Hopping over the Rabbit Hole

Chapter 15 Be Bold—Marketing Takes Courage: Standing Out by Sticking Your Neck Out

“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

—Winston Churchill

The asset management industry has never been more competitive. When I started working in finance more than 27 years ago, there were really only a handful of widely respected asset managers and hedge funds dominating the space. Today, there are hundreds of companies vying for your capital. Thirty years ago, investors had longer attention spans and were willing to give a trusted manager the benefit of the doubt if he had a bad year or two. Today, people are only long-term investors until they experience short-term losses. When things go south, they make knee-jerk decisions, often selling out of asset classes at exactly the wrong time. It’s like the lines in the supermarket. We always think we are waiting on the longest line and have an itch to move. The fact that it might always be better to stick to the plan is lost in the current culture of micro-attention. One bad year can cause long-time investors to start seeking redemptions and inhibit a manager’s ability to let long-term ideas play out.

In today’s fickle and crowded landscape, there are only two ways to separate yourself from the pack: consistent performance and good marketing.

In the same way mediocre performance isn’t enough to stand out in this day and age, neither is vanilla marketing. While the temptation exists for many firms to avoid the ...