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Beginnings and Endings

As the end of the year draws near, it makes sense to look back on where we have been—and to look forward at the path ahead.  

Our lives have threads; the life of our shared enterprise here at 228 Main does, too. One thread is talking with you, meeting you where you are, striving to connect your money to your life. Other threads pertain to finding worthy opportunities in which to invest, managing your portfolios to take advantage of that research, and communicating with you about what we are doing and why. 

It’s been an interesting year! The markets have been challenging; the economy is dealing with the aftermath of the shutdown and the restart relating to the pandemic. Disruptions continue to affect many aspects of our lives. 

Turmoil brings opportunity, of course, and we are always thinking about opportunities. Our underlying theory is that we survive, the economy recovers, and we end up sooner or later with record levels of GDP, income, and wealth. No guarantees, of course. 

In other words, a lot happened in 2022, but the big story has not changed. We are looking forward with anticipation to 2023. 

Our story may not have changed, but our structure is evolving to better reflect our work together. We have talked about the collaborative enterprise we’re becoming, and our regulatory structure will soon reflect that. I can’t work to age 92 by myself—and I would not want to! So the New Year will include a transition to a more sustainable form of organization. (More details will follow, and you can refer to our previous discussion on this process.) 

My sense is that we’re more capable than ever of taking care of business for you—with more time spent by more people searching for opportunities, managing portfolios, attending to the details of service, and communicating with you in more ways than ever. The new structure will be a better way to organize this reality. 

Clients, what are your plans and planning for the New Year? Any parts you’d like to talk about with us? Email or call, any time. 

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Play the audio version of this post below:

Beginnings and Endings – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

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

Three Cheers for Larry!

Coincidence, good timing, good fortune… Whatever you call it, something wonderful happened to bring Larry Wiederspan into my life and later into our shop. Clients, three cheers for Larry as he closes a chapter working here at 228 Main.

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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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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/.

Our Schedule Is Your Schedule
photo shows a pen pointing at a calendar with the word "You!" circled

The best clients in the whole world rarely disappoint. We’ve built trust together across decades of conversations, in some cases. Newer faces have gotten to know me and my work, online or through friends and relatives.

But there are certain things that just break my heart to hear from you.

“I know you’re busy…”

“Mark, I’m so sorry to bother you…”

“I don’t want to take your time…”

Ouch. I can feel the pain even as I type those words! Let me set the record straight.

Sure, I’m busy. If there were three of me, we’d all be busy. But I choose to direct my time toward your business: your plans, your goals, and our discussions about all of the above!

One of my staff members once told me it wasn’t possible for me to waste their time, because there’s no way they would allow that! If I were in danger of wasting their time, they would tell me. (We’re all adults here, right?)

Clients, you can trust me to be direct about my schedule and my priorities. And my goodness, you are the reason I’m here. I’ve got a whole team to help me with the details, so I get to spend more of my time doing more of what I love: my day job.

My time is your time is our time. When you’re ready, reach out.

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Play the audio version of this post below:

Our Schedule Is Your Schedule – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

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

Investing in (Y)our Future

Caitie Leibman image

If you’ve been following along, you know my intent to work to age 92 dates a long way back. Therefore, I wanted a practice that would last that long.

The more we thought about sustainability, the more we realized that mere survival to a certain point in time was not fair to you—nor a sound plan for us. So the goal became building an enterprise that could thrive for decades.

If we automate everything that works better when automated and get human understudies for all the remaining activities, the organization will be more durable. It will work more smoothly day to day, and it will be more likely to last for the years and decades ahead.

The next phase is falling into place. Caitie Leibman has joined the team full-time as Director of Communications. We foresee three main benefits:

  • Caitie will take over some communications-related duties now performed by Greg and me. This will give me more time to work with you one-on-one on your plans and planning. Greg will have more time for investment research.
  • Our communications program could stand improvement in a dozen ways I know about and many more that I cannot now conceive of. Caitie will bring these to fruition. (I’m particularly excited about the blog collections she is weaving into book form. Stay tuned.)
  • In time, Caitie will be writing in her own voice for new audiences, introducing 228 Main to new generations. Making sound planning and timeless investing strategies available to more people is an exciting part of sustainability.

These last several years we’ve used digital communications to stay close when personal circumstances turned time and geography into challenges. The digital presence we built proved to be far more valuable to you and to us than we dreamed; it makes sense for Caitie to become involved in the enterprise in this area first.

I’ll still be writing, of course. Caitie, with her degrees and experiences in writing and a firm grasp of the philosophy of our family firm, will be a major resource.

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

Building an Enterprise to Serve You

© Can Stock Photo / artjazz

Over lunch with dear clients recently, I mentioned that our work together has now spanned twenty years, through the beginning of retirement and building a dream home.

One said, “I will never forget what you told us in that first meeting.” I was curious: what had been so memorable?

“You told us you wanted to work to age 92.”

I still have the goal, as you know. (Although, I had not remembered that it was twenty years old.) Of course, working to age 92 depends on living to age 92, maintaining vitality and mental acuity.

But we do not choose our lifespans, and good health is a gift that may be lost.
Early in my career I established a succession agreement. This assured your affairs would be handled by competent, high-integrity colleagues in the event I could no longer work for you. You could elect to go elsewhere at your convenience, on your time frame, but you would not be forced to scramble for help.

Although I would not walk across the street to talk to a prospect, being fully occupied with the goal of growing your buckets, the business has grown beyond anything I could have imagined when I established that agreement. Our outbound communication is aimed at you, not prospects. And yet we grow and grow, and new clients find us.

You point neighbors to our blogs and videos at 228Main.com. Your relatives find their way in. Even “likes” and “shares” in social media spread the word about our services.

This unexpected success prompts us to think about building an enterprise strong enough and deep enough to survive me. We’ve had success in finding wonderful people to work with us. Our philosophy and strategies resonate with them, and they bring their personal contributions to the shared mission.

You see four people working at 228 Main, but three others are working part-time, behind the scenes, and there may come a day when any of them devote even more of their energy to working for you.

I’ll never farm out talking to you to someone else. Yet we will develop associates who help new clients get connected to our system and philosophy, and take care of them.

Our object is to develop the organizational depth to survive the loss of any one of us. Then you will have a more resilient, sustainable partner in this enterprise.

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.

Frisky as a Puppy

© Can Stock Photo / mvaligursky

We recently wrote about our plans to keep on managing your needs, and those of the friends and loved ones you keep sending to us. Bottom line, we have to scale up.

Greater effectiveness gives us the time we need to talk to you and understand what you are trying to accomplish. Our systems and our staffing are key to the effort. The scale we are building adds to the resiliency of the organization.

An interesting byproduct of intending to work to age 92 is that the business seems as frisky as a puppy. Why? Maybe because I have thirty more years to work. While some of my colleagues are coasting into retirement, we are planning for the decades ahead.

Those plans are getting exciting.

1. You know about the understudy to our Client Service Specialist Larry Wiederspan: Patsy Havenridge, Client Service Assistant. She is already on the job, working and training with Larry and Greg.

2. Technology Associate Max Leibman is working on a project basis, part-time, building a new operating system for the business. This will last through year-end, or longer. This new system will be a platform to automate and simplify our administrative tasks, freeing up our staff to spend more time with you and on seeking opportunities to grow your accounts.

3. Our Marketing Associate Caitie Leibman, within three semesters of her doctorate in English, is spending some part-time hours for the firm–outside of and without interfering with her current work as Director of the Writing Center at Doane University. Fittingly, she is collaborating with Greg Leibman to improve our communications and provide more consistency.

4. Caitie’s partner, Operations Associate Billy Garver, is also engaged in projects for us. His master’s degree in statistics is a good base from which to add depth to our research and portfolio management capabilities. His work with online course content provides some insight into things we are trying to do with http://www.228Main.com. He will continue to serve on the adjunct faculty at Doane University.

We cannot know whether the current projects turn into more permanent connections with these talented people. But having more of the next generation more involved with 228 Main is wonderful.

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.

Doane University and LPL Financial are not affiliated.

Here We Grow Again

© Can Stock Photo / ajithclicks

We spend a lot of time thinking about business. Shares of common stock are percentage ownership interests in businesses, after all. But lately we have had to spend some time thinking about our business. It keeps growing.

Our idea has long been that growing your buckets is the best way to grow the business. So we put all of our energy into that task, and talking to you clients instead of strangers. You evidently talk about us–word of mouth is an amazing thing.

We think the best strategy to manage growth is a concept we learned by revamping our communications beginning in 2015. The digital venues like 228Main.com are scalable. In other words, when we communicate to dozens of clients, hundreds or thousands of others can listen in with no additional cost or effort or time on our part.

Scalability in our operations means systematizing the things that would be done better if they were systematized. Scalability in our staff means getting understudies in place for every human activity, and documenting those processes.

When you think about it, our efforts in these areas will make our enterprise more durable and resilient. These are good things for everyone.

The first steps in the scalability project:

1. Hire an understudy for Larry, to work in client logistics (forms, paperwork, and organization). This will happen soon.
2. Develop a custom operating system for the business. Portfolio analytics, our longevity-driven fee administration, task management and client contact records will ultimately all be in a single system. This is in development, and will probably take many months to complete.
3. Hire an understudy for Greg, to work in research and trading. This will be a longer-term project.

Of course, we all pitch in on many different activities as needed to meet your needs. Clients, if you have questions about this or anything else, please email us or call.

A Tour of 228 Main Street

228main

Hello, and welcome. We hope you enjoy your tour today. If you have comments or questions as we go along, by all means, ask them.

My name is Mark Leibman. I have been enchanted by the markets and the economy since my college days. And my whole career has been about helping people plan and invest to strive toward their life goals. It is all I ever wanted to do.

Back in the year 2000, twenty years into a career marked by experience in most forms of personal finance, I bought this building. I needed more space than my office at home could provide. Obviously, I could not pass it up. It dates to 1900, a brick commercial Victorian structure like the ones that dot so many small town Main Streets across the country. The careful restoration reflects the timeless values we hold dear.

My brother Paul and I did the work to get the place ready for business, and he became my first assistant. Paul, a retired firefighter, was a man of many talents. He refinished the wood floors, and we patched and painted the walls together. By the time the first round of inexpensive furniture began to show its wear, my wife Cathy was working here and directed an upgrade to the comfortable and functional pieces you see.

Larry Wiederspan, our newest associate, sits here. He came to us after more than thirty years in banking. I knew decades ago that he would make a great addition, and the pieces fell in place back in 2014. He has a great background for all the paperwork and compliance duties required of us these days. Clients also love that we have a dedicated Technology Ambassador to coordinate 24/7 online account access, electronic signing of documents, and going paperless for those who prefer.

Greg Leibman works at this desk. Yes, we are related—he is one of my children. Greg does valuable work in a number of areas. He is the primary contact when people call the office with questions about their accounts. He assists with investment research, doing special projects and screening the market for potential holdings as well as following the news on current holdings. When it is time to make changes in portfolios, Greg makes trades under my direction. Hard to believe he started here at the end of 2009.

(Greg also maintains our virtual presence at http://www.228main.com, where he is a full partner in the writing and editing. Just like our physical location here at 228 Main Street, 228main.com is a friendly place. We post a new story or article once or twice a week, highlighting our philosophy or key investment concepts or thoughts on events of the day. Links there go to our running daily short commentaries at your choice of venues, Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn. It’s almost like chatting out front on the sidewalk, talking about whatever seems most pertinent or interesting at the moment.)

My office is right back here, across from the coffee maker. I believe that five cups a day keeps the Alzheimer’s away, and that is important to anyone like me who plans to work to age 92. You’ll notice that I sit at a partner’s desk—it is the same on both sides. When you sit down, we meet as equals. We think true genius lies in finding unrecognized simplicities, not in complicating things to confuse people or acting like some high priest.

The machinery on my side of the desk connects to a thousand times the resources any investment professional had back when I got registered to do business, at a tiny fraction of the cost. For someone who reads voraciously and studies long hours, we truly live in a golden age. And it’s portable: I can work from anywhere with my cell phone and internet access.

So that’s our place. I’ve done all the talking so far, and I apologize for that. If you’d like to visit about your goals and your life, let’s get started. We can do that by phone, email, or the good old-fashioned way, face to face. You choose.