Smart Business Magazine, November 2019

18 Smart Business Cleveland November 2019 Have a short memory The best investors are those who buy funds and forget they own them Empathy creates an opportunity for others to be part of the solution How you react and connect with others impacts your ability to make a difference Do you empathize and listen Or do you sympathize and draw yourself into the story line Listening is the first step to learning how you can make an impact in others lives In business part of being a strong leader is listening to the talented associates you drafted to your team and letting them share their ideas and plans It can take some real practice to not interject an opinion all the time By listening managers can help people work out problems Managers learn to work out the problems themselves with your support Then you build a stronger team In the world of investments when we talk about taking emotion out of decisions acting in the heat of the moment can result in major financial losses Feeling anxious about a stocks performance rushed to sell while the markets up influenced by feedback from another emotional investor whos raving about a purchase this is dangerous territory With investments its all about the numbers Its not how you feel about a company whether you can relate to the owner or if you have a connection with the brand Its about performance track record Emotional investment decisions are made on a whim and thats easy to do with the availability of information We are bombarded with status updates and stock reports in real time To make wise decisions youve got to turn on a filter know when to react and when to rest easy The Fedeli Group conducted a study to learn more about who invests in our mutual funds We wanted to know about their investment habits and what makes them successful What we found was the best investors are those who buy funds and forget they own them Their performance was not about what they did it was about what they didnt do They kept watching the market go up and down and they stayed the course When you get too emotional with investments you work to get in on an opportunity and jump out too soon and then when the stock comes back you miss the real win Is staying the course easy Of course not Is listening when you want to give advice a natural thing for leaders and managers Well no it isnt But when we can pause and read the intentions of others really connect but not dive into their emotional wreck then we can make a real difference Taking emotion out of investment or business decisions requires effort For many business is personal The investment choices feel personal because we use personal resources to fund those decisions We should feel strongly connected but when we become emotional thats when trouble begins ENTREPRENEURIAL INVESTING UMBERTO P FEDELI UMBERTO P FEDELI CEO The Fedeli Group a Cleveland based firm specializing in employee benefits consulting as well as property and casualty risk management solutions Since 1988 Umberto has served as CEO ufedeli@ thefedeligroup com www thefedeligroup com