I’m Proud to know a Black Swan

June 7, 2021

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By definition, a Black Swan event is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, severe impact, and widespread insistence that were obvious in hindsight. Or, at least, that’s what the Google machine says.

I feel that it’s pretty obvious where I’m heading with this since it’s damn near impossible to get through a conversation without someone referencing COVID these days (which is an entirely separate conversation and post, to say the least).

What I would like to share with you is a positive story around the Black-COVID-Swan.

For most of our counterparts in the Private Capital world, 2020 represented a massive slow down around our capital raise – and when I say slow down, we are talking almost 70% decline from the previous year.

Let’s be honest, it was understandable!

How does dealing with representatives do a complete 180? Instead of personal face-to-face meetings, we required a shift, a shift that meant logging into platforms that spray of faces (all too close in some cases) with or without audio. As you can imagine, all with the expectation that they are still supposed to ask for the sale. Always be closing right?

So with that incredibly long-winded preamble, I am proud of my partners at MAVAN Capital and all of our distribution partners, particularly Cape Cove and Portfolio Strategies.

We, like everyone on the planet, pivoted (super overused tech jargon) and learned how to provide the support and information that not only our business partners could use, but our investors wanted to see. As a result, over the last 4 months, we’ve been able to raise 2.5 times what was raised in all of 2020.

In my humble opinion, that is a positive story worth telling.

So in closing, and trying not to sound too “coach-like” and stealing from the great Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, “What Stands in the Way becomes the way”!