Month: December 2024

Actions Speak Louder?
By Mark Leibman, President

In business, it is popular to claim that one is “client-centered,” that the focus is on the clients. Well, we should hope that any service would be client-centered!

So what exactly does that mean to us?

I’ve often said that our only business objective is to grow your buckets. When you do well, we do well. We talk about that a lot, along with the importance of the long view.

So a few years back, when your individual successes began to add up to success for our firm, our costs began to go down. With the savings, we reduced the fees for our loyal clients.

We put in a discount for those with five years’ tenure, and another for fifteen years.

We reviewed these discounts recently, and they spread across the more than 50% of portfolios that have been with us more than fifteen years and the 25% more that have notched at least five years.

It is gratifying to enjoy such loyalty! And it’s also a celebration of the long time horizon that effective investing requires. The effects of compounding have a much greater impact over the long term, too—maybe you’ve noticed?

Many of you have heard me say I plan to work to age 92. But is it work, to talk all day with people I like about stuff I am interested in? It does not seem that way to me. It is an honor to have worked with so many of you for so many years. And it gets easier for me, the bigger and more capable our team here at 228 Main.

Some companies spend their time and money and energy chasing prospective customers. We’re doing very well by striving to grow the ones we already have—and we think that makes things more pleasant for you, too.

Those dollars in fee savings could not be going to nicer folks, in my view. Thank you all, for everything.

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Play the audio version of this post below:

Actions Speak Louder? – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

This text is available at https://www.228Main.com/.

Thirty Years—and Counting
By Mark Leibman, President

50 years ago, I was finishing my first semester of college at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

40 years ago, I became registered to work with investment products.

30 years ago, I affiliated with LPL Financial—December 1994.

That connection was the seed that sprouted into the business you see today, Leibman Financial Services at 228Main.com, online and on Main. We are an SEC-registered Investment Advisor, LPL still custodies client assets and provides services, and I remain a registered representative of LPL.

We might not be here today if not for two features of our relationship with LPL. The first is the spirit of independence, the freedom to build our business to fit our vision—not theirs.

The second is the unwavering support through the years for the voice of the advisor in digital media.

For a while in the middle, the health of my high school sweetheart became an existential crisis. I needed the business for the health insurance and resources to keep her alive. But her care required so much of my time that I could not communicate one-on-one with our clients, as I had before, in the volumes needed to maintain relationships.

That LPL Financial supported our voice in 21st century communications made all the difference. Email newsletters, blog posts, videos, social media—with these, we could talk with all of our clients at once.

Cathy Livingston Leibman fought for years after diagnosis, saw children marry and grandbabies born, before she passed. And I learned, in the daily triage of life, how to focus on the essentials like never before.

The business thrived in the face of adversity, becoming too large for me to operate by myself. So we transformed the investment advisory work into an enterprise, collaboratively owned and managed by three next-gen family members and me. We are now better built for the decades ahead.

And I have more time than ever to talk with you.

We have choices in our affiliations. The choice I made thirty years ago has stood up, and I hope it always will. In a time when allegiances are bought and sold, and short-term profit drives a lot of business decision-making, playing the long game is a competitive advantage.

Clients, that’s how we work with you, that is how we conduct our own affairs, that is why we are marking this 30th anniversary.

Thank you all, for everything.

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Play the audio version of this post below:

30 Years—and Counting – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

This text is available at https://www.228Main.com/.

Sorting Out Probabilities

Many domains in life require us to make decisions in the face of uncertainty. It’s possible to act even when the outlook requires a hearty dose of hope about better times ahead. Sometimes we can only see as far as the headlights reach—but you can make the whole trip that way. 🙏

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Compare and Despair?

By Caitie Leibman, Director of Communications

It’s said that comparison is the thief of joy. The grass is always greener, the Joneses are doing better, and no one else seems to have blemishes in their highlight reel.

This might feel like a modern problem, with how easy it is to fall into a cycle of “compare and despair” in this age of social media. But comparing ourselves to others is a very human tendency. Any strong group may feature some healthy competitiveness, for example.

But comparison becomes a problem when we forget to add some context back in. On LinkedIn, for example, we aren’t just seeing what our peers are up to on an average Tuesday: we’re also being fed content from the champions of every industry, as they chalk up lifetime achievements in real time!

What’s the antidote to the cycle of compare and despair? I sometimes daydream about deleting all my accounts, finding a nice quiet cave to hide in for a few months. (It’s not gonna happen, and it wouldn’t help anyway.)

Instead, we can just keep at it. That is, our version of “it.” Our work, our mission, bringing our attention back to whatever is happening in our lane. And research backs this approach.

“Keep your eyes on your own work,” psychologist Susan David reminds us in her book Emotional Agility. Maybe we heard this line a time or two in our school days, when teachers were on the lookout for cheating. While life is not a test, and there are no grades, this mantra might still do us some good.

Keeping our eyes on our own work might mean keeping ourselves at the center of our choices. When people give advice, it’s often in the form of, “Well, if I were you…” But they’re not you! You don’t need to know what others would do. They’re not in your shoes. You’re trying to find a way to figure out what you might do.

Comparison can spread doubt and add unhelpful pressure. We’re not trying to become that shiny person we saw on LinkedIn or even to become the friend with advice who is just trying to be helpful. That approach would be miserable. Susan David says this would lead us to become a “striving, lesser version of someone else.”

Instead, we can lean in to becoming even more of ourselves. This journey is not a race you can lose—because it’s not a race. Just keep your eyes on your own work. We’ll try to do the same.

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Play the audio version of this post below:

Compare and Despair? – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

This text is available at https://www.228Main.com/.

The Cycles and the Seasons

Each season of life brings different challenges—and makes different demands of us. Still, we don’t fight change. What does this season of life have to offer?

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