Details Are Part of Our Difference
Embracing the Evidence at Anheuser-Busch – Mid 1980s
529 Best Practices
David Booth on How to Choose an Advisor
The One Minute Audio Clip You Need to Hear
Author: Matt Hall
Tune in Soon to “Take the Long View” Podcasts
In addition to what I already was envisioning when we published Odds On three years ago, I was pleasantly surprised in two more ways: New friends and new clients discovered us, and our existing friends and existing clients got to know us even better.
Since the book’s release, we’ve been looking for more ways to share meaningful stories and ideas with others. It struck us: For the commuter, the long-distance runner, the family chef, and anyone else who might prefer to listen instead of read … why not take our Take the Long View® to a podcast?
So, you heard it (or technically, read it) here first:
“Take the Long View with Matt Hall” (TLV with MH) podcasts are set to debut in June!
Expect more public promotion in the months ahead, but we wanted to inform our closest followers first.

Of course, we’ll talk about investing, but don’t be surprised if we shift into related thoughts about emotions, behavior, and time management. They’re all up for grabs as topics to talk about with our guests – thought leaders who we at Hill Investment Group have learned from or are inspired by in our own journeys. Together, we’ll reframe the way you think about what it means (to you) to live richly. Similar to my goal when writing Odds On, I hope you won’t even notice the “vegetables” of educational insights we’ll bury in our sweet conversations with interesting individuals.
Are you as pumped as we are about TLV with MH? To prime your pump, here’s a clip from Episode 1 with our good friend and respected psychotherapist Marilyn Wechter, talking about why money matters are such sticky subjects for so many people.
Look for more to come, come June!
Nell’s Excellent St. Louis Adventure
Here at Hill Investment Group, we’ve intentionally set up our infrastructure to offer seamless client care from Houston, St. Louis, or anywhere else we may roam. As such, if we didn’t tell you, you’d probably never know that our Chief Operating Officer Nell Swanson Schiffer has relocated from Houston to St. Louis, at least for a while.
By happy coincidence, her husband was recently accepted into the Internal Medicine Residency program at Washington University in St. Louis. (Congrats, Walter!) With Nell already an integral member of our HIG team, it was even easier for the couple to pick up roots and head to St. Louis.

Never one to miss an opportunity, Nell mentioned the move when she was speaking with the St. Louis Business Journal about our related, 2019 Best Places to Work announcement. In the same issue, she shared her journey with Business Journal readers. It’s an adventure that has taken her from wearing a flame-retardant jumpsuit as a Houston-based petroleum engineer, to her role as HIG’s COO.
Click here to read all about it.
The common denominator between Nell’s past and current careers? A passion for pursuing ingenious and disruptive best practices across all of life’s pursuits.
We welcome Nell to our St. Louis office, where we’re confident she’ll continue to be valued firm-wide.
Dimensional’s Dave Butler: A Leader We’d All Work For
On a wintry February morning in St. Louis, we were honored to spend time with Dave Butler, Co-CEO of Dimensional Fund Advisors. Over breakfast, we were reminded why Dave is the type of leader we’d all work for. That’s saying something, as we’re picky about who we’d follow.
We’ve been collaborating with Dimensional since we launched Hill Investment Group, but this was the first time we heard Dave’s own story about how he discovered his life’s calling there.
Dimensional is now one of the largest mutual fund companies in the world, with 1,300+ employees, 13 global locations, and over $500 billion in global assets. But it was a fraction of its current size when Dave joined them back in 1995. At the time, he was working on the East Coast, and wanted to return to his California roots. He sent his résumé to this nascent fund manager in response to a Wall Street Journal ad he spotted, and beat out over 300 other applicants to get an interview.
Knowing very little about Dimensional, Dave told us he’d contemplated skipping the interview. Fortunately for all of us, the Santa Monica office was on his way to something else, so he showed up for the scheduled meeting after all.
Minutes into the interview, Dave was invited to have lunch with a Nobel Prize laureate who was part of the Dimensional team. His impression of the firm changed quickly that day; he could almost physically feel the team’s enthusiasm for its novel approach to “applying academic research to practical investing.” From that day on, he was hooked.
We are grateful to be surrounded by a similar level of enthusiasm in our own firm and among our key strategic alliances, like Dimensional. They and we are mindful of who we work for – our clients, that is – and how exciting it is to help them put the evidence-based odds of successful investing on their side. We’re also very glad Dave made it to his interview!