lpl financial

How Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

The team at 228Main.com is growing! You might get to see a new face or hear a new voice, courtesy of our partners at LPL. Let me introduce our latest client services teammate.

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Choosing the Slow Way, Or, See Ya Soon?
photo shows a sunset on a beach in Pinellas County, Florida

I recently drove to a business conference in Florida, more than 1,500 miles from home. It would have been much faster and cheaper to fly. But saving time and money were not on my list of objectives.

In fact, it took six days to get there. There were visits with clients along the way—sharing meals at their favorite restaurants, talking and laughing and commiserating about life and world events and markets and more.

As we learned more about each other’s plans for the future, a wide range of topics emerged. We talked about Social Security choices, long-term investing in perilous times, how to pay for increasing expenses in retirement, the snowbirding life, downsizing homes.

These weren’t theoretical discussions, either. These are real people living their real lives, making real decisions. It was affirming for me to be greeted so warmly, and to experience “IRL” just how our work has helped people with their plans and planning.

The trip was a roaring success by the measures I care about: happiness, gratitude given and received. (And I wrote this reflection even before the conference started!)

Two lessons so far:

  • It really is the journey, not the destination, as they say.
  • And there is nothing like being there.

We’ve all done a lot of phone calls and email exchanges and Zoom conferences over the past couple of years, but human contact does a very different job for our souls.

Then next, I had a few days at the conference, and then the journey home—the long way, of course, with many more stops. With the team we have to keep things running smoothly at 228 Main, I’m thinking more travel is in my future. I may be seeing many more of you in the months and years ahead.

In the meantime, when we can help in any way, please email us or call.

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Play the audio version of this post below:

Choosing the Slow Way, Or, See Ya Soon? – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

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

Here We Grow Again: Welcome, Whitney!
headshot of Whitney Engle

One of the blessings of our enterprise is the way it grows, by word of mouth. One friend helps another by introducing them to us, or putting them on our email newsletter list, or forwarding a blog post. When we focus on growing your buckets and meeting your needs, our needs get met. 

Growth brings challenges, of course. We have staffed up from time to time in recent years to continue taking care of the business. Now we are embarking on a new and more flexible arrangement. A few benefits to our latest expansion: 

  • We get the expertise we need to keep our operations and logistics flowing more smoothly. 
  • We add another lovely teammate to help serve the best clients in the whole world! 

With that in mind, we want to welcome the newest member of our team. Whitney Engle comes to us by way of LPL Financial’s Administrative Solutions program. She is a full-time LPL employee, well-versed in all the systems and processes. She now works with us from afar, though the distance is no obstacle. Phones and email help bring us together; it’s one thing I learned with all of you in the last chapter of life. 

I believe the core activities of our enterprise are investment research, portfolio management, and talking to you. But nothing happens until the details are handled, and they are crucial. So Whitney is joining a client services team—along with Patsy Havenridge and Larry Wiederspan—that plays a vital role. 

We’re grateful for Larry’s long service; hard to believe it goes back eight years! And Patsy, four years in, has been a joy to have in the shop. With Whitney’s help, we are better equipped than ever to take care of business. 

Whitney will assist us with paperwork and logistics: it’s the work we may need to create new accounts, monitor requests, interface with mutual fund companies, guide us through home office processes, and help with a variety of other tasks. 

When she’s not hard at work, Whitney tells us she enjoys spending time with her two boys, taking care of a menagerie of animals at home, and cruising the country roads on a skateboard. 

Another friendly face joins the team, and we are glad to have access to a talent like Whitney through our partners at LPL. We’re looking forward to an arrangement that’s good for you and good for us. For the months and years ahead, staffing is key to helping us help you. So we’d like to offer a hearty welcome to Whitney! 

Clients, when we need to chat about anything, be sure to reach out—anytime.

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Play the audio version of this post below:

Here We Grow Again: Welcome, Whitney! – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

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

SURVIVING OR THRIVING?

We were running a bit ragged there for a few years. You’ve heard parts of the story before, but when my late wife’s health meant more travel and new challenges, I had to try something different. What had worked before was no longer sufficient.

Once we caught our breath, we found exciting advantages in those new things we tried. We feared digital communication might seem a poor replacement for in-person connections, but they were never in competition. We improved the speed and clarity of our thoughts as they traveled to you, and then our personal conversations became that much deeper. The various channels of communication made wonderful complements for each other.

We might not have made that discovery—or made it in such record time—if not for terrible adversity. The universe gave us a shove, and we tried to ride the momentum forward.

We survived and, as it turns out, thrived.

In a recent company communication, LPL’s Angela Xavier shared that what makes “thrivalists” (we love LPL’s term!) different from the rest.

“We all know that with crisis comes opportunity,” she said, “and those that are going to thrive will definitely take advantage of those opportunities.”

Xavier mentions a few key moves that help thrivalists: practicing flexibility, reimagining the work, and embracing the new things you have access to. Each new environment brings new challenges and new paths.

Become a thrivalist in whatever way makes sense to you. We’ve described it in the past as discovering you’re actually “in the right place at the right time” or with the old chestnut “necessity is the mother of invention.”

And when you struggle? Xavier encourages us to “steal with pride”: what are your mentors, neighbors, and friends doing? How might you adapt, not just to survive—but to thrive?

Clients, we’re excited to help you with any of your plans and planning. Call or write when you’re ready.

Convention Time Again

canstockphoto4299368

One of the best and biggest gatherings of financial professionals is coming up. LPL Financial’s annual Focus Conference presents a number of opportunities to gain education, perspective, and more.

Because we 16,000 registered representatives are free to build our businesses in accordance with our own principles and interests, a wide range of presentations are held. These are conducted by an incredible array of company and industry talent, as well as peers.

Our investment philosophy and portfolio management operations are mature. We’ll be looking for ways to enhance our productivity and speed of execution, as well as potential new research and information sources.

We have a deep interest in communications theory and practice as applied to the 21st century venues we use to keep in touch with you. Fortunately, some of the most talented people in the industry (maybe the world) will be available. They understand what we’re doing at 228Main.com, they have helped us all the way along, and we expect to make more progress on our plans for the future.

The cast of characters includes communications professionals in LPL departments, as well as specialized consultants like Scott McKain and Amy Florian. McKain is the author of ‘Create Distinction,’ a business best-seller that has inspired us over the years. Florian is an expert in helping advisors communicate more effectively with those who have experienced loss or difficult transitions. I’m looking forward to working with them again.

Over my long association with LPL, I’ve been fortunate to build close relationships with the leadership team. Most of this happened in the last four years, as many people in managing director and executive roles became readers and followers of our blog and social media. As we sort out the best structure for our business going forward, these connections are a great help.

I have breakfast and lunch meetings scheduled each day of the conference with key players on my LPL team. With all this, plus gatherings with friends and colleagues from around the country, it looks to be another exceptional experience.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

Anniversaries
photo shows a lit candle on top of a rainbow cupcake

We balance our attention between the moments in which we live, and the longer term over which we plan for the future. Anniversaries are a natural place to pause and take stock.

My 63rd birthday approaches. This may not seem like a particularly important number, but for me it is. My father and my eldest brother both passed away at age 62. Getting older has never been a problem for me; it is key to my intention to live a long and productive life. I am trying to do what I can to extend the string of birthdays so I can indeed work to age 92.

The 25th anniversary of my affiliation with LPL Financial comes later this year. It has always seemed like the right choice. With the challenges that we have had to work around in recent years, the flexibility and effectiveness of our partner LPL has become vital. In particular, full support for 21st century communication has helped us make a digital presence a key way to deal with periodic separation in time and distance.

Speaking of partners, I will celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary with the really important one this summer. In a life filled with good fortune, I count alphabetical order as a special blessing. On the first day of freshman year of high school, I found my assigned locker right next to Cathy Livingston’s.

You play a huge role in my long range plans: you are why I want to work to age 92. To say I am having a good time would be an understatement. While enjoying the moments as they pass, I’m also looking ahead to ways to build an organization that can better serve you, on a more sustainable basis.

Back to work! Thank you all, for everything. If you would like to talk about anything, please email us or call.

Change is Changing

© Can Stock Photo / PerseoMedusa

When we think about our lives, our work, and our leisure, it seems evident that the pace of change is accelerating. This is not a new idea. A 1970 best-selling book by Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Future Shock, first brought this idea into public consciousness—they argued that the rate of change was overwhelming for many people. The future was coming too quickly. And since then, things have only gotten faster.

A speaker spent time talking about change at the recent LPL Financial national conference. One of the lessons of change is that knowing about it is not good enough, but instead, “You have to do something about it.”

We think about the evolution of the economy and the markets, the changing face of law and regulation, industry trends that affect us, and the unfolding needs of you, our clients. There are many sources of change!

Knowing that adaptability is the new superpower, as White says, we also think about how we survive change, or better yet, thrive in it. How do we “do something about it”? The answer, for us, has a number of parts.

• Focusing on your wellbeing helps us sort out what we need to do in seeking to improve your position in the years ahead. You know our theory has long been the better off you are, the better off we will ultimately be. Looking at change through this lens brings clarity about what we need to do.

• Planning to work to age 92 has perhaps given us the perspective of a younger, more vibrant enterprise. When others might be coasting toward retirement, seeking an exit, we are gearing up and planning for the decades ahead.

• Having a sophisticated institutional partner like LPL Financial is a boon. It feels as if they are creating the future of digital communications together with us. They are at the leading edge of new media in terms of support and training, in our opinion. Few colleagues employ these tools to the extent we do, to keep our connection to you.

The unfolding future, change and all, feels as if it were built for us. We like having the same story for everyone. Communicating at the speed of light is good for you and for us. And it is as gratifying as ever to work with you as you strive toward your goals.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

What We Learned at the Big Conference

© Can Stock Photo / appalachianviews

I have gone to many conferences over a long period of time. Each has provided some perspective, insight or connection that proved to be quite valuable. Our quest to improve your financial position, being a human endeavor, is always susceptible to improvement. The conferences serve to expose us to ideas, concepts and tools that can help.

LPL Financial’s Focus17 event was perhaps the most consequential ever. The social media and blog presence we started at http://www.228Main.com two years ago has a far greater reach than we realized. We have relationships with top executives at LPL Financial and senior management that we did not know we had. This is turning out to be vitally important to you and to us.

Regulation creates change, and encourages standardization. You know we are contrarian; we dislike conventional wisdom, so we aren’t big on doing what everyone else is doing. As the company sorts out how to get to the future, our voice is in the conversation. Our proposals, the ones that will let us keep serving you as we have been, are being reviewed at the highest levels. If we didn’t have the new media presence, we would still be trying to let the brass know who we are and what we want.

Our communication strategy is to be radically transparent. We share our fundamental beliefs, our strategies, our methods and our views. So when we introduce ourselves to a policy-maker and say “this is what we are about,” the policy-maker says “Oh, I know, I read your blog. What do we need to do?”

Clients, understand, we put this all in place for you, not them. If there were three of me, none of us would have time for ego-stroking with big shots. But the fact is, these good people are going to help us shape the future in a way that might work out for everyone.

The highlight of the program was Bert Jacobs, Chief Executive Optimist of the Life Is Good Company. (You may have seen their T-shirts or coffee cups.) You have to know, the message that ‘life isn’t easy, life isn’t perfect, but life is good” certainly rang my bell. The idea that optimism is a tree trunk from which authenticity and empathy and humor and generosity etc. can branch is very powerful. Bert learned that ‘life is good’ resonated most deeply with people who had big challenges, not those who had easy lives.

I’ll summarize the rest by saying LPL Financial has a great culture carried by incredibly talented people. The firm is paying attention and taking care of business. You and we could not ask for more. Please call or email us with questions or to have a longer conversation.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

Meet Our Research Sources

© Can Stock Photo Inc. / meggichka

You already know Mark Leibman and Greg Leibman. But you might not know our allied staff economist, our fixed income research director, our market strategist, or the fellow who oversees the whole allied research effort. The executives at LPL have decades of combined experience, advanced degrees, specialized training and the appropriate professional designations.

Most importantly, they each have the ability to communicate economic and market developments with the context and background needed to get at the real meaning and significance.

These folks do not work at 228 Main. They are the key people among dozens in LPL Financial’s Research Department. In our quest to find the right investments, and to understand the economic and market environment in which we live, they play a major role. They put out reports, they help conduct the daily Research Morning conference call, they blog, they tweet—they communicate.

One of the wonderful things about life in the 21st century is the vast amount of information available. We’ve spent a lot of time appraising the quality of commentary from across the financial industry. We are able to follow key specialists at Schwab and Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo and other firms, as well as our most respected peers and money managers.

The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times provide a great overview of the major stories of the day, and more detailed trade publications are a vital source of news about the industries in which we’ve invested. People with specialized knowledge are available through blogs and social media, as well. We read the Detroit newspapers for auto industry news, Australian papers for news on global raw materials producers, and we find news sources for other situations as needed. Subscription-based investment research and data round out our fundamental sources.

We have what we need to do our own thinking, draw our own conclusions, and take action in pursuit of your interests. If you have specific questions, please call or write to ask them.