By Nicholas Hamner
Investment Advisor Representative & Director of Marketing
[email protected]
If you know anything about the Barnes Museum in Center City, you know that Dr. Barnes was very particular about how he wanted his art arranged.
There are two paintings in his collection that I want to talk about—not that we ever make a point to discuss post-Impressionism in this newsletter, but because they illustrate larger point. Upstairs in the museum, there are paintings by Paul Cezanne and Vincent Van Gogh, spaced about ten steps apart in a room crammed with paintings. Cezanne’s is titled “Peasant Standing With Arms Crossed”. Van Gogh’s is titled “The Postman”. Both artists are held in similar esteem and were similarly skilled, both artists produced their works in approximately the same time, and the subjects of both paintings are similar.
But when you look at the two one after the other, it becomes clear. Cezanne sat across the room and painted a person. Van Gogh sat across the room from a friend… someone he knew well… and he captured his friend in his painting. From the weathered cap sitting just so on the head, to the curls of the beard, to the glint in his eye, to his informally rigid posture… Van Gogh painted a man he knew well.
I bring this up, not to prove my worth as an art critic (I got kicked out of design school for being color blind, and I still think dogs playing poker is a suitable art subject…), but to point out how often people fail to recognize this distinction. This past week, I had the opportunity to observe an industry peer deliver a presentation similar to ones we’ve delivered a hundred times before. He stood up, gave all the details he felt he needed to give to make people trust him, he conveyed the information he felt made him feel knowledgeable, and he told anecdotes that he felt made him sound competent. But the overall impression he gave was as fake and as plastic as the wood grain laminate on the tables he put up in the room. He wasn’t talking to people he knew or wanted to know. He sat across the room and talked to people. It didn’t help that he thought my name was Nate the whole time…
But because I’ve been here for more than a decade, I couldn’t help but compare his demeanor to the one I’m most familiar with: ours. And the distinction is clear. Here, we’re going to make sure we know you and that you know us before we ever try to move forward with business. We’ll know your birthdays, your favorite restaurants, where you grew up and where you go on vacations long before we ever know your finances. We want to see the human across the table. And we want you to see the humans on our side. When you call our office, you talk to a human. Usually Dave, sometimes Anne or Jaime or Ive or Jen. When you send us an email or get an email from us, you know that it’s being read and responded to by a human who knows you and knows your situation. It’s not an automated response generated by an app.
The world is increasingly impersonal. Remember what making a deposit was like 25 years ago? You went to the bank, you talked to a teller, you walked away having had a conversation and maybe with a pen in your pocket. Now? You click a button three times on your phone. Grocery shopping used to be an adventure—drive to the store, walk around for an hour seeing what’s new and what’s on sale, and bumping into someone you hadn’t seen in a month. Now? You pull up to the supermarket, wait five minutes while someone loads your bags in your trunk, and you drive home. And the more impersonal our lives get, the easier it is to lose our sense of the person.
I don’t watch a ton of TV, but I’ve seen enough ads to know where things are going. This company is helping folks with their finances, but only if they have $1 million in savings and don’t ask questions. That company is firing all its support staff and relegating all interactions to chatbots. It’s impersonal… well, the $1 million thing is rude, first and foremost… and it makes it clear. These companies have no interest in humans with interests and lives and quirks. They want to sit across a table and talk to a person.
We don’t like anyone feeling overlooked or that they’re being treated impersonally. We want to sit across the room and talk to people we know and know well. And we want you to do the same. And hopefully, you’ll be sitting across the table from us (again) soon!