The Swartz Report: Interesting question… Are we the best?

By Donald Swartz, President

Recently, I met with a prospective client to discuss the aspects of handling their real estate portfolio. After engaging in the history of our company and listing of some of our clients who have similar portfolios, the prospect asked this follow up question, “Yes, but are you the best?”

The question caught me a little off guard, but only because it was posed as part of general conversation. It was not the “final question” or the climactic question to a series of questions. Rather more in line with, “how is your coffee?”

So, what is the answer?

This past week, I traveled to Las Vegas to have our planning meeting for the 2024 year with our Indurante group and then came back to Kansas City for our planning meeting with the Swartz employees. I decided this would be an excellent question to pose to each of the employee groups.

“Are we the best?” I casually inquired during the middle of each of our meetings as I was curious how everyone would respond.

Like me, collectively, they were surprised by the question and stumbled a little with their respective answers. “Well, of course we are!”, “who’s better?”, “excellent question… How did you answer?” were some of responses coming from all directions.

In short, my answer is, and will continue to be, we try to be the best we can be in representing our client’s interests. We are professional, ethical, transparent and try to be as communicative as possible to both our clients and County representatives or State governing officials we work with on a daily basis.

• Are we the most aggressive company in our service industry? NO
• Is our sole focus maximizing reductions without concern for the governmental entities? NO
• Will we risk our reputation to benefit a very few? – NO

How do we define “the best”?

I believe our testimonials and client retention speak volumes to the work we provide. Our positive feedback from both clients and government officials also positively reflects on our work. I believe we have the best employees working in our respective companies and their years of service and commitment to the clients continually reinforces our mission.

I don’t know if we are the best, but we know how to take care of our clients ????

Speaking of planning meetings, chalk the 2023 meetings up to another successful series of days of positive and candid discussion to promote efficiency in our work place and continuing to provide value to our clients. Our discussions were somewhat different, as Indurante has a finite number of opportunities – there are only so many owners and managers of private railcars.

Contrast that with Swartz where the opportunity to represent owners of commercial/industrial properties and machinery/equipment is literally endless. At the end of the day, our companies are similar and our goals are the same. If we take care of our customers, the financial rewards will take care of themselves. The key is to ensure we are focused and taking care of the tasks at hand.

I will end this blog with how I started… Are we the best? Again, I believe our clients would say yes because they are happy and stay with us. If you aren’t a client, give us a chance to show you what we’re capable of doing for you! Feel free to reach out to me at or .