Clients, it’s Caitie here. I’m so thrilled to introduce you to our newest teammate, Allison Bauers! In a small business, we tend to wear many hats, so this week, we’re chatting about how our roles and duties will change in the coming months.
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Friends, it’s been a season of change for Leibman Financial!
As many of you know already, Mark will be focusing on client work and research—and less on administrative duties—starting January 1, as Caitie takes on the front-facing CEO role.
Caitie has been serving as Director of Communications full-time since 2020, and our communications program has only grown in those years.
The team has committed to making our messaging more accessible, adding more audio and video in addition to our blog posts. We take pride in making our ideas available in multiple formats, to fit a variety of clients’ lives. We’ve been working to make our contact with you more timely, relevant, and consistent—without clogging up your inboxes!
As Caitie starts to flex her leadership muscles, it’s time to introduce our newest addition: a dedicated Director of Communications who can continue to foster our important connections with each of you. On that note, we’re pleased to introduce Allison Bauers as Leibman Financial’s next Director of Communications.
Allison is a Nebraska native, growing up on a farm near Auburn and moving to Cass County in the mid-1980s. She and her husband Larry raised their children in Louisville, where they were involved in the school system, community theater, and other endeavors over the years. Now they split their time between Nebraska and Arizona spending time with family and making their best attempt at exploring all of our National Parks and the wonders of this country.
Allison’s work includes decades in roles across the fields of education and communication, and her skills suit the demands of this role well. She tells us she is excited to join the team and grow in the specialty role that Caitie helped establish.
We’re already confident that Allison’s attitude and energy will bring fresh possibilities to the firm, as we work to continue to serve our clients in thoughtful new ways.
Communications will remain a team sport here at 228 Main, and we are thrilled to add Allison to that team. We hope you get a chance to meet her soon.
Welcome, Allison!
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Clients, you may have already spotted the new face or heard the new voice around the office. Let us take a moment to get everyone up to speed on some exciting developments.
You may remember that our dear friend Larry Wiederspan “retired” a couple years ago, but it didn’t stick. Then, the time came for certain: his last day in our employment came and went in April. While we miss seeing Larry so regularly, his retirement brought us a new opportunity. (Life’s all about beginnings and endings, isn’t it?)
With Larry’s departure, we were ready for some help on the Client Services team. Our Client Services Coordinator Whitney Engle has been with us full-time for more than a year now, and she’s been on top of everything we’ve been able to throw to her—and then some! She’s so proactive. And Client Services Associate Patsy Havenridge has been holding down the front office with grace and good humor since 2018. Where does the time go?
And now, joining as our newest Client Services Associate, we’re pleased to introduce Brenda Smith!
Brenda brings years of experience in financial services and administrative support, and we were so pleased to discover that her skills were a match for our needs. Her warm personality and easy-going spirit were evident from our first encounters.
Brenda is a Louisville native, and her son Isaac is a third-generation LHS student. When she’s not in the office at 228 Main, she enjoys traveling, reading, cooking, and spending time with friends and family. “I have a group of lifelong friends who still refer to ourselves as ‘the Louisville Girls,’ and we try to get together at least once a month to catch up,” Brenda says. “I’m a history nerd and can be found watching historical documentaries and historical shows and movies when I’m at home.”
Brenda may be the latest addition to the 228 Main team, but she is already caught up on the “history” of our work here. The mission is the same for the whole team: we strive to grow your buckets. And that project takes all of us, from research and trading to paperwork and communications—it happens when all of us are ready to be of service to each other.
Come in and say hello whenever you have a chance. Welcome, Brenda!
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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. Disruptions continue to affect some aspects of the economy.
Change brings opportunity, of course, and we are always thinking about opportunities. Our underlying theory is that we persist, some will innovate, 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 2023, but the big story has not changed. We are looking forward with anticipation to 2024.
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.
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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You know her name from emails; maybe you’ve even had the pleasure of speaking with her on the phone. You may remember us announcing her arrival on the team just over one year ago, when she was lending us her talents part-time via LPL Financial’s Administrative Solutions program.
Today, we’re proud to announce that Whitney Engle of Floris, Iowa, is joining our team full-time! We are employing her directly as she continues to work remotely.
Whitney will serve as our new Client Services Coordinator, continuing to work closely with Larry and Patsy on the service team and also supporting the management team of Mark, Greg, Billy, and Caitie with their various duties in research, portfolio management, and communications.
We have staffed up from time to time in recent years to continue taking care of the business. This latest expansion will have a few important benefits: now that we are an SEC-facing organization, it’s more important than ever that we stay efficient in our processes and systems.
Having another team member onboard full-time also means one more friendly face is at the ready, getting you what you need, when you need it.
“I can’t wait to spend more time getting to know clients,” Whitney said. “They are the reason we’re here.”
As we’ve gotten to know her across these months, we’ve felt so fortunate. Whitney’s skills will continue to grow in her new role of course, but she has already shown many of those qualities that are tough to teach: enthusiasm, curiosity, tenacity.
Not only does she take pride in her work, Whitney is someone who clearly cares so deeply about her family—and the menagerie of animals they keep at home! Her proactive approach to things will no doubt continue to improve the experience for all of us and for all of you.
For the months and years ahead, we know that people are key to helping us help you. So, we hope you’ll help us offer a(nother) hearty welcome to Whitney! Thanks for being with us.
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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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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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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:
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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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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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:
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.
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