By Tom Bradley

‘skin in the game’ … ‘eating our own cooking’ … ‘co-investment’ … ‘manager-client alignment’ …

These are all phrases we use to describe our commitment to clients and the desire to have our interests closely aligned to theirs. This alignment takes many forms, but we demonstrate it in two very concrete ways.

The first is to have the Steadyhand team’s compensation and net worth closely linked to how our clients do over the long term. We do this by sharing the ownership of the firm with the employees. At Steadyhand, we have 6 shareholders – Lori Lothian (my life and business partner), Neil, Elaine, Scott, Chris and me. Suffice to say, we’re all highly motivated to see our clients do well.

The second way is even more directly linked to our clients’ interests. Everyone at Steadyhand has a significant chunk of their financial assets invested in the funds. As is our discipline, we update this percentage every year and publish it in a document called Showing you the Money. As of June 30th, the Steadyhand team has $18 million invested, which represents 80% of our financial assets on average. Again, the team wants to see the funds do well as much as our clients do.

However it’s described, we think having a tangible linkage between our interests and those of our clients is important. Really important.