#135: Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group)

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:00:00]:

You have to give it away before you receive it, and I refer to that as the law of reciprocity. You can get anything in life you want if you help enough other people get what they want. So before you demand something, I think you set the example by giving it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:15]:

Let's discover what people are building in the Greater Cleveland community. We are telling the stories of Northeast Ohio's Entreprenuership 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 had the real pleasure of speaking with Umberto Fideli, the founder, President and CEO of the Fideli Group, one of the largest risk management and insurance firms in the state of Ohio. Umberto sits on numerous private company boards, is a managing member of Strategic Value Bank Partners, investing hundreds of millions of dollars across the community banking industry, and has previously held positions on the boards of many other public and private entities. Umberto is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Cleveland Clinic and serves as chairman of the Clinic's Government and Community Relations Board. This conversation is packed full of Umberto's earned wisdom over his career and his life as a true Maven and master connector of people. It is easy to understand through our conversation how and why Umberto has become so renowned for his first class hospitality, his powerful network, and his influence writ large across the business, political and philanthropic worlds. We cover a real breadth of topics here, from Umberto's life philosophy, to the importance of love and of faith and of family, to lessons learned from some of his eight figure multi million dollar mistakes, to reflections on his own success and fulfillment, to the actual value of just breaking bread over a home cooked meal. This was truly an insightful and timeless conversation and one of my favorites so far. So I hope you all enjoy my conversation as well with Umberto Fideli after a brief message from our sponsor. Lay of the Land is brought to you by Impact Architects and by 90 as we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. Impact Architects has helped hundreds of those leaders, many of whom we have heard from as guests on this very podcast, realize their own visions and build these great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much that I have actually joined the personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together and thrive by doing what they love. If you two are trying to build great, Impact Architects is offering to sit down with you for a free consultation or provide a free trial through 90, the software platform that helps teams build great companies. If you are interested in learning more about partnering with Impact Architects, or by leveraging 90 to power your own business, please go to IA layoftheland FM. The link will also be in our show Notes. So, as you know, the purpose of this podcast in many ways is to celebrate the entrepreneurship that transpires here in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. To show people what is happening in our own community. To inspire others to build, to educate and learn from the best of what other people have already figured out and from our time together. If I have picked up on anything, it's that you have figured out a lot of things in business and investing, which we'll talk about, but I think in life. And so I really do appreciate you taking the time to sit down and unpack and share your earned wisdom.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:03:58]:

my pleasure Jeffrey

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:00]:

So I want to start with something that I remember when we first met, actually, you were quite adamant that there was one three letter word which more so than others, has contributed to your life, both in terms of, I think, success and failure. And so I'd love if you could start know what is this mantra and what is its importance to you.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:04:22]:

But Jeffrey, what I found in life that there is one three letter word that has probably more to do with success, failure, lessons, joy, happiness, headaches, problems. And that one three letter word is who. WH who. If the who isn't right, the what usually doesn't matter. And so it's normally about who. Who you marry, who you do business with, who you trust, who you associate with, who you hang around with. But then part of that is before you figure out in life what you want to do, I think it's important to figure out who you want to be a type of father, what type of friend, type of son, type of brother, type of community person. And I do everything in threes, since I'm Catholic, we also have to become the best version of who we can become. So that's kind of my three in one lesson of the who, when you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:12]:

Think about that, what you want to do, who you want to be. With those questions in mind, we'll unpack a lot of topics here, but I'd love if you could share just a bit more about your family and your childhood. I know there's this confluence of Italian heritage and Cleveland upbringing. How did it shape and influence your approach to answering those questions for yourself?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:05:34]:

Well, I was very fortunate land. I had nothing to do with picking great parents or great grandparents or aunts, uncles, cousins. Most of us don't get to choose who your family is. Right? And so I happened to be the firstborn of immigrant parents. My mother and father were both from Italy. My dad finished fifth grade. My mother probably equivalent the 7th or 8th. Three of my four grandparents went to third. One did not go to school at all. But these were people that had a lot of character. Now, they were also characters with character, but they had a lot of wisdom, but they also were full of love. And I think you learn a lot by how you see people treating other people. And these were people that were just very good people. And so I was fortunate. I was born in the inner city in a neighborhood called Collinwood, and I moved out as a little baby and moved to South Euclid, and then grew up in South Euclid, went to a grade school called St. Gregory the Great, and then went to high school at St. Joseph's High School. And the went to John Carroll University. So I was just fortunate that I had wonderful grandparents, wonderful aunts, uncles, cousins, we had a big extended family and we had a lot of fun and there was a lot of love and we were just able to be who we were.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:48]:

So in that vein, I think something you also shared the last time we spoke, and I'll just keep referring back to it because I think even just then you shared a lot of really inspiring things. Was that a model for life stands on top of these kind of three foundational tenet pillars across purpose, passion and principles. And I think you've already kind of unexplicitly touched on some of those. But to make it explicit, how do you think about those pillars today and how have they evolved in your journey?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:07:19]:

I think if you can be consistent and have a life purpose and a career purpose, a civic purpose and a passion, and with certain guidelining principles, I think that then you're playing what I refer to as the infinite game. You're not playing the finite game. And so if you can align your interests, alignment of interest is a big deal to me when I'm an investor, that there's alignment interest. But I think if you have an alignment and interest where you're not different personally than you are in your business life or your professional life or your political or civic life, I think then you can just be yourself. And I think when you can be yourself, you don't have to do role playing. You're not an actor, you're just being. Jeffrey I think if you can align purpose and passion again with certain guiding principles and certain principles that are important to you. So integrity to me is very important. Loyalty is very important. Respect, kindness are important. But I also learned the hard way that you have to give it away before you receive it. And I refer to that as the law of reciprocity, that you can get anything in life you want if you help enough other people get what they want. So before you demand something, I think you set the example by giving it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:36]:

At what point did Entreprenuership come into your life?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:08:41]:

Probably at a very young age. Land I think that was primarily because I beat to my own drum, and I'm not saying that's a good drum, but I think a lot of entreprenuership just kind of like to do things their own way. You don't start off necessarily trying to be super successful or wealthy. I think you start off with just saying you want to kind of just be who you are. You want the independence. You want to be able to do things. I don't really fit very well in a lot of boxes, if you will, political boxes or philosophical. And I think at an early age, I think I learned that I had probably some good experiences and some that weren't so good that I thought that I was better suited to being a little bit more entrepreneurial. I didn't think I was really a corporate guy. Probably wouldn't have done well in the military. Maybe I would have if I had to. You tend to adapt, but I think at an earlier age, I decided that I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial. Wasn't quite sure what. But also then you can impact your own culture. And to me, culture is probably the most important thing in an organization. Land in a family, in a business. Land if you are leading an organization, you can set that culture. It's a little harder when you work for an organization that you're just part of. You don't have as much opportunity unless you're in a leadership role. Sometimes that takes a while.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:03]:

At the point where you first conceived of what would become the Fidelity Group, did you have a vision for what that would be? How did it actually get started?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:10:14]:

No, I think I'm probably not as visionary as some people would be. I think a lot more life is random than we'd like to admit. I didn't have the strategic plan that I would marry Mary Ellen, although I fell in love with her at a very young age. Land she's been my girlfriend since 1977. Then we got married 1984. I didn't necessarily pick the insurance industry by design. I like people, I like business, and I was intrigued by learning about businesses, but that could have gone into banking or could have gone into different investments. I think what happens is that you start off wanting to do something more entrepreneurial. And then I did try some other things along the way as well, and had plenty of failures as well, so I didn't have a plan per se, other than I wanted to just be my own person.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:08]:

So the first time we met, you graciously hosted me for a lunch here at your offices, where we are now. And I had imagined at the time that it would be somewhat akin to some of the other business networking lunches that I've gone to countless times in my career now. But this experience was markedly different in a very positive way, in that your mom cooked lunch for us and we just sat and talked and enjoyed company and broke bread and candidly. It was pretty special and incredibly memorable as an experience. At this point, just from learning more about yourself and your background, I feel comfortable saying you are a Maven in that you're a connector of people. And I'm really curious, especially having experienced that the role that networking has played in your journey and your life. Harkening back to the mantra of who right? How do you think about what it is to network, the power of your network, and how did you hone your approach to networking?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:12:08]:

Well, I only know how to be me, and so I was comfortable being around a dining room table. It's kind of how we grew up. And breaking bread. I believe magic happens when you do that, and so be it. My mother cooking or my sister. We always considered it a privilege and an honor and a pleasure when someone would visit your home or someone would visit your office. We thought it was an honor. So serving our guest was an opportunity for us not only to break bread, serve various courses, but having a conversation. And I think you need to get to know people first, understand what their interests are, what their problems are, what their concerns, what they like, maybe what areas they need help with. And to me, networking is simply the exchange information, ideas and resources. And so if you can be a source where you provide information or ideas or resources or in many cases we're just the conduit to introduce people to other people. I don't have a lot of skills. I didn't even know I was any good at networking. I just thought because I wasn't good at much, I usually was good at knowing two things, and that would be one who could be trusted and who was good at what they did. And often what we did is we just introduced people to somebody, said, this person's very trustworthy, and they're really, really good at what they do. And so I didn't think it was a skill, it was because I wasn't good at many things, but I was probably pretty good at knowing who you could trust and who was good at what they did. And I think it often is. We introduce people to people and we try to help people out with their problems, what are their concerns, what are their needs. And I think if you put the need of whoever you're talking with, wherever you're serving ahead of yours, it's a good start.

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:54]:

I mean, it exemplifies, I think, perfectly. The law of reciprocity. You just mentioned earlier, I'm a big.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:14:00]:

Believer in the law of reciprocity. You can get anything you want in life, anything. You just have to give it away first. And you can't demand something that you're not willing to do. And people will often watch what you do. They may look at what you say, but if what you say is inconsistent with what you do, then you don't have an alignment of interest. And I think if you have an alignment of interest and people see that and you can be trusted. Land selling is nothing more than a transfer of emotions. And so if it's selling a product or selling a service, or if it's selling a candidate that's running for office, or if it's helping raising money for a charity and a cause that you believe in, I think that the more you can get people's emotions involved, the more you can have things happen.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:45]:

What have been some of the most positive, unexpected consequences of facilitating some of these connections?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:14:52]:

Well, I think what happens is you build some lifelong relationships and you start off helping somebody, and then all of a sudden, decades later, this person becomes a very prominent public official, a prominent movie star, a super successful businessman, somebody who maybe has had impact in the nonprofit world. There was a guy named Michael Novak years ago, wrote a book that business can be a calling. And even the late, great Mother Teresa said, you know, people wait until they become successful or they're powerful to make a difference. And she said, Every day you have the opportunity to do ordinary things in an extraordinary way. Land so no matter what your walk of life is, you have the ability to touch lives. Land if you can touch people's lives in the business setting, that's wonderful. So I think we've been blessed with probably the word relationships. And if you study people towards the end of their life and ask them what's the most important thing when they know they have a limited amount of time, that word usually comes up more often than anything else. And if it's important at the end of your life, why not make it maybe more important earlier in your life? Sure.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:57]:

It makes a lot of sense. A large piece of what we talked about over that lunch actually was about investing and investment philosophy. I am curious at what point in your journey with the Fidelity Group you started to focus on investing and kind of widen the aperture for what it was that you were going to spend your time on professionally. Just kind of take us through the evolution of the Fidelity Group.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:16:22]:

Well, the Fidelity Group basically provides risk management services. When we help people with their insurance needs and their businesses transfer, risk could be manufacturing plants, it could be retail, hotels, shopping centers. It could be airplanes. So every business has risks. And if you have a business, you have certain risks. So we do risk management, and a lot of that is by placing insurance to transfer that risk. The people we do business with, you're not convincing them to buy insurance. They have to have insurance if they have a business or if you have health insurance. If they have associates or employees, they need to have health insurance. So it's a matter of who they do business with. So our business is insuring businesses because I was interested in people and businesses. That's what investing is. Investing is all about people and businesses. You have the business side or the economic side, but the you have the human nature side. And there are two distinct parts, just like you have the art side of investing and you have the scientific side. The scientific side would be maybe the analytical part. Sometimes the more complicated part is understanding the people and their behaviors and why they might like a particular product or company or business. So I was interested early as a teenager. Land in my early 20 in businesses, and people said, well, why didn't you start off in investments? I said, Well, I didn't have any funds to invest, so if you don't start off with any money, it's hard to make investments if you don't have any money. So you need to initially make a living before you can be having the opportunity to make investments. The investment world is huge because we've been involved in owning positions in public companies, and these are our businesses. Land I really do, when I study the businesses, pretend I'm buying the entire business and saying, is it a good business? And it usually comes down to three major characteristics. And quality to me is the most important thing. Is it a quality business, is a good business. So they have some distinct advantage. There's something special to it. Warren Buffett would call it a wide moat. Does this business have the ability to grow? Because if you can't grow, you're not going to create more value, but you have to buy it at a reasonable value, because even if it's a great business and it's growing, if you start off overpaying, then it's hard to make it up. So it comes down to quality, value. Land growth. And we had done a study once on hundreds of my mistakes. And my number one mistake going backwards about a dozen years was buying value traps, buying things that were a good buy, but they weren't necessarily a good business, and they were inexpensive. And that could be called nets. Graham Dodd. Or it could be what Buffett calls cigar know? Land one time Charlie Munger said to Warren, I think it was when they were buying seized candy, aren't we better off, Warren, buying a wonderful business at a fair price than a fair business at a wonderful so quality to me is the most important thing, is buying quality businesses that have some type of advantage. Land so be it an investor in the public markets, or being an investor even in private equity, or being an investor in real estate. Now, if I don't have the ability to select something, then we try to find people that we trust that are really good at what they're doing. And we wrote a little piece about the three p's of private equity and try to simplify complicated things. But it comes down to people and then make sure that they have a team and they have a proven track record and they have worked together and they have an alignment of interest, all the things that have to do with the people. What is their process, do they look at a lot of companies? What is their secret sauce and then how's their performance been? Do they have a track record? Sometimes the best indicator of future performance is past. It's not always an indicator, but if they're in an area that they really know well and they really can execute and trying to find what that competitive advantage is. So I was talking to a friend of mine recently about a great company in Cleveland and I should have invested in it when I met a gentleman running the company. The company has done incredible and it's run by a great leader today and it's Sherman Williams in Cleveland. It's got a market cap of around 70 billion. Enterprise value is even higher, but they probably compounded at about 20% for decades. But they've created a tremendous brand, which is important and they also control their distribution by having thousands and thousands of stores. But there are other great businesses visa, Mastercard, there are Duopoly. So there's only two that do what they do. And when someone makes a transaction, they get a little piece of it. So there are certain businesses microsoft is an incredible company, right? You have some companies are just great businesses and that have some strategic advantages. Then you have other businesses that are hard. And Buffett said that he likes to buy a business that anybody could run because someday somebody that maybe isn't as talented may run. And there are certain businesses that have so many obstacles that it's just a tough industry or it's a tough business and so why try to fight it? So there are plenty of opportunities. Now private equity is nothing but private businesses. And if you look at how big the private equity market is, there are tens and tens of thousands of private companies. So there's way more private companies than there are bigger companies. I'm not big on venture because startups are really hard and I'm an optimist and everything sounds good, but the execution risk from the time and you have to really be talented and to me do venture. You have to do with someone who has a track record because you're going to have a lot of failures. There's just too much execution risk even in young public companies that we call speculative growth. Speculative growth isn't necessarily durable growth, right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:15]:

What do you mean by that?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:22:16]:

So speculative growth companies are companies that have the potential to grow but they're not quite proven yet. And so they're almost like venture. They may be public and they're new and they're growing, but they may be doing one thing well but what's to stop somebody who's bigger and more powerful, that has many other capabilities of doing something so DocuSign grew during the Pandemic. They're a great company, but can Adobe or Microsoft or others do that, or different companies? So, to me, speculative growth is not durable growth. Speculative growth isn't necessarily wide moat. We had a period of time where you bought these young companies that are growing like crazy. And also the Pandemic did have certain things happen that accelerated people's growth. And then people think their growth is going to happen forever. And I find that good luck and bad luck don't usually happen forever. There's usually forever. There's usually a reason. So to me, if you like people and you like business, then investments are kind of like that. And I've been very active politically for decades. Land understanding human nature is a big part of politics, because what's really going on and what's really going on is not necessarily what's going on. Right? And so the political world is much more complicated than people would think. It's not quite as simple.

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:37]:

Yeah, I can imagine. One thing you mentioned earlier was some of the failures that you've experienced. I do recall also that they have been, in your experience, at quite a scale. Land I think you even said eight figure mistakes before.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:23:52]:

Oh, I've made this and I have made mistakes. College was the cheapest thing I ever paid. I have made mistakes in businesses that I've invested in, businesses that I was trying to run. I've made countless mistakes in value traps, but I've made mistakes buying things that had great projections. I often say. I don't often see bad projections. I have made so many mistakes now. Part of it is if you do a lot of things, you're going to probably make more mistakes. If you go up the bat 1000 times, the chances you strike out more than someone who's batted ten times in their life. But the tuition is awfully expensive when you make these mistakes. Land oftentimes you're doing things you really don't have expertise in. You really don't have knowledge. Land you might think you do, but you really don't. And so I'm very open about my mistakes because I've done plenty of them. Land you do learn, and if you reflect on your mistakes, those are tremendous opportunities to learn. And I think also if you can share them with other people, because if you can learn from someone else's mistakes, why do you have to make your own? And if you can help someone else avoid a mistake or share a mistake with them. I read something once by a guy named Cialdini who writes a book on influence, and I couldn't figure out what was so profound about what he's talking about, because it was something I had been doing my entire life. And that's admitting your failures or admitting your mistakes. The other thing that happens when you admit your mistakes and you admit your failures, people tend to trust you more. And I tell people, maybe you live in a perfect world. The world I live in isn't always so perfect. I've had plenty of mistakes, and you're not going to get good judgment if you haven't had some bad judgment in your life. And so why not share it with other people? Why not explain to them what were the mistakes? That's when you usually learn, is after you've made mistakes, but you have to reflect, learn, and then move on. And you got to let it go, right? Otherwise it'll eat at you because you're going to make them. I don't care who you are. You're going to make them now. You don't want to make them where they destroy you or put you totally out of business. They got to be where you can afford to make them. But even times things happen that you didn't predict. I didn't predict the pandemic, right? I didn't predict interest rates would go up so fast. I didn't necessarily predict there was going to be the war in Ukraine, and I can't predict there's going to be a hurricane. There's a lot of life that happens that you don't have the ability to predict. What you can do is act now what you know, and then try to figure out what to do. But I'm not always the best at predicting the future.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:24]:

What have then been some of the more salient, painful and then informative mistakes that you have made?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:26:32]:

Well, recently when I went from avoiding the value traps and getting enamored with these great young companies that had incredible scalability, you said, the potential of these companies to grow is unbelievable. And we were buying those, and we bought them early, and we bought some really great ones, but the valuations got so out of hand and they were too expensive. And at some point you say, it doesn't make sense. You can't have something that trades. And I would have some of my young guys just to say, well, they don't go by PE. They don't go to price to cash flow. I said, well, how do you say something's worth 100 times sales? Or how does something if you can project 50% compounded growth for 20 years? But what are the chances that any business can have sustainable growth of 50% for decades? I mean, it becomes something that's not possible. So I think in more recent years, going from value traps and doing the inverse and the buying companies that grow, it worked for five years. But when something is overvalued where it doesn't make any sense, at some point you have to say it doesn't make any sense. But you become kind of in that environment where that's kind of the environment and you get kind of sucked into it, and then you got to kind of go back to basics. Now, it's hard to time it's better if my personality is probably better. To buy companies that I don't have to sell, that I want to hold for a long period of time, well, then maybe I shouldn't invest in speculative growth companies. Maybe I shouldn't invest in great wide mode companies, maybe when they're out of favor. So we studied probably 500 to 700 public positions we had and looked at our mistakes. And Prado's law works with everything in life. 80 20. Yeah, it's actually more than that. It's 80 20. But when you really study it, if you look at your business, you'll see that maybe 5% of your customers may be half. But if you study it, we found out that 5% was actually two thirds. And then we said, well, 10% should be two thirds and was actually three quarters, and 20% should be 80%. Mark 20% was 90%. And then we inversed it and say the smallest 20% was less than 1%. And the same with mistakes. We were making the same mistakes over and over again and then learning from them. So value traps has been a mistake buying things because they're cheap and they're not good, but when valuations get so high that they don't make any sense. So to me, if you want to buy quality companies, when we went back and looked at all right, we looked at our mistakes, believing projections, value traps, what did we do? Well, in we did fairly well when we bought great companies where there was nothing really wrong with them long term, they were just out of favor. Short term, there was a temporary problem. It wasn't long term. It was maybe the environment, maybe it was the economy, maybe it was a bad quarter, maybe it was some bad press. We were able to buy Visa out of favor. We were able to buy Mastercard out of favor. We were able to buy Google out of favor and Microsoft out of favor. These are great companies, and if we can buy great companies out of favor and when they're attractive and you buy them, and if they go down, you're saying, I'm happy because I can add more to them. And if you let the magic of compounding happen, it works. But it takes a long period of time. People expect things to happen overnight, and it takes time for things to happen. Some people are a very good adventurer, very few, but it's much, much harder. And so why try to fight the system? Why not ride a company that's got momentum? They have an advantage. You can clearly identify what the advantage is, and they're out of favor. And there are times where maybe there's a pandemic and there are a lot of great companies that are out of favor because there was a pandemic. We actually did a paper that Mike Noaki helped me out with. We researched it, and it said the markets will bounce back and the economy bounces back. This is a short term problem. We studied history because I hadn't lived through a pandemic. So sometimes you're dealing with things that you don't really have life experiences with. But there are plenty of examples, and there are plenty of people you can learn from by listening to podcasts and watching interviews and reading books and articles. You have to be committed to lifelong learning. We ask our people for three commitments. Are you committed to lifelong learning? Your industry, your profession, your community? Are you proactive? Land not reactive. And are you cooperative, collegial, congenial, and collaborative with your colleague? Land the we look for people that have what I refer to as the three eyes. Number one is integrity. Without integrity, I don't really care about how smart you are. Then it's about intelligence. And there's different types of intelligence, right? Emotional intelligence, experience, land so forth. Okay. Land intensity. Can you get something done? Can you bring something to a conclusion or to just philosophize about something enough that ever gets done? You have to get results at the end. You're going to be judged by how you treat people and how you perform. And you have to perform in the real world. People want performance. Those are simple comments, but they're important in life and they're important in investment. So we share three major areas our life lessons about life, we share lessons about investments, and we share lessons about business. Those are the three areas that we share. Now, there's a lot in those three areas, right? There's plenty of material.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:59]:

We're only going to scratch the surface of it here.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:32:01]:

Plenty of material.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:03]:

What does success mean to you?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:32:06]:

Well, it depends on what type of success, I think, when you study. We wrote an article once about being a peak performer, and there are studies done about this. And typically you'd have to have about seven aspects of your life in check. So if you ignore health, you're going to run into problems at some point. If you are super successful and don't have a good personal life, with your own family, with a spouse, and with your children. So you're super successful in business but don't have a successful marriage or a successful life with your children or grandchildren or your friends if you have financial problems, okay, so there's different types of success. To me, success is having great relationships, and that's not a financial measure, right? But having those relationships are very important, I think having financial security so that you can be independent and do what you want and like to do and don't feel obligated because you have to I think success also on the way you live your life. So I think we have to sometimes be in harmony with different aspects of our life. Faith, whatever you define faith being, there's different variations of faith. Someone can be Catholic, somebody could be Jewish, somebody could be Protestant, somebody can have a different view of faith. But I think people that have some type of faith I think there's a blessing to that. I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned that I think the family life is important. Success in business you can measure by retention of your associates, retention of your customers, your clients. So depending how you define success, if you define success by relationships, that's one way you can measure financial success. Land measure that and benchmark that as well. But also I've learned the hard way that if you're only after certain levels of success, you get into what my friend father, Robert Spitzer talks level two comparison game. He said it's a road right to hell because what happens is that someone will run faster than you, someone have made more money than you, somebody had gave more money away, somebody may have more locations, more sales. And life's about a contribution and not a comparison. Are you making a difference in people's lives? Are you able to have impact? Are you able to go from success to significance? In a book that my friend Bobby Campan has shared with me years ago called Halftime okay, are you being a man and a woman for others? So I think you can define success different ways depending if you want to break it into components. Business success, personal success, financial success, life success. There are different ways to do it. If you're just lopsided in your success one way and you could be off balance somewhere else. So I'm a work in progress because by nature I am not balanced. I would eat chocolate and ice cream all day long if I wasn't lactose intolerant. I at one time was at 344 pounds. Right? There's nothing that I enjoy more than if one piece of pie was good, then three or four is better. If two scoops of ice cream are good, a half a gallon was better. And at some point you say you might like it. We all have certain vices or certain areas of our life that maybe are harder to control than others. So you have to work around your weaknesses. And I think you also have to find out what are your strengths and then play to your strengths, know what your weaknesses are and work around them. But find out what your strengths are. Find out what you love to do and what you're good at. Find out what I refer to as rational targeting. What are you really, really good at? And then do something what I call relationship mapping. Right. And in the last five years I've been stressing a simple concept about let's figure out how to connect dots, not just collect them. One or two more steps can give you exponential success. Just one or two more steps and sometimes you think the opportunities are a million miles away. And if I had paid attention more at the opportunities that came in and out of our office and in and out of our home, we didn't have to go to Wall Street. We didn't even have to go to 9th street in downtown Cleveland. We had opportunities in front of us that we didn't even realize. So sometimes Buffett refers to the sins of omission as the sins of commission. Now, he took that from the Catholic Church, even though he's not Catholic. But there are the things that you made mistakes on, but oftentimes there are things you should have done that you did not do, and those could be much bigger.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:24]:

And this might just be a misconception on my part, but when you think about that level two comparison in The Road to Hell, why is it that you see that so many people who you might consider to be successful have difficulty achieving this kind of balance and harmony?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:36:42]:

I think what happens sometimes is that you have to be driven and you have to want to be successful, but you also at some point have to realize, no matter how hard you try and how much you do that you'll never achieve all the success. And at some point you have to say, okay, there are people that are going to be more successful. Envy is a terrible thing. If you go back to the seven deadly sins anger and envy, and there's other ones, right? But envy is a terrible thing. I think that if you have friends and you help them become more successful, you will be more successful. And I think it goes back to the law of reciprocity. And I think what happens is people get so competitive that it becomes zero sums game. The more I win, the more you lose, the more I win. And that is a horrible thing. I think if you can have a situation where it's win win and it's win win with your associates, win win with your customers, win win with investors, okay, then you expand the pie. You're not restricting the pie zero sums game, you're restricting the pie. If you can make that pie grow and there's more pie for everybody, then you help other people achieve success. And it doesn't have to be zero sums game. I don't like zero sums game.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:57]:

No, I don't either. I definitely try and embody a positive sum mentality. The piece about envy and I did not I'm not the origin of this idea, but it really stuck with me when I heard it, was that you have to challenge feelings of envy because you can't selectively take the best parts of other people's lives. You only really could wholesale swap with the entirety of their lived experience. And so it's not so much of a useful feeling because it's just not realistic.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:38:26]:

Even I have a good friend of mine that refers to that as the fruit cocktail tree. You just can't take something and make fruit cocktail and take bits and pieces you want and put it in a can and create a fruit cocktail out of it. We're all part of something and you can't take bits and pieces. I see people trying to find a spouse and they're sitting there and they want a husband or a wife that has these particular attributes and you're putting together, well, that's nice theory, but the same thing with people. We're all packages, and you can't take bits and pieces of parts and put them together. You even see this with people who are trying to put together a winning team. They'll take two or three components and recruit them over on a football team. See it in the NFL, I've seen it. And all of a sudden they're not winning. Well, they took two or three, but there's maybe four or five other components they didn't take. And also, relationships aren't always transferable. Land maybe the way the team played together with the culture that was involved in one team isn't the same thing in another team, or just taking one quarterback or taking one coach without taking other. So I think you have to look.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:32]:

At it more holistically you've mentioned faith a few times. How do you view the role of faith in your life and in business?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:39:42]:

I think it's an important role. If you looked at the model of the state of Ohio, nobody ever asked the question, what is the model of the state of Ohio?

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:50]:

No one has ever I don't even know, honestly, what you're well, you can.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:39:53]:

Look it up, but it's something like, with God, all things are possible. So if you look at when our country was founded, there was a lot more faith based. That was part of the curriculum, it was part of public officials. We've gotten to a point where there's more separation of church and state. And I think what happens is if you look at statistics of couples who regularly go to church together, or it could be temple together, but in this case it was church together. Divorce rate was one in ten couples who lived together before marriage and never went to church. The divorce rate was somewhere around 75%. In the Catholic community, those who follow the teachings of the church and have only been with each other, all of a sudden, the divorce rate was one in 50. So if you start saying, well, why do things seem to work better? I think the more we have taken God out of society, the more troubles we have had. It's the antithesis of what people think. I'm not a big fan of all the things that happen in popular places, let's call it in Hollywood or in movies and so forth. That's not that I'm a prude, I don't mean that. But I think that if you have a sense of what's right and I share with people, they're not called the Ten Suggestions, right? Those are supposedly given to a Jewish guy named Moses. And I don't know if that was 6000 or 7000 or 5000 years ago, but there are ten major rules, and again, they're not called suggestions. I think that the world would be in a better place if people didn't kill, if people didn't steal, if people didn't lie. I think if everybody looked at that woman that works at a company saying, that's somebody's daughter, that's somebody's sister, somebody's mother, that little young man, there is somebody's brother, we're dealing with people. And if we look at the evil that exists today in the world land the evil of things that are done to children or our wars, killing people over religion, or people saying, I want your land, I want your property, or I need to kill you because you don't believe in my religion. My religion teaches tolerance, teaches love, teaches acceptance. Doesn't mean you necessarily like everything, right? But who am I to tell you that your religion is wrong and my religion is right? Okay? Shouldn't I set the example if I treat you? I think if we had more faith, I think we would have a better world. I think if we had more love, we'd have a better world. When people love each other, they don't want to hurt people that they love, right? And so love is what's missing in the world more than anything else. Land if people love people and irregardless of their religion or their race or their color or their size or their nose or their eyes or their hair, okay, they're people. And a gentleman that I had the opportunity to meet is a young man who took care of 50,000 children, had shared something once in a letter to me when I was in my 20s. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. And he said that he found that in life, the secret of happiness was to love, and the essence of love was to serve. He also said, for every Terry wipe off a child's face is a star you let up in the sky. And so he was in his 80s when he wrote me that letter, and he used to visit and come in from overseas and have lunch in our dining room. And I think what is missing in the world is love. And I think if we had a little bit more respect, a little bit more kindness, things would be better. Be careful what you ask, because, Jeffrey, I'm going to share my ideas with you. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:32]:

Well, that's why we're here. What is the role of philanthropy in your life at the moment?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:43:40]:

Well, I think I need to do more. Land I think I want to do more. And so I say it's an Italian word, but it's technically Greek, and it means a lover of mankind. Right. That's what it really means. And I think philanthropy is something that allows you to do something for somebody else. So if it's for children, sick child, the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital does a wonderful job. So does other hospitals. But I think it's very noble to take care of a child that's sick. A friend of mine once said to me, what better investment? You help a sick baby or a sick child? They have decades to do good in the world. And so there's also that multiplier effect, but also let's reverse it in the opposite. Go visit a nursing home sometime. Land see how sad and how lonely that is. But people are towards the end and I think so philanthropy gives you an opportunity to maybe provide some help to somebody else. It could be through education, it could be through health care, it could be through feeding somebody. It could be by someone who's got a disability. There's many different ways to do it, but I think it gives you an opportunity to do some good for others. And I think Americans are amazing. My guess is that America is probably the most generous country in the world. And I think what happens with people is when they achieve some success, I think a couple of things happens. One is they feel somewhat obligated to maybe help somebody else out because they've been so blessed. But I also think what starts to happen is it's a little anticlimactic. They get to a certain level of success and they get to another level of success and they get to another level of success. And then at some point they say, is there something more than this? Because at some point what else do you need? And you just sit there and say, okay, if you got cars or if it's planes or if it's houses or if it's homes or if it's financial security. And I think what happens is that it becomes we talked about the level two comparison game, but the level three is basically, as Father Spitzer would explain in his Four Secrets of Happiness. Level three is going from success to significance. As I mentioned earlier, being a man or woman for others, but basically trying to figure out how you can make a difference in somebody else's. Land I think it was St. Francis that once said that only through suffering do we learn compassion. And so when you're hungry, it's not a nice feeling. I mean, maybe a little bit hungry, but if you're hungry and you don't get any food or when you're in horrible pain and you're hurting, or when you see someone losing a loved one or you lose a loved one, that pain of that suffering. And so that if you can help somebody alleviate some suffering, be it a death, be it an illness, be it a tragedy, but philanthropy is beyond just financial. There's different ways to show kindness and to show love and to help others out. So I think it should be a part and I think we need to do more, not less.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:01]:

So I imagine on a pretty regular cadence you are somewhat inundated with information thrown at you or pulled in more selectively. How do you try and filter what is valuable signal from noise, especially today, I feel like with the proliferation of all this information out there.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:47:25]:

Yes. Land yes, that's a very good question, Jeffrey, because what happens sometimes is you get so busy that sometimes you need some time for reflection. You need some time to say, okay, what are your priorities, what are your passions, what are your principles? What are the things that are important to you? Where can you make a difference? Sometimes I avoid certain situations because I don't think that I can really make a difference. Not that they're not good, but I don't know if I can make a difference. I like to use sports analogies occasionally, even though I'm not a big sports guys. But I think it's easy to understand is that when I get on the playing field, to me it's playing the win. But I don't mean that necessarily just from a competitive standpoint, it's making a difference, having impact. And if you get involved and you're not moving the ball, then you're saying, what am I doing this if I'm not making a difference here, if I can't get involved with something land make it better before I got involved, or make one land one become more than two. I like to add value to create value. Land to me it's consistent if it's in business, or if it's investments, or if it's in philanthropy. Can we get that exponential growth? Can we do better? Can we get other people involved? Can we share something with somebody else? Can we maybe combine our resources that maybe collectively we can get more accomplished than we could individually? But you're inundated by if it's emails. I mean, I asked my guy once, Ryan, in our information, who we met a little while ago, and he said, we get and receive and about 7000, 8000 emails a month. I said, Is that a lot? Land he said, yeah, that's an awful lot. And I didn't know relative to what, but if you're looking at that's a few hundred a day, depending on if land the thing is, I don't have any days off, so I just divide by 30. Land other than I do plug my iPads, I have three iPads and I have three cell phones, and I have five home lines, but I'm on the phone and the iPad a lot, but I do plug them in and I don't bring them to bed with me. I have a hard enough time staying asleep. Land so at some point you got to let them charge, and you got to charge. And as I get older, I realize that I went a long period of time with a lot of sleep deprivation thinking that I was Superman. And as you get a little bit older, you realize that you're not as tough or you're not as strong. There are certain things that you need to do, and rest is something that is important, a little downtime is something that's important and trying to work on balance. And for full disclosure, I'm not. Right. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:09]:

It's something I wanted to ask about. I think this concept of work life balance, work life harmony, it's quite topical right now. How do you structure your days? What do your days actually look like?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:50:20]:

Well, for many, many years, I got up very early, and that typically could be as early as 230 to 330. Once in a while I slept into 4430 maybe. But it was typically, let's call it 03:00, 04:00. And then I would do a lot of reading because it's quiet and it's hard to read when you're on the phone, it's hard to read. If you're in meetings, it's hard to read and drive. Right. The mornings were designed for me to read business things, personal things. I spent a few minutes, not a lot, but I spent a few minutes reading a little bit of scripture. I do stop at church for five to ten minutes. It's read the gospel of the day, maybe a little reflection, receive Communion. So it's probably a little shorter. I do church probably not the right way. I do it like accounting. Last in, first out. Okay? It's called LIFO. Not on Sunday. Sunday I try to be relatively on time and stay. And so I think in the morning it's time to read. The other thing I found for me, and again, not lecturing others, that I had to make things a habit. And if I didn't make things a habit, you just didn't get around to it. So if you said, I'm going to exercise at the end of the day when I'm done, it probably didn't happen. I'm going to go to church or I'm going to go to temple, when I get around to it, it's probably not going to happen. So I think I have learned that anything that you want to do, you have to create a habit, create a process, create a system. It's not going to be perfect because I fall way short. And you can ask my wife and my kids. They'll tell you how imperfect I am. Or ask my associates. They'll tell you I have plenty of flaws, make plenty of mistakes. So in the morning it was reading and then a little bit of exercise. I'm not going to go to the Olympics, but I think that some exercise. If it's walking outside, if it's the treadmill, if it's the cross trainer, if it's a recumbent bike, I do something that I don't know anybody else that does it. And it's probably not the best way to do it, but I make my telephone calls when I exercise. So I take my mind off of the monotony. I look at a treadmill and I think, I've been on it for 2 hours and it's two minutes, and I look at how many calories are in a candy bar after I eat one or two. And I say, how could it take me 2 hours to burn off what it just took me 20 seconds or a minute to eat? It seems like it's not fair. It's not right. There was a knob that we could turn in, right? And so what I've worked on is making things a habit. So the mornings were for me to read because it's quieter and then a few minutes in, maybe some reflection and then some exercise land, then telephone calls and then meetings. And I like breaking bread with people. I try to have lunch with guests every day. We have what I may call theme lunch. And it could be we're hosting a lunch for a charity. It could be for a public official, it could be an investment, it could be clients of ours. It could be people in the community. We try to use our dining room. I have a funny theory that the more lunches we do, the less they are per person so that they're better value. But I think that it gives us the ability to touch more lives and it gives us ability to meet with more people, people to share ideas with. You don't need a lot of good ideas to be very successful. There's a handful of investments that could really change your life or a handful of relationships that can enhance your life. But again, you have to give it away before you get it back to the law of recipe. Yeah. And then what I used to do is the morning was my research and reading day was my business. And then the nighttime used to be my civic land, charitable. So I used to work I called it three shifts. The morning shift, the day shift and the night shift. I probably cut back on some of the night shift. It was probably not sustainable to go to three to five events a night. I never made more than five. Three was not uncommon. I've made two land, three weddings on a Saturday, and maybe that's a little too many. And I think sometimes maybe I was just going through the motions and trying to go places and trying to make sure I satisfied. Relationships and obligations. But maybe I'm not very good at saying no by nature, but on the other hand, I'm also not Superman. At some point you do get tired and if you're too tired, you're not going to drive well, you're not going to think well. You make poor decisions. So I think sometimes you need to slow down a little bit and have a little bit of reflection. Checks and balances. Have people you can check with. People that tell you what you're doing, right or wrong.

Jeffrey Stern [00:55:05]:

And I know it's hard to prescribe what the right balance is for someone else, but I am just with that being your day and having, as you said, no days off, what is your feeling about work, life balance? And the importance of hard work and weighing all these things.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:55:26]:

Well, I work on balance but I'm not a big fan of this work life balance because if you tell me go out and golf that's going to be I don't golf. So say, well you need to go golf. I don't like the golf so I don't know how that's balanced. If you're having me do something I don't have any interest in or go playing pool or go bowling I'm saying or go sailing. If you get sick in the water and you're on a boat and you're vomiting and you're saying isn't this fun? So it depends on what you call fun. The work life balance. To me, I don't know. I don't know. Sometimes I don't know if I do things I like or I do because I'm good at it. I'm doing some type of business every day, some type of investment every day, some type of exercise typically most days, some type of spiritual. Again, maybe not as long as I should a little bit every day, but I don't really take days off. And if I'm out of town, I'm just working from out of town. I'm not a big remote work person either. I think you can do some of that. I don't mean that I work from home every day in the mornings and at night, but I also like the camaraderie, I like the culture, I like the collaboration and I think that too much remote is not a good thing. If it was that effective, I'd tell people, show me how you make a baby that way. There are certain things that I just think you just got to be face to face with. Right. I just think being in person is the most powerful thing. Breaking bread, meeting with people individually, I think by far is the best. I think a far second is telephone. I think a far third is email and remote. But you can do hybrid. I understand there are people that are very effective working remote depending on what you're doing. But if you're meeting with a team you need to kind of be together and if you're going out visiting businesses or clients and seeing what people are doing, you need to go out and see it. I think there's a reason for that. Right? I think that makes a lot of sense.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:25]:

To what extent do you think leadership is innate versus if it can be learned? And what to you makes for great leadership?

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [00:57:37]:

Well, I wrote a piece about great leaders, right? And I called it How I See Capital C and Commitment and Character, land, Compassion, Communication, these are all C's and I can give you that article that I wrote about that I think you can learn leadership. Certain things I don't think you can learn and one of those is sales. I think you can learn to present but I think you're born with sales ability rainmaking ability. I think 5% of people have the ability to sell. Maybe it's ten. When it comes to rainmakers, I think it's less than 1%. But I think you can learn leadership because there's different styles of leadership. I've seen some leaders that are kind of quiet, but they're very good at setting it by example. I've seen other leaders that are very good by just taking the lead, by doing things. I think there are different styles, and I think you have to play to your strengths. And Jeffrey's got to be the best version of Jeffrey and play within your strengths. If you try to be somebody else, that doesn't come natural to you. But I think you can learn leadership skills. But I find there's not a lot of leaders. It's a lot of work and there's a lot of effort and you have to set the example. And I don't think a lot of people are willing to make that type of commitment. It's a big commitment and it's got to be something that's part of you. And if you're playing that finite game and it's a means to an end, you're going to burn out, you're going to get tired. If you're playing the infinite game and you're on twenty four seven and you get energized by it. I get energized when I'm working. I get energized people. I may get a little tired going to another event, but once I'm there, it's almost as if I'm the guy that's on stage that likes to act or sing, which I can't do either one of, but using that as an example. But when you're in your element and you're doing what you love to do and what you like to do and you're doing it with who you like to do it with, it's a pleasure. I was talking to my good friend Angel Petiti yesterday, talking about when you hire the right people. What a pleasure. When you invest with the right people, when you work alongside people, when you're socializing, when you have the right people around, it's almost effortlessly. And when you have the wrong people and you're working really hard and you're really working really hard. If I'm intellectually honest, as Peter Drucker said, seeing things for the way they really are, not for the way you want to see them, it's often that I've had the wrong right land, I've been involved with the wrong land. So I think if you have the right people, you don't have to manage a lot. You provide a little leadership, right? Somebody once said you manage inventories, you lead people land. If you have the right people, a little bit of leadership goes a long way. If you have the wrong people, you don't have enough leadership, you don't have enough time. And so if you look at building a world class business, you need to have the right people in the right place. You have to figure out how do we engage your associates, and you have to engage your customers, and engagement is very important. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:44]:

Speaking of people, I mean, you've mentioned by name a few Munger, Buffett, a handful of others already who have been those characters in your life that are most influential, that you've looked up to for mentorship advice, whether you know them personally or they exist in history.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:01:05]:

Well, in my case, I think that as a little boy, spending a lot of time with my grandparents, and again, three out of four had third grade, one had zero. So for me, early on, it's seeing these people that had high integrity, great character, and just were full of love, so younger. It was my grandparents. I had a professor. I just went to his funeral. Dear friend of mine that I met when I was a teenager, and then he was my professor at John Carroll, and he was my counselor, and he took an interest in me, and he was an advisor for decades for me. And unfortunately, he recently passed away. But when I looked in my lifetime at St. John Paul great pope that we had and he was the first Slavic pope in 500 years and looked at the impact he had and how he took down communism without any bloodshed and you looked at him or you look at Mother Teresa. So those are two that I couldn't say that I had a personal relationship. I did have the pleasure and privilege and honor of meeting John Paul, but it wasn't that I had a personal relationship or with Mother Teresa. I also, from a political standpoint, admired President Reagan, his ability to communicate, his ability to be charismatic and made you proud to be an American and less government, more self responsibility. I think he was a great leader as a president. Again, he's not a saint. He's a political leader. I've been disappointed with some of the leadership in Washington. I could say, in some cases, on both sides of the aisle, I probably am perceived more as a Republican, but I was born and raised as a Democrat, so I'm a biological Democrat, probably philosophically more Republican, or maybe a Democrat with my heart and a Republican with my mind, if you will. I think there's I like diversity, and I have no problem getting along with people that I disagree with philosophically on religion or on politics. I think if everyone's looking for the greater good, you can achieve that from the right or from the left. But when you talk about people that are great role models, grandparents, parents, people that you have to meet in your life, it could have been a neighbor, could have been an uncle, could have been a cousin, could have been a great grandmother, land, great grandfather. But then we've had some great religious leaders. We've had some great examples locally of people that are just very giving. This is a very giving community. Northeast Ohio is a very special place. I don't know if people realize it, but when I get visitors from all over the world, they always comment that the nicest people they've ever met are from Northeast Ohio. And I don't care if they're from Europe or from the West Coast, East Coast, or from different countries. I get that comment. So we're fortunate that we have a community that really cares, that is very giving, and we also have a lot of great entreprenuership. Right. And we have had good leadership politically in our state. I think our state is in good shape. Our governor, lieutenant governor. I think I've done a very good job for years. I had a very great relationship with Mayor Jackson. I know Mayor Bibb as well. I don't know him as well because he's still much younger and he's only been in office a shorter period of time. Senator Portman was a good senator. Senator DeWine was in the Senate was very good. There are certain public officials that I maybe don't agree with them as well, with some other philosophies or some other styles. I like people who are probably a little bit more diplomatic. You can be direct and still be kind. We recently had Speaker McCarthy over the house. I have a lot of respect for what he's trying to do. He's working across the aisle. It's a tough job. I was friends with Speaker Baynard when he was speaker, and noom, actually, before. Politics is a tough life, but you need to have good people in office that have a good country, a good state, a good city, land, a good community. And there's a lot of really good public officials that really spend a lot of time to improve people's lives, and they have a big impact.

Jeffrey Stern [01:05:21]:

Yeah. Well, of the things that we haven't talked or spoken about yet, rather what do you feel is unsaid that is important to the conversation here that you.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:05:31]:

Would like to share? One of my greatest joys today is the joy of being a grandfather. And someone said, Is that because you get to play with them and they go home? I said, that's not the point. You don't have to discipline them like you do with the parents, because as a parent, either you discipline your child or somebody in the world that doesn't love them. Well, being that disciplinarian isn't my most enjoyable thing as a grandparent. You can love that child, play with that child. And it's my children's job to be the mom and the dad. I get to be papa. And so I think that is a great joy. We're blessed to have 13 grandchildren and five children and one's not even married yet. So I think that's something I really enjoy. I think I've been very fortunate to be lucky to have married a wonderful woman who's been my girlfriend and my wife several decades. And I think sometimes your decisions do determine your destiny. And so sometimes you're making some important decisions, maybe when you're not even ready to make them right. And so sometimes maybe that's a little bit more luck than any skill set. But having a good personal life I think is very important. Having a supportive spouse that accepts you for who you are. Sometimes people say, what's the most important qualification of get married? Or who do you marry? And I said, someone who will put up with you. Because if you get somebody who just says, because I have my own style, and if I have to try to be who I'm not, I couldn't even play Santa Claus with this kid because I'm not an actor. So I just know how to be me. My kids remind me, and others remind me that sometimes I'm not always appropriate things I do or things I say. And I say, listen, I only know how to be me. So that's being genuine. And that doesn't mean it's always kosher, always the best way to be, but I probably am fairly consistent.

Jeffrey Stern [01:07:25]:

Well, I'll ask you our traditional closing question, and it's for a hidden gem, something that other folks may not know about, but perhaps they should.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:07:36]:

Well, we have a community that I think it's well known. I think if you look at Catholic Charities, we're the most generous in the world. If you look at in the Jewish community, they're in the top handful. If you look at United Way. So I think from a standpoint of philanthropy and the compassion of our community, I think Northeast Ohio is right on top. We obviously have great health care. I'm fortunate to be a director of the Cleveland Clinic, and I have been for probably around 20 years or so. The clinic does amazing work. We have great institutions. We also have other than some rough weather in the winter, and we don't have the traffic jams that bigger cities like Boston or New York have. But if you like arts and you like sports teams, if you like the water, the lakefront, if you like the suburbs and the parks, I don't know if we have one gem. I think we have an awful lot in Northeast Ohio, and I think people in Northeast Ohio from different walks of life work relatively well together relative to, let's say, Washington. Republicans and Democrats seem to get along better in Northeast Ohio, and I think various religious groups get along really well, and ethnic groups get along well. So we're an ethnic town. I think sometimes we have a little chip on our know. This used to be the fifth biggest city in the world or in the country. We're no longer in the top 20 or probably or 30, but we're probably in the top 15 largest counties. We have a lot of great attributes, be it the healthcare or be it the arts or the sports or be it the beautiful suburbs or the ethnic groups. So I think we have an awful lot to be proud of and also grateful for.

Jeffrey Stern [01:09:33]:

I think we do. And with that, I am quite grateful for you taking the time.

Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group) [01:09:37]:

All right, Jeffrey. Thank you. It's been my pleasure.

Jeffrey Stern [01:09:42]:

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 Jeffrey at layoftheland FM or find us on Twitter at @podlayoftheland or at @sternjefe 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. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.