By Scott Ronalds

We held our annual strategy session on Wednesday afternoon. Every year we lock ourselves in a room for 4-5 hours (or more), tune out the outside world, review the current state of our business and hash around ideas, thoughts and strategies on the future direction of the company. There’s lots of discussion, debate and of course, caffeine.

Some of the topics and questions on the table this year were:

• Helping our clients become better investors – Bringing the concept of Strategic Asset Mix (SAM) to life; setting realistic return expectations; providing more education sessions & tools
  
• Potential long-term investment opportunities for our clients that we’re not addressing
  
• The performance and positioning of the Global Equity Fund
  
• Assessing the Founders Fund’s first year
  
• Identifying key business risks and vulnerabilities, and strategies to mitigate them
  
• Adapting to a new rate of growth and ensuring that we maintain our quality of service and personal touch
  
• Increasing the “network effect” (word of mouth, referrals, etc.)
  
• Should we publish another book? It’s Still Not Rocket Science
  
• Live chat – should we introduce a ‘live chat’ tool on our website?
• Enhancements to the client portal
  
• How can we further simplify Steadyhand for our clients? (better forms, account statements, access to new tools & resources)

While we didn’t solve all of the world’s problems, we walked away jazzed about the future of Steadyhand. Tom and Neil will spend a few days digesting all the discussion and prioritizing the action items. We have some cool ideas and projects in the works, all aimed at enhancing your experience as a client.

Ultimately, many of the issues we discuss come from feedback we receive from our clients, and on that note, we’d love to hear from you. If there’s something you think we should be strategizing about, post a comment below.