By Scott Ronalds

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time lately thinking about and helping design our new website. It’s an important part of our business – the hub of all things Steadyhand. Our current site has served us well, but it’s starting to look a little dated and its functionality needs improving. Steadyhand.com 2.0 will be responsive (i.e. it will adapt to different screen sizes for tablets, mobile applications, etc.) and will have a new look and feel. We’re still doing some polishing, but plan to have the new site and up running in the coming days.

While I’m excited about the refresh, I can’t help but reflect back on our original site. Front and center on the homepage was a series of videos with Tom and a 1,600-pound grizzly bear named Koda. (Off camera there was a heaping bucket of salmon treats, an eccentric trainer barking commands, a nervous wife and a co-founder deep into a bottle of Pepto-Bismol). The theme of the videos, which we launched with the first version of our website in early 2007, was Don’t Fear the Bear. The timing couldn’t have been better, or worse, depending on how you look at it. Just around the corner lurked the biggest bear market of our generation.

A lot has transpired since then. The markets have tanked, soared, zigged and zagged. Our team has grown from 4 to 10, we’ve welcomed over 2,500 clients on board, and manage close to half a billion dollars in assets.

Koda serves as a reminder, however, that our greatest accomplishment has been keeping our clients on track. The greatest detriment to investment returns is poor behaviour – reacting adversely to short-term news or market movements. Our clients have been awesome in this respect. We’ve had very few investors make wholesale shifts to their portfolio or jump ship at inopportune times.

The markets will always be erratic and unpredictable in the short term. But if we can help our clients keep a steady hand on their portfolio and stay focused on their longer term goals, we’re living up to our name. It sounds corny, but it’s the hardest part of investing. We’ll continue to hammer home our messaging through our blog and new website. We’ve also got a few other hair-brained ideas we’re stewing on. Koda is smiling out there somewhere.

To watch our original videos with Tom and Koda, click here. And to watch the behind-the-scenes footage of the making of the videos, click here.