Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Boomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.
Speaker 1: Ron Carson, CEO and founder of the Carson Group, started
Speaker 1: way back in practically in his dorm room in Nebraska,
Speaker 1: has been one of the leaders in the r i
Speaker 1: A space, not just through Carson Wealth the sm management
Speaker 1: business side, but through Carson Partners, which is uh sort
Speaker 1: of tamp plus for independent are as who were looking
Speaker 1: for succession, planning and help on the back end of
Speaker 1: their business with technology, as well as Carson Coaching, which
Speaker 1: is a program that came about in response to demand
Speaker 1: from r I s who we're looking for a little
Speaker 1: more helping, a little more assistance in in running their
Speaker 1: their businesses. If you're at all interested in the business
Speaker 1: off of how asset management is changing, the impact of technology,
Speaker 1: the impact of alterations to the fiduciary rule, the general
Speaker 1: trend towards fiduciaries and away from commission based brokers, you're
Speaker 1: going to find this conversation to be absolutely fascinating. With
Speaker 1: no further ado, my conversation with Ron Carson vass Masters
Speaker 1: in Business with Barry Ridholts on Boomberg Radio. My extra
Speaker 1: special guest this week is Ron Carson. He is the
Speaker 1: founder and CEO of the Carson Group, which covers several
Speaker 1: different companies, including Carson Wealth, and we'll discuss the different
Speaker 1: business lines. Ron is also the author of Proven in
Speaker 1: the Trenches and most recently The Sustainable Edge, to best
Speaker 1: sellers on Amazon. The Carson Group manages well over twelve
Speaker 1: billion dollars for about thirty four thousand families. Ron Carson, welcome,
Speaker 1: two Masters in business. Very thanks for having me. It's
Speaker 1: a privilege to be here today. So I'm kind of
Speaker 1: intrigued by your history and your story. This kind of
Speaker 1: a Michael Dell background. You started Carson in a University
Speaker 1: of Nebraska dorm room in three am I exaggerating that
Speaker 1: at all. No. I grew up just north of Omaha
Speaker 1: on a farm. I thought it was going to be
Speaker 1: a farmer my entire life. And those that remember the
Speaker 1: early eighties, you know, interest rates twenty one percent. Farmers
Speaker 1: were going broke. My parents went broke, and uh, I
Speaker 1: was forced to do something else. And I was reading
Speaker 1: a money magazine article talked about the top professions of
Speaker 1: the future, and one was to become a CFP and uh,
Speaker 1: so I thought, you know what, that's what I'll do.
Speaker 1: And I literally ran three years ago is at the
Speaker 1: Napa Valley Wine Auction and there's a pre event cocktail
Speaker 1: party and some ladies said, oh, you're from Nebraska. What
Speaker 1: do you do? And I told her. She was so,
Speaker 1: how did you get into that? And I said, well
Speaker 1: I read this article. Her faith lit up and she goes,
Speaker 1: You're not gonna believe this, but I wrote that article.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, then I owe you my career
Speaker 1: that that's amazing. And I go back to you and
Speaker 1: I are similar ages. And when I was in college
Speaker 1: and eight three, I was trying to scrape up beer money.
Speaker 1: I wasn't thinking about, I know, let me launch a
Speaker 1: new business in an area that really nobody else is in.
Speaker 1: You had to be one of the first independent advisors.
Speaker 1: Is that a fair statement? I absolutely was, And in
Speaker 1: those days it wasn't even viewed. I didn't know this.
Speaker 1: I mean I was totally unconscious and competent. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I didn't know. And so I like the
Speaker 1: idea of being independent and uh but there wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of places to even go, you know, the Rooker
Speaker 1: dealer community was super small, didn't have a lot of technology,
Speaker 1: sold a lot of product. But that's how I got started,
Speaker 1: and you know, to this day it was. It was
Speaker 1: a great, great growing up experience. I feel like I
Speaker 1: grew up, you know with the the advisory world. I
Speaker 1: remember in you know, eleven short years after starting, I
Speaker 1: was so excited when you know, I realized I could
Speaker 1: become an r I A and uh and truly be
Speaker 1: a true fiduciary for for clients and and and as
Speaker 1: you well know, our space has changed dramatically, you know,
Speaker 1: several times over the last thirty years, to say the
Speaker 1: very least. So so what was it surrounded by farms
Speaker 1: going broke with interest rates that made you say, I know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to focus on financial planning. So initially someone
Speaker 1: told me if I went down to the brown got
Speaker 1: to play football, and I, uh, my first part of
Speaker 1: the season, I ended up becoming injured. I was, you know,
Speaker 1: reread shirted. And but I came from a family where
Speaker 1: you know, my parents were struggling. I'd have any money,
Speaker 1: and someone said, you can sell life insurance and make money,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, I've always had a knack for
Speaker 1: selling things. Even as a kid, I went to auction school,
Speaker 1: so I told people and let me do an auction
Speaker 1: for their junk. And you know, I had a little
Speaker 1: popcorn business. I had a lot of little businesses. So
Speaker 1: I always had this entrepreneurial um spirit. And for six
Speaker 1: months I just called out, called out of a phone
Speaker 1: book and amical Life had just come out with Life
Speaker 1: insurance in those days, the fighting to come out with
Speaker 1: the Universal Life, and I didn't like trying to talk
Speaker 1: someone into buying insurance whether they needed it or not.
Speaker 1: And shortly after that, I thought I want to get
Speaker 1: my securities license. And I was fascinated by the stock
Speaker 1: market and and you know, the capital markets and how
Speaker 1: they functioned, and it just, you know, I feel like
Speaker 1: I have hardly worked a day in my life. The
Speaker 1: first few years were tough. There's a couple of times
Speaker 1: I thought I hated, I was going to quit the business.
Speaker 1: But once I got some i'll call it, you know,
Speaker 1: epiphany around just you know, taking care of people and
Speaker 1: really putting people's interests first. Not only did the profession
Speaker 1: become a lot more fun, but I grew incredibly fast
Speaker 1: and and I've always stayed in this in this line
Speaker 1: of work. And I've always, um, I've always been a
Speaker 1: non traditionalist. I've always thought of different ways of doing
Speaker 1: things and until it allowed me to not only be
Speaker 1: in a in a business that I enjoyed, but it
Speaker 1: gave me a lot of, you know, creative space in
Speaker 1: order to try, you know, to try different things. I
Speaker 1: love that phrase that you hardly you've never worked the
Speaker 1: day in your life. My wife used to tell people
Speaker 1: I'm gainfully unemployed, which I guess is sort of the
Speaker 1: same spirit. So so, since you started back in eighty three,
Speaker 1: you're coming up on forty years soon. Do you recall
Speaker 1: who was your first client? Do you remember the first
Speaker 1: person who said, Ron, you seem like a trustworthy guy.
Speaker 1: Here's all the money I have in the world, try
Speaker 1: not to screw it up. I do. UM. I I
Speaker 1: still they owned UM. They owned a drug store in
Speaker 1: the middle of um, Nebraska. It was a small, small town,
Speaker 1: and I remember them writing me a check and uh
Speaker 1: and I and I pulled. I pulled out a town.
Speaker 1: Of course, there was only gravel roads in and out
Speaker 1: of this small town, and I remember pulling my car over.
Speaker 1: I got out and I ran around it like six times,
Speaker 1: jumping up and down. You would have thought I won
Speaker 1: the powerball lottery. And those uh, the the they he
Speaker 1: passed on shortly after they became clients, maybe a couple
Speaker 1: of years, and then she was a client until probably
Speaker 1: about five six, seven years ago. And then their children
Speaker 1: are clients to today. And but that was that was
Speaker 1: the very very first one. You'll never forget the first one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great story. Let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: this division of the Carson Group. Tell us what is
Speaker 1: Carson Wealth and how does it fit into the bigger
Speaker 1: umbrella organization which seems to have a number of moving parts.
Speaker 1: So we have Carson Group and then Carson Wealth. Berry
Speaker 1: is the very very first, you know, part of Carson Group.
Speaker 1: It's our retail offering. So we're on a registered investment advisor.
Speaker 1: We manage you know, close to thirteen billion in assets
Speaker 1: for you know, several thousand families around the United States.
Speaker 1: And our mission is to be the most trusted for
Speaker 1: financial advice. And if I'm driving down the road and
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about our profession, I'm listening to this,
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, doesn't everybody you want to do that?
Speaker 1: And I would say, maybe, you know, how many. I
Speaker 1: don't know how many people consciously think of it, but
Speaker 1: we're in a profession unfortunately that that you know, in
Speaker 1: financial services is a huge category berry, but sixty of
Speaker 1: Americans do not believe that their advisor or the institution
Speaker 1: they represent, we're going to put their interests ahead of
Speaker 1: their own. And that's really the mission of what we're
Speaker 1: trying to do. Nobody owns the space, and it's so
Speaker 1: fragmented to this day. There's two thousand financial advisors. There's
Speaker 1: roughly a half a million in the mid nineties. Of
Speaker 1: the two today, nearly a hundred eleven thousand are going
Speaker 1: to retire. UM we call them rich and tired. Most
Speaker 1: of them made a lot of money and they just
Speaker 1: don't want to keep up all the technological change. And
Speaker 1: we see that as a real opportunity to UM grow
Speaker 1: market share, but do it the right way. You know,
Speaker 1: we've we have quite a few offices around the country.
Speaker 1: We have you know, are proven process We have very
Speaker 1: specific ways of of delivering you know, the value proposition.
Speaker 1: But you know, ultimately, you know, I feel that we
Speaker 1: have a real shot at owning or co owning that
Speaker 1: in the future. You know, when you think about Vanguard
Speaker 1: owns and as far as a brand low cost investing
Speaker 1: fidelity owns. You know the retirement plan market, um, but
Speaker 1: no one really owns the trusted wealth management market. Quite interesting.
Speaker 1: You alluded to something that I want to circle back
Speaker 1: with you because you went by it so quickly. Six
Speaker 1: of the public do not believe that their financial institution
Speaker 1: has their best interest, Yes, and barried to this day,
Speaker 1: most people do not know. So I travel around the
Speaker 1: country pre COVID. I probably give sixty seventy talks a year,
Speaker 1: and many of those to retail clients of ours. And
Speaker 1: I always ask the question, who in here can tell
Speaker 1: me the difference between a produciary and a broker, and
Speaker 1: anywhere from zero to one, hand will go up. I
Speaker 1: mean I was speaking at a CEO institution last year.
Speaker 1: There was sixty CEOs from all over the world. Not
Speaker 1: one of them knew the difference between a puduciary and
Speaker 1: a broker. And and to this day of broker is
Speaker 1: not required to put at your interest first. It's only suitability,
Speaker 1: that's it. I mean, if they disclose it in a
Speaker 1: you know, one thousand page perspectives and it says they
Speaker 1: can do it, and they can charge it. It makes
Speaker 1: it quote unquote legal, and and we have a son
Speaker 1: of Carson. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.
Speaker 1: And I think we still have a massive gap between
Speaker 1: understanding produciery versus brokers. And I will open those talks
Speaker 1: to say, listen, if you get this one thing right,
Speaker 1: do you understand a true producer versus a broker? And
Speaker 1: you pass it on to someone you love and they
Speaker 1: get it, You've given a true gift that will give
Speaker 1: for the rest of their life. Now here's one of
Speaker 1: the really interesting things about the R I A industry.
Speaker 1: Over the past twenty years, a lot of who we
Speaker 1: think of as big brokers you b asked Mary Lynch,
Speaker 1: Morgan Stanley, a big portion of their employees have moved
Speaker 1: either to be hybrid broker r i A S or
Speaker 1: just registered investment advisors. Are days, is the fiduciary side
Speaker 1: of the street is the fe only no conflict of
Speaker 1: interest versus the brokerage sales commissioned side. Is this side winning?
Speaker 1: Do you see that as the trend that's taking place?
Speaker 1: I do. I mean the trend is accelerating. Marry, And
Speaker 1: let me just say something because I think this is
Speaker 1: a fact that gets lost on a lot of people
Speaker 1: is everybody has a conflict of interest, right, you can't
Speaker 1: help it. I'll use an example. Let's say you've got
Speaker 1: it um an R I A who has a hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars under management and his largest client has fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars with them, And his largest client comes and says, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about taking fifty million dollars out and buying
Speaker 1: this business. That advisor has a conflict because he realizes
Speaker 1: if he loses that client's asset, he may not be
Speaker 1: able to stay in business. But we all know that
Speaker 1: the conflict is are you gonna do? Remember what I said?
Speaker 1: I said put the client's interests that of their own interests.
Speaker 1: So this adviser to say, listen, yes, let's do that
Speaker 1: and give them the best advice, even at the demise
Speaker 1: of his own company. Is it's a conflict, but it's
Speaker 1: at least a conflict that the client I think consciously
Speaker 1: knows are going in. Am I going to get the
Speaker 1: best advice because this could hurt his business? And there's
Speaker 1: also conflict very unfortunately even on the fiduciary side, more
Speaker 1: so that are more nuanced, like cash you know before
Speaker 1: when we're back, we had yield. There are some fiduciaries that,
Speaker 1: in order to they would not take the time or
Speaker 1: effort to sweep a client into the highest yielding cash
Speaker 1: and let it set somewhere where they weren't earning a
Speaker 1: lot of cash. That's a conflict, especially if you've got
Speaker 1: a custodian. It's going to charge you or the client
Speaker 1: some additional fee if they're not making the return on
Speaker 1: the account. I still think our profession has quite a
Speaker 1: ways to go. The fiduciary is the future. But I
Speaker 1: think even as fiduciary areage, we can get better at
Speaker 1: putting the client's interest first and being more transparent. I
Speaker 1: love that story of the sweep and some time ago, um,
Speaker 1: I know you must have a ton of war stories.
Speaker 1: I do. Also, we figured out, you know, very often
Speaker 1: you run with a little bit of cash an account
Speaker 1: in case a client asked for a disbursement or something,
Speaker 1: whether it's forty or fifty or sixty basis points, it's
Speaker 1: something relatively small, and very often when the market is
Speaker 1: going higher, it's a slight drag on performance. And we
Speaker 1: figured out a long time ago it was much better
Speaker 1: to sweep the cash into one of the higher yielding
Speaker 1: money market accounts. We figured out, we did the math,
Speaker 1: we analyze that, We sat and played with it and said,
Speaker 1: net net, this creates a few hundred thousand dollars of
Speaker 1: positive gains across all our clients. But we're relatively small
Speaker 1: shop like yours. Sweeping cash into a higher yielding money
Speaker 1: I could account. Have you ever sat and figured out
Speaker 1: the math on how much additional gains that generates for clients? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Last year alone, we estimated, you know, it was in
Speaker 1: the high single digit, you know, seventy eight million dollars,
Speaker 1: you know, directly to our clients because we we we
Speaker 1: did the sweep and very How crazy is I think
Speaker 1: about banks? They'll pick on banks for a second. Most clients,
Speaker 1: if you go do you love your bank? Go? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love my bank. What are you getting on your
Speaker 1: cash and your savings? And most of them are getting
Speaker 1: almost zero yet to think can turn around and get
Speaker 1: you know, let's sake nineteen of the Fed funds rate.
Speaker 1: I said, can you imagine if they were crediting you
Speaker 1: that and at the end of the year they said, hey,
Speaker 1: we want our fee to be what you made. You know,
Speaker 1: clients if they were writing that check back would go crazy.
Speaker 1: But because they never see it, it's a huge hidden
Speaker 1: drag on their performance that they really don't consciously think about.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things we want our clients
Speaker 1: to think of, every single penny of they're paying, how
Speaker 1: they're paying it. And and we you know, and I
Speaker 1: know we're big planners. You know, people will make an
Speaker 1: investment in their future, but no one wants to pay
Speaker 1: something and not see value beyond a doubt for the
Speaker 1: investment we're asking them to make. And I think cash
Speaker 1: is a great example of that. You know. I want
Speaker 1: to follow up with what you're saying with the issue
Speaker 1: of free trading, and let me point out neither of
Speaker 1: us have a horse in this race. If trading is
Speaker 1: eight dollars, or of trading is free, it's essentially the
Speaker 1: same thing as far as I'm concerned with the average
Speaker 1: portfolio size. However, when you look below the surface of
Speaker 1: all the companies offering free trading, that cost of carry,
Speaker 1: that return on cash is where they make all their money.
Speaker 1: And it turns out free trading, when you look at
Speaker 1: the numbers, is pretty expensive. Bury and then you've got
Speaker 1: order flow payment and invisible tax that you know, consumers
Speaker 1: don't see. Like I said, there's a lot I think
Speaker 1: we can still do as a profession to become even
Speaker 1: more consumer friendly, you know, than we are today. I
Speaker 1: don't disagree at all. Let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: your coaching business. What is Carson Coaching? So Barry and
Speaker 1: and I guessaid. I started a retail in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three and nineteen ninety three I was giving a talk
Speaker 1: in Boston at the organization at the time called the
Speaker 1: i a f P. I don't remember that, International Association
Speaker 1: of Financial Planners. And I was talking about the different
Speaker 1: things I was doing in my business, and two gentlemen
Speaker 1: came up and said, hey, we do coach us. And
Speaker 1: I said sure, And that's how my coaching business started.
Speaker 1: In in n I launched Carson Coaching UM. I had
Speaker 1: seven people come out to Omaha, Nebraska and I, you know,
Speaker 1: and we've and we've had quite a following over the years.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have around twelve hundred offices today that
Speaker 1: we provide UM consulting services and coaching services to. We
Speaker 1: have tens of thousands of alumni. People that coming in
Speaker 1: out of there will be in our program for a
Speaker 1: year or two, come back out, come back in again.
Speaker 1: And a lot of a lot of independent advisors are
Speaker 1: they feel like they're isolated islands out there, and they
Speaker 1: really want to have community. They want to have best practices,
Speaker 1: They want to have places that they can bounce ideas
Speaker 1: off of. You know, today we have I think we
Speaker 1: have eleven executive business coaches, just specialized in a variety
Speaker 1: of different areas and uh and and I have learned
Speaker 1: a ton from having our coaching organization. Always like to say,
Speaker 1: you know, we're better together. None of us is as
Speaker 1: smart individually as we are collectively. And just this group
Speaker 1: has pushed me to get better. I've learned so much
Speaker 1: from them. But it's really a cool community that's all
Speaker 1: committed to continuous improvement. Quite interesting. When I was kicking
Speaker 1: around your website, I came across a page of Carson
Speaker 1: Group Partners. Are those folks affiliated with Carson Coaching? Are
Speaker 1: they affiliated with Carson Wealth? And by the way, that
Speaker 1: page was just scrolling scrollings. It's hundreds of people along.
Speaker 1: So coaching is different than partners. So we have our sert,
Speaker 1: so we have our retail, we have our coaching, and
Speaker 1: then we have Carson Group Partners and what I learned
Speaker 1: through the coaching business, Barry and you, I think you
Speaker 1: appreciate this as many years you've been around being a
Speaker 1: mentor to people, either directly or indirectly. Is that old
Speaker 1: thing you can lead a horse to water, but you
Speaker 1: can't make them drink. Is you can give them all
Speaker 1: the ideas but very few people. I used to get
Speaker 1: questions all the time, like Ron, how can you give
Speaker 1: everybody your secrets? I said, well, first of all, I
Speaker 1: want a profession to be better, and I believe it's
Speaker 1: us against the evil empire out there, the conflicted model.
Speaker 1: But number two, most of them won't do anything with it,
Speaker 1: and it's not a real competitive threat. And that's why
Speaker 1: Partners was launched in twelve. Is a lot of these
Speaker 1: clients of ours that say, can't you do it for us?
Speaker 1: So then we evolved into a model today where we
Speaker 1: are a succession Solutions. So a lot of these firms
Speaker 1: have become Carson. We bottom, or we own a minority
Speaker 1: or we own a majority. We are very flexible, but
Speaker 1: we do their technology, we do their trading, we do
Speaker 1: their compliance, do their marketing, We do everything, with the
Speaker 1: exception of actually sitting down and meeting with the client.
Speaker 1: We have CPS, we have attorneys on our team. We
Speaker 1: have a trust department, I mean, we have insurance department
Speaker 1: where we can provide all of that in one single
Speaker 1: pain of think of an Amazon experience. And most of
Speaker 1: the smaller independent advisors can't begin. They're so stuck in
Speaker 1: the whirlwind of trying to run their business day to
Speaker 1: day they can't really emerge and then think creatively and proactively.
Speaker 1: And that's really what Carson Partners does for them, and
Speaker 1: we do it together. It's bottoms up innovation. They come
Speaker 1: up with some amazing things that that's what we implement
Speaker 1: into the model. But we also I date top down
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of none of us knew the
Speaker 1: iPhone was possible until Steve Jobs came up with it.
Speaker 1: Right now, we all love it, can't imagine a world
Speaker 1: without it. So we've also ideated stuff that they're going, wow,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know this was possible, and it's it's
Speaker 1: been really an exciting partnership with our partners around the country.
Speaker 1: So this is a TAMP. This is a full turnkeysset
Speaker 1: management program. Is that right? It is correct? Yes, and
Speaker 1: a Camp, Mary, it's it's everything else. I mean literally,
Speaker 1: we will right there RFP, we will present to an endowment,
Speaker 1: our foundation. It's not like, oh, they have access. Our
Speaker 1: team in Omaha is their team. And if you go
Speaker 1: to our partner's website you'll see that. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of them are branded Carson. Some of them continue
Speaker 1: to go under their own brand, but it's you know,
Speaker 1: a lot. I think of its Tampa providing just asset management.
Speaker 1: That's one of ten services we provide to our partner offices.
Speaker 1: Quite intriguing, how many different offices are you working with
Speaker 1: with Carson Partners, Because it looked like, right now I
Speaker 1: have a hundred and thirty five offices. Yeah. Did you
Speaker 1: ever expect coaching and partnership to develop into two completely
Speaker 1: different businesses from financial planning? Obviously related, but totally different
Speaker 1: aspects of the business, Verry, No, And I never expected
Speaker 1: the success I've had. I mean, I've throwned myself with
Speaker 1: really great people and it's really their success that has
Speaker 1: allowed this to happen. And No, I never dreamt in
Speaker 1: a million years that you know, we would be doing
Speaker 1: what we're doing. And and because of that, you know,
Speaker 1: and group is really focused on impact, you know, local impact,
Speaker 1: community impact, national impact, global impact, and we spend you know,
Speaker 1: considerable amount or I said they spend. We make big investments.
Speaker 1: You know, my wife and I make big investments into
Speaker 1: our communities, and so does Carson. And and I can't
Speaker 1: say I can't talk about our success without talking about
Speaker 1: what I feel are are Our personal obligation is is
Speaker 1: to you know, to lift people up that that struggle.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think when I got started in
Speaker 1: the eighties, um, you if you worked hard, you could
Speaker 1: go out and you could make it. And there's parts
Speaker 1: of the world today, and especially there's even parts here
Speaker 1: in the US it's really hard, you know, to emerge.
Speaker 1: And so you know, with that success comes, uh, I
Speaker 1: think an obligation that we've been braked, you know, to
Speaker 1: have as big an impact on our community as we
Speaker 1: possibly can. Quite fascinating. So the future of the asset
Speaker 1: management industry. You talked earlier about technology and how challenging
Speaker 1: that is. How has technology changed the landscape currently and
Speaker 1: what does this mean going forward? So Barry, I go
Speaker 1: to a place called Singularity University. I've done it for
Speaker 1: the last two years and it's out in Palo Alto
Speaker 1: and it's Peter Diamantes and Frank Kurzweil and you know,
Speaker 1: just people that are talking about the things that are
Speaker 1: that are coming. And Frank made a comment two years ago,
Speaker 1: he goes, you know, the technological changes nothing up to
Speaker 1: this point. It's been a trickle and the avalanche is near.
Speaker 1: And I share that view. I am seeing what's going
Speaker 1: on with artificial intelligence, with data um and I see
Speaker 1: a world where a lot of this is controversial, right,
Speaker 1: I mean when you when you you know, for example,
Speaker 1: I have three children, my sons non on social media,
Speaker 1: hate Google and and because they you know, they read
Speaker 1: our email. And I'm on the opposite end of it.
Speaker 1: It's like, I love it. Get to know me as
Speaker 1: well as you can know me and help me, help
Speaker 1: make my life easier. So I understand the listeners are
Speaker 1: gonna fall in one of those categories. Probably most of
Speaker 1: them falls somewhere in between. And so we made big
Speaker 1: investments at Carson last year and the year before into
Speaker 1: what's known as a data warehouse. So we have all
Speaker 1: our data. We have very clean data. And the other
Speaker 1: thing that's cool about that is we call we used
Speaker 1: to say that we have a high degree of i Q.
Speaker 1: And that's implementation quotation, because when it's all said and done,
Speaker 1: more gets said than gets done almost in every business.
Speaker 1: But now at a Q as well, And that's adaptability
Speaker 1: quotation because none of us can possibly anticipate all the
Speaker 1: amazing technologies are going to emerge out of the garage,
Speaker 1: so to speak. And and so if if you are
Speaker 1: in the old traditional way of having technology, if you
Speaker 1: were going to switch from you know, one application to another,
Speaker 1: it was a major migration. I mean it was a
Speaker 1: big deal to make the switch. Well, now at Carson Group,
Speaker 1: we've got a data warehouse. All we have to do
Speaker 1: is consider what's known as an a P I not
Speaker 1: think the two technicals listeners, but think of a think
Speaker 1: of it just plugging in a hose and all that
Speaker 1: information could float any application that we want, and we
Speaker 1: can switch out an application overnight. And I'll use Amazon
Speaker 1: as an example. You're an Amazon user, right, Barry for
Speaker 1: twenty something years already. And how the experience overall, I
Speaker 1: would you rate at scale of one to five? Pretty
Speaker 1: rare that it's not a five each time every time?
Speaker 1: And and and Barry tell me that from the time
Speaker 1: you started using Amazon to today. How many different technologies
Speaker 1: were swapped out behind the scenes that you weren't even
Speaker 1: aware of. Oh god, it's got to be countless biggest
Speaker 1: of all Amazon web services. Look at how they took
Speaker 1: their own infrastructure, empowered so many others. So to me,
Speaker 1: it's just a web interface, but there has to be
Speaker 1: a ba jillion things going on behind the scenes. And
Speaker 1: you don't even care, right if you could care us
Speaker 1: you just want to have a great experience, right to
Speaker 1: go on. It works, It just works, That's all you
Speaker 1: care about. That's the future financial services. You know, what
Speaker 1: we believe is we've built this single pane of glass
Speaker 1: for the consumer to have everything they want. Like Amazon
Speaker 1: is super simple to use and to see and to interact,
Speaker 1: and that is that is the future. But you better
Speaker 1: have great data because I believe the risk always has been,
Speaker 1: always will be as far as ruining someone's financial plan.
Speaker 1: Is a consumer doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Speaker 1: Why do they do that? Because they get caught up
Speaker 1: in noise and and everything going on, and they make
Speaker 1: really poor knee jerk reaction kind of moved. For example,
Speaker 1: it's talking about Donald Trump. You know how many people
Speaker 1: wanted to just go to cash. Before Trump got elected
Speaker 1: in the market had a major run up. Many people
Speaker 1: went to cash in the middle of COVID because it
Speaker 1: said the world can never recover from this, or at
Speaker 1: least since for the next several years, when in fact,
Speaker 1: if they would have just had the risk budget right.
Speaker 1: And then taking technology a step further, we get to
Speaker 1: know when a client's blogging on what's going on in
Speaker 1: their life, what is they're reading, and we can anticipate
Speaker 1: now moves that they're gonna make that might be counter
Speaker 1: to what's in their best interests. We can get out
Speaker 1: ahead of it, we can have a meeting with them,
Speaker 1: we can talk about it. And this is just a
Speaker 1: very very beginning. I saw, I saw a technology. I
Speaker 1: spoke at tibern last year in New York and I
Speaker 1: talked about the future of artificial intelligence, and a lady
Speaker 1: comes up to me and says, I'm developing that. You
Speaker 1: got to see it. And I brought this back to
Speaker 1: my team and they're like, well, we don't think anybody's
Speaker 1: that close. They did a demo for Usberry. We were
Speaker 1: asking this engine financial planning questions and it was giving
Speaker 1: us answers, and we thought we were talking to another
Speaker 1: person on the other end. It was that good. And
Speaker 1: this stuff is going to continue to get better and better.
Speaker 1: Just imagine today if I if we sit down the client,
Speaker 1: we got lots of technologies. It used to take me
Speaker 1: a weekend really to get ready for a big client
Speaker 1: and review and all the things we needed to do
Speaker 1: and talking to their tax profession finals and their attorney
Speaker 1: and their insurance agent. Now all of that stuff is
Speaker 1: set in and we can be ready and have a
Speaker 1: really productive meeting in an hour. But the future is
Speaker 1: all of this stuff tacked legal risk, cash flow, all
Speaker 1: of that's going to be looked at twenty four hours
Speaker 1: a day, three in or sixty five days a year,
Speaker 1: and there's gonna be alpha actions that can be generated
Speaker 1: because of the technology. That's the future of financial services
Speaker 1: and it will be mind blowing the kind of value
Speaker 1: we can we can add and and the consumer is
Speaker 1: being expected to They want an Amazon and Netflix, a
Speaker 1: Google kind of experience, and that's what we're going to
Speaker 1: have to deliver. I don't think each you know, financial
Speaker 1: advisors look at each other as their competition. It's really
Speaker 1: those experiences that we're going to continuously be compared against
Speaker 1: and compete against in the future. So when the first
Speaker 1: sets of the various automated advisors rolled out, people call
Speaker 1: them robo advisors, but I think that's a bad moniker.
Speaker 1: But shops like Betterment and Wealth Front, there was a
Speaker 1: general backlash, Oh, this can never do what an advisor
Speaker 1: can do. Do you think that eventually we'll get to
Speaker 1: the point where hey, ubers will be self driving cars
Speaker 1: and financial advice will be some bot telling you what
Speaker 1: is best for your financial circumstances. I think it's going
Speaker 1: to be a combination. So my view very it's technology,
Speaker 1: it's a higher end where there's more complex needs. Is
Speaker 1: not to replace the financial advisor, but it's gonna enrich
Speaker 1: the experience for both the advisor and the consumer and
Speaker 1: allow us to do a much much better job anticipating
Speaker 1: somebody's needs before they even know they have them. It's
Speaker 1: the lower end. I think there are people that in today.
Speaker 1: I mean I went and signed up for all of
Speaker 1: those and they you know, they just there wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of substance there. There wasn't a lot of of
Speaker 1: of wow that was really really good or you really
Speaker 1: how me? But I think it's a place to get started.
Speaker 1: I think the future is going to allow people to
Speaker 1: migrate start there, move up to a hybrid experience as
Speaker 1: their complexity grows, eventually have a full on traditional kind
Speaker 1: of relationship. But sometimes a client considers that higher traditional
Speaker 1: light relationship. There's not a lot of changes, there's not
Speaker 1: like going on, and then they go, do I really
Speaker 1: want to pay act for this? And today the only
Speaker 1: choice they have is to fire their advisor or to
Speaker 1: have an uncomfortable conversation about reducing their fees. Under this,
Speaker 1: I think future model, they'll be able to ratchet down
Speaker 1: to a different service offering without them to go through,
Speaker 1: you know, liquidating and all the tax ramifications, all the friction,
Speaker 1: even the big and astriction to come with that. And
Speaker 1: but I think technology is going to give consumers a
Speaker 1: lot more choices and a lot easier way to measure.
Speaker 1: Am I getting the value for the investment that I'm
Speaker 1: being asked to make in a form of a asset
Speaker 1: management fee or financial planning fee or a retainer fee?
Speaker 1: Really interesting? You alluded to something earlier that I have
Speaker 1: to follow up on. What you talked about a lack
Speaker 1: of young people in the industry and a number of
Speaker 1: people retiring, but I want to go a step beyond
Speaker 1: that and ask you let's let's throw this out in
Speaker 1: three parts. The first part is how do we get
Speaker 1: more people interested in financial planning? Secondly, how do we
Speaker 1: get more women interested in the field? And third how
Speaker 1: do we bring more people of color into the field.
Speaker 1: So we're announcing a major diversity and inclusion and next
Speaker 1: gen initiative at Carson Bury because I think you know,
Speaker 1: as a profession we've all sat around and waited for
Speaker 1: someone else to do it, and and we we've been
Speaker 1: experimenting at Carson with an intern to higher program where
Speaker 1: we've gone into colleges and at interns and we really
Speaker 1: interview them as though they're going to come to work
Speaker 1: for us, and we do offer them a job at
Speaker 1: the end if they perform well and they want to.
Speaker 1: We asked them to interview us at the same level.
Speaker 1: But we're we are We're building an office campus here
Speaker 1: in Omaha. We have Carson University today, so we do
Speaker 1: a lot of teaching and get young people interested, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna take that to a whole new level. Um.
Speaker 1: The other is I mean of people of color, I
Speaker 1: mean you you it's been a why it's been you
Speaker 1: and I. Right, it's been you and I in this
Speaker 1: profession forever, and it's still I still scratch my head
Speaker 1: and go, why why have we not been more successful?
Speaker 1: Because it's people think it's a sales job. It's not.
Speaker 1: There's so many you know, there's there's so many different
Speaker 1: tracks that you can take. And by the way, you
Speaker 1: gotta you got a huge till one behind you. Guys,
Speaker 1: we have you know, more than half of who's in
Speaker 1: it today. It's gonna be gone, They're gonna be retired.
Speaker 1: And there's more people over the age of eighty in
Speaker 1: our profession today buried than under the age of thirties, right,
Speaker 1: And and so we at Carson are going to take
Speaker 1: a major lead in this, and we're gonna put real
Speaker 1: money behind it. But I think it's it's um not
Speaker 1: only bringing people in and training them, but letting them know,
Speaker 1: here's what your career path can look like, and here's
Speaker 1: one of five different paths that you can take to
Speaker 1: be successful. So I think it really is going to
Speaker 1: come with in the trenches education and uh and where
Speaker 1: I guess that we've been working on this UM for
Speaker 1: you know, a good six eight months now, and we're
Speaker 1: we're going to be announcing I think a really exciting
Speaker 1: initiative around this in the next in the next few
Speaker 1: weeks there. So you're you're timing on that is really good.
Speaker 1: Let me stick with the idea of all these over eighty,
Speaker 1: over seventy, over sixty five year old advisors that are thinking,
Speaker 1: I think you described them as as rich and tired. Um,
Speaker 1: are they going to retire? Are they going to hand
Speaker 1: off their business to somebody junior? Are they going to
Speaker 1: sell it? What does the and it's a barbell, I
Speaker 1: think it's like thirty or of the profession is over sixty,
Speaker 1: maybe even more than that. What are those folks gonna
Speaker 1: do with their practices, with their businesses? It depends on
Speaker 1: the advisor. So there's really three different flavors out there.
Speaker 1: You've got the advisor who has next Gin people there
Speaker 1: they can't afford to buy in. And this is where
Speaker 1: we've been successful in helping the next Gin actually buy
Speaker 1: out the founder. Our Chicago office is booming, and this was,
Speaker 1: you know a great example of it was a c
Speaker 1: P A firm. The founder of the firm was like,
Speaker 1: I love my clients. I want to take care of
Speaker 1: my clients. But they but I'm not gonna give my
Speaker 1: business away, so we're able to cut in and finance
Speaker 1: them buying out the next next generation. So that's one model.
Speaker 1: The other model is you've got some of the same
Speaker 1: people that retire, but they're not They don't tell their
Speaker 1: clients they retired. And what I mean by that is, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just you know, they're working a few last hours
Speaker 1: every every year on a daily basis, or playing more golf,
Speaker 1: more time with the grand children. They're not really bringing
Speaker 1: anything to science. And if they lose the client or
Speaker 1: client passes on, they're not really that aggressive about going
Speaker 1: out of the next year. And the problem with that
Speaker 1: is they're not making huge investments, you know, into the
Speaker 1: into the next you know, into really what it takes
Speaker 1: to stay competitive, you know, in the field. And then
Speaker 1: there's a third bucket and they just they want to
Speaker 1: exit the business like I don't really care about the
Speaker 1: next gen and I don't care about my clients. I
Speaker 1: want to get the highest check possible um. And we
Speaker 1: see all three of those, you know going on today.
Speaker 1: Of course, we we focused on the next gin, someone
Speaker 1: that really cares. We did a deal recently and um,
Speaker 1: the office was in Vermont, and you know this guy,
Speaker 1: you know, we are never the highest price, you know,
Speaker 1: payer was. We're really looking for alignment of interest and
Speaker 1: and we really want the founder to stick around and
Speaker 1: make sure that it's going to be a super smooth transition.
Speaker 1: And this guy man the due diligence and the way
Speaker 1: it's like, if I can have a hundred of these,
Speaker 1: I do a hundred of them, you know, every year,
Speaker 1: and it's been it's been a super easy transition. He's
Speaker 1: happy as clients are happy. And he's now, as he
Speaker 1: will say, entering the third chapter, you know, of his life.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that space a little bit because
Speaker 1: I'm intrigued by it. We get people offering us firms
Speaker 1: to be sold all the time, and we're not in
Speaker 1: the business of buying firms. How do you go about
Speaker 1: finding these businesses? Do you self finance them? And what
Speaker 1: do you think about the role of private equity in
Speaker 1: the roll up slash acquisition space? So, I know, let
Speaker 1: me just be clear cars that we're building a hundred
Speaker 1: year firm. You know, I started in eighty three. We're
Speaker 1: building this new building, and I said, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to have shirts for everybody. When we move in.
Speaker 1: At the picture of the building, it says for the
Speaker 1: next hundred years, because we're we're not building it to
Speaker 1: sell it, but a lot of people are. And that's
Speaker 1: where private equity is. Actually he stepped in and we
Speaker 1: have a small minority interest in private equity. I brought
Speaker 1: him in. I plan on keeping control um as long
Speaker 1: as I'm adding value to the business. I've got two
Speaker 1: generations of succession. I've got my my next succession you know,
Speaker 1: already done. Private Equity has been fantastic for coming in
Speaker 1: and helping us professionalize the firm early on. They gave
Speaker 1: us an m and a strategy that we didn't have before.
Speaker 1: But I think, you know, private equity is like a
Speaker 1: mutual fund, Barry. They come in so many different flavors
Speaker 1: summer in. So how can we how can we change?
Speaker 1: How can we financial engineer you to get you the
Speaker 1: highest price and get the heck out. That's a totally
Speaker 1: different relationship. And when I did the deal with Private Equity,
Speaker 1: I knew I was looking for some um know how
Speaker 1: intellectual capital, and I took a much much lower price,
Speaker 1: but I also got really patient um capital that was
Speaker 1: willing to give us, you know, pretty much full control
Speaker 1: on how we run, how we on our business. So really,
Speaker 1: I think it depends on the type of private equity.
Speaker 1: So when you I'm I'm talking generally, so you can
Speaker 1: get as specific and detailed or thirty thousand foot view
Speaker 1: as you prefer. When you're looking to do a deal
Speaker 1: with someone in Vermont or someone in Chicago or wherever
Speaker 1: they happen to be, is that something that you're funding
Speaker 1: with private equity dollars? Is it something you drive yourself?
Speaker 1: What does that deal look like? Is it a buyout?
Speaker 1: Is it an turn out? Because I've seen a million variations,
Speaker 1: a ton of different flavors, and I want to hone
Speaker 1: in on exactly how you guys go about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so very up to this point. So the private equity
Speaker 1: money we took with to build all the tech infrastructure
Speaker 1: that I talked about because it wasn't available, you know,
Speaker 1: without our profession. We've been fortunate up to this point.
Speaker 1: We've been able to self fund all of these. But
Speaker 1: we're getting to a point. Matter of fact, I had
Speaker 1: a team with my leader meeting with the leadership group
Speaker 1: this morning that you know, we're getting enough additional deal
Speaker 1: to look at that, we're probably gonna have to, you know,
Speaker 1: either you know, raise a little more um so a
Speaker 1: little equity or raise cash or we we don't have
Speaker 1: any debt as an organization and maybe take a modest
Speaker 1: amount of debt you know, potentially onto the balance sheet.
Speaker 1: As far as terms go, it depends on the seller
Speaker 1: um are. Our preferred deal is to have a minority
Speaker 1: interest and to have the next have us finance the
Speaker 1: next gin. As far as buying a h of a
Speaker 1: firm and then leaving, that's really not that not what
Speaker 1: we want to do. And if we do do that,
Speaker 1: it's going to be on an earnout basis because if
Speaker 1: they're not gonna stick around, they're not going to take
Speaker 1: care of the clients. We're not going to take the
Speaker 1: risk on it. And the most important thing very and
Speaker 1: all of these deals is culture. Is there a cultural alignment?
Speaker 1: We are We probably look at eight deals and do
Speaker 1: one and and the reason we don't do the other
Speaker 1: seven as there's not a cultural to it. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: make a quick comment back on the retirement peace with
Speaker 1: your wife and this is for everybody out there. You know,
Speaker 1: I love to say that you know, most of the
Speaker 1: society is on this unconscious journey to arrive at death safely.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is, you know, we
Speaker 1: get into this routine where it's just we live life,
Speaker 1: and days and weeks and months and years go by,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, it's all bias and
Speaker 1: we're like, you know, where did that go? And did
Speaker 1: I accomplish what I wanted to accomplish? And I teach
Speaker 1: a thing in my coaching program called blueprinting live your
Speaker 1: life by design, not by default, And I think most
Speaker 1: everybody can work their way into that kind of life
Speaker 1: with a conscious effort. One of my favorite all time
Speaker 1: books as an employon Hill You'll Think and Grow Rich,
Speaker 1: And it's and we're in a in a profession where
Speaker 1: you know, people want to get to a retirement, which
Speaker 1: I hate that term, like I'm gonna do all this
Speaker 1: and all this time doing things I don't love to do.
Speaker 1: So I get to spend a little bit of time
Speaker 1: during the thing I love to do when I'm the
Speaker 1: oldest and I'm not as healthy as I can be.
Speaker 1: So I challenge people to say, you know, if you
Speaker 1: start moving in that direction, you can't change it. Overnight,
Speaker 1: but you can get there a lot faster than you think.
Speaker 1: And just to accept this is my life. I don't
Speaker 1: love it, but I don't hate it. That's that unconscious
Speaker 1: journey you know, to death. Quite interesting today in confirming
Speaker 1: my priors, I have run Carson on telling me everything
Speaker 1: that I believe in and me just nodding my head
Speaker 1: vigorously in in a sense. Um. So so let me
Speaker 1: ask you a question you you referenced earlier, UM, that
Speaker 1: you don't usually use debt. Let's talk about a subject
Speaker 1: that's a little controversial, the Paycheck Protection Program. I know
Speaker 1: your firm participating in this, my firm participating in it.
Speaker 1: Tell us where you are with your p P P
Speaker 1: loan and I'll do the veal on ours also. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Barry, when this so well? We also have another business.
Speaker 1: It's an events business that UM really for financial advisors.
Speaker 1: We've been doing this for going back to nine three
Speaker 1: and we had a we had a we had an
Speaker 1: event we canceled in Vegas hit it hit our company
Speaker 1: to the tune of four million, almost four million dollars UM.
Speaker 1: We had eighty other events that we canceled around the country,
Speaker 1: and we have we have a lot of people that
Speaker 1: work on the events business and there was nothing to do.
Speaker 1: And so you know when we when we looked at
Speaker 1: our Carson Group, are r A doesn't need it, right,
Speaker 1: but our events business needed it when we have a
Speaker 1: transformation business that needed it. And we also were building
Speaker 1: technology and you know, just with the uncertainty around at
Speaker 1: one point, you know, our A U M had quite
Speaker 1: the depth as everybody's did. And we're like, we're gonna
Speaker 1: you know, before the paycheck paycheck protection program came out, Um,
Speaker 1: we were gonna have to lay off you know, a
Speaker 1: fair number of people and we probably would have hired
Speaker 1: them back at some point and and but not yet
Speaker 1: this year. And so the whole purpose of that program,
Speaker 1: as the government said, was to keep people employed that
Speaker 1: we otherwise would not have kept employed, you know, through
Speaker 1: the through the downturn. And you know, there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of pot shots. There's some gentlemen who have never
Speaker 1: met back East doesn't know me, doesn't know our business,
Speaker 1: and he's trying to shame us and to take in it.
Speaker 1: And I like, you know, I'd like for you to
Speaker 1: meet with these families, um that you know, I have
Speaker 1: have a continue to have a good job, and I
Speaker 1: want you to tell them why they shouldn't have gotten
Speaker 1: that benefit. Um, And so we take We took it.
Speaker 1: We thought it was a good program. By the way,
Speaker 1: we helped a lot of our our business owner clients.
Speaker 1: I think Nebraska at least at one point had the
Speaker 1: high UH success rate relative to our population of anybody.
Speaker 1: And we had a big hand in that because, you know,
Speaker 1: Jamie Hopkins, who works at Carson, really was on top
Speaker 1: of the care's act and really had all of our
Speaker 1: advisors very well educated on it. You know, the second
Speaker 1: there's action could actually be taken. And that's you know,
Speaker 1: indirectly what I was talking about earlier, being super proactive,
Speaker 1: you know, with our with our relationships, thinking about things
Speaker 1: that you know a lot of people aren't thinking about.
Speaker 1: I could tell pretty much the exact same story about
Speaker 1: the non advisor related businesses and our our thought process,
Speaker 1: my thought process, and this has evolved. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is the pot shots where oh, you're taking money from
Speaker 1: somebody else. And again I want to know the people
Speaker 1: taking the shots. Why is one family's employment more important
Speaker 1: than another family employment? You know, that's really what they're saying,
Speaker 1: is we we want to pick and choose, you know,
Speaker 1: the fan, the fan and all these are people making
Speaker 1: us in a hundred thousand dollars a year rules rule,
Speaker 1: those are rules. We are faced with another dilemma this fall.
Speaker 1: We have, UM, we have you know how this works.
Speaker 1: We contractually committed for a large conference, the Falling Omaha.
Speaker 1: We've got five hundred hotel rooms that were on the
Speaker 1: hook for because social distancing. We don't have enough room
Speaker 1: to bring people in and actually to consume all those rooms.
Speaker 1: So guess who gets to write a check for that.
Speaker 1: It's amazing to think that. And it's that's before this
Speaker 1: the second wave comes in. What we're dealing with today,
Speaker 1: and especially along the Sun Belt has been a spike
Speaker 1: in infections that's still part of that first wave. This
Speaker 1: is this isn't even the second wave. I don't think
Speaker 1: this thing is done by any threat of the imagination,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it could. I think it should
Speaker 1: have been anibled a lot differently. I think we should
Speaker 1: have quarantined those that were high risk that you know,
Speaker 1: to put to do what we did to our economy,
Speaker 1: you know, And of course you know Monday marking, Monday
Speaker 1: morning quarterbacking is great. UM, and and hey, our leaders,
Speaker 1: this was an unknown you know, we still don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, the full ramifications of the of how this
Speaker 1: will impact our society for many years to come. If
Speaker 1: you look at places like Germany and Switzerland and New Zealand's,
Speaker 1: they seem to have come up with the right balance
Speaker 1: that were very aggressive, not only with quarantining but with
Speaker 1: testing and contact tracing, and our numbers are still you know,
Speaker 1: not going down the way they should. At least the
Speaker 1: mortality rate has improved. The number of people who are
Speaker 1: dying from this is you know, it's ticking up more
Speaker 1: slowly than it was. It's not accelerating, but it certainly
Speaker 1: seems like more and more people continue to get infected
Speaker 1: every day, especially if you back out the early states,
Speaker 1: back out Washington State, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey. The
Speaker 1: rest of the country ain't looking so hot these days.
Speaker 1: I agree. I mean, we've been fortunate in Nebraska, um
Speaker 1: and you know, we got I still go up to
Speaker 1: our family's farm pretty much every weekend, and the whole
Speaker 1: county up there has five cases. I mean, then you've
Speaker 1: got to drive, you know, two miles to see another person.
Speaker 1: So it's been nice having yeah, we've been. We we
Speaker 1: social distance our whole lives. When we're up there, we
Speaker 1: don't even know what we were doing. That's right. But
Speaker 1: before we get to us being around, there's a couple
Speaker 1: of questions I missed during the broadcast portion that I
Speaker 1: have to ask you, one of which is what's a
Speaker 1: day in the life of Ron Carson looked like, how
Speaker 1: do you spend your time? Every day? So? I get
Speaker 1: up super early. I typically, UM, get up somewhere between
Speaker 1: four and four thirty in the morning. UM. I love
Speaker 1: my morning coffee. So I get my car, put the dogs,
Speaker 1: get my coffee, I catch I read. I love to read.
Speaker 1: I read, I think, I meditate, I do a little
Speaker 1: bit of breathwork, um, and then I work out, um.
Speaker 1: And then I move into you know, I've got meetings, um.
Speaker 1: You know pretty much you know, throughout throughout the day, um,
Speaker 1: and then the evening is. I'm so lucky. I have
Speaker 1: my kids. I have one daughter lives five minutes north
Speaker 1: of me, and other daughter that lives four minutes west
Speaker 1: of me. I have a grandchild. I have another one
Speaker 1: on the way. It's got a son who just graduated,
Speaker 1: who lives about fifteen minutes east of it, and so
Speaker 1: you know, we're spending time with family and uh and
Speaker 1: and I normally sound asleep by ten o'clock at night,
Speaker 1: So it's uh and I and I gotta tell you
Speaker 1: I love you know. I've got my life to where
Speaker 1: I get to spend my life doing things I love
Speaker 1: to do very versus the things I have to do.
Speaker 1: And I can just hear it in your voice. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're you're a man of passion and uh and it's
Speaker 1: just you know, it's it's I get out every day, um,
Speaker 1: with a ton of enthusiasm and I people, hey, do
Speaker 1: you start getting the snooze button and you hit up
Speaker 1: more than twice, something's wrong. You've got cancer developing on
Speaker 1: your enthusiasm. So, you know, reorganize your life and your
Speaker 1: day to where you can't wait to get out of
Speaker 1: bed and and get started with today. I totally agree.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna horrify you a little bit, snooze button.
Speaker 1: If you're still using an alarm clock, you need to
Speaker 1: change your lifestyle. But that's a whole nother conversation. Um
Speaker 1: the phone metaphorically of my alarm plots, my iPhones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm fond of saying this podcast is the most fun
Speaker 1: I have a week. But it's a pretty high steady steak.
Speaker 1: This is this is just the peak of it. Um.
Speaker 1: And speaking of podcasts, tell me about the Framework podcast.
Speaker 1: Is this a new venture for you guys? What are
Speaker 1: you doing with that? It is brand new. Jamie Hopkins
Speaker 1: Um who joined us you know about a year and
Speaker 1: a half Agou is running that and very there's so
Speaker 1: many podcasts out there that it's like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: is a really room for another podcast. And he's done
Speaker 1: such a great uh job with it. You know, he's
Speaker 1: had really an eclectic group. We just had Ashton Kutcher
Speaker 1: on who um genie and I got to know Ashton
Speaker 1: Amila through um our. We belong to a thing called
Speaker 1: the Reserve out in Napa Valley and his technology knowledge
Speaker 1: and they're very much philanthropist. We had just had them
Speaker 1: on talking about Thorn, you know, their their company and
Speaker 1: technology about you know, stopping you know, child sex trafficking.
Speaker 1: But then also he's a tech genius. And then all
Speaker 1: the way over to Tyrone Ross you know, very successful
Speaker 1: um you know advisor and he like and I'm listening
Speaker 1: to podcasts, I'm going man, I learned some stuff I
Speaker 1: didn't know and uh, and it's and he had his
Speaker 1: you know, Jamie was playing with Michael Felt and had
Speaker 1: his his coach on and and I learned something there.
Speaker 1: It's like they never took a day off for five
Speaker 1: years in training, where everybody says, oh, you need to
Speaker 1: take time off to rest. So it's YEA framework has
Speaker 1: been awesome. It's not around financial services, it's around interesting topics.
Speaker 1: And Jamie's getting getting a pretty decent following fairly fast
Speaker 1: with it. I love that. I love that. And then
Speaker 1: the last thing I want to ask you before we
Speaker 1: get to the speed round is about your philanthropic efforts.
Speaker 1: I know you and your wife have a number of
Speaker 1: different projects underway. Tell us what you do when you
Speaker 1: want to spread some some happiness and some inspiration for people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we decided early on that we were going to
Speaker 1: leave our kids much money. I've seen just the flip
Speaker 1: side of that and how awful it can be. And
Speaker 1: by the way our kids have celebrated it and with pride,
Speaker 1: you know, they know they're gonna I'll take a quote
Speaker 1: from Warren Buffett, We're gonna give our kids enough they
Speaker 1: can do anything. But not so much. They can do nothing,
Speaker 1: and the rest is going to our charitable foundation. And
Speaker 1: Jeanie and I are like, well, let's be giving it
Speaker 1: away while we're alive. And we started a foundation called
Speaker 1: dream Weaver where we do end of life dreams for
Speaker 1: the terminate, ill, financially unfortunate elderly. That's been tremendous. We
Speaker 1: were now funding some projects in the Dominican Republic around
Speaker 1: coral restoration. Anybody that wants to know more about coral,
Speaker 1: there's a great Netflix documentary called Chasing Coral. But it's
Speaker 1: a crisis and our ability to feed the world Carson.
Speaker 1: We have UM three schools in Africa that we're feeding,
Speaker 1: We're help We're involved with Scott Harrison's charity water UM.
Speaker 1: We're giving you know, over twelve hundred people a day,
Speaker 1: you know, fresh water from from Will's well. As we've
Speaker 1: driven but we're just getting started Bury. I mean, we
Speaker 1: as an organization UM really want to have impact and
Speaker 1: and we're looking for more and more ways, you know,
Speaker 1: to to help people. And I personally believe private enterprise
Speaker 1: can do a much better job than the government can,
Speaker 1: you know, and figuring out who needs it and being
Speaker 1: very efficient and trying to deliver your needs. UM for
Speaker 1: causes that that can can very efficiently invested. Quite interesting,
Speaker 1: So let's jump to our speed rounds. Although we should
Speaker 1: feel no time pressure. You can answer these um as
Speaker 1: quickly or not as you like. You mentioned that Netflix
Speaker 1: documentary about Coral. What are you streaming these days? Give
Speaker 1: us your favorite Netflix or Amazon Prime Video? What are
Speaker 1: you podcasting, listening to, etcetera. I love Joe Rogan, so
Speaker 1: I listened to this podcast all the time with our
Speaker 1: kids being out of the house. Janie and I we
Speaker 1: just got through watching the Michael Jordan's The Last Dance.
Speaker 1: That would be fantastic and we're good, um Avid readers,
Speaker 1: and I'm reading UM The Tattoo Us of Auschwitz, which
Speaker 1: is really really good right now Essentialism, which is another
Speaker 1: great book UH that I love and UM and I
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time going on walks and heights.
Speaker 1: I think most high functioning creative people can can gain
Speaker 1: a lot by just going and not having anything, just
Speaker 1: letting your mind go to wherever it goes. Then, UM,
Speaker 1: Carson Partners was actually born on a hike. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to summit all of the fourteen thousand foot peaks in
Speaker 1: the US Berry and a lot of them I've done alone.
Speaker 1: I've been fifty seven. I have twelve left. I got
Speaker 1: to get a knee replacement before I can finish out.
Speaker 1: But some of my best ideas have come on these,
Speaker 1: on these, you know, several day mountain expeditions. You know
Speaker 1: that I've gone on. You've done fifty seven fourteen thousand
Speaker 1: foot peaks. Is that what I heard you say? And
Speaker 1: it only cost you one knee? That's a fair trade.
Speaker 1: Well cost me both, but I got to get the
Speaker 1: other one fixed soon. Here COVID I supposed to haven't
Speaker 1: done in March, but COVID hit and that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about your mentors, who influenced your career,
Speaker 1: who helped make you into the run. Carson, we know
Speaker 1: today my mom and dad, My mom um growing up,
Speaker 1: My dad, hard worker, hard farmer, farmer. My mom though
Speaker 1: she was Ronnie, you can do anything you want to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is being a kid. She had me
Speaker 1: convinced if I wanted to be the President United States,
Speaker 1: that was gonna be it. And and uh, and she
Speaker 1: encouraged me on any any businesses that I ever wanted
Speaker 1: to do or start, and she was my partner. UM
Speaker 1: A lot of times she's passed away, um five years
Speaker 1: ago Mother's Day. And then I, um, I got to
Speaker 1: know a warm buffet here in town back when I
Speaker 1: was a business editor and and his nephew was in
Speaker 1: a YPO forum with me, and you know, just his
Speaker 1: his you know, wisdom and advice. And and then there's
Speaker 1: a gentleman here in Omaha, you know, self made billion billionaire,
Speaker 1: you know Howard Hawks who really started as business later
Speaker 1: in life. UM, just really gave me a lot of
Speaker 1: great advice growing up, uh in the business. And but
Speaker 1: ultimately it's my partners too, in my my coaching group.
Speaker 1: I mean you, if you have an open mind and
Speaker 1: you take the philosophy that you know, the older I get,
Speaker 1: the less I know. And I don't defend what I
Speaker 1: know and what I'm comfortable with, but embrace the unknown.
Speaker 1: You will learn something new every single day of your life.
Speaker 1: And a lot of it's very useful. I call it
Speaker 1: custal cool and useful information. Custal information. UM, as long
Speaker 1: as you don't think you've arrived or you've figured it
Speaker 1: all out. I love that there's a poster with an
Speaker 1: eight scratching his head. It's as soon as I figured
Speaker 1: out the answer, as they changed all the questions. And
Speaker 1: that's so true. You know that, Uh, the questions are
Speaker 1: changing rapidly. So one of these days I'm going to
Speaker 1: have to lean on a favor and and my collection
Speaker 1: of podcasts will be incomplete until I get Warren Buffett
Speaker 1: under or Charlie Manger under my belt. I don't suspect
Speaker 1: that's gonna happen anytime soon, given the lockdown. I think
Speaker 1: I sent them a snail mail about five years ago
Speaker 1: and I never heard back from them, but it was
Speaker 1: still early days. I should probably follow up again. You
Speaker 1: mentioned a couple of books earlier that you're reading. Now,
Speaker 1: what about books you recommend to people who say, Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to learn more about investing, finance, the economy.
Speaker 1: What books do you recommend for those people? You know,
Speaker 1: I really have never read any of those books, very
Speaker 1: attentive because and here's here's why. I mean, I've read
Speaker 1: I've read a handful of them, but I'm a little
Speaker 1: different in my beliefs, and that is this is that
Speaker 1: most people are trying to find a silver bullet of
Speaker 1: investing and they're just it doesn't exist. And and the
Speaker 1: silver bullet is is that if you stick to a
Speaker 1: plan and you get your risk budget right, you can
Speaker 1: be successful with deep value. You can be successful with
Speaker 1: momentum growth. You can be successful with passive you can
Speaker 1: be successful EPs with mutual funds. But as soon as
Speaker 1: you start reading this book, and then you read that book,
Speaker 1: and then you get distracted and you think that you've
Speaker 1: got something that's a black box, I mean, trying to happen,
Speaker 1: to have it happened in a hurry berry just doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: And my nearly forty years in this business, the clients
Speaker 1: that have followed a plan not gotten emotional. They got
Speaker 1: more wealth and they could possibly spent in ten lifetimes.
Speaker 1: But I've had those clients that are always chasing the
Speaker 1: hot dot, or they read this or that book. I mean,
Speaker 1: I liked um Unexpected Returns um uh, you know the
Speaker 1: Value Investor UM. I mean, I've probably read you know,
Speaker 1: twenty books over the years, but I really hesitate to
Speaker 1: give a book to say this is this is really
Speaker 1: what you which, which you really ought to follow, because
Speaker 1: it's the consumer behavior that's gonna drive their success, not
Speaker 1: what the market does or when not not, what investment
Speaker 1: philosophy they have. So just recommend think being fast and
Speaker 1: Slow by Danny Kahneman and that'll scare them off everything else. Um. So,
Speaker 1: so what sort of advice would you give to a
Speaker 1: recent college grad who came to you and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about a career in finance. What would you
Speaker 1: tell them? I had this conversation yesterday, and I try
Speaker 1: to have them, um any day I can, because I'm
Speaker 1: lated and I have kids reach out to me all
Speaker 1: the time, and I tell them this is the the
Speaker 1: best time to get into financial service. I said, you
Speaker 1: don't realize that, but you've won five powerballs And they're like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? And I said, well, let's
Speaker 1: just let's just count them up here. First of all,
Speaker 1: you're a mammal. Do you know what the odds are
Speaker 1: for you to be a mammal? And then you're a human,
Speaker 1: And then you're in the United States of America and
Speaker 1: financial services if you choose at the most disruptive time possible,
Speaker 1: every single relationship is in play because consumers are starting
Speaker 1: to look and say, am I getting a return on
Speaker 1: the investment I'm making? And I and I and I
Speaker 1: give them the stat that we're going to have a
Speaker 1: huge capacity issue because we're don't we don't have enough
Speaker 1: financial advisor. And it couldn't be a more powerful, powerful
Speaker 1: hill win. But do it right. Don't go to the wires,
Speaker 1: don't go to the brokers. Go find an r I
Speaker 1: A that really is mission focused, that's not building it
Speaker 1: to sell it. That is really about being a consumer advocate,
Speaker 1: and you will do incredibly well. And by the way,
Speaker 1: when you prove your worth, negotiate a way to participate
Speaker 1: in equity. You know, in that way. That way you
Speaker 1: won't have to make it. Don't don't move around a lot,
Speaker 1: You'll find a place, stick with it, and and don't
Speaker 1: be afraid to ask, you know, for equity at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, in the in your relationship. Good answer. And
Speaker 1: now our final question, what do you know about the
Speaker 1: world of investing today that you wish you knew back
Speaker 1: when you were first getting started. I wish I knew
Speaker 1: my own advice because early on I was doing commodity sutures.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the stuff I was doing on
Speaker 1: my own account, Barry, And I mean I actually had
Speaker 1: cattle delivered to me, you know, I never realized that
Speaker 1: a paper contract could turn into real cattle. And I
Speaker 1: went through that. Um I if someone would have said,
Speaker 1: run American businesses are like a yo yo going up
Speaker 1: a flight of stairs. You know, the market kind of fluctuate,
Speaker 1: you know, short term. I love what Buffett says. He says,
Speaker 1: our markets are capital relocation centers. They relocate well from
Speaker 1: me in patient to the patient. And I and my
Speaker 1: own take on that is they relocate well from those
Speaker 1: that have a plan from those that don't have a plan.
Speaker 1: And I wish earlier I would have figured that out
Speaker 1: for myself so I could then apply that to clients
Speaker 1: and uh and investor behavior will dictate your success, not
Speaker 1: what the market does, because you know, Barry, there's always
Speaker 1: that to make money regardless of what's going on in
Speaker 1: the market. Thanks Ron for being so generous with your time.
Speaker 1: We have been speaking with Ron Carson, founder and CEO
Speaker 1: of the Carson Group. If you enjoy this conversation, well
Speaker 1: be sure to look up an incher down an inch
Speaker 1: on Apple iTunes and you could see any of the
Speaker 1: previous three D plus conversations we've done over the past. Wow,
Speaker 1: six years, that's a long time. You can also find
Speaker 1: us at any of your favorite podcast hosts, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher,
Speaker 1: wherever finer podcasts are sold. You can check out my
Speaker 1: weekly column on Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion, follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at rit Halts, sign up for our daily
Speaker 1: reads at rit Halts dot com. I would be remiss
Speaker 1: if I did not thank the crack staff that helps
Speaker 1: put this conversation together each week. Michael Boyle is my producer.
Speaker 1: Maroufle is our audio engineer. Michael pat Nick is my
Speaker 1: head of research. Attica Valve Run is our project manage Here.
Speaker 1: I'm Barry Hults. You've been listening to Masters in Business
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio