-: When I was very young, for whatever reason,
I became totally fascinated by my grandparents' stories
about the Great Depression years.
My father was born, both my mother and my father were born
just months before the great crash of 1929.
So their first 10, 15 years of life
was the Great Depression followed by the Second World War.
And I just became totally fascinated by it
and very afraid, just wondering,
when could this happen again?
And so it, it instilled in me a,
I think a fairly high level of prudence.
I know that for most people,
the money that they have earned
and built and saved and invested and grown,
it has not come easily
and it should never be treated lightly.
Timing often is everything in life
and timing can be a very, very big factor in investing.
So the first thing that I will look for
in any person to become part of this group is integrity.
Integrity is absolutely essential.
Over time, I think integrity will earn people's trust.
We're looking for people who are competent.
And then a third component is
looking for people who really care,
not just about their work or their career,
but who really care about other people,
because that's the business that we're in.
We're in the business of trying to make
positive contributions to folks
in the financial arenas of their life.
So why work with us?
Work with us if it seems to you
that we share some values in common,
that our philosophy makes sense,
and that you think we could potentially
have a good long-term relationship.
One of the things that we have found
is that we do the best work for people,
we make the most difference
when they are clients for a long, long time.
There's just a tremendous value
in the long-term relationship,
when you really understand people,
you understand what they want,
you understand what they're afraid of,
you understand their needs,
and they understand how we work.
And over time, they build trust and confidence
and are able to stick with a plan.
Sticking with a plan in the investment arena,
in our view, is one of the most important
contributors to success.
We are 1000% focused on long-term relationships,
not short-term transactions.
I started this business really for one word,
and that's family, in all its many aspects.
We try to operate our firm as a family
in the sense of caring about each other
and really thinking about what will work best
for everybody in this firm.
The idea of family goes beyond just our group.
We try to think of clients as part of our family
and we want everyone to care about them
as much as we care about our own family.
We think about numerous nonprofit clients,
foundations, endowments, et cetera,
as not just part of our family,
but they're part of the community family.
All the people that they serve,
whatever niche that they serve,
that's part of the family.
Our tendency is is very strongly to be
multi-generational in our thinking.
We're not just thinking about a particular set of time
or a particular person's life.
We're usually thinking about the next generations.
What a fiduciary is or what it means to be a fiduciary
is that you, by law, have got to put
the interests of clients ahead of your own interests.
30 years ago, legally, most of the people in our business
were not considered fiduciaries
from a legal point of view.
But that is the way that I always thought of myself
and that's the way I wanted to build our firm,
that we would operate that way.
I don't want ever to feel like somebody else,
some other firm would care about any client of ours
more than we did or more than I did.
(upbeat music)