Mark Balasa shares the most important lessons learned on trust from his celebrated career in asset management.
You’ll Learn:
- How to build trust with anyone
- How trying to sound smart can hurt you
- The most important question to ask in any meeting
About Mark
Mark is the former founder and CIO of Balasa Dinverno & Foltz LLC, a wealth management firm.
Mark has been a featured speaker on investment and technology topics with organizations such as Morningstar, the Financial Planning Association (FPA), Charles Schwab & Co., and Standard & Poor’s. He has been quoted in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Barron’s, Smart Money, and BusinessWeek.
Mark has been recognized as one of the top wealth managers in the country by organizations such as Robb Report Worth magazine, Medical Economics and Bloomberg. He previously sat on Blackrock’s RIA Advisory Board, J.P. Morgan’s RIA advisory board, PIMCO’s advisory panel for RIAs, the advisory board for State Street Global Advisors, and the technology board for Charles Schwab & Co. Mark has written for INC. magazine website and publications for CCH.
- Company: BVM Studio
- Podcast: Is THIS for Kids?
Resources Mentioned
- Website: Morningstar
- Book: Nudge: The Final Edition by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
- Book: Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard Thaler
- Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- Book: The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues by Patrick Lencioni
- Book: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
- Past episode: 552: The Foundational Principle that Separates Good Leaders from Bad Ones with Pat Lencioni
Thank you, Sponsors!
- Dash Hudson. Manage your social media and stay up to speed with Dash Hudson’s Social Media Trends Report.
Mark Balasa Interview Transcript
Pete Mockaitis
Mark, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.
Mark Balasa
Thank you.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am so excited to dig into your life and career and the wisdom to be gleaned from it but, first, I want to hear a little bit about when you grew up, you were in a town of 300 folks. Tell us what was that like?
Mark Balasa
Yeah, it’s funny. Looking back, it was such a small town. Of course, when you were growing up, you don’t know that. That’s just normal. So, when we went to the nearby large town of 7,000 to go to school and shop and everything else, but it was awesome. You knew everybody, everybody knew you, very relaxed. It was a great spot to grow up.
Pete Mockaitis
Now was there anything odd that, I guess, you later learned was odd about the experience of being in such a small town that came to light?
Mark Balasa
What struck me, as I came to Chicago to start my career, was how unusual that was in many ways. Because you knew everybody, there was, of course, good and bad. They knew all your business, you knew theirs, but for the most part, it was very positive. And going into a much larger city and into a working environment, where you had to learn the ropes about how to trust people, how to navigate relationships that you didn’t grow up with them, because it was so intimate in such a small town, so that was a period of adjustment, for sure.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. It’s sort of, like, “Huh, this is different. I know nothing about you, and you, and you, and you.”
Mark Balasa
Right.
Pete Mockaitis
As opposed to youth. Okay. Well, I’m so excited to dig into… you’ve had just an impressive interesting career, and we’ve had a number of really delightful exchanges and conversations, so I think that we have a lot to learn from you. And I want to hear maybe just the four-minute version so we can get a little bit oriented. Can we hear a bit about your journey from founding your asset management company to exiting it, and then we’re going to dig in a whole lot more from there?
Mark Balasa
You bet. Again, the four-minute version of this is I was in the financial industry, I found that very boring, so I went back to get additional schooling in credentials, etc. I always thought it fascinating to be able to work with somebody about what’s really important to them, and finance, of course, checks that box pretty well.
So, I started a firm inside of an accounting firm and left that, went and started a wealth management firm and I brought in partners as I went along. For me, the journey was fascinating, Pete. The opportunity to help people, to get to be, in many cases, friends with them, to know their families and get paid for it at the same time, it was a dream career.
I loved getting up every day going to work. I love growing the firm. There was lots of challenges. Of course, there is in any business but it was so rewarding. We had people that were clients for 30 years. Some, of course, were just started just as I was leaving, and everything in between. But it was the relationships and the ability to help people that made it so rewarding.
Pete Mockaitis
And so then, tell me a little bit about the decision to sell or exit as well.
Mark Balasa
We became victims of our own success, in a way, and, of course, it’s a first-world problem but, as the firm went along, Mike, and Armand, and I were the three founding partners, and we wanted to bring in additional talent to grow the business. So, a really important way to do that was to give ownership. Not give, I should say, but to provide ownership, which they had to pay for.
So, as the firm continued to grow, and we got leverage, if you will, in terms of our asset growth and so forth, the revenue and the profitability was quite high. And so, what happened is the ownership interest became very high and very expensive. And so, what in the beginning was kind of a manageable debt load for a young person to buy in became very expensive, and it got to the point, actually, it was borderline not doable.
So, we looked out into the future, we said, “Gosh, it’s going to take probably another 12 years, maybe 15 years, to transition the firm internally,” and I was 60 at the point, “And do we want to work that many years?” And the answer was no. And so, we decided to look to the outside. I would tell you that, over the course of the firm’s trajectory, I would say three, four times a year for the last 20 years, we had people approached us to buy us.
So, we know that there was an interest. We always deflected that because we have the opinion that we wanted to have our own control, grow at the pace we wanted to grow, etc. And so, in making this decision, we knew it would be a big one because we’d be bringing an outside capital, in the end, actually, ownership but the reason for doing it was the ability to transition internally and transfer the firm got too expensive.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, a victim of your own success, yes, well, I guess that’s what I wanted to establish here because you are a kind, humble, generous man, but you said the revenue and profitability became quite high. I’ll say it for you, it seems like you guys were crushing it in terms of you were growing well, more and more folks were entrusting their assets to you, you were named seven times one of the best financial advisors in the US by the magazine that report such things.
And, yes, as I’ve interacted with you, I have also been just impressed by your way. And so, I kind of want to dig into the underlying skills or mindsets associated with your success. First of all, is it fair to say, your success as a company was not due to the fact that you generated massively superior returns relative to all of your competitors? Is that a fair statement?
Mark Balasa
Yes.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I imagine there’s something else going on there because that would be kind of obvious, “Oh, hey, Balasa’s company makes the most money. Let’s just go over there.” There were some other factors that were driving this success and growth. And what do you think some of them were?
Mark Balasa
That’s a great point. Each industry has its nuances, Pete, and ours, returns from an organization are like a state secret. Unless you’re a public mutual fund or a hedge fund that we have to report some of this stuff, it’s almost impossible to get people’s returns. And so, I can talk about our returns relative to peer groups, if you want to do that later, and then we were very proud of them.
But you’re absolutely right, when people come in to hire someone like us, you don’t do it based on returns. I would calmly tell them the criteria for a high net worth individual to hire someone like us is as follows. Number one, do you trust them? That’s a gut instinct. The second is, what is their background, if you will, academic and so forth?
Number three, what’s their scope of services? Number four, who’s the team I’m going to work with? Number five was fees. And number six was returns or vice versa. The last two were fees and returns. So, the thought process of hiring was not based on returns.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, let’s talk about trust. There’s something that I think all of us would love to exude, to have a vibe such that folks want to trust us to buy into our ideas, our proposals, or what we’re after. And, in some ways, that feels kind of intangible. I think some people just give you a vibe that you’re like, “Hmm, I don’t know about that guy.” And others, like, “Yes, I really like and trust them.” What, Mark, do you think is behind this in terms of you and your team that made you come across as trustworthy?
Mark Balasa
I’ll answer that in two different ways. First, structurally, our firm collected a fee for the services provided. We got no compensation from any other source. Not selling any products, not giving information, literally nothing, so we had no other objective other than serving our clients. In other parts of the financial world, there is that conflict where you’re being sold a product that has a commission or some other incentive for the person to sell it. We didn’t have that.
So, structurally, us and firms like ours, had that to help, if you will, as the foundation. But to answer your question a different way, for me, it’s trying to not sell in the sense of, “Look how good we are,” but, “Let me sit down and ask you, what’s important to you? What do you struggle with? What are your problems? And can we solve them?” And being honest about whether or not we can solve them. So, if we can’t, then say that, “You’d be better served over here,” or, “This is what we can do in terms of what you’re struggling with. This, we can do, we can do very well.”
So, it was, frankly, something I never learned in school but in the real life, which is how important it is to ask good questions, and how important it is to listen. Those skills are unbelievably important to me to build trust in the sense of solving a problem and not selling something.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s perfect. Well, Mark, I was hoping you’ll bring this up or I was going to foist it upon you because that’s what exactly what I’ve observed as we’ve had interactions. And, in some ways, I think it could be rather easy to become sort of prideful or arrogant or to think you know a lot. But in our conversations, I know you’ve experienced much more success and experience in terms of financially and scope over the course of running your business and career.
But when we’re having conversations in the world about media, podcasting, etc., you are full of questions and listening well, and not cutting me off. And I really do feel like I am the expert, you are the pupil, and it’s kind of fun, it’s like, wow, you can teach me so much. But here you are, you’re in a learner mode and it’s just great to be on the receiving end of that. And I imagine your teammates probably felt likewise over the course of your career journey. Have you heard feedback along those lines?
Mark Balasa
Yeah, very much. Thank you for those kind comments. I would give you an example to illustrate the point. So, for a number of years, we did recruiting on college campuses for new team members. We eventually gave up on that. We only wanted people with two- or three-years’ worth of experience. But whether it was someone with two or three years of experience, but certainly, for sure, someone coming out of college.
They would come in and they would have a lot of background, let’s say, on investment or taxes or estate, whatever, and then we would give them additional learning. So, let’s say two years in, they’re now going to present to a client on some specific topic. They tended to come in with, in their mind, a prepared avalanche of information and data.
And what you had to encourage them on was, “Look, a couple things. One is they really don’t care what you know until they know you care.” You hear that a lot but it’s so true. The person doesn’t think that you’re there for their self-interest. They don’t really care how much you know. Number two, you’ve got to learn to modulate that. So, things I used to talk to our new team members was, “Look, on a scale of one to ten, if you know a lot about the subject matter, and one means you know very little.”
A client comes in, an interior professional so you know ten, or whatever the subject matter is. A client comes in and, in my case, let’s say it’s investments, and it’s a widow, and she’s on a three on a scale of one to ten. Well, then you need to talk at a level of four, just ahead of where she’s at but not over her head, not jargon, not tons of data but more stories to give her the point and the comfort to take her and educate her to where you need to go.
By comparison, if you’ve got a CEO from a company in Chicago coming in, and he’s a nine, well, then strap on, go to ten, and get data and give concepts, and give hard-charging data. In other words, you have to modulate with who you’re in front of to help them bring them along. To come back to your point about how do you build trust, and how do you communicate well, it’s doing two things. Being aware of who you’re in front of, and being good at what your subject matter is.
Pete Mockaitis
I think that really resonates. As I’m thinking about conversations I’ve had, if someone is dropping lots of complicated stuff on me, way over my head, I never really walk away thinking, “Wow, they’re so knowledgeable. I felt clueless. I should really go with them.” I think, “Hmm, this guy probably knows a lot because I wasn’t understanding it, but they could also be a con man. They could just be making up these things I don’t actually know.” So, that doesn’t give me a great impression even when they do know a lot, and they’re sharing a lot to prove that they know a lot.
Mark Balasa
That’s very true. And I’ll give you a nuanced example of that. Almost always, when a husband and wife came in, they were on a different spot on a scale of one to ten, so you had to adjust your presentation, the questions you ask, and how you presented it, to both audiences at the same time, especially the wife, which is stereotypical but, unfortunately, it’s true.
They’d have less knowledge about taxes and investments, and so forth. Most of them didn’t have an interest in it. If they felt that they couldn’t understand or follow you, and they left the meeting, that was not good.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no.
Mark Balasa
No, no, because the husband and wife are going to make decisions in the car on their ride home, and she says, “I have no idea what that clown was talking about.” That doesn’t help your cause, so you’ve got to learn to do both at the same time without being disrespectful or condescending to either party.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you share a little bit about how you, if you are, I don’t know if I want to use the phrase dumbing it down, but let’s say you have a ten-level knowledge, you’ve ascertained that the person you’re speaking with has a three-level knowledge, so you’re aiming to be a four. When you are doing that, how do you do that in a way that doesn’t come across as patronizing, or like, “Well, listen up, little lady, let me simplify this to you. Mommy and daddy have a lemonade stand…”? How do you do that skillfully without coming across as patronizing?
Mark Balasa
You have to do both. You have to talk intellectual, high-level, for the one that’s a nine or ten, and give data or numbers, but then give stories, give examples, or say, “Out of that, tell me what you heard.” Let them play that back, “I heard nothing or I had these two bits.” “Great. Here’s the other thing I’m trying to explain.”
And many times, not always, many times the husband or the wife, vice versa, will step in, and say, “Here’s what he means. Here’s what they’re trying to say.” And, of course, almost all of them appreciate that because you’re trying to meet them where they’re at. And so, it’s more of a conversation at that point, which is what you want.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so now I want to talk a bit about asking good questions and listening. When you were in the process of having a conversation, and attempting to do just that, how do you do that? What is your mental process by which you are generating good questions and listening well?
Mark Balasa
You bet. Some of it, of course, is just practice makes perfect. But in terms of how to approach it, I always took it from the perspective of, “If I was in their shoes, what would I want to know?” I’ll give you an example. One of the reasons I came into this business to begin with was when I got out of college, I was studying for the CPA exam, and a buddy of mine that I was growing up with from northern Michigan, lived in Chicago, he came to sell me insurance, and he asked me a bunch of stuff. Here I was, I’m 22 years old, he’s selling me life insurance, “Okay, I’m not sure I need it.”
But he’s asking me all these stuff in the sales process, I think, “Well, I don’t know.” So, I remember going to the library, back in the day when people went to the library, there was no internet, and trying to find an answer to how to buy life insurance, and I could not find it. I couldn’t find it anywhere. And so, I told myself, “Well, gosh, if I can’t find it, there’s got to be other people that are confused by this sort of thing.” And that’s literally part of the reason I went into this business.
So, I try to put myself in their shoes, their age, their gender, if they’ve got kids, if they’ve got a mortgage, they like their job, they don’t like their job, all that stuff. In the back of my mind, I’m thinking, “What’s important to them? Why are they here?” And so, I would try to build the questions off of this specific scenario, but there are some standard ones that you could certainly start with.
So, for example, “What does success mean to you? If we were here together a year from now, and you’re with us, and you look back, what would you say, ‘Gosh, this was a homerun for us to work with your firm’?” I would ask that question. Another one I would ask questions about is what is their experience around money or taxes or estate. Those are generic. Several don’t apply, frankly, but you get the idea. There’s a handful of standard questions to get things started.
But, almost invariably, when you ask a couple of things, especially around, “When do you want to retire?” Oh, my gosh, is that loaded. All kinds of stuff would come out of that. So, I just gave you a bunch of openings to start to ask questions about, “Why did you say that? What do you mean by that?” So, I can give you examples but that was kind of the general premise.
Pete Mockaitis
And so, when you’re in other contexts and generating good questions and listening, how do you think about that? So, in the world of asset management, you are asking questions to gain an understanding of their situation to tailor what you’re going to share and to see if you’re a sensible fit. When you’re in learner mode, it’s a little bit of a different process of generating questions. How do you play the game in that context?
Mark Balasa
For me, part of the answer to that question is I try to think to the end, “What am I trying to accomplish? What do I need to understand better?” And I try to take it back from there. So, in the example, let’s take, I’m starting to do more in the social media world, which I don’t know much about, so there’s infinite ways for me to learn.
So, I try to say, “Okay, why do I need to know how Instagram works? Why does someone who views it, what do they get from it? If I’m a sponsor and I’m going to monetize Instagram in some way, how does that work? Why does it work that way?” So, in other words, I start at the end and I come back, as best I can, and try to say, “What do I need to understand to get to that point?”
Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, I still don’t think I understand Instagram, Mark. So, okay, kudos. All right. So, we start at the end, and so then we ask the questions that drive us there. Do you have any favorite master questions that you find you use again and again as you’re trying to get the lay of the land and understand the situation?
Mark Balasa
Yeah, I hope I can think of examples. So, let’s say we’re going to look at a brand-new piece of software, and then maybe we can take other examples, Pete, if you like. But I don’t know anything about the software so I would start with the salesperson on the phone, “Tell me about you a little bit. Great. Tell me about your company. How many employees? How much revenue? How long have you been in business? Can I talk to some of your referrals as a client, a client referral? Tell me who your chief competitors are?”
So, it’s a series of things to understand more about their business, nothing to do with their software yet. Because if those things don’t check out, I don’t really care about your software, frankly. I want to know that that’s a stable business, if you will, before I’m going to proceed further.
Pete Mockaitis
You know, Mark, I’ve made that mistake by not asking those questions, because, a lot of times, when it comes to someone who’s very eager to give me a software demo, the answer is, “It is a super cutting-edge hip startup who has revenue and profit that is minimal, that existed for less than a year,” and I’m sort of there to help them learn how things work. In a way, that’s okay. That’s sort of fun. That’s sort of how things can get created, it’s sort of a two-way street.
But you’re right. To the notion of, “Do I want to invest myself in this software?” that becomes important because, like, “Oh, shoot. There’s a high risk it won’t be around in a year or two.” And then it’s like, “Well, now what? I guess I’ve got to go find another one to solve the problem I was trying to solve.”
Mark Balasa
Yeah, and that came true just making some mistakes for our firm with technology over time. I did exactly what you said. I remember we had a CRM early on, it was neat stuff but the company wasn’t viable, and so we had to convert a year later because they were out of business.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, CRM conversions, not pleasant. Okay. So, lovely. And now when it comes to the listening, how do you ensure that you are really tuned in and getting the goods?
Mark Balasa
That was one of the hardest things, frankly, to mentor and train new people on, was the ability to just be still and listen. And I mean not just thinking about what you’re going to do tonight after dinner, but listening. And, for me, some of that comes back to inside of you. It takes humility, it takes patience. Some people, depending on personality, it takes perseverance. But, in my view, it’s critical.
How many sales presentations have you been in? I’ll give you an example. So, we went to update our website a couple times in the last 10 years in our firm. Both times we put out an RFP, and you would have these three or four firms coming in, all kind of preselected, certainly know what they were doing. But you would watch the sales process, it was so fascinating. You’d have one group come in, they came in actually from New York, flew in, it was an hour meeting. They spent 55 minutes with their deck. They never even asked our name, and it was just this long trudging page-by-page process of just listening to what they had to say.
By contrast, if you start a sales meeting, or actually even a regular meeting, by saying, “What’s important? Why are we here? Let me ask you some questions. What’s your biggest pain point?” Even though you’ve already prepared a deck, I would always start with saying, “What questions do you have first?” Because if they asked a question, they come out and then frame something they’re struggling with, even though you’ve had two sales pre-calls, if you will, sometimes that’s with different people, sometimes it’s with them, invariably if you ask them that question, they tell you where they want to go.
And so, one of the hardest things in telling and training a new team member for us was they’d be very prepared for the meeting, the sales meeting. They’d have a 10-page deck and all kinds of data to back that up if we needed it, and their inclination is to present that, and we would always say, “No, no, don’t do that. Because out of those 10 pages, you probably need a page and a half. You just don’t know which page and a half it is. You have to start with what’s important to them, and then come back and use the pages that represents or makes that point.”
My favorite way to listen and to engage someone is with the whiteboard. Because when you present something that’s written, on a PowerPoint or whatever, it’s kind of pre-canned, and people kind of almost automatically kind of turn off a little bit, especially after four or five pages, they do. By contrast, if you’re on a whiteboard, and you ask me a question, and I draw a picture, and I write words, and draw numbers and designs, you’re engaged the whole time because I’m building and it’s custom. It’s a reaction to what you just asked me. It’s not pre-canned.
And so part, to me, the importance of listening is you can do that in person, real time, you ask me a question, here’s an answer based on all my experience, my network, and my training specifically about something you asked, as opposed to, “Turn to page seven now, and we’re going to go through these six bullet points next.”
Pete Mockaitis
Totally, very different energy. Very different feel there. Absolutely. All right. Well, Mark, tell me, anything else about listening, questions, engaging people, relationships, you want to make sure to mention?
Mark Balasa
I think those have been a good series of questions, Pete, no.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now since you happen to have a towering expertise in money, let us know, as professionals who have an interest in their money, are there any top things that people tend to get wrong as they’re thinking about money or managing their money that you’ve sort of seen as a pattern over and over and over again?
Mark Balasa
There’s lots of ways to answer that question. I’ll pick two. On the actual specifics, expenses are really important when it comes to money and investing. You want to try to minimize costs. That’s universal. Morningstar’s done two studies over the last 20 years about bond returns. And so, there’s, pick a number, 2500 bond, mutual funds in the United States. The difference between the top tier and the bottom tier, the number one difference is their expense ratio. It’s not how clever the manager is, it’s not how the duration of the bonds, it’s not the quality of the bonds. It’s their expense ratio.
Because the bond returns are so narrow that if someone is charging you 1% to manage your money as opposed to 0.2 of a percent, that’s a 0.8 of a percent immediate benefit to you, that’s a huge difference in terms of collective return on the bond side. So, expenses are always important. Taxes, always important. So, when you’re investing, what’s your after-tax return, not so much your growth return? So, if you have a high turnover, you’re constantly selling and buying, you’re going to pay a lot of capital gains, short term, in particular, capital gains, that really eats away at your return.
So, there’s a couple of examples of universally always true things on the investing side. Let me answer your question a different way, and this is behavioral finance. Are you familiar with behavioral finance, Pete?
Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I’m thinking Richard Thaler comes to mind, Nudge.
Mark Balasa
Yup. Yup, exactly, Nudge. That’s exactly right. Daniel Kahneman is another one. They both won Nobel Prizes for their work in behavioral finance. For your listeners, it’s a field of study that tries to look at mistakes that human beings make when we’re dealing with finances just because of the way our brain is wired, and they’re called heuristics. I’ll give you just a couple of examples.
Human beings as a species are overconfident. Now, that helps us in many ways. So, when you go to start a new job, you’re going to get married, go to college, you’re really not sure what you’re up against, but, “I can do this, by God. Here I go.” And that’s awesome for us. But when it comes to finance, overconfidence is not an advantage.
We think we know more than we do. So, if you have a stock, you work in a company, you think you know all about it, well, really, you don’t. And so, helping people against some of these heuristics, overconfidence, loss aversion, framing, anchoring, all of those things play tricks on how we make our decisions. I’ll give you an example, loss aversion. This is one of the chief things that you have to deal with when people are investing their money.
When a human being sees a loss, it’s very different than when a human being sees a gain, and that bleeds into their decision-making. Thaler has done this one, a great example. He’s got a room full of participants.
And he says, “I’m going to flip a coin. And if it’s a head, I’ll give you $1500. If it’s a tail, you give me 1000. How many of you want to take the bet?” Like, no hands go up. Well, mathematically that makes no sense because the 50/50 bet and you get an extra $500 if you win. No, human beings don’t like that chance that they could lose.
How about 2000 to a 1000? “No, I don’t know.” Twenty-five hundred to a thousand? No hands started going up. That was his way of quantifying that for a human being, a 10% gain is one unit of pleasure, a 10% loss is two and a half units of displeasure. And so, think about your portfolio. What people do then, psychologically, is they hold on to their losers because they don’t want to recognize the loss, and they’ll get rid of their gains because it feels fabulous to say, “I sold a stock when it doubled.” So, that’s not a good recipe, selling your winners and holding onto your losers.
And I can’t tell you how many times people come in, we’d go through the portfolio, and we say, “Okay, we should get rid of these six types.” “Well, no, I can’t. I’m underwater on those. We have to wait till they come back.” That makes no sense.
So, behavioral finance is a really rich area for people in terms of how they can check themselves. One of the things you can do there is encourage everybody, and it’s maybe too pedestrian, but to be a long-term investor, and it’s easiest to do many times with exchange-traded funds or mutual funds as opposed to individual stocks because you don’t see all the moving parts. It’s easier to stay the course.
But in periods of like 2008 and during the pandemic when we got big drops, oh, my gosh, is that hard. I was at a meeting in Chicago, and there was a person who sat on the board for an endowment for one of the prominent universities here in Chicago, PhD in Finance, runs an enormous firm. So, he’s on the investment committee for this university in Chicago for their billions of dollars of endowment.
2008 hits, and you know how bad that was, right? One month led to the second month, led to the fifth month. It’s like its sixth month, constant grubbing of the portfolio. Portfolio has easily lost in the stocks at 50% of their value. So, here’s this sophisticated university, with world-renowned people on the board, including this gentleman, and the investment committee came in about five months into this, said, “We’re going to sell a bunch of the stocks.” “No, no, no, don’t do that. We’re probably near the bottom. We don’t know. We’re probably near the bottom. No, we can’t.”
“As a fiduciary, we have to stop the bleeding.” “No, no, you can’t.” “Oh, yeah, we have to.” And they did. About two months, maybe 30 to 60 days before it bottomed, it went up. And when it goes up, it goes up disproportionately quickly in the beginning. And so, the psychology there is, like, “Yeah, I missed the first 30% back. I got to wait till it drops again.” It’s all bad.
So, to come back to your question, what are some things, as an investor, you should know? Taxes matter. Costs matter. Diversification matters, I didn’t touch on that. And on the behavioral side, coming up with checks and balances so that you don’t get greedy, and that you don’t get frightened.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. Well, so now you have sort of turned over a new chapter in your life and career. You have towering knowledge in asset management, and now you’re in media. What’s the story here, Mark?
Mark Balasa
You bet. As we sold the firm, I wanted to do three things, Pete. I wanted to try to work with my family, so I’ve got some family members involved in the new business. I wanted to do something, not to give back some of my money, but also my time. And the third thing is I wanted to do something faith-based. And so, our new venture does those things.
And so, I’m a complete novice at this world, but the people I’m working with are much more experienced, so I hope I’m bringing some of my experience to the table to help us reach a younger audience with things that are impactful for them, for their lives, and for their families.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And could you give an example of something that you’re putting out there that’s impacting folks?
Mark Balasa
We recently just started a podcast about a month ago, it’s called Is THIS for Kids? And it’s two young parents, Jonathan Blevin and Katie Ruvi, who review each week something in terms of a movie, a song, a video game, or TV show through the lens of, “Is this good for your kids?” And they’re not telling you whether or not if it’s good for your kids, but they’re telling you things you should be aware of, especially with things a lot of parents don’t have time to review, like video games or music, “Are those lyrics, are they okay? That video game, is that too violent? Is it too much sexual content?”
You, as a parent, can decide but we want to tell you, “Here’s what you should be aware of.” So, it’s an attempt to help busy, young parents, with the avalanche of stuff that’s available to their children, about how to navigate that world. So, that’s a specific example of how we’re trying to bring to the market with something that hopefully is helpful.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. And I’ve watched “Is THIS for Kids?” and I actually really love it because I am a semi-young, approaching 40 parent, and it’s not just a couple of prudes, like, “Oh, dear, dear, I was so repulsed by this egregiously inappropriate whatever.” It’s sort of like, “Well, hey, in Barbie, there was a masturbation joke, and it was kind of an eye-roll but I actually didn’t think Barbie was that fun anyway.”
And then just, generally, sharing, “Hey, these are my thoughts, these are my observations, this is my best guess for what age it’ll probably be fine,” and it shows that two good parents – I assume they’re good parents, they come across as good parents, Mark – can come up with different interpretations and conclusions of something, and have a lot more fun and laughs and nuance than, “Oh, no, they said the F word two times, so, therefore, this is immediately banned.”
So, I think it’s really cool. So, good job.
Mark Balasa
I appreciate that. And I’ll just tell you, one of the first things that struck me about the point you just made about the interplay between the two of them, because they don’t agree on many things, so Jonathan tells Katie that she’s getting older, and Katie says, “Well, I’m like a fine wine. Jonathan, you’re more like a sippy cup under the couch.”
Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. It’s a nice chemistry in that they seem to genuinely like and care about each other, but they do not mind to razz. Okay. So, that’s a very different thing, “Is THIS for Kids?” and faith-based media stuff. So, tell me, how have you used these skills associated with listening and good questions as you do something totally different?
Mark Balasa
Well, what I’m trying to do is, as you just said, you assemble those skills that I’ve acquired in my other business into this and help the team learn how to do sales presentation, how to do an interview, how to work with a new vendor, kind of some of those universally needed skills, if you will, regardless of what the actual business is, whether it’s a service or a product, and trying to bring that to them, so that’s hopefully my contribution.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell us, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?
Mark Balasa
I think that’s it. Thank you.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?
Mark Balasa
I thought about that, it’s a great question. I’m not sure if I can attribute this to Winston Churchill but I remember reading it in context of him. I’m a real big World War 2 aficionado. And he said to some of his military leaders during the war, he said that, “Authority is taken, not given.” So many times, when a young person would be in our firm, they’d say, “Well, how do I become an owner? And how do I get to lead a team?”
It’s one of those tricky things. You don’t really have a checklist, right? You know it when you could see it but I would always tell, “Look, you have to essentially take the authority because no one is going to step up and say…” Well, I shouldn’t say no one. It’s less likely someone is going to tell you, “You should go do it,” as opposed to stepping up and take it.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?
Mark Balasa
Going back to behavioral finance, I love that stuff. I would use it with our clients all the time. In many cases, I would tell them if I’m using it so they would see the folly of their own decision-making, and that area is ripe with so much interesting research. Like you said, Richard Thaler with Nudge, he did another one recently. What was it? Misbehaving. Daniel Kahneman has got a great book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. That’s actually one of my favorites. But there’s so much stuff in there that’s not applicable just to finance. It’s applicable to running a meeting, to how to interact with people. I think it’s just a really helpful thing for anybody’s career.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?
Mark Balasa
I’m a big fan of Patrick Lencioni. And so, two of his books are actually a required reading at our old firm. We’re doing it at the new firm as well, which is how to be an ideal team player, be humble, hungry, and smart, and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.”
Pete Mockaitis
That’s good stuff. Pat was on the show. It’s so good.
Mark Balasa
Very nice.
Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?
Mark Balasa
This is a boring one. As bad as it’s going to sound, Excel. I just use it. Even my to-do list, as something as simple as that, I just found it indispensable.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. Well, now I got to ask. A to-do list in Excel, are you putting some numbers or quantification on some of the columns? Or, how does Excel enhance a to-do list?
Mark Balasa
It doesn’t. It’s just easy. It’s a great question. I’m not that sophisticated.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I thought you’re like, “Approximate hours required to complete this task.” All right. And a favorite habit?
Mark Balasa
Favorite habit for me is probably reading, if I can answer that broadly. Whether it’s for your own benefit, for your own edification, for your professional development, I know media is voraciously consumed by the younger generation, but maybe it’s just me and my generation, but I don’t retain things as well when I watch them as opposed to when I read. And so, for me, reading is critical on all fronts.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular nugget that you’ve shared with colleagues that people associate with you or they quote back to you often, a Mark original?
One of the things I almost always would ask at the end is, “Is there anything else I should be asking?” And so, I would get teased for that.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, you have asked me that, and I asked that myself, so it’s a good one. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?
Mark Balasa
BVM Studio. Right now, we just have a landing page. We’ll have more to come but that’s an easy way to reach out.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?
Mark Balasa
For me, as I look back over my career, the things that stick out is this. The world is a hard place, and an act of kindness, a sincere effort to help someone is always recognized and it’s almost always rewarded.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Mark, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck with BDM Studios and all you’re up to.
Mark Balasa
Thank you very much, Pete. It’s great to spend some time with you.
