By Matt Hall
Heraclitus told us thousands of years ago that "The only thing that is constant is change."
It’s true in investing, and it’s true in life.
Almost ten years ago now I
sat in my eye doctor’s office feeling exhausted and seeing weird white
flashes in my eyes. Two terrible weeks and a whole lot of tests later, I
found out I had CML, a rare form of leukemia. I fought for 5 years to
get clear and declare myself cancer-free, and somewhere in there me and
my clients hooked arms and walked through the fire that was 2008 in the
stock market.
Looking back, I shake my
head sometimes wondering how we made it through. It wasn’t sheer luck,
but it wasn’t super-easy either. So what was it?
It was about putting the odds in my favor and pressing forward.
When my eye doctor told me
I might have leukemia, my head raced with questions. Then she helped me
set up the next set of test and told me exactly what to do in the
interim. Without her to guide me, I would have been lost in the maze of
the medical system.
Later when I brought my
oncologist a list of questions, he set them aside and said “Matt, I can
answer those questions for you later, but I don’t want you focusing on
that stuff now. I want you to focus on just two things. I want you to
get 400 milligrams of this medicine in your body. And then I want you to
go live your life.”
When our clients called us
freaking out in 2008, I leaned on these lessons. It’s one thing to know
the right logical thing to do, but another to get each of us to
understand the right choices when we are scared. Our brains just aren’t
wired to be investors, so we need a quiet mind and a long view plan to
make it through.
I don’t know all the
answers, but I do know this: Fear will pop up like a ghost chasing us in
a nightmare, but it cannot actually stop us from doing what needs to be
done and moving forward.
Matt Hall is the President and Co-Founder of Hill Investment Group
with offices in St. Louis, MO and Houston, TX. He is the lead on all
strategic matters — crafting the firm’s vision, establishing its
exceptional standards, and managing key relationships. Hall is forever a
student of his craft and has attended the highest level of training and
education tied to investment theory and practice. What's more, Hall has
led many training programs for top advisors, and founded a peer group
of hundreds of advisors, called Evidence-Based Advisors, from the U.S.,
UK, New Zealand, Australia, Belgium, and Canada.
Hall
graduated from the University of Missouri, Columbia with a bachelor’s
degree in English literature. He and his wife, Lisa, have a young
daughter who is the star of their lives.
Odds On is currently available for on 800 CEO Read, Amazon and other fine booksellers.
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