Speaker 1: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
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Speaker 1: filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just
Speaker 1: some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President
Speaker 1: Donald J. Trump's leadership. I'm Christy nom the United States
Speaker 1: Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border
Speaker 1: crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you
Speaker 1: are here illegally, your next you will be fined nearly
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned, and deported. You will
Speaker 1: never return. But if you register using our CBP home
Speaker 1: app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
Speaker 1: Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump, America's laws,
Speaker 1: border and families will.
Speaker 2: Be protected sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 3: So it might take you ten years to figure out
Speaker 3: what we've done forty five times already, right, and now
Speaker 3: I bring that intellectual property into the company and say
Speaker 3: here's how we're going to design this a little differently.
Speaker 3: Here's how we're going to change your compensation plans for
Speaker 3: your salespeople to actually incentivize them to give you more
Speaker 3: stable revenues or or or you know, more visibility into
Speaker 3: the future revenues and earnings of that business that you
Speaker 3: may not have figured out or may not figure out
Speaker 3: because you may not be in an environment a circle
Speaker 3: of people who have dealt with that before. And so
Speaker 3: that's why the expertise that we bring is often more
Speaker 3: valuable than the capital.
Speaker 4: My graduates from my school being forced bad drop drop
Speaker 4: might drop bad drop drop.
Speaker 5: All right, guys, welcome back, e y L. This is
Speaker 5: a very special episode.
Speaker 6: Let's call it the Icon Adition.
Speaker 7: It's also the earliest episode that we never.
Speaker 3: Oh, I thought it was your this early well, I.
Speaker 5: Mean once we got the toime slot make it work
Speaker 5: up twenty four hours so and I did get the memo.
Speaker 3: Well you didn't get Brandy.
Speaker 7: Yes, the blue blazer with the reepeace suit.
Speaker 3: Look, yes, this is the brand. This is the new brand.
Speaker 3: That's the new brand, This new brand, the Icon addition brand, rebrand.
Speaker 3: It's called it's called rebrand.
Speaker 5: So you know this this is it's a it's a
Speaker 5: very full circle moment for us, because I think probably
Speaker 5: three maybe four years ago, right, So a lot of
Speaker 5: this started for us on social media on my Instagram,
Speaker 5: and I used to write a lot like write like blogs,
Speaker 5: but I put it on Instagram, so I would write
Speaker 5: about a whole bunch of different topics. And one of
Speaker 5: the topics that I wrote about was you. You had
Speaker 5: an art you had a cover of Forbes and thinking,
Speaker 5: my yet like three or four years ago, so I
Speaker 5: put the cover up and then I wrote like a
Speaker 5: three page, three paragraph description of the whole situation. And
Speaker 5: then my whole point of it was at that time, specifically,
Speaker 5: I didn't feel that enough people knew who you were.
Speaker 3: I remember, I remember that, you remember it. I remember
Speaker 3: that he said you got to meet this guy.
Speaker 5: That's great, that's crazy. So so you know, I was
Speaker 5: real passionate. I kind of like, you know, we put
Speaker 5: too much emphasis on sports entertainment, and you know, but
Speaker 5: this is the most wealthiest black person in American history,
Speaker 5: and a lot of people don't know who is.
Speaker 7: So long story short, fast forward.
Speaker 5: Now I think a lot of people do know, especially
Speaker 5: after the Morehouse situation. We'll talk about that, but still
Speaker 5: and still and still. The wealthiest Black person in America.
Speaker 6: Four years ago was true four years later, still.
Speaker 3: And still.
Speaker 5: That's an accomplishment and not through sports or entertainment. I
Speaker 5: think that that's something that's extremely important, especially for young people,
Speaker 5: to understand that, you know, you can reach levels of
Speaker 5: success in our culture and our communities and not necessarily
Speaker 5: do it through sports and entertainment.
Speaker 2: I think that was one of the pillars that when
Speaker 2: we started, was like, let's show everybody what they can be,
Speaker 2: the possibilities in the realms of things, they can be
Speaker 2: outside of those through things which we knew that we
Speaker 2: could be great at. But let's show I'm somebody who's
Speaker 2: doing something that's far beyond that and it's succeeding at
Speaker 2: a different level as well.
Speaker 6: So definitely one of the pillars of Ernalisia.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So Robert Smith, CEO and founder of Vista Equity Fund.
Speaker 5: He is actually a very prolific person because if you
Speaker 5: read his bio, it's like forty five different things. He's
Speaker 5: a chairman of Carnegie Hall. Yes, he's a family man.
Speaker 5: That's probably the most That's what I should have said.
Speaker 3: First.
Speaker 5: He used to he used to do a variety of
Speaker 5: different things. So he used to be an engineer and
Speaker 5: then he used to actually work on the corporate side
Speaker 5: for financing as well. So it's an extremely impressive background
Speaker 5: because most engineers that that doesn't usually mix. That's like,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying, a weird combinations. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: Wall Street and engineers, like at the same time, he
Speaker 5: could build your house and give you finance.
Speaker 3: It's a little it's a little closer than you think.
Speaker 5: Unpack some of that, Okay, but this is going to
Speaker 5: be a very dynamic conversation, something that you know, extremely
Speaker 5: excited about. And I gotta tell this story. I told
Speaker 5: this story in La but this is something that I
Speaker 5: think is very important to tell because the.
Speaker 7: First time that we met him was in Harlem and uh.
Speaker 5: Guy Steve Harvey, So he invited us and you were
Speaker 5: doing something for colon cancer.
Speaker 3: I believe for African American man cancer.
Speaker 5: So it was something that you know, I always remembered
Speaker 5: that moment because it was in the projects and Wagnant
Speaker 5: Projects in Harlem, and that's where he chose to actually
Speaker 5: do that and educate and he brought a bunch of
Speaker 5: celebrities out and that was something that was very impressive
Speaker 5: to me because it wasn't on Wall Street, it wasn't
Speaker 5: you know, in Times Square. It was you could tell
Speaker 5: that it was really for the community, and it was
Speaker 5: really a community based initiative.
Speaker 7: And we'll talk about that as well.
Speaker 5: And when we met him, you know, we obviously are
Speaker 5: introducing ourselves and the first thing he said to us
Speaker 5: is I love you guys.
Speaker 6: So I don't even think we got to say who
Speaker 6: we were.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was like.
Speaker 5: So his his humility was infectious and still is and
Speaker 5: you know, his charitable arms is just a million miles long.
Speaker 5: So I wanted the public to know that because a
Speaker 5: lot of times people don't know different things that happen.
Speaker 5: And it's not for you to say that, but it
Speaker 5: is for us to champion that, and that's that's important.
Speaker 3: So that's important to me. Yeah, and us telling our
Speaker 3: own story. So you you play a very important role
Speaker 3: in part in our community. It's not just the education
Speaker 3: of our community about our community, but helping us understand
Speaker 3: how to uplift each other. And you know, our community
Speaker 3: gets attacked from all sides for multiple reasons, but it
Speaker 3: has to be it has to come down to our
Speaker 3: community defending our community. In that context, you guys pay
Speaker 3: a very important role. And as dynamic is the media
Speaker 3: is today, your role is even more important. So keep
Speaker 3: doing what you're doing and keep leaning in hard.
Speaker 7: Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 6: So that was an amazing moment.
Speaker 7: Thank you for joining us. Okay, we can get to it.
Speaker 5: So you grew up in Denver, Yeah, in a very
Speaker 5: diverse neighborhood. Is they call it the Harlem of the West?
Speaker 3: Is that what they? Yeah? Five points? Yeah, can you
Speaker 3: talk about that? Yeah? Sure. You know, we as African
Speaker 3: Americans have had just an interesting journey and you know,
Speaker 3: in points in time you can kind of frame where
Speaker 3: different things happened to our community, and you know, things
Speaker 3: that we did of our community. And the thing I
Speaker 3: always point to is our not only resilience, but the
Speaker 3: ability to create and create things new and influence and change.
Speaker 3: I mean, a lot of American culture is coming out
Speaker 3: of our experiences, and music, of course, is one of
Speaker 3: the principal drivers of that. You know, I always say
Speaker 3: I grew up in a beloved community, and you know,
Speaker 3: it sounds like you guys grew up in that as well,
Speaker 3: a place where in my case it was completely segregated community.
Speaker 3: But you know the needs of the children in that
Speaker 3: community were being satisfied by the adults in that community.
Speaker 3: In those needs of love and guidance and instruction and
Speaker 3: everything from learning how to play at the piano to
Speaker 3: learning about science and in my case like rocketry and
Speaker 3: in learning sports. I mean that came from the members
Speaker 3: of our community. But you also saw the adults in
Speaker 3: that community defend the community and also try to make
Speaker 3: more progress. And the Five Points area is the area
Speaker 3: one of the first areas that was settled by African
Speaker 3: Americans in Colorado as we moved across this country, and
Speaker 3: typically it was you know, at the end of you know,
Speaker 3: the emancipation period. My family, many of them went into Pueblo, Colorado,
Speaker 3: but they came from you know, Oklahoma or Tennessee, right,
Speaker 3: and you guys are all familiar with Greenwood, and part
Speaker 3: of our family tree comes out of there. Some of
Speaker 3: them actually owned the you know, one of the pool
Speaker 3: halls and one of the one of the hardware stores.
Speaker 3: And as that happened in the early nineteen hundreds in
Speaker 3: that massacre, they moved into Pueblo, Colorado and then from there.
Speaker 3: So I'm fourth generation from Colorado, and so my family
Speaker 3: are families of teachers and educators and nurses and doctors.
Speaker 3: Think about that, right, you know, providing I'm the fourth
Speaker 3: generation of my family to go to college. Wow, right,
Speaker 3: There's very few families in America where it's fours generations
Speaker 3: that have gone to college. And so what I saw
Speaker 3: growing up was a community that had a lot of
Speaker 3: wholeness but was again being attacked on any size. But
Speaker 3: I saw the adults like my parents, my father and
Speaker 3: my mother, you know, pulled together organizations not just a
Speaker 3: fan to defend, but to advance. And one of the
Speaker 3: most important areas of advancement was of course education. You know,
Speaker 3: being educated it was critically important to success and to
Speaker 3: creating you know, financial opportunity and to frankly create stability
Speaker 3: in the community. Both my parents were teachers, elementary school teachers.
Speaker 3: They both ultimately ended up getting doctorates in education, both
Speaker 3: in them being principles. But I look also to the
Speaker 3: work they did civically in our in our in our family.
Speaker 3: Back then, it snowed a lot in Denver. You know,
Speaker 3: it's the whole climate change dynamic. I don't think we're
Speaker 3: addressing in this. We can do another. And so so
Speaker 3: we as kids always got excited about snow days, right
Speaker 3: and stay home. Our parents didn't why because at that time,
Speaker 3: our neighborhood wouldn't get the snowplow to come through it
Speaker 3: for three or four days after it's snow. Now you
Speaker 3: think about it, where your parents are trying to go
Speaker 3: to work, but they can't even get down the street.
Speaker 3: They can't get to the bus stop, they can't. You know,
Speaker 3: for those of us who had cars, you couldn't even
Speaker 3: drive because it was just snowed in. So I saw
Speaker 3: my father lead an effort and it created a civic
Speaker 3: association and they literally went and campaigned and lobbied so
Speaker 3: that we at least got snowplows the same day as
Speaker 3: other communities in you know, in our city. I remember,
Speaker 3: and then they put one stripe. They'd come down and
Speaker 3: do one stripe down the main street, and we still
Speaker 3: had to get to the main street and you would
Speaker 3: get out and then okay, great, we got on a
Speaker 3: bus to go across town because they were desegregating schools
Speaker 3: using bussing, and we'll talk about that in a minute.
Speaker 3: And you'd go to the neighborhood where the better resource
Speaker 3: school inner streets were clean and dry, snowpiled up on
Speaker 3: the side are gone, and are still had just one
Speaker 3: strip down the center. So when you talk about economic disadvantage,
Speaker 3: systemic economic oppression, these are the things that you don't
Speaker 3: think about on the one hand, but if your community
Speaker 3: can't get to work, it has a major impact. And
Speaker 3: we had a lot of wage workers, so it wasn't like, oh,
Speaker 3: everybody was on salary. You were wage workers. If you
Speaker 3: didn't show up that day, you didn't get paid that day.
Speaker 3: If you didn't get paid that day, you were now
Speaker 3: trying to figure out how to you know, make groceries
Speaker 3: and pay pay you know, ensure that your kids ate
Speaker 3: or clothed and those sort of things. And I saw
Speaker 3: the community say this, we're that's not going to stand
Speaker 3: right and make take a stand of that. I saw
Speaker 3: my father also pull together resources so our local y MCA,
Speaker 3: our kids had a chance to go to summer camps
Speaker 3: and to go into the mountains, and we raised money
Speaker 3: to build a gym so we could actually have a place,
Speaker 3: you know, where our kids could actually you know, recreate
Speaker 3: in peace and also with facilities. But it was them
Speaker 3: taking that on and making a community project in us.
Speaker 3: You know, going out and selling candy and all that,
Speaker 3: you know, to to ensure that that happened. And it
Speaker 3: was i'll call it a spirit of self determination that
Speaker 3: very much was part of the fabric of that community.
Speaker 3: And you saw people looking out for the kids. That
Speaker 3: wasn't perfect, like everything, you know, nothing is perfect, but
Speaker 3: you felt loved, you felt cared for it, you felt protected,
Speaker 3: and you saw adults coming together for the betterment of
Speaker 3: that community, not episodically when something bad happened, but on
Speaker 3: a regular basis. And that's what I remember, and those
Speaker 3: are the things that really inform how I like to
Speaker 3: live my life. And I have an opportunit do it
Speaker 3: a little bigger platform than growing up there. But it's
Speaker 3: also i'll call it rich with community life. You know,
Speaker 3: the music, the you know, we'd have the Friday night
Speaker 3: fish fries and you guys too young members. We used
Speaker 3: to do these people take slide pictures on slides and
Speaker 3: slide projector you guys left.
Speaker 2: You don't know, I know, I know, I feel like
Speaker 2: that happened in elementary school slide projected.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, but but but people would go to people's
Speaker 3: homes and you know, bring food and pot lucks and
Speaker 3: watch slide projectors of people's what they did that summer,
Speaker 3: and and then of course play cards and you know,
Speaker 3: you know, drink whiskey and soda, pop it all but
Speaker 3: and play music. And I mean that's it was very vibrant.
Speaker 3: And I just remember that. And that wasn't like, like
Speaker 3: I said, episodic. That was kind of just the way
Speaker 3: we lived. So it was actually it was actually pretty cool.
Speaker 2: It sounds like I mean, just having the foundation set,
Speaker 2: like you said, most of us don't come from, you know,
Speaker 2: families that went to college. You had two educators in
Speaker 2: the home. You spoke about that, the impact your dad had.
Speaker 2: I remember hearing the stories about the impact that your
Speaker 2: mom writing the checks to the United Negro College Fund
Speaker 2: and what that profound impact had on you.
Speaker 6: I want to talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2: And Bus thirteen, like you kind of alluded to it,
Speaker 2: but the importance of that and how you know, having
Speaker 2: one bus in the community and the impact that that
Speaker 2: had on you, and also the future of some of
Speaker 2: the people that were on that bus and how you
Speaker 2: know they excelled as opposed to the people who didn't
Speaker 2: make it.
Speaker 6: Can you tell about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's you know again, it's kind of the
Speaker 3: great segue into you know, the importance of resources in
Speaker 3: a community and the importance of guidance in that context.
Speaker 3: You know, we were at a time it was a
Speaker 3: dawning of uh call it the civil rights movement in action.
Speaker 3: So you know, there were there were you know, we
Speaker 3: spilled a lot of blood, and a lot of our
Speaker 3: blood was spilled in the streets. And one of the
Speaker 3: things we got out of it was Brown versus Board
Speaker 3: of Education. And now I was like, okay, now we're
Speaker 3: going to desegregate schools. How are you gonna do that
Speaker 3: when everybody lives in segregating neighborhoods. So it was in
Speaker 3: Denver many other places. It was a thing called bussing, right,
Speaker 3: they called it force bussing, but it was bussing. And
Speaker 3: so now you know, the cities took here. They bought
Speaker 3: a bunch of busses, started figuring out, Okay, who from
Speaker 3: this community, who goes to this local school? My dad
Speaker 3: was a principal at the local school, and now you're
Speaker 3: going to rebust across town to another school. All right, Well,
Speaker 3: right before this was to happen, some racists didn't think
Speaker 3: This was a good idea and burned like a third
Speaker 3: of the buses.
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Speaker 3: Okay, so now all of a sudden, fewer people are
Speaker 3: going to get busted, just as real nature. So rather
Speaker 3: than my whole neighborhood getting bussed, only one bus came
Speaker 3: to my neighborhood, and so just so happened to hit
Speaker 3: on a corner down the block for me. And so
Speaker 3: the kids in that four block radius were the first
Speaker 3: ones to go to desegregated schools. Okay, and I got
Speaker 3: talked about better resource schools. And when I look at
Speaker 3: the kids who were on that bus versus the kids
Speaker 3: who were two blocks away, okay, when it was bus
Speaker 3: number thirteen, like I say, ironically right, it was those
Speaker 3: kids have a higher percentage of professionals went to Ivy
Speaker 3: League schools became you know, doctors and professors and scientists
Speaker 3: versus a blocks of just a few blocks away. How
Speaker 3: much down there were some professionals that came out of there,
Speaker 3: but a much lower percentage. I mean, it is a
Speaker 3: stark contrast. And it's because that K in that case
Speaker 3: K through six education was so different than what you
Speaker 3: saw in our local neighborhoods and because they were still
Speaker 3: you know, separate, equal, but it wasn't you see, to
Speaker 3: mean the teaching, the capacity, the care, you know. And
Speaker 3: we had some phenomenal teachers in our community, and some
Speaker 3: of the teachers through that also ended up in those
Speaker 3: better resource schools because it was that as well. And
Speaker 3: I remember Missus Olivier third grade teacher, African American woman
Speaker 3: and you could only after American teacher in that school,
Speaker 3: but she looked at for every kid of color in
Speaker 3: that school. And I'm telling you that's one of the
Speaker 3: most important things that made a huge difference in our
Speaker 3: educational upbringing and gave us a chance to launch and
Speaker 3: go into the high schools and go into the colleges
Speaker 3: that we ended up in because we had great fundamental
Speaker 3: education K through six.
Speaker 5: So I want to get into how you've actually built
Speaker 5: what you have acquired, but I want to start with
Speaker 5: your engineering career. So you was at Craft and you
Speaker 5: were at Goodyear as an engineer, yeah, and then you
Speaker 5: transitioned to go them in sex.
Speaker 7: So can you talk about that, like how did that?
Speaker 3: How did you go.
Speaker 5: From being an engineer from Craft and Goodman and Goodyear
Speaker 5: to being an investment banking world of Goldman Sex.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a point to the importance of media. Okay,
Speaker 3: So I will get into later kind of what this
Speaker 3: is and how the engineering informs all that we do
Speaker 3: and has created the enterprise that it is that can
Speaker 3: grow at scale sustainably because of the engineering background, mindset
Speaker 3: and design points. But the transition came from media. Okay.
Speaker 3: So at the time, I was an engineer working in
Speaker 3: a plant in upstate New York for Goodyear Time Rubber Facility,
Speaker 3: and I had a collection of friends and we would
Speaker 3: get together. We'd read I mean, like, okay, we weren't
Speaker 3: just watching football because you know, we had a book club,
Speaker 3: but to African Americans, you know, we had a book
Speaker 3: club back then, reading different things. And one of the
Speaker 3: guys brought to kind of the book club a Black
Speaker 3: enterprise magazine and on that were a bunch of blacks
Speaker 3: on Wall Street the first time, like, well what is
Speaker 3: Wall Street? Because I was I had no idea what
Speaker 3: Wall Street was. And they had all these guys on
Speaker 3: Wall Street and it had you know guy you know,
Speaker 3: John Newton Dahl, this guy you know, Ray McGuire and
Speaker 3: Stan O'Neill and George Vanantum and and I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: who are these cats, and what's this Wall Street all about?
Speaker 3: And why are they undercovers this magazine? Right? What's that?
Speaker 3: And so we start reading and understanding and talking about it.
Speaker 3: I mean that's importance of community too, where you can
Speaker 3: kind of bounce some ideas off and what's this all about?
Speaker 3: And started really understanding that there was a whole different
Speaker 3: world outside of engineering, which is what I thought the
Speaker 3: world was, right, And so I started thinking about, well,
Speaker 3: maybe I should go to graduate school. So as I
Speaker 3: started looking at different you know, ELM Men's. Business school
Speaker 3: looked interesting, law school looked interesting. Uh, And I decided, well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to go to Columbia. I went to Cornell
Speaker 3: undergrad and I started looking around and decided Columbia it
Speaker 3: was a good place for me to go. It was
Speaker 3: fortunate to get in.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And outside of the good fortune, I did well my
Speaker 3: first year, so I was top student in my class.
Speaker 3: I had to come back for an award right for after,
Speaker 3: you know, business schools two years. So after the first year,
Speaker 3: had come back with this award during the summer, you know,
Speaker 3: the summer graduation. Uh. So I come back and lo
Speaker 3: and behold one of those guys from the magazine is
Speaker 3: actually the keynote speaker for the summer graduates God the
Speaker 3: named of John Newtondhal. And you know, they go and
Speaker 3: give my background and all that sort of stuff, and
Speaker 3: you know, my award, I get that at the end
Speaker 3: of the thing. You know, he gives his speech and
Speaker 3: pulls me and I says, hey, hey, hey. He said,
Speaker 3: you have an interesting background engineer. All. So, he said,
Speaker 3: have you ever thought about a career in investment banking.
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, I said, you know, there's a bunch
Speaker 3: of investment bankers in my class. I don't like any
Speaker 3: of them. And he says, well, he looks at me.
Speaker 3: He's like, well why not. I said, well, they think
Speaker 3: they know everything, and they're pretty arrogant. I said, I'm
Speaker 3: an engineer. We do know everything. It bothers us, right,
Speaker 3: And I thought I was a jokester then, but and
Speaker 3: I said, in all honesty, I said, I don't really
Speaker 3: know what y'all do. And he said, well, why don't
Speaker 3: you come have lunch with me? I said sure. And
Speaker 3: being in Columbia, one of the advantages of being at
Speaker 3: Columbia business schools, you're you know, a subway right away
Speaker 3: from Wall Street. So I go down and sit with John,
Speaker 3: and I'm expecting, you know, half hour forty five minutes.
Speaker 3: This guy's aren't gonna give me any time. And we
Speaker 3: just start talking. He's asking me my experiences. I'm telling
Speaker 3: them all the stuff I was inventing and doing and
Speaker 3: all that sort of stuff, and I guess he thought
Speaker 3: I was entertaining. But at the end of it, he said,
Speaker 3: let me introduce you some people. And he picks up
Speaker 3: the phone and he calls, you know, Ray McGuire. He
Speaker 3: picks up and he calls, you know, George van Anson,
Speaker 3: picks up the phony calls you know. Stand O'Neil's like, hey,
Speaker 3: there's a guy in my office, really interesting background. You
Speaker 3: guys ought to interview him and talk to him about
Speaker 3: a career investment banking and so, you know, as a
Speaker 3: scientist with what you do is you analyze data and
Speaker 3: try to come to some conclusion and then act upon
Speaker 3: it was with some activity. So now I'm entering my
Speaker 3: fall of my second year business school, and I'm trying
Speaker 3: to understand what this investment banking thing is all about. Sure,
Speaker 3: I'm taken classes of finance and marketing and doing well,
Speaker 3: obviously you know statistics and accounting, but I didn't understand
Speaker 3: the industry and the business of it. And these brothers
Speaker 3: all brought me in and had conversations with me and
Speaker 3: introduced me throughout the organization. I ended up having over
Speaker 3: one hundred interviews with people on Wall Street, Goldman, Sachs,
Speaker 3: you know, Morgan Stanley, you know, it was called a
Speaker 3: place called Banker's Trust the time JP Morgan. And through that,
Speaker 3: I said, Wow, the business that I really like is
Speaker 3: mergers and acquisitions, right, Okay, because if you think about
Speaker 3: M and A, it's board level discussions, it's CEO level
Speaker 3: cut discussions, and it's how assets move across this planet. Right.
Speaker 3: So I said, well, that looks really interesting to me.
Speaker 3: And this is another one of those life lessons. This
Speaker 3: is something you don't learn in school. It's an apprenticeship business.
Speaker 3: Someone has to decide that they're going to make you
Speaker 3: an apprentice in the M and A business and teach
Speaker 3: and train you how to do this. You can read
Speaker 3: all the books in the world, but you actually have
Speaker 3: to practice it, okay. You actually have to develop a
Speaker 3: set of skills that have to be honed through a
Speaker 3: set of interactions that create fact patterns that you can
Speaker 3: rely on to make judgments going forward. And so from
Speaker 3: that I said, at the time, they are only really
Speaker 3: maybe four principal M and A shops, Goldman being one
Speaker 3: that I thought actually that you can get better training
Speaker 3: there than anywhere else. And Goldman at the time had
Speaker 3: really prided itself on this teamwork dynamic, and some of
Speaker 3: these other firms at the time, if you worked for
Speaker 3: a partner in M and A, that's the partner you
Speaker 3: worked for for the next four or five six years.
Speaker 3: And if you were favored, then you do great, and
Speaker 3: if you were not, it'd be tough sledding, right. And
Speaker 3: you look at those departments, there are very few people
Speaker 3: who look like y'all and me and say, well will
Speaker 3: I get that experience? And while Goldman was not perfect,
Speaker 3: like no place is, you would work for multiple partners,
Speaker 3: so you work on a deal with this partner, and
Speaker 3: a deal and this partner at the same time, so
Speaker 3: it was you'd have six seven different partners or vice
Speaker 3: presidents that you worked for. And so there you had
Speaker 3: a chance what I call build your fat pattern of
Speaker 3: experiences through the lens of different practitioners. And I thought
Speaker 3: that would actually enhance my ability to be expert at
Speaker 3: that craft. So that's why I went to Golden Sachs.
Speaker 2: So in M and A, I want to talk about
Speaker 2: that because at that time, I mean, you have the
Speaker 2: background chemical engineering, you've been creating, you've been inventing. What
Speaker 2: is that like now, Because at the time, if I
Speaker 2: read it correctly, you're the other guy that's focusing solely
Speaker 2: on technology because you can see it, this is going
Speaker 2: to be the thing that changes the future. So you're
Speaker 2: seeing Apple, you're seeing Microsoft, and you're seeing eBay and
Speaker 2: all these things. Before they started, what was that like
Speaker 2: trying to explain to the investment the banking side, like,
Speaker 2: hey guys, this is my expertise.
Speaker 6: You guys should trust me on this. This is going
Speaker 6: to be the thing.
Speaker 3: So that's interesting. So when I started, you know, I
Speaker 3: was in New York and I had I've had I
Speaker 3: had baby food businesses, I had paper companies, all these
Speaker 3: sort of things, and it's the dawning of introducing technology
Speaker 3: into the industrial environment. Okay, so you guys, you know
Speaker 3: back in the day, and let's let's unpack this. That's
Speaker 3: actually pretty interesting. Back in the when I was at
Speaker 3: Goodyear or craft. Very few companies then were actually you
Speaker 3: know in well, they wanted to, but they didn't necessarily
Speaker 3: have the investment resources to implement computing capacity into the environment.
Speaker 3: So you guys are digital natives, Okay, my generation are
Speaker 3: digital immigrants. And so at the time, if you wanted
Speaker 3: to use the computer, it was like one thousand dollars
Speaker 3: for a half hour of computer use. You'd have to
Speaker 3: sign up for it, and you could go use it,
Speaker 3: and it'd be somebody standing behind you waiting for your
Speaker 3: thirty minutes to come up, and then they'd come on
Speaker 3: and you have to go sign up again to use
Speaker 3: the computer because it was that scarce of a resource.
Speaker 3: And so one of my early projects, for instance, I
Speaker 3: was working uh and running a plant in in you know,
Speaker 3: Niagara Falls, New York, and I was responsible for implementing
Speaker 3: some computer systems and computer control systems. So the way
Speaker 3: systems work before that were analog and there were individuals.
Speaker 3: So what would happen is, you know, you're going to
Speaker 3: run a process and you're going to charge the reactor
Speaker 3: with you know, with the reagents, with the catalyst, and
Speaker 3: you kind of you know, put the steam on and
Speaker 3: stir it and then the reaction would kind of take off, right,
Speaker 3: and depending upon the rates of change and all that,
Speaker 3: you sometimes you need to cool it or heat it up.
Speaker 3: So there'd be what I call there would be an
Speaker 3: you know, a an episodic observation of the event, and
Speaker 3: then you'd have an episodic you know, intervention. So you
Speaker 3: change something and it would change the control dynamic. And
Speaker 3: like I said, if you weren't the control or operator,
Speaker 3: wasn't at lunch or you know, talking about football or
Speaker 3: whatever it is, every dynamic was different because it wasn't
Speaker 3: consistent because you had that human engagement as the actual
Speaker 3: control system. Well, if you put a computer system in,
Speaker 3: it's measuring those observations thousands of times a second, and
Speaker 3: you could also then put in systems of control where
Speaker 3: you could have interventions thousands of times a second. So
Speaker 3: you went from control dynamics that look like this to
Speaker 3: control dynamics that look like this. And for mathematicians, everything
Speaker 3: under the curve is waste. Right, So now you look
Speaker 3: at that and like so and first implementation I did
Speaker 3: of that of the plant, increase the productivity of that
Speaker 3: plant by twenty six percent. Okay, that's a whole shift
Speaker 3: a day by putting a control system. So now you
Speaker 3: understand the power and the productivity that software actually brings
Speaker 3: to a plant. Now take that and put it in
Speaker 3: an office managing an insurance claim. You're an insurance adjuster.
Speaker 3: You know, the car is wrecked. Back in the day,
Speaker 3: you'd have to go to a place and they kind
Speaker 3: of take pictures of it and write it up, put
Speaker 3: it in an envelope, send it to somebody in the
Speaker 3: home office, and maybe you were on vacation, sit on
Speaker 3: that desk for a week, maybe got to the right person,
Speaker 3: and then you say, well, you know, you didn't do
Speaker 3: some right, so you got to send it back to
Speaker 3: you and ask more questions. And that happened back and forth,
Speaker 3: and from that you to justin and say, okay, here's
Speaker 3: here's how much the you know, approximate value is. You
Speaker 3: send me a check. I get mad because it wasn't
Speaker 3: enough to fix the car. And that was the whole process.
Speaker 3: How things now introduce a computer in that environment?
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Speaker 3: Where through the adjustment process in some respects you have
Speaker 3: an adjuster who's actually looking at it and filling it out.
Speaker 3: But now you can actually take your phone and take
Speaker 3: a picture of it. Based on the make of the car,
Speaker 3: estimate exactly how many hours it's going to take, what's
Speaker 3: the bill of materials, what's the cost, and so the
Speaker 3: efficiency from an insurance production like this and now to that. Okay,
Speaker 3: that hit every single industry. That's what we're doing right now.
Speaker 3: So software is now the most productive tool introducing our
Speaker 3: business environment last fifty years on like we will be
Speaker 3: for the next fifty. So now I go to Goldman Sachs.
Speaker 3: They're now in the process of you know, we're using
Speaker 3: different spreadsheet programs. You guys don't remember because you've used
Speaker 3: Excel all your life, haven't you. You've been paying Microsoft
Speaker 3: thirty years for a project for a product that you
Speaker 3: use back in the day. There are five or six others,
Speaker 3: the one called Lotus, there's Multiplan, there's Physical Asterisk, a
Speaker 3: bunch of different and so there's always a fight ask
Speaker 3: to which one of these programs you would use. But
Speaker 3: once you consolidated on one, the efficiency of not having
Speaker 3: to move you know, my project which I did in
Speaker 3: Lotus to yours as didn't Excel because we're working on
Speaker 3: a team together. That's another efficiency that came out of
Speaker 3: the system by consolidating. So I'm now at Goldman, I'm
Speaker 3: now working on a bunch of different M and A
Speaker 3: deals and started to see what I'll call the recognition
Speaker 3: of efficiency that can come from consolidation on platforms. One
Speaker 3: of what we would compare these to put these things
Speaker 3: together called common stock comparisons, where you get up in
Speaker 3: the morning and you'd have to put together forty five
Speaker 3: different stock comparisons for work that you're doing, and you're
Speaker 3: sitting across the aisle working on or you know, down
Speaker 3: the hall working on something similar and you're doing exact
Speaker 3: same work he's doing. You just don't know that you're
Speaker 3: doing it, and you're both see all the inefficiency. Whereas now,
Speaker 3: once you have done that, how do I share it
Speaker 3: with you? And how do you you know you can
Speaker 3: do this part in you that but it makes it
Speaker 3: much more efficient. Well, computer systems do that. So now
Speaker 3: we're getting more efficient and how we're processing deals and
Speaker 3: applications in all industries and so now it's the dawning
Speaker 3: of what is technology being mainstam stay in real So
Speaker 3: the head of our department calls and he's like, I
Speaker 3: think I want to start a tech group. He's like,
Speaker 3: would you like to be part of that? I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: So where is it? We're going to do this in California?
Speaker 3: He wanted to do it in LA. I said, no,
Speaker 3: the suit in San Francisco. He lived in LA and
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, Samcisco's kind of you know, Silicon Valley
Speaker 3: all that sort of stuff. I said, that's where I go.
Speaker 3: So we agreed. I was our first M and a
Speaker 3: banker on the ground focused on technology for Golden Sachs
Speaker 3: in San Francisco, Okay, and so so from there I advised,
Speaker 3: you know, like I said, build companies like Apple Computer
Speaker 3: and Texas Instruments and Hewlett Packard and eBay and Yahoo.
Speaker 3: And what was amazing to me because again it's the
Speaker 3: dawning of an industry. That's how they all did things differently.
Speaker 3: In the world of a chemical engineer, if you went
Speaker 3: into almost any production facility where they're you know, an
Speaker 3: ortho cracker where they're taking oil and making different types
Speaker 3: of fuel and gas, they're all pretty much the same
Speaker 3: because over years they figured out what's the most efficient
Speaker 3: way to do it. But that's not how the software
Speaker 3: industry was. Everybody did it differently, their go to market,
Speaker 3: their product development, okay, because.
Speaker 6: It was new.
Speaker 3: And so the whole ideal tomate behind Vista is how
Speaker 3: do I take the best practices from software companies that
Speaker 3: I have experience with and deliver those to other software
Speaker 3: companies so that the efficiency now comes out of that
Speaker 3: system and eliminate all that waste. Right, That's what Vista is.
Speaker 3: It's a system. It's an engineered system. So my going
Speaker 3: out to Silicon Valley, like all things in life, you
Speaker 3: got to look at what informs you and what creates
Speaker 3: the basis for the activities or the actions you now
Speaker 3: bring forward into your work product, and that's what it is.
Speaker 3: How do you bring engineering efficiency to the management operations
Speaker 3: of software companies? So that's the narrative and that's what
Speaker 3: my actions have been against from a Vista perspective.
Speaker 5: So let's get into this conversation with private equity. Vista
Speaker 5: is which the company that you started twenty years ago,
Speaker 5: I believe, and it has obviously made you a billionaire
Speaker 5: and you know, extremely successful person. But can you talk
Speaker 5: about a lot of people don't even know what private
Speaker 5: equity is.
Speaker 7: Sure they might have.
Speaker 5: I think people are familiar with Vinure Capital at this
Speaker 5: point because that's really trendy, but can you talk about
Speaker 5: what private what he is and the difference between that erners?
Speaker 8: What's up?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question because our community. It's important
Speaker 3: our community understand the goal of capital and growth. And
Speaker 3: there's different providers of capital along different stages of a company. Okay.
Speaker 3: One of the best ways to think about it is
Speaker 3: if you all have an idea, which you have, we're
Speaker 3: going to create a platform to educate our people. You're
Speaker 3: going to start off first with the idea of labor YouTube, right,
Speaker 3: and we've got ideas, we're going to write them down.
Speaker 3: We're going to put a process together to now communicate
Speaker 3: those ideas. Great, and so you start off and social
Speaker 3: media because it's free, and I say, well, how do
Speaker 3: I now push this out more broadly speaking beyond trying
Speaker 3: to get followers? And you may say maybe I should
Speaker 3: buy some advertising. Where am I going to get this money? Okay?
Speaker 3: The vast majority of investment capital even today is still
Speaker 3: out of the debt markets. So unfortunately, seventy percent of
Speaker 3: our communities don't actually have a branch bank. So depend
Speaker 3: upon where you live, there's no bank that you have
Speaker 3: a banking relationship with. It you can go and say, hey,
Speaker 3: I need ten thousand, fifty hundred thousand dollars because look
Speaker 3: at how you know and they don't understand your business.
Speaker 3: I've got eight hundred and forty thousand followers, and if
Speaker 3: I had twenty thousand dollars, I could rent a studio okay,
Speaker 3: five times a month and get a million followers or
Speaker 3: two million followers. And by having two million followers, I
Speaker 3: can go get advertisers who will pay me to have
Speaker 3: access to you know, my my people, right and if
Speaker 3: they pay me, I can now pay you back that
Speaker 3: money and then I can invest in more of my
Speaker 3: business make it growth. That's the capital cycle, and it's
Speaker 3: a virtuous one, but our community hasn't had access to capital.
Speaker 3: The next phase of that is like some of the
Speaker 3: banks are like, well, there's no hard assets because your
Speaker 3: hard assets your hard work. So I'm not going to
Speaker 3: lend you any money. I'm not sure you're credit worthy,
Speaker 3: so you can't come to me. So enter the venture capitalists.
Speaker 3: The venture capitalists are designed to actually look at what
Speaker 3: it is you're doing in the markets that you participate in,
Speaker 3: and if you have more capital and in some cases
Speaker 3: know how and resources that they can hopefully bring to
Speaker 3: you because they've done this once or twice or one
Speaker 3: hundred times in that industry, they can show you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: take that ten thousand dollars. Okay, don't buy advertising. But
Speaker 3: what I want you to do is actually build a
Speaker 3: platform where you can do your own streaming. It's more
Speaker 3: efficient long term and you make more money long term.
Speaker 3: And so that's advice you might get from them. And
Speaker 3: here's ten thousand dollars. Now, they're not going to necessarily
Speaker 3: ask for an interest rate like the bank spam you know, four, five, six, eight, ten,
Speaker 3: now twelve percent right in interest. They're going to ask
Speaker 3: you for a percentage of the company. Say, and when
Speaker 3: you sell the company, you're not going own one hundred percent,
Speaker 3: You're going one hundred percent minus how much they bought.
Speaker 3: That's venture capital. Okay. Now years later, you're now running
Speaker 3: a big platform, you got twenty million followers, you've got
Speaker 3: advertisers making eighteen fifteen million dollars a month in advertising revenues,
Speaker 3: and what you're not spending on your team and crew
Speaker 3: because you're going to give them all raises because they're phenomenal.
Speaker 3: You guys should I'm giving.
Speaker 7: A shout out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So don't be two greed. No. But now
Speaker 3: you're at the point where you're making you know, ten
Speaker 3: thirty forty fifty million dollars in revenues, and now you're
Speaker 3: trying to manage your business how profitable and expenses and
Speaker 3: all that. And that's where private equity comes in. Private
Speaker 3: equity typically are larger checks and we typically bring in
Speaker 3: my case, we do buyouts. So we want to do
Speaker 3: control investments where you were selling and control of your business.
Speaker 3: And you may say, well, why am I selling control
Speaker 3: of my business? Hey, you get the money, but be
Speaker 3: what you really want is my know how Why do
Speaker 3: founders come to us? Because we've done it so many
Speaker 3: times in enterprise software, I can bring remember those best practices.
Speaker 3: I was telling you, here's how you run your product
Speaker 3: development organization more efficiently, Here's how you run your go
Speaker 3: to market system more efficiently, Here's how you do your
Speaker 3: contract administration more efficiently. Because you've never done that before,
Speaker 3: or you've done it, but you don't necessarily know the
Speaker 3: best way to do it, and we can share experiences
Speaker 3: with you that actually can enable you to do it now.
Speaker 3: Not all private equity people bring that. Some just bring
Speaker 3: to capital and they say, I just want to own
Speaker 3: the business because if I buy the business and it's
Speaker 3: growing well over time, and they may put debt on
Speaker 3: the business, they're going to increase the value of that business.
Speaker 3: And then when they sell it, but they make the
Speaker 3: difference between where they sold it and what they bought
Speaker 3: it for, minus the debt that was in the company.
Speaker 3: So the way to think about got to think about
Speaker 3: buying a house. If you go in, it's a house
Speaker 3: worth one hundred thousand dollars, I know you guys talk
Speaker 3: about this shell and a buyout person can come and say,
Speaker 3: all right, I'm gonna buy it for one hundred thousand, Okay,
Speaker 3: But then they go to the bank and they borrow
Speaker 3: sixty thousand, so they only have to put forty thousand in. Well,
Speaker 3: because it's in a good neighborhood. Five years later, it's
Speaker 3: now worth two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand whatever it
Speaker 3: might be, right, or they fixed up the house, they
Speaker 3: went in, put a new porche in and put forty
Speaker 3: thousand in to really improve the value of the house.
Speaker 3: Now I can sell it for three hundred thousand. They
Speaker 3: sell it for three hundred, They pay back the sixty
Speaker 3: thousand to the bank. They've been paying interest along the
Speaker 3: way right, and that difference they put it in forty
Speaker 3: The difference is what is profit and that's what profit
Speaker 3: equity firms do. Okay. As an owner of protty firm,
Speaker 3: that difference in value. If I borrowed the money or
Speaker 3: raised the money, I've got to pay by investors back
Speaker 3: and then I get a percentage of profits. So that's
Speaker 3: how that works. So it's just a different form of capital.
Speaker 5: So you just buy buying companies as opposed to where
Speaker 5: bench capital they're investing in companies, but the owner still
Speaker 5: runs it.
Speaker 7: You're actually taking control and ownership.
Speaker 3: Of the company. Yes, but like ninety percent of the
Speaker 3: founders that we buy our companies from are still involved
Speaker 3: in the business with us or in our ecosystem. Okay,
Speaker 3: And so you're taking control, but you're also investing in
Speaker 3: the infrastructure. Now you like to use words, you're accelerating
Speaker 3: the corporate maturity of that business. So it might take
Speaker 3: you ten years to figure out what we've done forty
Speaker 3: five times already. Right, And now I bring that intellectual
Speaker 3: property into the company and say, here's how we're going
Speaker 3: to design this a little differently. Here's we're going to
Speaker 3: change your compensation plans for your salespeople to actually incentivize
Speaker 3: them to give you more stable revenues or or or
Speaker 3: you know, more visibility into the future revenues and earnings
Speaker 3: of that business that you may not have figured out
Speaker 3: or may not figure out because you may not be
Speaker 3: in an environment a circle of people who have dealt
Speaker 3: with that before. And so that's why the expertise that
Speaker 3: we bring is often more valuable than the capital.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like the highest level of mentorships, last internship,
Speaker 2: where it's like you're giving it to me because you've
Speaker 2: already been through it.
Speaker 3: Right, And we create an ecosystem where our founders are
Speaker 3: we intentionally bring them together our CEOs. We have twenty
Speaker 3: six events this year. Okay, we've got eighty six software
Speaker 3: companies today, we've got ninety five thousand employees. But we
Speaker 3: have an event. And the last month our CXO event,
Speaker 3: I had four hundred and fifty cxos. So that's you know, CEO,
Speaker 3: chief financial officers, chief marketing officers, you know, c sells
Speaker 3: all that in one city for three days in that case,
Speaker 3: going through seven or eight different tracks. So if you're
Speaker 3: a CFO of a forty million dollar software company. You're
Speaker 3: sitting next to a CFO of a four hundred million
Speaker 3: dollar software company, sitting next to a CFO of a
Speaker 3: three billion dollar software company. You all are dealing with
Speaker 3: different things on the one hand, but you want to
Speaker 3: understand what you need to do to build your organization
Speaker 3: so you can support four hundred million dollars worth of growth.
Speaker 3: And you want to understand what you need to do
Speaker 3: in your organization four hundred million so you can support
Speaker 3: a three billion dollar You're not going to get that
Speaker 3: anywhere else but at Vista, you see what I mean. Oh,
Speaker 3: and by the way, we do that for the product
Speaker 3: and technology groups as well, and we do it for separately,
Speaker 3: and we'll do it for our talent organization's talent development,
Speaker 3: and we'll do it for go to market. You see
Speaker 3: what I mean. All of those are elements that are
Speaker 3: value add intellectual property best practices that we now share
Speaker 3: with the community of founders and executives in all of
Speaker 3: our portfolio companies. So it gets back into that efficacy,
Speaker 3: that efficiency I've talked about in engineering. Now I could
Speaker 3: hope that you could figure this out. I can invest
Speaker 3: in your company and hope you figure it out and
Speaker 3: if you don't afire you. But we don't take that approach.
Speaker 3: We say, let me give you tools and systems, and
Speaker 3: let me actually equip your management team with tools in
Speaker 3: systems so they have a higher probability of being successful
Speaker 3: as opposed to let me just hope you get it
Speaker 3: right or you figure it out. You see what I mean.
Speaker 3: That's the difference in how we approach the market. And
Speaker 3: that's in some cases difference between i'll call it highly
Speaker 3: skilled tuned investors, either private acuity or venture capital, and
Speaker 3: those who are just providing access to capital.
Speaker 2: One of the things you were talking to us about
Speaker 2: was knowing value and worth. And as I'm listening to
Speaker 2: you talking about the stories of creating eficient systems for
Speaker 2: other companies, at what point or was it always are
Speaker 2: that entrepreneurial mindset where like, I'm doing this for them,
Speaker 2: I need to start doing this for myself. Was that
Speaker 2: always in the mindset or did that develop as you
Speaker 2: created more efficient systems and said, wait, I'm saving them this,
Speaker 2: I'm saving them this, maybe I can create this for myself.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's a great question, because like all things in
Speaker 3: my life, it's evolution. You know, my parents were school teachers.
Speaker 3: I didn't have private equity people in my life, bankers
Speaker 3: in my life, lawyers in my life. So you're learning
Speaker 3: along the way, and you hope that you can glean
Speaker 3: and learn and understand insights that could be helpful to
Speaker 3: you going forward. One of the key insights we talked
Speaker 3: about a so earlier that I had I got as
Speaker 3: an engineer. Okay, so I was working for a company
Speaker 3: who was actually a company called craft Urn the foods,
Speaker 3: and in that case I was responsible for changing and
Speaker 3: hopefully enhancing One of our best products was a company
Speaker 3: called Maxwehouse, which is coffee, right and coffee blended coffee
Speaker 3: is made up of different forms of coffee. We talked
Speaker 3: about you know, rap coas or busses and maybe five
Speaker 3: or six different types of coffee roasted to a certain amount,
Speaker 3: ground to a certain amount that give you a flavor
Speaker 3: profile that you want to be consistent everywhere you go
Speaker 3: in the world, so no matter where you went, it
Speaker 3: tastes the same. Okay, this is backcnated when Maxweus was
Speaker 3: the largest coffee distributor on the planet. Okay, Well, one
Speaker 3: of my projects was to figure out a way to
Speaker 3: an essence enhance the flavor profile at a lower cost.
Speaker 3: And I did that, and I'll spare you all the details.
Speaker 3: I told you got some of the details. Let your
Speaker 3: audiencity know all that nerdy stuff, but U And in
Speaker 3: doing that, I was able to save the company fourteen
Speaker 3: cents a pound on every pound of coffee that we manufactured.
Speaker 3: And we were manufacturing tens of millions of pounds a
Speaker 3: month of coffee, okay. And I told you guys that
Speaker 3: I chuckled because I got a great little plaque out
Speaker 3: of it to give me a thousand dollars in an award.
Speaker 3: And that was wonderful. And I started to understand that
Speaker 3: Ernest checked this out.
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Speaker 3: Now, Look, I could have never done that if I
Speaker 3: weren't in that environment. I could have never done that
Speaker 3: had I not been a chemical engineer from Cornell Okay,
Speaker 3: But I was graced with both of those scenarios, and
Speaker 3: I was able to create something of real value for
Speaker 3: the company at the time. But then you start looking
Speaker 3: at the give get analysis. They're saving you ten, twelve,
Speaker 3: fourteen million dollars a year, and you know, I got
Speaker 3: paid the same thirty four thousand dollars a year whatever
Speaker 3: it was at the time, which I thought was more
Speaker 3: money than could ever make because that was more money
Speaker 3: my dad ever made in his career, Okay, as a principal, right,
Speaker 3: And so then you start thinking about is there a
Speaker 3: different utility of my time that I should be thinking about?
Speaker 3: And ultimately what I actually realized. And you know, we
Speaker 3: chat about this so earlier through my interactions with with
Speaker 3: with John Newtondahl and Ray McGuire and these sort of
Speaker 3: folks the power of capital versus labor, And we just
Speaker 3: talked about labor and you all as labored to create
Speaker 3: this platform. At some point you realize if I had
Speaker 3: a different quantum of capital, you could reach more people
Speaker 3: on accident than you do flying around and doing events.
Speaker 3: If you utilize that capital efficiently, you see to mean,
Speaker 3: And so that's kind of the next evolution. And yeah, right, okay,
Speaker 3: And in some cases you learn it. In some cases
Speaker 3: someone tells you right, and and if you get it right,
Speaker 3: you then can do it at increasing scale and efficiency.
Speaker 3: And we call it the unit economics of your productivity
Speaker 3: go up with every time you do it as opposed
Speaker 3: to down. Right, So those are the dynamics that informed
Speaker 3: me on understanding capital. And one of the things we
Speaker 3: talked about, you know, capital markets are just basically equilibrium systems.
Speaker 3: That's what we learn in chemical engineering is understanding equilibrium systems.
Speaker 3: It's actually the same thing in some respects. You've got
Speaker 3: difference out of inputs and outputs, but what is the
Speaker 3: equilibrium system that you're actually evaluating and understanding and in
Speaker 3: some cases changing the dynamic of the control in those
Speaker 3: equilibrium systems to make you more efficient outcome. So they're
Speaker 3: not as far apart as you think if you look
Speaker 3: at it through the right lens.
Speaker 5: Well, let me ask you this as far as I
Speaker 5: want to make sure I get this number correct. Well, first,
Speaker 5: your guy's portfolio consists of ninety four billion dollars ninety
Speaker 5: four billion in assets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a little more than that, but yeah, that's close enough.
Speaker 7: Who's counting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but this is a disturbing fact. So one point
Speaker 5: four percent of US based assets under management managers are
Speaker 5: for diverse owned firms. Women and people of color can bine, right,
Speaker 5: So that is disturbing. So yeah, talk, So that's one
Speaker 5: point four percent of the firms are women, and it's
Speaker 5: like everybody like Latinos, blacks like you just don't everybody
Speaker 5: in a bucket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we only have access to one point four
Speaker 3: percent of the assets. We make it up a little
Speaker 3: more one point four percent of the population, though, don't we,
Speaker 3: And we actually make up a little higher than that
Speaker 3: in terms of our contributing to the pension plans. Did
Speaker 3: your parents are they part of a pension plan? Yeah?
Speaker 3: My mom.
Speaker 7: My mom was a teacher for thirty years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, what's percentage of black teachers in her union?
Speaker 3: A lot, little more than one point four percent for sure. Okay,
Speaker 3: what about you know some of the civil service workers?
Speaker 3: Probably the same thing. Do about federal government? Yeah, probably
Speaker 3: the same thing. But yet we don't control a proportionate
Speaker 3: share of the assets that our parents put those sixty
Speaker 3: two dollars a weekend for pensions, and we our parents
Speaker 3: go out work so hard, send us the school, send
Speaker 3: us the college, get educated, go manage this capital. But
Speaker 3: yet they don't get the capital to manage that, as
Speaker 3: you know, flows back in our communities at much higher
Speaker 3: rates than almost anything else, because as you do better,
Speaker 3: you typically are enhancing your community at much higher rates
Speaker 3: than non people of color. So those are the things
Speaker 3: we you and me have to make people aware and
Speaker 3: drive these pension plans to make sure they're distributing their
Speaker 3: fair share to the constituency base that makes up those
Speaker 3: who are contributing point number one and in point number
Speaker 3: two to the highest performers, which when you look at
Speaker 3: we have a group called the NAIIC that's been doing
Speaker 3: this work for twenty years evaluating our firms perform at
Speaker 3: a higher rate, a higher level with lower loss ratios.
Speaker 3: Can we talk about that, Yeah, sure so, I mean
Speaker 3: we've been doing this. When we do these studies, we
Speaker 3: have over the last twenty years, especially in the private
Speaker 3: equity business, returned more capital, had fewer losses, lower loss
Speaker 3: ratios than majority white firms, but yet we get less
Speaker 3: than one point four percent of the allocation of capital.
Speaker 3: We've got the studies and we go take these studies
Speaker 3: and we you know, it goes in shows. These consultants
Speaker 3: are in there and they kind of like, yeah, it's
Speaker 3: going to take some time. Well that's a problem. Okay.
Speaker 3: Those are the things that destabilize communities if they feel
Speaker 3: there is injustice and the way people are treated and
Speaker 3: it's not a meritocracy. That's a dynamic that has to change,
Speaker 3: and there are certain leaders who are doing a good
Speaker 3: job of that. You know, somebody criticize Honestly, New York
Speaker 3: does a pretty good job of it. New York State,
Speaker 3: New York City is to call out. And we're sitting
Speaker 3: here now right in understanding that, and you know, comptrollers
Speaker 3: and treasurers, you know, Adopotly being one and Lander being
Speaker 3: the newest one in New York City, understand that and
Speaker 3: have been driving the programs in that regard. And that's
Speaker 3: why some of the return to some of the highest
Speaker 3: in the US because they recognize that fact. And there's
Speaker 3: some states that don't recognize and don't do anything about it,
Speaker 3: and they've got some of the lowest returning plans. You
Speaker 3: see what I mean. It's economic necessity at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, and it's fairness that's actually going to
Speaker 3: move our society forward.
Speaker 6: In UH twenty nineteen, I want to talk about this.
Speaker 2: Uh. Obviously there philanthropy philanthrop efforts have been well documented,
Speaker 2: uh Borehouse philanthropic, philanthropic.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I.
Speaker 2: Was thinking of philanthropy and philanthropic, so I appreciate you,
Speaker 2: uh obviously well documented to give back to the senior
Speaker 2: class of Borehouse.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And then I recently, you know, saw that the parents
Speaker 2: as well of some of the students uh that their
Speaker 2: tuitions were their student loan debt taking care of One
Speaker 2: of the things I heard you speak about, and I haven't.
Speaker 2: I've never heard it was broadband deserts and how HBCUs
Speaker 2: are disproportionately affected by having board band deserts. Not a
Speaker 2: topic that I've heard discussed, you know, nationally or even
Speaker 2: in you know, amongst communities, about how that affects students
Speaker 2: long term and how it affects communities and EDGUC.
Speaker 6: Can you talk about your efforts to try to combat that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question, Earners.
Speaker 8: What's Up?
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Speaker 3: We've been talking about what is really the fourth Industrial
Speaker 3: Revolution that's occurring today. Every industry is being digitized, every
Speaker 3: single one. I mean you just look in our studio
Speaker 3: here and how much of this equipment is now digital
Speaker 3: versus what it was even eight years ago, whereas analog right,
Speaker 3: the capacity to edit okay, the capacity to deliver streaming
Speaker 3: real time, you know, phase time around the world, your
Speaker 3: program that wasn't you know something you could do ten
Speaker 3: years ago, twelve years ago? Okay? Digitizing everything every industry.
Speaker 3: This is again, this whole Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing
Speaker 3: the economic landscape of this planet. But yet our HBCUs
Speaker 3: eighty percent of them are in broadband deserts. How are
Speaker 3: you going to participate if you don't have access to
Speaker 3: the tool of progress, the principal tool of progress today
Speaker 3: in the economy. And that is a big problem. And
Speaker 3: that's one that we decided to take on, and I
Speaker 3: decided to take on and bring some partners to take
Speaker 3: on to go get after this. We have to enable
Speaker 3: all of our citizenry to participate in this next generation
Speaker 3: of opportunity. The US today, you own, our borders are
Speaker 3: basically closed, okay. You know, we've got immigration laws and
Speaker 3: political conflict that in essence, we are not importing labor anymore.
Speaker 3: And as we need to grow as society, we need people.
Speaker 3: I just tell people the biggest issue, the most scarce
Speaker 3: asset we have on this planet today are software programmers.
Speaker 3: There's eight billion people on the planet, there's only twenty
Speaker 3: six million of us who write software for living, and
Speaker 3: it is that software that is required to digitize every
Speaker 3: industry on the planet. Automotive, healthcare, finands, banking, all of
Speaker 3: it is now requiring tools and systems that are digital
Speaker 3: in nature. But yet one of the greatest infrastructures for
Speaker 3: training people historically Black college and universities eighty percent of
Speaker 3: them don't have broadband access where our kids can learn
Speaker 3: the tools of this craft in a way that they
Speaker 3: can participate effectively long term. And if we don't get
Speaker 3: this right now, eight years from now, ten years from
Speaker 3: twenty years from now, the market of change and opportunity
Speaker 3: and transformation will have been gone so far that we
Speaker 3: won't be able to participate in this next way. We
Speaker 3: didn't get to participate in the great economic opportunity that
Speaker 3: was America in owning land, Okay, many of our families
Speaker 3: were unpaid labor okay, which created massive wealth. And then
Speaker 3: you had gi Bill Home Set Act, Southern Home Set Act.
Speaker 3: We didn't participate in that proportionately. We didn't get a
Speaker 3: chance to participate in the asset accretion in real estate
Speaker 3: because of redlining in those dynamics, and so now here
Speaker 3: we are Corporate America started to expand, it has taken
Speaker 3: a while for us to get and we're still not
Speaker 3: even there. Fair shit year of opportunity to participate as
Speaker 3: professionals environment and now you're going through the fourth Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 3: If we don't participate here, it's going to be the
Speaker 3: same dynamic. That's why it's so essential that we equip
Speaker 3: our children and our communities with the tools, and they
Speaker 3: need to insist that those tools be provided and insist
Speaker 3: that they learn and train and develop ways to participate
Speaker 3: in this economy, in this digital economy. What percentage of
Speaker 3: your viewership you think is listening on some digital device
Speaker 3: or digital ablement. Yeah, your business relies on it, So
Speaker 3: why shouldn't your community participate in it? And right now
Speaker 3: those schools are being starved at those resources. You can
Speaker 3: say conscious, unconscious, whatever it is, but the fact is
Speaker 3: it is there. That's what we have to do about it. Look,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do my part, and you guys got
Speaker 3: to continue to do your part and make sure that
Speaker 3: your viewership demands that our HBCUs have access to broadband,
Speaker 3: every one of them, not just the big ones, every
Speaker 3: one of them, so that our kids could learn and
Speaker 3: participate and have the ability to now take what they
Speaker 3: know and deliver business systems solutions into their community to
Speaker 3: make their small and medium businesses in their community and
Speaker 3: the education of the kids in our community more effective
Speaker 3: than what it is today.
Speaker 5: I want to just follow up on that on the
Speaker 5: HBCU thing, because you got a lot of headlines when
Speaker 5: you do more house, when you paid off the student loans.
Speaker 5: But when we were in LA and I heard you
Speaker 5: speak about that, and I realized that it wasn't It's
Speaker 5: a little bit more complicated, which actually led to something else,
Speaker 5: another initiative.
Speaker 7: So can you talk about that.
Speaker 5: Because people just saw he paid off everybody student loans,
Speaker 5: but that's not actually the full story, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the next thing, so what I like all things,
Speaker 3: it's not as easy as you think to pay off
Speaker 3: somebody's loans. And everybody's like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: Who would have thought? Because yeah, who would have thought? Right,
Speaker 3: Because if you pay off somebody's loan, either you're giving
Speaker 3: them a gift or they're receiving a gift. Now they
Speaker 3: got to pay taxes on it, so there's a burden
Speaker 3: to them or an increasing burden to you. So you've
Speaker 3: got to actually architect a system to do that effectively
Speaker 3: so that doesn't create the burden in that process. What
Speaker 3: I learned is over sixty percent of African American wealth
Speaker 3: goes towards servicing student loans. Okay, you come out, You've
Speaker 3: got sixty eighty one hundred and twenty thousand dollars with
Speaker 3: the student loans. Now you're paying interest on those loans.
Speaker 3: Something happens in your family, don't use your job, whatever,
Speaker 3: And now that compounds and it can be decades before
Speaker 3: you've paid off those student loans. That inhibit your ability
Speaker 3: to buy stocks, bonds, a house, invest in a business,
Speaker 3: you see what I mean. And I was like, well,
Speaker 3: that's just unconstable because most of the student loans are
Speaker 3: paying back to the United States government. Yeah, African Americans
Speaker 3: paying money back to United States government to pay our
Speaker 3: student loans. How y'all feel about that?
Speaker 7: That's crazy?
Speaker 3: Crazy? Yeah, y'all should think about that, right, talk about that. Right?
Speaker 3: So then I thought, well, what's a better way to
Speaker 3: do it? This is what's the better equilibrium system. The
Speaker 3: better equilibrium system is to create a fund it's called
Speaker 3: the Student Freedom Initiative. We raise money, I put in
Speaker 3: a bunch of money, and now these students borrow from
Speaker 3: the fund. Okay, let's make sure it fits our condition.
Speaker 3: Our condition often is that we often aren't paid as
Speaker 3: much as corresponding white students. So let's make sure that
Speaker 3: the interest rate is below. Parent plus loans at a minimum,
Speaker 3: at a minimum and every now and you have life interruptions. Okay, Well,
Speaker 3: if there's a life interruption, you know, parent ailing, we've
Speaker 3: got to go back take care of that parent. Then
Speaker 3: we can actually stop those payments in that period of time.
Speaker 3: Parent plus now you're gonna pay whether you work it
Speaker 3: or not. And then compounds and all that, so you
Speaker 3: can stop it during that period of time. And if
Speaker 3: you decide to go work in a community to be
Speaker 3: a teacher, like you work right, okay, and you're making
Speaker 3: below a certain amount, but you're doing good for the community.
Speaker 3: You do that for twenty years and that's forgiven. But
Speaker 3: rather than pay that money back to the government, it
Speaker 3: pays back into the fund, and then that fund can
Speaker 3: relend that capital and that's a virtuous cycle. Okay. So
Speaker 3: that's a Student Freedom Initiative is okay, And so that
Speaker 3: our students can borrow from this fund and they pay
Speaker 3: back into that fund, they can be reborrowed. So now
Speaker 3: you're taking care of your own community through your work
Speaker 3: in that regard, that's what it is.
Speaker 5: And the money goes back to the next generation of students.
Speaker 7: Right, those are recycled, right, situation Right.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about an initiative, and I think
Speaker 2: it's pretty amazing that the two percent solution. Yeah, whereas
Speaker 2: correct me if I'm wrong, but banks, right the determined
Speaker 2: on the profits that they make off their investments, they
Speaker 2: reallocate that back into their communities.
Speaker 3: They should.
Speaker 6: Well, I'll let you talk about the initiative.
Speaker 3: But that's the point is it's like, you know, the
Speaker 3: average American individual gives about two percent of charity, you know,
Speaker 3: to charity every year, and African Americans actually will higher
Speaker 3: and people call it will higher. And I said, well,
Speaker 3: if you just take that and apply that to corporations,
Speaker 3: so beyond just the dollars, it's the know how, Okay,
Speaker 3: So take two percent of your earnings, two percent of
Speaker 3: your profits, whatever it is, and now use that to
Speaker 3: enable the equitable opportunity. And listen to the words equable
Speaker 3: opportunity in the communities that support your business. Right, if
Speaker 3: you are in a healthcare business, for instance, so why
Speaker 3: not take that and invest that in telemedicine solutions for
Speaker 3: communities don't have access. Right. If you're in the banking business,
Speaker 3: invest that in digital banking in the communities that don't
Speaker 3: have banks. My community that I grew up in didn't
Speaker 3: have a branch bank. Okay, if you're in the supermarket business,
Speaker 3: two percent of that to go to providing access to
Speaker 3: high quality foods low costs. In mention, my community I
Speaker 3: grew up in did not have a supermarket. Still doesn't
Speaker 3: think about that. Right, We had to drive across down
Speaker 3: or go to local communience store where the prices are
Speaker 3: three four five X. You see what I mean. So
Speaker 3: that's what the initiative is designed to do, is to
Speaker 3: bring a consciousness to how you can actually enable citizenry
Speaker 3: to have opportunities to participate in that case, in our
Speaker 3: economy as full citizens. That's what it's designed it.
Speaker 6: I mean, it feels pretty simple, right.
Speaker 3: Makes sense to me.
Speaker 5: Oh, missus Smith, you've been a gentleman and a scholar.
Speaker 5: Thank you for joining us. Anything that you would like
Speaker 5: to leave the audience with any last words or anything
Speaker 5: that you will like.
Speaker 3: I will leave you all with something. Make sure you
Speaker 3: continue to expand your voice. And we talked about this
Speaker 3: earlier this morning, the importance of you thinking about bringing
Speaker 3: scale to this platform and leave behind so that the
Speaker 3: youth that hear you or the parents that hear you
Speaker 3: can point their youth, do your messages, your tools, and
Speaker 3: bring build systems for people to get more financially literate
Speaker 3: and enabled to be more effective in achieving their goals,
Speaker 3: which most people want financial independence and some freedom in
Speaker 3: their lives. Uh. And you all have a wonderful and
Speaker 3: great platform and I sincerely mean that, and I congratulate you.
Speaker 3: Just continue to think about how you scale it effectively inefficiently.
Speaker 3: So good luck on that. And if I can never
Speaker 3: be helpful, you know, just a text away. Sure.
Speaker 5: Well, we tried to get you out of We had
Speaker 5: a big thing called investments last year and Tyler Perry
Speaker 5: and Steve harveybody keynotes you're trying to get you, but
Speaker 5: you out of I think you're out of the country
Speaker 5: on vacation. I remember, yeah, but let me know, just
Speaker 5: be this year we can good look forward to look
Speaker 5: for seriously, I just wanted to thank you for your time,
Speaker 5: and I'm sure we'll run into well, we're actually gonna
Speaker 5: see next next.
Speaker 2: Week, see you next week, you see us together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, thank you guys. Keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: This is definitely off the bucket list of people that
Speaker 2: we wanted to sit down with. I told this when
Speaker 2: I woke up this morning. I'm like, I can't believe
Speaker 2: this is actually happening today. So thank you for blessing
Speaker 2: us with the knowledge and all your service as well
Speaker 2: my pleasure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a it's a blessing to be here with you, brothers.
Speaker 3: So keep doing what you're doing. Thank you you having guys.
Speaker 3: That's a wrap, all right, guys, did you record it?
Speaker 4: My graduates from my school being false bad drop bag
Speaker 4: drop my drop bad drop.
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