The Value of Long-Term Partnerships
It’s time again for a refresh of our company website and a continued furtherance of the Buchanan brand. The exercise requires us to constructively evaluate our current messaging, product lines, and associated value propositions to communicate more directly with our investment clients, registered investment advisors, and the associated investment manager network.
The current site was developed years ago to speak to the greater real estate services ecosystem including sale and finance intermediaries and varied industry participants. Going forward, the new site will speak more directly to our investor and RIA clientele by increasing engagement through our digital platform, providing ease of client access to our reporting portal and the integration of HubSpot and Juniper Square allowing us to further our customer relationship platform.
Through this process, we examined our many podcast airings, written thought pieces, and transactional experiences to guide us to its final form. Traversing memory lane was both instructional and emotionally rewarding in thinking about the greater body of work that my partners and I have been involved in since our company’s inception. This included the writing of our original business plan, the building out of our company, the completion of $8 billion worth of transactions and our continued reinvention over the past 26 years.
In reflecting on the many chapters and changes, I note what has not changed is the importance of having long-term business partnerships and the tangible benefits. During a recent Counting Capital podcast, my partner Tim and I discussed our long-term partnership, which includes Chris MacDonald, and affirmed the benefits and positive contribution to Buchanan’s 26 years of operating and investment performance. My subject for today’s Chairman Minutes is the 6 takeaways from our discussion.
Trust & Alignment
Most importantly, our long-term partnership is built on shared values, trust, and an alignment of risk and return. This allows our decision-making to be predictable and efficient given the mutual understanding and concurrence of our varied investment goals. Further, we have measurably increased our co-investment coinciding with our individual net worths and business success to further align with our investors.
This additional alignment and established trust with our investors have allowed us to predictably capitalize time sensitive new investment opportunities.
Diversified Expertise & Skillsets
Our successful partnership has benefited from the varied skillsets and passions we each possess, allowing us to focus on our strengths to expand the company’s capabilities and reach. We refer to this as “staying in our lanes” with respect to our partners’ competencies, yielding exponential efficiencies through our collective knowledge and varied investor relationships. In doing so, our partnership has yielded depth, range, enhanced outcome and enjoyment for ourselves and our clientele.
Consistency & Stability
Both our investor relationships and long-term partnership have provided stability and resilience throughout our company’s long-term history. The real estate industry is littered with boom-and-bust participants and transactionally oriented operations. Alternatively, Buchanan’s steadiness has not only afforded it reputational equity but predictable access to capital from both its investors and financial institutions resulting in peace of mind during market fluctuations.
Strategic Decision-Making Over Time
From inception, our partnership has had a long-term outlook, enabling us to confront the market’s ups and downs, with confidence of partnership permanence and the ability to opportunistically pivot. This commitment has allowed us to maintain duality of focus on both our core business and the continued exploration of new avenues of growth. Key to this equation has been the financial stability we’ve built through long-term sustainable investments. This enables us to maintain discipline and not be forced to transact to cover overhead in the off cycles.
Enhanced Investor Confidence & Retention
Essential to the company’s success is our 500 plus investor base and their responsiveness, dependability and capacity to meet varied investment opportunities. Investors regularly comment on not only our performance outcomes but the confidence they have in the company’s enduring leadership and partnership continuity. Our family of investors have benefited each other by allowing for collaborative investment consistency through all market cycles.
Commitment to Role of Fiduciary
Prioritizing capital stewardship has been at Buchanan’s forefront in building lasting investor relationships. From the beginning, we’ve utilized ongoing investor education as our informed and knowledgeable investor has become a great asset for Buchanan. Supplementing this fiduciary mindset has been the tool of timely and transparent investor communication with an investment thesis headlined by capital preservation. My partners and I take seriously the role of governance and compliance in running our business. In-turn, we conduct our personal financial matters similarly, with zero to negligible leverage and a fiduciary mindset for our own families, just as we treat our Buchanan family of investors.
Years back we trademarked a tagline for Buchanan “Capital You Can Count On”, developed to communicate multiple meanings and usages. Whether it is finding the right investment, managing a current asset, preservation of capital or providing predictable and performing capital we have enjoyed its touchstone for “The Buchanan Way”. In closing my Chairman Minutes today, I’d add to that moniker an additional reference to the benefits and enjoyment of a steady and long-term partnership.