Plus, Spence fired off an e-mail that summed up the advice he had given me and provided links to more information to help me increase my professional speaking platform.

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In 2007 Manchester United defender Gary Neville called for "the removal of agents from the game", arguing that players didn't "need people taking hundreds of thousands of pounds off them, just good advice from a solicitor or an accountant".

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Fees for financial advice and acquisitions were part of an elaborate deception to keep the massive losses off the company's books.

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Instead, we politely give an off-the-cuff response that often results in the kind of well-intentioned, yet irrelevant advice that was given in the example above.

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