It’s easy to impress people from a distance. It’s much harder to create trust. To do that, we must be brave enough to reveal the wholeness of our being, including our strengths and our weaknesses. Perhaps the most essential quality of leadership is credibility; otherwise, people won’t believe us. How do we build credibility? Not by hiding our imperfections or, much worse, by creating an image of perfection. We create credibility by being honest and embracing the fullness of our own humanity. Only then do we deserve to be trusted.
Two score and one year ago, our founding father, Sandy Singer, brought forth a new enterprise, dedicated to the ideal that small(er) professional service firms could deliver equal (if not better) services than their larger, more established brethren. A whole host of naysayers advised Sandy to give up on his new endeavor because he would never be able to compete against the elite, well-connected and deeply entrenched business management firms servicing the entertainment industry at that time. Forty-plus years later, Singer Burke is recognized as one of the leaders in our field.
Singer Burke’s origin story resonates with the proverbial story of the underdog. With dedication and passion in pursuit of the ideal, Singer Burke has endured and thrived for over four decades against much larger competitors. In fact, many of our original (and current) clientele were (are) also underdogs who have gone on to prove themselves worthy in their chosen professions. Thus, we have a particular fondness for the underdog because that’s who we often represent and who we are at our core.
Because of our origins as an underdog, we find it fascinating that in an independent study conducted by CNBC, SB Capital Management is ranked as one of the elite independent Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) in the country—number six out of 100! It’s important to note that we actually received the same total score” as the top five firms in the study, and thus, we are effectively rated equally with the top five firms in the United States! Singer Burke began building our own RIA in 1999 solely for the purpose of providing the best practices in the industry to our esteemed clientele because the Wall Street firms refused to provide us with transparency and/or objective advice fully aligned with our clients’ best interests.
And so it has happened again—the underdog has come out on top. We aren’t as big as some of our top-rated brethren, and yet we deserve to be ranked with the elite of our profession. We may have begun with humble origins—both in 1974 with our tax/accounting/business management firm and then again in 1999 with our RIA—but our dedication to providing the best practices of our profession to our clientele has resulted in being recognized as one of the top-rated firms in the business.
Coming back full circle to the story of our origin: We never followed the path to where we are now out of a desire to impress. We do assess our strengths and weaknesses on an ongoing basis. We do thoughtfully determine how best to apply our abilities and energies in pursuit of continually improving our professional service offerings to our clientele. We have never claimed to be perfect, and we never expected to be recognized as one of the best in our profession. Regardless of the outcome, we have always been determined to be brave in our attempt to be true to our origin as well as true to those who rely upon us for independent and objective advice in the attempt to achieve their life goals and dreams. Earning the trust of our clients is reward enough; however, receiving independent/objective recognition as being one of the best in the nation is certainly icing on the cake.
