#210: Umberto Fedeli Round III — Patience & Persistence, Progress & Perfection, Rationality & Uncertainty

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:00:00]:
We've almost lost the sense of when I was raised in the generation or two before me that I got to see. There was a kindness. There was a warmth. There was a respect. And today, we seem to have lost simple things like kindness, respect, warmth, humility, being grateful. I mean, these these simple concepts seem like they're not around as much. We got a AI, and and we can, you know, create things and and and send things up in the space and go here and do these things, but then we can't say thank you. We can't say please.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:00:37]:
And I think we've lost some of that. And I think coming getting back to just goodness. Again, I have to remind myself to do it as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:50]:
Let's discover what people are building in the greater Cleveland community. We are telling the stories of Northeast Ohio's Entrepreneurs, Builders, and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern, and today, I am very excited to welcome Humberto Fedeli back on for his third conversation. In our first two conversations, episode one thirty five and episode one seventy one respectively, we explored Humberto's remarkable life journey, deep rooted wisdom, and how he's mastered the craft of building authentic relationships and connecting people across business, politics, and philanthropy. Those conversations are timeless and contain awesome knowledge for those curious. I would highly recommend you listen to those to best set the stage for our discussion here. Today, we delve deeper into these foundational ideas.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:48]:
Unpacking the origin of Humberto's relentless commitment to relationships, mentorship, and personal growth. We explore how to navigate the delicate balance between patience and persistence and between progress and perfection, and ultimately, how to cultivate resilience and rationality during times of great uncertainty. We impact Humberto's perspective on the current state of the world from economics and politics and tariffs. We talk about volatility, the fundamental human need for love and connection, regrets, legacy, and a whole lot more. So please enjoy this insightful continued discussion with Humberto Fedeli. On a technical note, due to unexpected issues with our recording equipment at the time of this recording, we did lose some portions of this episode, which have been audibly enhanced using speech technology to attempt to recover the recording's clarity and continuity. We appreciate your understanding for these subtle auditory and phonetic discrepancies. Lay of the Land is brought to you and is proudly sponsored by Roundstone Insurance.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:52]:
Headquartered in Rocky River, Ohio, Roundstone shares Lay of the Land's same passion for bold ideas and lasting impact from

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:02:59]:
our community's entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders. Since 02/2005,

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:59]:
Roundstone has innovators, and leaders. Since 02/2005, Roundstone has pioneered a self funded captive health insurance model that delivers robust savings for small and medium sized businesses. They are part of the solution to rising health care costs, helping employers offer affordable high quality care, while driving job creation and economic growth throughout Northeast Ohio. Like many of the voices featured on Lay of the Land, including Roundstone's founder and CEO, Mike Schroeder, Roundstone believes entrepreneurship, innovation, and community to be the cornerstones of progress To learn more about how Roundstone is transforming employee health benefits by empowering employers to save thousands in per employee per year health care costs, please visit roundstoneinsurance.com Roundstone Insurance, built for entrepreneurs, backed by innovation, committed to Cleveland So I was thinking about where the the best place to start would be. And the last two times we did this, we covered so many interesting parts of your life and career and story, but there's so much more to discuss even in over, you know, two hours of conversation that, you know, we we have recorded so far. And I thought it would be fun for this chapter to be a continuation of some of the themes we've discussed, introduced some new ones, but what has stuck with me and a lot of it has, you know, the law of reciprocity, the mantra of who this kind of relentless application of a continuous learning mentality that that you have amidst, you know, many others. And I think the unifying foundation for a lot of what we discussed is about who. It's about the people that underpins a lot of your thinking, your philosophy.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:53]:
I thought it would be interesting, you know, of the many thousands of of people that that you've met, the people that I've gotten to know in your universe of people over the years, Bob Campana, Nico Bolson, Adam Kaufman, many others that come to mind. And we're sitting here in your office with pictures of you and and family, but, you know, you and presidents, you and the pope, you and global leaders, all these extraordinary people. And it's really about relationships and your ability to connect the relationship dots that you've collected at the heart of it. And we talked a lot about the application of this idea. But I am curious about where this idea came from. Like, when, why, and how did you come to articulate this who mantra?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:05:40]:
Well, Jeffrey, thank you for inviting me to do this again. I really enjoyed doing the first two, and I'm Yeah. Sure I'm gonna enjoy the third podcast as well. Many more to come. As I shared with you in the past that I found that most success in life really had to do with the who. Right? And if the who isn't right, the what usually doesn't matter. But you you brought up a word that I also shared with you in a Harvard study where they studied 8,500 people for eighty five years, the people who had the most fulfilling lives, where the people had built the best relationships. And early on, I had seen that, with my grandparents and my relatives, and they were very simple people, but very good people.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:06:19]:
But it was always about putting somebody else's needs first, be it a neighbor, be it a friend, somebody who was sick. And so you probably learn a lot as a young child by observing, your parents and grandparents and and and your relatives and the people in the various neighborhoods. And when you see a study that people on their deathbed are not talking about how many dollars they gave away or how many billions or millions or tens of millions or millions they made or, how many square feet they built or how many apartments or shopping centers or whatever the measurement is, they're usually reflecting about the relationships. And when you think about it, if that's the most important thing at the end of someone's life, that perhaps maybe we should make that a priority a little earlier. So it was, instilled, you know, being a peasant kid born with immigrant parents, three of my four grandparents. Went to third grade, and my one grandmother did not go. My dad, fifth. My mother, maybe a little bit more in fifth.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:07:20]:
So I was the first person forget college, forget high school, first to go to junior high, but it was always about people and about relationships, and it's about touching people's lives. So to me, relationships are so important, be it with your your children and soon to be, in our case, 14 grandchildren, our five children, their spouses, but also our families and our neighbors. And and one day, a reporter asked my wife, I I don't understand your husband's life. Because what do you mean? I can't figure out where his business life, personal life, civic life, tribal life, political life, where it starts and where it ends. She goes, I don't know what there is to figure out. She said he just has a life, and and it's all part of it. It's not so much strategic. It's that opportunity, you know, stopping the other day to go to a chiropractor occasionally, does an adjustment, and I brought a gift for him and his wife.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:08:07]:
And and the lady in front, she goes, oh, is that for me? And I said, well, no. She goes, why didn't you bring me a gift? I said, why? I didn't know you before, but I'll send you one. So then when I got back to the office, we sent her one off. Now I I just had met her, but it could be that receptionist. It could be the valet. It could be the waitress. They're all people. To me, a simple idea that we sometimes lose track in this busy, complicated, chaotic world is what about kindness? Irregardless of what their religion, nationality, political persuasion, education, they're all people.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:08:43]:
And what's missing more than anything else in the world is love. That's what's missing. If we had more love in the world, we'd have a lot less problems. Right? And so because it becomes pretty doggy dog in in the political world, in the business world, and what's going on in the in the public markets or what's going on with wars. If people loved each other, would they wanna kill them? If they loved each other, would they want them to hurt them? And so if we had more love, I think the world would be a better place. So to me, relationships are the most important thing. Now I'm human, and sometimes I'm a little tired or I'm a little upset about something, and so sometimes I have to remind myself. And one of the reasons I write sometimes is to force myself to put down not only my thoughts and reflect, but once I put it in writing, I really learn it.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:09:30]:
And if I can share it and I can teach it, then I own it. But then it's also a way for me to go back and say, you better be living what you wrote. You better be doing what you talk about. It also puts pressure on me to perform and to live up to what I've shared.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:46]:
Yeah. It it is an incredible vehicle for galvanizing and and crystallizing your own thinking when you put it to paper and you're like,

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:09:55]:
oh, that maybe isn't a good idea. Well, Jeffrey, I struggle with it. So I'm not a natural writer. It's not something that that just is just easy for me. Then I have to think about it, and I put bullet points, and I write things, and sometimes I do draft two, three, seven, eight. But again, if I can write about it after I reflect it, and if I can share about it, if I can actually speak and teach it, I absorb it. And then I can go back and reread it and just make sure that I'm doing what I shared with others.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:24]:
The relationship idea is quite resonant. There is a component of it that I'm particularly interested in that I I don't think we've really discussed before. It's around this idea that more than anyone that I've gotten to know, I think, specifically, people look up to you as a mentor. And I've met many of these people, and I I look forward to meeting, you know, many more of of your mentees over the years. You mentioned kind of the early influence of your grandparents, you know, family around you. That's kind of at the the origins of how you carry yourself and kinda work with other people. But beyond those, I'm I'm curious to the degree you've become a mentor to so many other people with regards to how business is conducted, how deals come together, you know, how investing should be done, how people should carry themselves. Who are those mentors to you? Like, the ones that you've modeled your own mentorship model on the shoulders of.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:11:20]:
I saw a lady Sunday at church that was my seventh grade teacher, and I still see her. And Gary always give her a big hug. And when I had her for class, she was kinda tough, and she didn't let us get away with much. But she really cared about us, so you can see the compassion and the concern. Missus Thompson had this incredible ability to teach us, But there was discipline, but there was also love, and she was mission driven, and she made such a big impact in my life. So I I go back, and I remember teachers of mine. It could be in kindergarten or in grade school or even high school or even in college. So some of the teachers early on, they really cared about you.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:12:05]:
And and it wasn't just student. They kinda watch over what you were doing, and they became a counselor or an adviser in in, you know, after school or, you know, with extracurricular things that you were involved with. One of the gentlemen I met when I was 16 years old, my father was starting business, maybe I was 17, and he was a CPA. And then I ran into him again where he's a professor, and he's now my counselor at John Carroll. And he took an interest in me and watched out for me and gave me advice and kinda taught me lessons and and kinda watched out and protected me. Another gentleman I've met at a social event as a young business guy, I became almost a son to him. You know, he had four daughters, and he had become a very successful executive and president of a number of very, very big substantial companies. Throughout my life, I had people who did, as mother Tricia would say, ordinary things in an extraordinary way, but they really cared about me.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:13:01]:
And they had such a empathy. And and a great guy once said, nobody really cared how much you know until they knew how much you cared. And these people cared, and they were concerned. And they went out of their way to share life lessons or to, you know, pull you aside, to say watch out, be careful. And there wasn't a hidden agenda. It was just because there was a concern. I got a call the other day from a a friend of mine I haven't seen in a while, but I met him in second grade. Yeah.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:13:29]:
And he needs help with something that he's involved with a charity's involved with. It's actually a school where where he spends a lot of time volunteering to help out. And I reminded Jamie that you invited me to your house for for dinner. And I'm in second grade, and I had transferred over to Saint Gregory's. And you were so kind, and you were really popular, but you were really nice. And then you brought me to meet your mom and dad and your family. And I said, I just remember that kindness. And and and you were already in school there.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:13:59]:
I was the new kid, and I I you were treated me with open arms, and he's been like that his whole life. And I shared the happiness article with him with all the research and all the key factors, and from Saint Thomas Aquinas to Aristotle to Socrates to the Beatitudes. And I said, you've been living this ever since I met you in second grade. So in second grade, I'm not sure how old you are, at seven or eight years old. And here, I've agreed that we're gonna do a luncheon for this campaign they're gonna do and agreed we're gonna host an event that we did, and this is gonna be their hundredth anniversary of this school. But he made a difference. I was at a charity event not too long ago several years back, when we got honored for this event, which we didn't know we were getting honored. This gentleman had sent a a big contribution in.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:14:44]:
As a teenager at 16 and 17, I was cleaning the bathrooms in his family's property. Yeah. And I said only in America, would you be cleaning the bathrooms in someone's property? And several decades later, they're sending a very large gift in your name and your honor. So that that touches you. And I said, I met my wife there, and she was 16. I was 17. And and then last year, we honored him at the Cleveland Clinic, and we brought him in. And for me to be able to be his chairman, and now for me to just say thank you.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:15:15]:
And I met him as a young man by accident. And I connected the dot by just going over and thanking him when I dropped some presents at a wedding and saying thank you to him. That one extra step has had exponential returns. Not I don't mean necessarily financially, but in satisfaction in life because we got to be friends and decades later. So I had great people, like school teachers, high school, college. You could be a coach when I played Little League. I remember a gentleman that just would take me out with him. It was my next door neighbor of my grandparents, and he would take me to, like, a restaurant.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:15:51]:
Like, we didn't go out to dinner. And I I was friends with his son, who's a little older because he'd left next door to my grandparents, so I may be five or six. And he was so kind to me, and he was the neighbor of my grandparents. And he just took me in and had me at his house, and and I hung around and played with his son and and and their kindness and teaching us things and watching out for us and sharing things. And so I think we learn from others. Now sometimes you also learn not how to treat somebody.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:18]:
Sure.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:16:19]:
And by people maybe that had an adverse effect, that's still a good lesson, but it's also lesson of how not to treat somebody, how not to act. So there have been so many wonderful people, and it was once said by, the late pope Benedict, god works through people. And sometimes we don't necessarily know that, but I've had many great experiences with so many wonderful people that set the example.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:43]:
Who comes to mind as the most formative of those people with regards to business and investing?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:16:51]:
I would say to business. So I had a a business professor who taught me accounting, and I wasn't an accounting major, but I was a business major. And I had the highest grade in the first semester. And then I had the lowest grade and probably the lowest of the lowest grade. It was barely but, like, barely passed. In fact, I went up to him and said, mister Panicky, someday, I'm gonna be an important client of yours Mhmm. Because he also had an accounting firm. And I said, I think there's a mistake.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:17:17]:
He gave me a d. And he looked at me and goes, I know. It should have been an f. So if I were you, I'd shut up and get the hell out of here. And so, you know, early on, he was a CPA, and he had a number of prominent clients. But I met him through my father when he was starting because I had to go meet the accountant and the lawyer to help him incorporate when he was starting his business. And, unfortunately, last year, we lost him, and I did go visit him in in a nursing home. Initially, I had lunch with him when he was good enough.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:17:43]:
The last time I went to see him, he was not cognizant. He was already out. Another gentleman that was president of White consolidated, and he was president of FIGU International, he was a a a CPA and then got into industry and then went from basically being a financial guy to becoming an operations guy and then was COO and ran a number of businesses. And I met him early on at a political event, and I got to be friends with him. And he became the chairman of our advisory board. We started an advisory board, and I said, alright. Listen. You'll be chairman.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:18:15]:
Good. Good. Now what do I do? What do you mean? I said, I have no idea. I've never done this because I started at 19, and I didn't work at any companies. I didn't have any training. And he said, alright. Well, give me a pad and pencil or pen. And he started asking me a bunch of questions.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:18:28]:
And all of a sudden, he goes, well, this is what you said your mission is, and and this is your vision. Yeah. These are your critical success factors. And then we were doing things like a SWOT analysis, and and, you know, he had gone through the process of doing this and planning in different businesses with executives and building companies. And then he became the chairman of our advisory board, because I said I made him chairman because I didn't know what to do. And then we asked other people to help us, and then we actually had an advisory committee of very prominent, very successful, very significant business people that were willing to help me out as a younger guy and as a smaller business guy, and they didn't really have much to gain. And then we would take them on trips, and we'd have, you know, meetings, and we'd go to nice places and nice restaurants and stay at nice hotels, and and it was like my way of saying thank you because I could never pay them what they were worth because they were all successful business people that did very well, but they were willing to help me out. And so that whole concept of play it forward, then I sometimes say, well, alright.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:19:27]:
Maybe sometimes I don't wanna do something, but it's important to somebody else in their career. They may be at a different state or stage. And so there are so many people that set the example. And so I would say these two gentlemen stand out to me that I met much, much earlier in my career, one when I was a teenager and one when I was, you know, maybe in my early twenties. They were, you know, very significant. Unfortunately, my one friend, I would visit them two or three times a week, you know, at a home, and he couldn't speak anymore and had a stroke. And I would go visit, and he would be so excited when I would walk in his room, and he and he couldn't communicate. And and I'd give him a big hug, and I kissed him on his ninth birthday.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:20:07]:
Came out, brought him a bunch of chocolates. And someone said, I I don't know if that's good for him. I said, well, I think at 90, he can have some chocolate, and he couldn't talk. He's in a nursing home. And as many chocolates as I could feed him, he would eat. I mean, I got to get the whole box, and I think I bought fruit pound pounds. Right? Yep. And and he was able to to chew and swallow them.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:20:28]:
And and then I was there when his wife died. They had to wheel him in, and they actually did the funeral there because she lived across the hall. And then eventually, he had passed on, and, he had a big impact. But I you know, when I go visit him, I I just couldn't forget what he did when I was younger, and I didn't now he was no longer the successful prominent business guy. He was an old guy in a nursing home that didn't have the ability to do anything for himself. And so sometimes we we complain about things we don't like. We complain about things we perhaps don't see. And I wrote a Thanksgiving message once and said, you know, we complain about what we don't like to see, but maybe we should say we're grateful we see.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:21:09]:
We don't like what we hear Yeah. What we can hear. We don't like all these people's opinions, but we're free that we can express our opinion. So so I can give you what I don't like, but then I can do what Charlie Munger said, the inversion, and say, well, this is why you should be happy. We're in a country where you can at least complain. We have choices. You know? You have an eyesight. You have hearing.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:21:28]:
You don't like the way this tastes, but you can taste. You have food to eat. You have choices to make. So I could take the opposite of every situation and invert it and say there is a positive side to this. And sometimes even bad experiences, there are good lessons to learn.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:42]:
Yeah. I like the inversion thread. So there there's some concepts we've discussed before, some included in these recordings and and some, you know, outside that I think would be interesting to follow-up from that idea with which there's some through line between this tension between progress and perfection, the tension between high external standards and low internal expectations, and this tension between patience and kind of, like, persistence.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:22:17]:
And not being stubborn all the time. Maybe you think you're being patient, but maybe you're being stubborn.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:22]:
Yeah. So I'm not

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:22:22]:
You read that article at the 10 points I see.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:25]:
I did. Yes. And I and we talked about it before. Yep. And I I'm not even sure if tension is the right word, but it's it's kind of there is a there's a balance between all these things, and they kind of relate to each other. I'd love for you to just expand on, you know, those three ideas and how you think about them.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:22:41]:
Well, let's take the stubborn versus patient, right, or being persistent. There have been times where I really thought I was I was being patient, and you gotta make this work. And I love the correlations of life lessons and business and investment Yeah. Because they correlate. So you made a bad investment. You said, well, you need to have patience. But is that the same thing as if not, Glenn, say you made a mistake? And is are you being patient? Are you being stubborn because you don't wanna make you made a mistake? And Warren Buffett once said, you know, when you've dug yourself a hole, maybe you need to stop digging. And and because you start you keep on digging and you say, I'm gonna double down.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:23:15]:
I'm gonna keep on investing more. I'm gonna spend more time on this business and more time on this situation. And it's been a failure. Maybe you need to say it's a mistake. I messed up. Reflect on it, and then learn, and then move on is different than, no. Jeffrey, this is gonna take some time. You're you're you're you're not being patient enough.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:23:34]:
So sometimes not knowing the difference at the time is difficult. I believe on having very high standards for your associates, for your family. But, internally, you better have a mechanism that has lower expectations because you're gonna be disappointed every day. But it doesn't mean lower your standards, have high standards, but you better have kind of a valve or or some type of gauge because if you expect too much, you will be disappointed. So does it mean don't have high standards? Yeah. Have them. But don't always have high expectations because you're gonna be frustrated your whole life. And then I shared before we went on the podcast, you know, there are certain certain times where I said, you know what? I'm not in control of what happened, but I can try to make the right decisions or make the right moves based on what did happen.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:24:25]:
So there's fear and uncertainty going on in the world right now. Right now, it's it's it's it's the trade wars, then it's the fear of inflation, and there may be a recession. And there's all kind of chaos going on. You know? And a couple years back, we had COVID, and that was brand new, and then we had the financial crisis. Yep. Alright? And so there was a period of time we had World War one, and then we had World War two, and then there was the Vietnam War. And what's different is what is going on today, but what is not different is human nature and fear and uncertainty are difficult because people have a hard time dealing with something where they don't know what the future lies. It's scary to people.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:25:08]:
They can deal with something once they've accepted it, once they know what's happening, but that fear, then it creates volatility. But volatility isn't necessarily the same thing as risk. And often when there's volatility and there's fear and uncertainty, if you invert it and say, where are the opportunities, Jeffrey, right now because of this fear and uncertainty, because of this chaos? So in this troubled time, there perhaps is an opportunity. It could be an opportunity to make a good investment in the public markets, but also when there is a tragedy going on in someone's life, is there an opportunity to perhaps learn something or perhaps do something that you can deal with what happened? Because you can't necessarily control what's happening in Washington or what's happening perhaps maybe in The Middle East or what's happening in a war in a foreign country, but you can perhaps control what you do. And so then I think that we've had to learn the difference between the patience and the persistency and being stubborn, having high expectations. Because sometimes what ends up happening is you're not gonna do something that's perfect. Guess what, Jeffrey? You're never gonna be perfect. And guess what? Some lady you marry someday, she might not be perfect either.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:26:22]:
So you want progress. You want to improve, but understand that we're a work in progress. You're never gonna be perfect. You'll never get there. That one deal won't be perfect. That one relationship won't be perfect. That one decision may not be perfect. It's always trying to improve and get better and learn.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:26:38]:
But if you wait for perfection, you're never gonna do anything because it's not a perfect world. That's why it's progress, not perfection.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:45]:
Yeah. So I think there there's a lot of things there that are simple but not easy in practice.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:26:51]:
Yes. That's a good expression that I do use because a lot of things that are simple to understand are not necessarily easy to do. The concept is simple.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:00]:
Right.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:27:00]:
And the other day, my my son, Nick, was saying, boy, dad, this is hard doing the situation. And then we shipped it, and we're about five or six different topics. And I said, Nick, the only thing I found pretty easy in life is, like, eating a bowl ice cream. And now being lactose intolerant, that isn't so easy so more. Or eating a candy bar, I said, like, usually, most things in life that are worth something aren't usually that easy. The concept is simple. It's simple when you watch somebody else do it, and they make it look easy. But when you gotta execute it and the grind that what it takes to do it is not always as easy as it looks.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:27:35]:
The concept is simple.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:36]:
So when you think about being in a time of great uncertainty, while there have historically been many of them, I think it's one of these simple but not easy things to say, you know, we should we should practice the stoicism, you know, and and be, you know, rational rather than emotional. How do you actually practice it, though? Like, what tools are you using? What are the people around you, you know, helping you guide the decision making process? I mean, particularly, you know, today, I would say where there's a lot of uncertainty. People feel very uncertain, which, you know, maybe that doesn't mean risk to your point, but there's an opacity around, you know, what the future looks like a month, a year from now. How do you practice that?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:28:17]:
Well, I think when I speak to my children or my associates or my friends, and I'm trying to help them, as I'm trying to help them, I said, listen. We're all gonna be emotional. So they say, don't be emotional. Well, most people are emotional. What you don't wanna do is make poor decisions with your emotions. So it's okay to be emotional. You know, fear is natural. The way you do it is say, alright.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:28:41]:
Let's look at the fundamentals now. Let's get the fear and uncertainty, put that to the side, the volatility, the noise, what's going on, the media, the radio, the papers, the social media. But when you sit there and say, look at the fundamentals. Let's just look at what really is important. So if it's being an investor, as an example, we sit there and say, short term, stocks can fluctuate 50%. They can be half. They can be, you know, they can be down 80%. They can go up, and it's all this emotion.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:29:13]:
But long term, if their earnings go up and their intrinsic value goes up and the business continues to prosper and succeed long term, it will follow the earnings, the book value, the intrinsic value. It'll follow the fundamentals. Short term, a lot of things have. So then you say long term, is this a good business? Does this business have a durable advantage? Is there something special about it? Buffett likes to talk about moats. But is it is it a good business? Is it run by good people? You know, you can use qualitative measures, you know, good management. Is it is it a product or service that people like? Is it something that just a commodity? Do they have pricing powers or elasticity demand? How is the management? Are they able to reinvest? Then you can look at quantitative factors. How's the return on tangible capital? How's the return on equity? Let's look at a peg ratio. K? And then, you know, kinda look at it and you say, are they already proven? Is this something that already is a winner and a leader, or is this earlier and we're not quite sure yet, which is a whole different set of risks? So today as we speak, you know, Amazon is way down, you know, because they do a lot internationally.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:30:26]:
And and right now, there are potential trade wars, let's say, with China, but they clearly are a very successful business. And AWS is continue to grow and very profitable. So the chances that they don't survive and prosper, probably not good. Doesn't mean I won't have short term challenges. But I remember when when, Whole Foods was sold to Amazon Mhmm. Everybody said that retail's dead. There'll be no no more stores. That everything is gonna be purchased online.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:30:55]:
Yes. Online's grown. At one time, it's 5%, then 10%, and maybe 15%. Maybe it's growing to 20%. But you know what? There's still a social part. People like to go to restaurants and go to stores, try things on. So that was the perfect time to take all the fair uncertainty and the chaos and say, okay. Who's getting painted with the same brush? But they really have a good model.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:31:18]:
Let's say Costco. They have a great model. I mean, they you know, it's a great company. TJ Maxx is a good model, and they're a good business. So everyone's getting painted with the same brush. And guess what? Now retails come back. They they sound like there's gonna be no more stores in the world. Now sometimes that's different than is is something a brand, or is it a fad? And I said to the young guys who helped me analyze things, let me show you bell bottoms, and let me show you leisure suits.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:31:45]:
They said, what what's a leisure suit? I said, well, they never came back. So if you got a leisure suit store and you call it leisure suits incorporated, is that just a fad, or is that a brand? Costco can sell lots of products, lots of services. They get a subscription model. But if you're having one store that just sells leisure suits, that may be a little bit more vulnerable. Or or if you take Lululemon, is Lululemon a brand, or is it just a fad right now? Yeah. Right? And now at the time, sometimes it's not as easy. Right? So that's as as an investment. But I think that if even if you're looking at businesses, you can also invert.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:32:22]:
But also if you're looking at what schools to send your children to, let's look at all the advantages of sending them to school and and do almost your own SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. But then invert it and say, alright. What's the downside? Jeez. You send them to a private school versus a public school. Yep. You send them here instead of here. Maybe single sex versus, you know, where's boys and girls. Do you wanna send them something more faith based? But the same concept of inversion, and that's when Charlie Munger said that he likes to use mental models.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:32:52]:
So he says you have to use a ladder. So he's saying use all your life experiences to make decisions. And there's a reason that 95% of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger's net worth came after they were 65 because they didn't have the same experiences and didn't have the wisdom, the ability to recognize patterns to say in their twenties, in their thirties, in their forties, in their fifties. It's not your fault if you haven't been a a parent yet. And I said, well, here's kinda how it feels, Jeffrey, and I can explain it to you. But how do I explain how it is to be a grandparent if you haven't been a grandparent yet? And so if you take all these life experiences, all of them, being a shopper, being an uncle, being a godfather, being a friend, being a customer, you know, being a consumer, you can take all these experiences and make decisions, and you can use the concept of inversion, okay, and SWOT analysis with every decision you need to make. Right? It's the mental models that he referred to. Right? So it works in business.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:33:52]:
It works in investments,

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:53]:
but it also works in life. It's the compounding of wisdom. Compounding.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:33:58]:
And and learning is also compounding because the more you learn, the more you learn, and it compounds and and it grows. It's no different than when I used to the weights, my muscles would get bigger. Right? So knowledge also compounds. Learning compounds. Experiences compound. And, unfortunately, we learn the most when we have bad experiences or have bad things happen or failures. Then you really have a time to learn, and it's painful, and it can often be expensive. But if you can learn on your mistakes and your faults or your failures and you reflect, those are like special jewels or gems as some people may refer to it.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:34:42]:
It really helps you the next time get better, get stronger. You learn more when you fail, and sometimes it's, again, it's very expensive, right, in life, not just in investments, just in business, but in life. But in the same token, what did you learn there, Jeffrey? What what did you learn? What went wrong? Why? Okay. What could you have done better? What weren't you not in control? What is in your control? What wasn't in your control? Right? Reflect, learn, and move on.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:09]:
Yeah. Is there anything you've changed your mind about recently?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:35:14]:
Yeah. I think, at one point, maybe earlier, you think you're in control of a lot of things. And so as you get older, you say, maybe I'm not as much in control as I think. I can't even control my appetite. I couldn't even control my my emotions or my my temper. So so sometimes I don't like to say success is always random because then you won't take responsibility, and you won't do all the things you need to do. But, also, sometimes you meet somebody and you fall in love. Yeah.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:35:44]:
And then you get married, and you said, what happens if I didn't go there? I didn't work there. If I just didn't meet that one person. So I think that today, maybe what I've changed is every day, sorry, there's opportunities right in front of you. I used to share with people, like, you don't have to go to Wall Street. I didn't necessarily have to go to Ninth Street. If I had just paid a little bit more attention to the people that I met walking in and out of our offices and just our home, just those two places Yeah. The opportunities, they're just there. It's just as an example.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:36:13]:
And sometimes you're looking for these special answers, and you're looking for complicated. And usually when I analyze problems in a in a business, it's usually blocking and tackling. It's dropping the ball. It's it's like you gotta go back to kind of basics. You know, sometimes things are more complicated, but sometimes they're not. At the time, it it seems a little harder to analyze because of everything that's going on. When you look in retrospect and you go backwards and you look at something, it looks so simple. It looks so obvious.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:36:41]:
It looks so Yeah. Right? But it not at the time.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:44]:
That's the it's the clarity of of the retrospect. No

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:36:48]:
question. What what are you learning about right now? Well, I've been fascinated to try to learn about tariffs and trade wars. Are they good? Are they bad? Do they help? Do they hurt? You know, what's really involved? Because it's not something that I typically thought about, but tariffs are taxed. So at the end of the day, they are taxed. And then who ultimately pays for them? Right? And are they a tool? Mhmm. Are they a weapon? Do they really work? Are they short term? Are they long term? They're much more complicated because in the current situation, what we're doing right now in in the country, when you send a note out to 200 countries at one time, that's an awful lot. It isn't just we charge you x, and then when we buy your products, you charge us y. You have to study it, and it depends on dairy is one thing.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:37:47]:
Steel is another. Plastics another. Now you get into all these different products and services, but then you also realize there's also currencies that can be manipulated. There's VAT taxes. There's other trade barriers beyond just the cost. So think about to understand economics, which is somewhat theoretical, you have to understand human nature. Because if everyone's afraid and they stop spending, we could end up in a recession. If people are not comfortable, you know, because their four zero one k's are down and they don't wanna spend as much and a business person doesn't wanna make an investment and build new facilities, then you can have a slowdown.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:38:27]:
You know? So you have to understand politics. You have to understand economics. You have to look at macro situations. Then you gotta look at the industries. And then you have to say, what does history show us? Because sometimes we can learn from history, but then you say, is it different today? And sometimes it is, and then sometimes it's not. So if you look at America, we have a 29 to $30,000,000,000,000 GMP. So we are the largest consumer. We're the largest economy in the world.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:38:55]:
Second is China. Mhmm. But they're about two thirds or roughly 20,000,000,000. Okay? Or or I shouldn't say, yeah, roughly maybe half. A little bit more a little bit more than half. If you look at Mexico and Canada, we are larger than both of them combined by many, many times. You know, you look at Japan and you look at Germany. Seventy Percent of our GMP is the consumer.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:39:20]:
So Americans are the biggest consumers in the world, but when they're looking at, let's say, Vietnam. But Vietnam is a smaller country. We're buying a lot more from them than they're buying from us, but we're much much larger. But we're all interdependent. So in some ways, having an open economy where people traded, the benefit is we bought products for less money than we could have built them because foreign countries maybe had less expensive labor and less expensive material. So the benefit is that we're buying products and goods and services for a lot less money. Now we said we lost jobs there. I know, but I don't know if today we could go out and build TVs and build radios and and build phones.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:40:03]:
Right? So there's advantages of having free trade. Right? On the other hand, we also made investments in other countries and took advantage of less expensive labor, but we moved plants there. And they were paying people one time in China a dollar an hour all in when perhaps we were paying 20 or $30 an hour. Right? They had less regulation with maybe EPA and different things. Right? And then they said, well, they took our jobs. Well, we we moved some of them there. We have trade imbalances. I know, but we also allowed it.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:40:34]:
So someone's upset about buying something from China, and they said, well, those people took jobs away from us. I said, alright. But you bought something less expensive, so you can say free trade. And so I think to me, as I try to study tariffs in the in the in the trade wars and what's happening on, I think, ultimately, you have to have a balanced approach. Yeah. I think that high tariffs long term are not as good as some people think. They think, oh, we can generate a bunch of revenue. Possibly.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:41:04]:
But if people stop buying, hey. We're so right now, we're at a 25 that we're charging products coming from China. Okay. When people start paying a lot more for products than they're used to paying, are they gonna like that or not like that? Are they gonna be able to afford that, not afford that? On the other hand, we don't have immigrants that built the country. Are we gonna have people to do certain jobs? Yeah. Like and so a fair and balanced approach. And it's not that I'm always trying to be politically correct, but an immigrant that wants to come to this country wants the American dream. These are people that want a good thing.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:41:41]:
I'm not for immigrants that are murderers and rapists or terrorists that come in to kill, but think that's a small percentage. Is it 1%? Is it 5%? But I don't think we want people to live that we know that are dangerous. But on the other hand, we are a land of immigrants. But I think a fair and balanced approach, it seems politically we go to extremes. Yeah. We go to one extreme, and then we go to the other extreme, and then there's constant chaos. Now one of the things the the political experts know, if you create intensity with voters and you get them really angry, they show up to vote. So they're very good at getting their base upset, getting mad on both sides, and then they want them to turn out.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:42:25]:
But at the end of day, isn't it fair and balanced? Isn't it say, okay. Let's look at what's right and fair? Recently, I sent a piece out to Stanley Druckenmiller. He's a brilliant macroeconomics guy, but he's a brilliant investor that had returns for decades that were incredible. And he worked with George Soros, and he intends to be more republican, and George Soros had to be more more liberal. In his opinion, you can get to about a 10% tariff, and that may be okay where it actually maybe helps. But you get too high, it actually hurts. There's others that tell you any tariff is bad. There's others that tell you, I don't know.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:43:00]:
Tariffs are beautiful because you can have other people paying for everything that we have. Now, like, when they talk about a war, and you say we put in $350,000,000 to help the people in Ukraine and said, but Europe put in a hundred billion, and we put in 350. Well, they say, is that fair? They're next door. We have a big ocean between us. Why do we put three and a half times as much? They put those sinners alone. And I think most of ours were just given. And so sometimes we're unbalanced, and sometimes Americans have been too generous. But on the other hand, some of these problems we have, we have to look in the mirror.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:43:36]:
So no different in business and in life and in family. I think we should first look in the mirror and say maybe we didn't do something right to start with before we start blaming somebody else. Because in many cases, we created some of the problems that we're in. People that get into trouble, you know, and I've had people come to me for years, and I used to try to help them. And I said, like, Jeffrey, if you got a drug problem, by by giving you more money to do more drugs, I I have to acknowledge that I can do my part if you do your part. You got a drinking problem. You got a spending problem. Right? So in many cases, I think it's good to look internal first and see.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:44:09]:
This is a complicated issue because we're talking about worldwide, and we're talking about a lot of products and a lot of goods and a lot of services, and it's the topic of today. Now what happens the time you have your podcast out? Is it over? Is it still going on? I can't predict the future and how long anything lasts. I'm not sure if the people in charge know where we end. They may know what they're trying to get to. Are we trying to just get the lower tariffs and better deals? Are we trying to generate revenue Possibly. To pay off deficits and pay of our spending? So why do we spend 2,000,000,000,000 more every year than we take in? So if we take in 5,000,000,000,000 in taxes, why are we spending $6.07, or 8? I understand during COVID. I understand during a war, but how do we continuously spend more than we take in and then we borrow more? At some point, we say it doesn't work in households. It doesn't work in business.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:45:05]:
I thought the last two stimulus bills that were done over the previous administration were over the top. Why didn't we need to stimulate a good economy? Why do we need to overstimulate when we have growth? And Ronald Reagan used to say that government is usually part of the problem, not part of the solution. Industry, businesses, entrepreneurs create jobs, but you need government. We need public and private participation. We need a balanced approach. It's not what we have today. In a Republican primary, you gotta move to the right. In a Democrat party, you gotta move to the left, and it's gotten more chaotic.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:45:37]:
I've never seen the country more divided, and I don't know if I'm just paying attention as I'm getting a little more mature. It it it's a nice way of staying older. Right? Or or is it more chaotic? And I asked my friends, is it just me? And I'm paying attention, and it wasn't when I was younger. They said, no. It is more chaotic. Right? But we've also had times in history, you know, during the Vietnam War. It was terrible when we had the the Cuban crisis. Yeah.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:46:03]:
Okay. The Korean War, and like I said, World War one, World War two. So all throughout history, what changes is things happen faster today because of technology, but human nature really hasn't changed. And so I think if we could have more of a balanced approach and say, what is the greater good? You can come from it from the left, and I can come from the right, but we have the same big goal. But if the other goal is I have a hidden agenda, and I wanna control your land, and I wanna control your country, and I want you to believe what I believe, and I I need to kill you because you don't have the same faith I have. I don't know how that makes any sense, to hate people over religion or even over political. I don't know. Like, if you like Ohio State and I like Notre Dame, or if you like vanilla and I like chocolate, that make you right and I'm I'm wrong? Now there are certain rules.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:46:53]:
My orthodox friends have over 600 of them. I can't track those, but but there are basically 10 that I think, you know, that's a good start with, the 10. I think killing is wrong. I think stealing is wrong. You know, there's certain basic rules that some people and there's other people that, unfortunately, I've learned that are delusional, and they're very narcissistic. And, unfortunately, I think some are almost sociopathic. They can justify anything they do because they needed to do that, and they think it's right. So if you wanna be delusional and sociopathic and narcissistic, then go ahead.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:47:26]:
I don't think that's the right way, but it's seems to be what's happening today in in Washington and what's happening in the world. Thank god that in Ohio, we we've had great leadership. Our economy in Ohio has been outstanding. We've had, I think, a good governor and and and John Eustad senator Eustad, who's our lieutenant governor. We've had more of a fair and balanced approach in things. Ohio right now is in in top five, but politics is is pretty brutal. So, you know, when I watch CNN, I I think they're fair and balanced to the left. I watch Fox.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:48:00]:
I think they're fair and balanced to the right. Sometimes I think it's like when I was a kid watching big time wrestling, it's just show business. Right? Because sometimes they're extremes. They're playing through their audiences. Right? So that's why I like to make my own decisions, and that's why I wanted to study what's going on. And and what does history show will teach us a lot, but sometimes things are different, and sometimes they're really not different. So I've been trying to study that, trying to understand what's happening. There have been trade imbalances.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:48:25]:
There have been also unfair practices, but there's nothing new. Ever since they've been men, they've taken advantage. Right? But we also allowed it, and we have to look in the mirror first. Right? And then say, you know, let's look at a fair and balanced approach.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:39]:
Yeah. When did you become interested in politics?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:48:42]:
I start getting interested in politics, I think. Well, I was interested when I was younger a little bit, but I didn't understand everything. I start getting involved in my twenties. Yeah. And it really was back when I would watch on TV and city of Cleveland was being made fun of. We were the mistake on the lake when we caught on fire, and we went through a pretty tough time. And then there was a gentleman who had become mayor and and kinda got people involved. And all of a sudden, through good political leadership working with the business community, things started to improve, and I was impressed.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:49:16]:
And I got involved, and I went to a couple little fundraisers because I was impressed in what I thought he was accomplishing. And then I said, you know, if I build relationships with these people and perhaps if I help them, then not only could I learn, but I could also have access. And I would have a voice, and I could kinda share what I think and see what I'm doing. So I probably got involved a little bit in my twenties, then I got more involved, and then I got very, very involved. And and I got very involved in the senate race, in the eighties, and then, I got very involved in a governor's race in 1990. And then so I've been involved with some senate races and some races for governor and and and congress, and we've hosted, I think, four speakers of the house that we've had over, and we were fortunate to have the president visit us in 02/2008. President Bush was president at the time. We've had a number of presidential candidates.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:50:08]:
But I think what happens is I learned that if I want to have a voice, that I have to be part of the process. And unless you get involved and be part of the process and part of the system, then you're not gonna have any input. This is part of our country, and so we have wonderful privileges. And I'm living the American dream because of the opportunities this country provides, but that also means certain responsibilities. I mean, state of Ohio right now is finishing their two year budget, and it'll be roughly 217,000,000,000. And that's just Ohio. And Ohio is, like, roughly the seventh largest state. Washington, you know, they spend 5 to 7,000,000,000,000 a year even though our economy is roughly 29 to 30,000,000,000,000 our GNP, but the revenues Yeah.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:50:53]:
And so when you realize they have a lot of power, they have a lot of influence. We can't build our own army, build our own defense. We can't build our own road system. I think when you get public and private participation and they work together, there's things that we need government for, and there's things that the private sector does better. But I think if you want to have access and you want a voice, you need to be involved. If you're not involved, who you gotta pick up the phone and call? They don't even know who you are. Yeah. And and so I learned long time ago, if you want a friend, you need to be your friend.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:51:26]:
If you need a favor, you need to do a favor. I don't mean quid pro quo. I mean, you need to build these relationships. And to me, it's been consistently what I've shared. Let's find what binds us, not what divides us. We're Americans living here. In my case, it's my mom and my dad. But most people's cases, their parents or grandparents or great grandparents, they came here for a better life.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:51:48]:
I figured if they had it really good, I don't know why they came here. And usually, it could have been religious freedom or economic opportunity, but they came to America, and America is an amazing place. It was an experiment that is just unbelievable. And if you think about it, with all our trade deficits and all the the the the the imbalances, we still became the largest economy in the world, almost 30,000,000,000,000. Okay? Right? You know, is it 30,000,000,000,000 or 40,000,000,000,000? Sometimes I'm off a few trillion. Right? But we're pretty big. Right? And with all the problems and all the obstacles, all these different religions and all these different nationalities. Right? You know, capitalism works.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:52:26]:
On the other hand, sometimes capitalism can be pretty ruthless. But the alternative of communism and socialism is way worse, or as I tell my my daughter, it's worser. They said, dad, it's not a word. I said, it is. It means worse and worse.

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:39]:
What is it that you want to say

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:52:41]:
with your voice that you have? Well, because we speak to a lot of people on a daily basis and we interface with a lot of people, be it business people, all walks of life, we have a perspective that we really are in touch. And it's like if you're in touch with the customer, you know, if you're at a store, you're in touch with the consumer and people walking in and out of a store, then you kinda know what what's happening, and you know different perspective. Sometimes people that are are higher up politically or even in the business, if they're not in touch with people, they may not have the same input. So it could be talking to a public official about a charity that does good work that still needs a support. Okay? And then and but it could be about why maybe less regulation in certain areas are important so that you have progress. On the other hand, in certain cases, you may need more checks and balances and controls and regulation or adverse things happen. And so, you know, when you look at, like, for instance, you know, some of the problems we've had with the people with all this the drugs that have come in where people start off with they have an operation, and then they get hooked on a on a drug, and then they they overdose. The tragedies are terrible and have these illegal drugs being out.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:53:55]:
So it could be a social issue. It it could be a charitable situation. It could be business opportunities. There's so many different topics. There's so many reasons. And so to me, having the ability to talk to our congressman, we have a great guy in Dave Joyce, and I have a nice relationship obviously with Max Miller. Some of my friends are out of office. Some, unfortunately, are gone.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:54:18]:
We have the ability to talk to to our governor, who'll be up here in a few weeks with the new lieutenant governor. I communicate very frequently with our our two US senators who are very, very responsive. But even on a local level, if I need to get a hold of a councilman or a mayor of a community, I think you need to have the relationships, and you need to make sure that you're helping them because you believe in the greater good. And if we need help or a friend of ours needs help, we'll reach out to them. I would prefer never having to reach out to anybody because everything's going wonderful. But that's just I don't live in a perfect world.

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:51]:
What do you think that you understand from, I'd say, the relatively unique perspective that you have of being the nexus point for coordination of tens of thousands of people that you've gotten to know over your life that other people may not understand about what it means to connect the dots?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:55:12]:
Well, I think, Jeffrey, sometimes one or two more steps could be exponential success. So you meet somebody, but if you don't do something with that or you listen to someone that has a problem, maybe making that phone call to that person who can make the difference, you know, or perhaps introducing them to them, or you have the opportunity sometimes to help somebody that's in trouble. Maybe they're sick, and they don't even know how to get someone that's an expert to help them. Or you sometimes see an injustice being done where somebody is being unfairly attacked because whatever reason, and you say, that's clearly wrong, and I'm gonna be that person that stands up and saying, that's wrong. You know, I used to tell people, you know, you gotta be careful sometimes, you know, who you upset because you get meet the wrong person that might not work out so well, and sometimes they say, guess what? You just met them. Because I'm not gonna tolerate what you're doing. You're being a bully. You're taking advantage of people.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:56:19]:
You're hurting people, and because you're able to get away with it, it's wrong. But on the other hand, sometimes it's a matter of people doing good things. So so for instance, you know, we have so many wonderful people that are our caregivers, you know, not only at the Cleveland Clinic, but people that are feeding hungry people at the hunger center or people maybe that are perhaps helping a young pregnant future mother. And I think it was Saint Francis who said, once you have suffered, then you really have an appreciation. So so once you've been a patient and you've been sick, and all of a sudden because you take your health for granted Yeah. And then you see the wonderful nurse and various caregivers and how they're compassionate, or you see someone that's taking care of somebody who can't take care of themselves. Watch somebody give somebody a sponge bath or shave them or somebody change an adult person's diaper, and you say, you got these angels that are willing to do things to help other people, and they do it with not only dignity, but they look like they're getting tremendous enjoyment by doing something good for somebody else. But only through suffering, Saint Francis said, do you become compassionate.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:57:32]:
Or to see somebody attacked because of different religious beliefs or different ethnic or different culture or different race. Why is that right? You know, why why is it right? But on the other hand, I think most people want the same thing that all people want. Little children want the same thing. You know, when a baby doesn't get love, the baby dies. Literally dies. Okay? And so loneliness and people who are no longer part of the community where they're just not able to, you know, be it physically or or or mentally Yeah. And they lose touch. And so I think that if we can just do our small part and sometimes we have to remind ourselves we get so busy, and you're so focused on if it's your business or your career or the next deal, Sometimes we need to get pulled back.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:58:24]:
And then sometimes we just see great examples of people that are just doing incredible work, be it the school teachers or the nurses, okay, or a person that's volunteering at a hunger center or a person that is changing someone's wound, or helping a little sick child, or helping an elderly person who can't take care of themselves anymore. Very seldom, when I visited my friends and family members and people that have been in nursing homes, I don't see them very busy. And it's almost like they're forgotten, and it's pretty lonely. I've never been in one where there's so many people waiting to get in to visit, and maybe I just been there the wrong times. It's somewhat sad. Those those are not fun places to visit for me. But neither are hospitals per se, but they also do a lot of good things. Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:12]:
So you had mentioned earlier in the context of relationships, you know, this kind of end of life regret framework. I'm curious how you think about regret.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:59:25]:
I think a couple of things. Sometimes you regret things you did, and sometimes you regret things you did not do. So that's actually a Catholic thing, sins of omission and commission. Warren Buffett liked to use it as an investor, but that is actually a Catholic thing. So it's things you did wrong. They're easier to know, but it's a little harder as things maybe you should have done that you did not do. And sometimes you regret things you did, but sometimes you regret the things you didn't do. And often people regret based on what I've read in talking with people, and I've also been with people as they're dying.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:00:00]:
Some of them regretted things they did in their life that they later on regret, maybe spending their time in the wrong place, doing things that maybe weren't very appropriate, or perhaps maybe not spending more time with their family or spending more time doing other things. And so I don't like guilt, which I have a tremendous amount. So I don't wanna regret not doing the right thing for the right reason, and I also don't wanna regret perhaps things that I should have done. Sometimes you don't know it at the time, or you're not cognizant of it, and you only find out in retrospect. And often, it's too late. Just like with certain people, they don't know how much they miss them because they always had them. So, again, I'm a work in progress because I need to prove a lot more. So I don't like having regret, but I don't wanna not do things, so just do it and spend the time.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:00:54]:
It's okay. But we also learn from other people, good and bad. Right? So regret, guilt can be a good thing and a bad thing. So part of it is you're never gonna be totally sure if you're going to the right thing or not. But you also can get feedback. Yeah. And so there are people that will remind you or pull you aside. There's others that have their own agendas.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:01:15]:
And so sometimes you have to stop and say, well, who do you listen to? If you listen to everybody, you'd be nuts. You still have a lot of hair. I don't. And sometimes knowing the difference is not so simple, right, at least.

Jeffrey Stern [01:01:30]:
With with this work in in progress in mind, you know, very much in the spirit of continuous learning, I feel that it also relates to to writing. I mean, one thing that I feel comfortable articulating at this point is that I feel, you know, you you care about the quality of ideas. Right? And and, you know, how you hone in on better articulating and relaying those those concepts. Why is it that you enjoy these kinds of conversations?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:02:00]:
Well, I think it forces me to think about the question you're asking because I don't have the questions in advance every time, nor do I want them. But it also helps me think. It also helps me share, and sometimes I have to remind myself the things that I share and then go back and listen. And I said, that's a good idea. You better do it. Or why aren't you doing more of that? You shared it. Are you doing it? And, also, I have this compulsion today to share my experiences, good and bad. I just wanna share them.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:02:28]:
And and if it it helps other people with their problems or helps them be become more successful, then I feel that I maybe did my small part. You know, philanthropy is a lover of mankind, but it doesn't always have to be just financial. It could be with time. Just like, you know, I mentioned earlier, the corporate works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy. You know, feeding hungry isn't necessarily just a hunger center. It's okay to feed your friends and your family and the community. That's a noble thing. Give them something to drink.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:03:00]:
It's a noble thing. You don't have to just do good to poor people. You can be good to everybody. These concepts, we've almost lost the sense of when I was raised in the generation or two before me that I got to see. There was a kindness. There was a warmth. There was a respect. Yep.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:03:19]:
And today, we seem to have lost simple things like kindness, respect, warmth, humility, being grateful. I mean, these these simple concepts seem like they're not around as much. We got a AI, And and we can, you know, create things and and and send things up in the space and go here and do these things. But then we can't say thank you. We can't say please. And I think we've lost some of that. And I think coming getting back to just goodness. Again, I have to remind myself to do it as well.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:03:55]:
Yeah. Because sometimes you're rushing to go somewhere, and you won't take that few seconds or minute just to say lower. Talk to somebody because you're you're in a hurry, or you're so busy in what you're trying to do. And And sometimes you say, well, maybe what's important to Jeffrey? How can I help you? And do you have something I can help you with? Do you have some idea that I can help you with or somebody I can introduce you to or some concept? Now doesn't mean you can help everybody, and it doesn't mean you can get everybody what they want because sometimes they may have a different objective or goal or may not be something that fits. Yep. And and you can't do everything for everyone. Nobody can.

Jeffrey Stern [01:04:27]:
Are you optimistic about a return to kindness?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:04:32]:
Well, sometimes I am, and sometimes I'm not. But I think when it's just gone for a while and things get too extreme, then it seems like sometimes they swing back a little bit. And so just like in politics, when one party seems to take over and then they just, like, start getting too aggressive and trying to get done what they're trying to do, And it seems like the next election or two, then it kinda goes the other way, and then it kinda gets balanced. The political stuff kinda balances out long term the way our country was designed because we have the house and the senate and the presidency. Sometimes one party controls, not not often. But normally, when the sitting president is of one party, usually the midterm elections go the other way. That's just in normal times. Yeah.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:05:23]:
But the decency and the kindness and the, you know, the humility, the respect, I think that's gotta be taught in families. I think it's gotta be brought up in schools, and I think it's gotta be an example that people that are in a position to set that example do, and I think it can be contagious. So I'm not giving up. You know? It just seems like certain times, it just seems lately it's been a little tougher. And then people will say, I don't like this politician. I don't like that politician. No. We're just public official.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:05:56]:
And and I said that often what we have in political office is a reflection of what we have in society. And, again, I think we need to look internally before we look externally.

Jeffrey Stern [01:06:06]:
How do you think about legacy?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:06:10]:
Well, I wrote something once in an article that I took from Warren Buffett, but you ultimately judged by how many people that you loved loved you. And I think what happens is and and somebody pretty famous once said, people might forget what you do or forget what you say, but they often remember how you made them feel. And I think, you know, what happens is that I unfortunately go to a lot of funerals out of respect, and I think there, you can learn a lot because now people are gone and there are people speaking and they're they're, you know, some are more religious oriented, some are more ecumenical. But I think most legacies are left with things that aren't necessarily just power or financial. When you look at through through history, a lot of the people that are revered were people that maybe necessarily didn't have a lot of power or wealth at the time. Right? And I could give you a great example with the whole Christian church, if you will, that, you know, here we are two thousand years later, and and you have billions of people that are following. And so my Catholic faith teaches us there's three parts of God. Right? The father, the son, and the holy spirit.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:07:26]:
So we're taught the father to me looks like Moses. Jesus was a man and God, which I know is hard to understand. And then there's the spirit, and that's the part of God that we all see. But that doesn't mean that God is necessarily just Catholic or Christian. God may also have a Jewish part. He may have a Protestant part. I don't know. Right? I think the fact that we can say there is God means that we're not the center of the universe.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:07:53]:
And if you can admit that you are not the center of your universe, you have to have some sense of humility. So there's a reason that Harvard study showed that people that have a sense of faith tend to be the happiest people. And after that, people who had good family lives and people that had friends and people that had earned success with work and service others. So it's faith, family, friends, and and work and service the others. And the people who had the most fulfilling lives had the word relationships. So at the end of the day, I think it's having a sense of faith is important. In my case, it happens to be Catholic. And in somebody else's case, if it's Jewish or if it's Protestant or if it's another faith, I think real religions talk about doing good things.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:08:37]:
Religions that tell you to act in an inappropriate way to do harm, to me, are not real religions. That's man trying to to to manipulate because I don't think, that real religions teach people to do bad things to people. Right? So I think the legacy of kindness, respect, try to be generous. Loyalty to me is also important. Don't forget your roots. Don't forget your friends. Don't forget those who did something to help you. And because they're sick in a nursing home and they're not helping you anymore, maybe it's good to go visit them and thank them for what they did, not what they're gonna do.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:09:19]:
And like I said, I've never been in a nursing home where there's too many people trying to get in. Maybe it's just maybe I just got it all the wrong times, and it just seems like they're forgotten. And it's, to me, pretty sad. Yep. So I think the word love, if you had to pick one word that's probably the most important word in life. But, you know, kindness, respect, gratitude, humility. Yeah. I think humility and gratitude are interrelated.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:09:45]:
I found those that are grateful have a sense of humility, and those that are humble have a sense of gratitude. They're they're interrelated. Because to say thank you, you have to have humility. I'm thanking you. Right? Say sorry, you have to have a sense of humility. Right? So some of these things are interrelated. But, again, I'm just a a work in progress with a lot more work to do.

Jeffrey Stern [01:10:04]:
What are you most excited about?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:10:06]:
I'm most excited when I see my little grandkids, and I just see how cute they are. And I see my children being children, and I just watch their cousins all play with each other, and it has memories of me being with my cousins. And and so I get so excited because the simplicity of a child and and and, you know, how little things make them just so happy. And and, again, you know, they have their moments as well because they're they're still children, but I think I love I love children, and I hate to see children suffer. And it's one of the reasons that I helped Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital because there's nothing to be more noble than take care of a sick or injured child. But to me, what makes me happy is seeing little kids laugh and smile. Little children laugh and smile hundreds of times a day, and adults, it's a small percentage of that. And I think we can learn a lot from children.

Jeffrey Stern [01:10:52]:
I think we could both in in laughter and curiosity. Lot of ways. We've covered so much ground here. What I've appreciated is that we've been able to really, I think, hone in on a lot of the timeless things that you've curated and built your own mental models for. Like, I think we've done a a good mapping of the lattice if we're gonna use Munger's, you know, terminology here. I think that's a perfect place to to wrap it for for

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:11:18]:
this time. Jeffrey, well, if there's any questions or topics that you think of later, pick up the phone and call me, and I'd be happy to answer them. Right? And I appreciate you coming out and spending the time, and, and hopefully that, some of your listeners will find something worthwhile in what we said.

Jeffrey Stern [01:11:33]:
I I certainly think so.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:11:35]:
I hope so. Thank you so much.

Jeffrey Stern [01:11:37]:
Thank you, Humberto. That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffreylayoftheland. Fm m or find us on Twitter at pod lay of the land or at sternfa, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland Founders and builders we love having on the show.

Jeffrey Stern [01:12:14]:
We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land. The Lay of the Land podcast was developed in collaboration with the Up Company LLC. At the time of this recording, unless otherwise indicated, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the company which appear on the show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next week.