Today, it’s all about scaling — raising a lot of money, managing a lot of money, growing the business every quarter and increasing the bottom line.
It’s not conducive to putting the customer, investor or patient first. It’s all about you, the business. Hey, I’m not against managing a profitable business, but I am against doing it at the expense of the customer’s long-term benefits.
This weekend, we took our son to the ER because his asthma flared up when he got a cold last week. From the beginning, it felt like we were a part of the system. We had been there before for this exact same thing only several months prior, but no one knew us. We had the same conversations all over again.
I understand the need for procedure and rules and things like that. I’m a trader that chooses this exact path, but when I speak to my investors, I remember things about them. I know them on a personal and friendship level. I don’t treat them as a number or as some expected value.
When one of my investors wants to contribute more money to the fund, I speak directly to them. I thank them. There’s a collaborative feel, not a corporate one where they feel like they’re on an island investing in this fund all by themselves with an inability to talk to a human.
We talk through things like timing of the investment, whether to space it out or put it all in now, what fee structure they’re comfortable with to maximize their ability to stay invested through tough stretches, if they’re comfortable with the aggressiveness of the strategy, etc. All of these things matter.
Handing money to someone is a very intimate transaction. I don’t take this lightly. I treat it with respect and handle it with care as it were my own.
But some operations see all of this effort devoted to building rapport and relationships with your ACTUAL customers, the people who hand over their money, as harmful to the bottom line.
“This is taking too long! Every minute counts! We have to move them through the sales funnel faster!”
Vomit.
Not at Melissinos Trading. No way. No how. Never ever.