[REPLAY] Jen Prosek – Branding an Asset Management Firm (Capital Allocators, EP.81)

24:48But one certainly is, we've talked a lot about brand building, but there's also brand protection, reputation management. So the financial crisis created this real wake up call that your reputation matters. And that, especially like in the hedge fund community, you are now on the radar screen. And it's not just on the radar screen with your investors, all publics. Now people get what a hedge fund is, and it has a sort of negative connotation. So what do we do about that? I think waking up to that reputation matters, that started in the financial crisis. I think increased competition is another thing.

25:23I think all of a sudden people looked at firms like BlackRock and said, oh my gosh, BlackRock, they're amazing. Everyone wants to go to BlackRock. Everyone's talking about BlackRock. Well, why? BlackRock was probably one of the pioneers in sophisticated marketing in the asset management space. They didn't become BlackRock overnight. They've been marketing for 35, 40 years and And Larry Fink's been a thought leader for, what, 25 years. So I think people think they turned on the marketing spigot overnight, but they were early, right? If you look at any of the early adopters in true marketing and thought leadership, a lot of them are the successful firms of today.

25:58The Vanguards, I mean, look at what Bogle did for Vanguard. He was a thought leader before people used the word thought leader. So I think that there was also all of a sudden this recognition that the world's getting more competitive, more difficult, more volatile, and I need a message that is distinctive and resonates. And if I am looked at as one of the same, if there's no competitive differentiator for my business and my brand, I'm going to have to work a lot harder to be successful. And that just started to become, I think, something people started to believe in the space. The examples you use, you tend to have a Nabogul and even a Larry Fink.

26:35You have a spokesman, AQR, probably a great example of Cliff Assis, right? Is it one person saying the message over and over, or is there a different way of doing it so that it's about the firm and not just one person's ability to speak? Well, let me tell you, you create as much of a problem as you solve by having a brand grow up around one person. And we are hired, especially in private equity and hedge funds, many times because the brand has grown up around one person and they create a succession issue, basically. So we do a lot of work with those kinds of firms, what I call building the bench strategy, making sure that there's a bench of talent that is showcased across the firm versus one person.

27:17So it is incredibly important if you have one strong founder or one strong spokesperson, which can be an amazing silver bullet, to be also having what I call a corporate program. And I feel like the AQRs and the Bridgewaters and the Blackstones have all been relatively successful having strong founders. Yes, there's a Steve Schwartzman brand, and he definitely built the Blackstone brand using that. But I think no one would say that Blackstone would not move on as an institution. So I always say, I think they pulled it off from a brand perspective. And you can argue some of the others, have they really pulled it off yet?

27:55But I think they're on their way. I think the AQRs and the Bridgewaters, Bridgewater as a client, have done a very good job showcasing the institution as well. And that's a journey for all of these institutions. I think they have to be very careful about how they build their brands. So the hedge fund world and the private equity world are clearly in two different places in the public eye right now, or even investors' eyes. What do you think happens from your lens of brand and communication with, let's just start with hedge funds? Private equity firms have been way earlier to the game of marketing than hedge funds.

28:31Hedge funds are still very new to brand building, reputation management, and being on the front foot with all of this. So the private equity world has been there early on. And why is that? They are long-term investors who had to build their portfolio companies' brands to have more value, right? So they've understood this for a very long time. And I think they were earlier to the game, to be honest. Hedge funds are newer. Do I think they'll be successful at building institutional brands that will survive into the future? Yes. I think there will be a handful that does, and there will be all kinds of other peril in the ones that don't.

29:09Can you tell a disaster story? Oh, boy. What kind of disaster? My personal disaster story? Well, why don't we start with that? Why don't we start with sort of your biggest mistake in the business? I think my biggest mistakes in business have been that I would have done some things earlier. When you bootstrap a business, there's a lot of fear in taking big bets. I look back and I say, I know I could have accelerated our success by taking a few big bets earlier. I would also say, Shoemaker's House, I would have marketed my own firm earlier than we took it seriously. So I would say that we take marketing now incredibly seriously.

29:48And if you ask me what has been the most successful marketing we've done, it's been thought leadership and it's also been convening. Convening groups of people that want to get to know each other who are true peers under our brand auspices has been enormously impactful for our brand. What are the mechanisms you use to do that? So, for instance, here's a great example. We realize in the alternatives world, marketing is new. And we realize in the alternatives world that for the first time, large alternative firms are hiring chief communications officers or chief marketing officers. If you look at the landscape, AQR being an example, they just made their head of marketing a partner, which shows you how seriously they're taking marketing, right?

30:30But these firms have only had marketers the last three or four years, if that. Most of them are just hiring them for the first time. So we made the assumption like, wow, I bet those people would love to get to know each other. Like wouldn't the chief marketing officer for AQR want to know the chief marketing officer for Cerberus and chief marketing officer at Kcare? We'd throw gatherings for them to get to know each other because we know they want to trade information and become friends and have a peer network. So those sorts of things where you're gifting a peer network and you're gifting value to a community, that's how you get something in return, right?

31:01I always say sales is giving to receive. So those sorts of activities have been very powerful to brand building for us. But we only started to do these things in the last five years. So I even look at our own model and say, boy, we could have accelerated our own success if we marketed ourselves a little more aggressively early. And how about turning that onto your client base, where you've been doing this a long time. I imagine not every firm you've worked with has gone on to huge success. So what happened in the one example that sticks in your mind of, man, we should have been able to help and it just wasn't going to work?

31:36The reality is what we do, there's a lot of authenticity to it, meaning if a management team is going to make silly mistakes, no PR can get you out of that. And this kind of gets to the other side of our business, which is the crisis management and the issues management, right? Right. So I always say sometimes that we are not just the communications council, but like the emotional intelligence council. So we had a client who called up on the weekend and said, we're going to make this announcement to all our partners that they're now going to be retitled to managing director. We're like, this is the communications we've written.

32:13And I mean, I looked at that and said, do you understand what this is? like psychologically, like when everyone's LinkedIn page goes from partner to MD overnight. And they thought it was no big deal. And I thought this is not just a big deal to your whole world. It's your talent. But reputationally, it will be a big black eye. And if you don't think people are going to talk about this in the press, they're absolutely going to. So sometimes some things that seem common sense to me are not necessarily. So I think that there are mistakes that are made in business turn out to be reputational mistakes, right?

32:51So that's where I see firms going wrong mostly is making genuine business mistakes that could have been avoided. And those become big reputational errors. And as you know, once you've let a perception or reputation calcify, very difficult to change that once it's happened. And what happened in that example? Did they roll it out or did you stop them from it? No, we stopped them. When I think about my proudest moments, it's when I stopped a client from doing something that would have been materially bad for their business and bad for their reputation. So let's turn to the crisis management side.

33:23Something happens, funds having a bad month, whatever it is, and you know the news is going to get out. What do you do? Well, of course, we try to mitigate disaster. And we also know if there is a really legitimate bad story or legitimate bad performance, there is sort of a myth out there that the firm is going to be able to kill a story. You don't kill a real story when it's bad and it's real. But what you can do is add context around it, neutralize it, negotiate with a reporter. Can I give you context around this? Because you're really too extreme on this. So we spend a lot of our time trying to neutralize or balance bad stories.

34:03Of course, we would like to think that we could always kill stories. But the reality is it's really the management around those stories. Negative performance almost always leaks to the press. So it's how do you deal with that and how do you contextualize that and how do you put forth the data about the performance over time, right? So that the reporter actually gets the story right and it's not as extreme, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. So the hedge fund industry hasn't had the best PR for the last 10 years, 11 years. How much do you pay attention to the PR of the industry when you're working with your clients that are in the industry?

34:45Context and sentiment is everything. So when negative sentiment is high, even if it's not among your target audience, you need to consider everything you do. So we do pay attention to it, of course. And I think we're very careful. It's sort of like you don't want to make an announcement when the news cycle is against you. A good PR firm is paying attention to everything, every data point, every policy move, every piece of press, whether it's in the popular press or it's in the institutional press. So context is everything. We're going to take a quick break in the action to tell you about SRS Aquium.

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36:11Learn more at srsaquium.com. That's S-R-S-A-C-Q-U-I-O-M.com. And now, back to the show. Do you try to influence the message for the industry at all? Sure. I think so. I think everyone's a participant in the industry, and some clients take that very seriously, and others really want to stay away from it. But we also do a lot of off-the-record and backgrounding with reporters. A lot of our clients actually invest a great deal of time educating reporters about the industry so that they can get it right. And that is usually repaid in spades. So again, I think when something is extreme or extremely negative, when people are willing to contextualize for the reporters, a lot of times it creates a more realistic, positive outcome.

37:03What's the competitive environment like for your business? It's very competitive, especially on the mature side. If a large global financial institution is going to hire a firm to manage its reputation, they are going to take that super seriously. And they are probably going to see upwards of 10 players in the beginning. And it's the usual process. Go from 10 down to four down to two finalists. But yes, it's a process. I would say on the other side of the fence, it's still a process, but it's not as competitive because those folks make decisions faster and they talk to their friends and they just decide if you're good enough for so-and-so, you're good enough for me.

37:40But think about it, though. On the large financial institution side, no offense to them, but they're spending other people's money and it's a different – there's a CEO and a CMO and a CCO and they're all – on the other side, it's a founder. and founders are to some degree going to go with relationship, gut, and who my friends use. What is it that the private equity firms have done right? They're long-term investors, right? And they're long-term operators. So the advantage they have is they take the long view of things anyway, and that's helpful. So I've seen a lot of the larger private equity firms actually do some very pioneering things that have helped them out now.

38:22Like if you look at KKR's track record on ESG and corporate social responsibility, it's like 12 years long. They've been looking at how to improve their companies, not just efficiencies, but climate footprints and all this stuff for years and years and years and years. So I think they have taken very seriously reputation, public policy, all this stuff. So I think that they've done some things really well. And I think the hedge funds will too. They're just earlier in their education process of what it means to really build those relationships and have those constituencies and protect your brand.

39:00I think it's just in early days. I also think, honestly, hedge funds have shorter-term mentalities, right? They're a trader mentality for the most part. So I think it's not as natural to them, this sort of space. But we see the hedge fund community as like talk about the emerging market. They are the tip of the iceberg with the emerging market, and they're taking this incredibly seriously. I mean, we must get five calls a week from hedge funds saying, I got to go from the back foot to the front foot. I got to learn this stuff and take it seriously, and what do I need to do? We don't spend very much time, even in the hedge fund community, educating them as to why they need this anymore.

39:35They know they need this. It's just getting it in place and the process that it takes to do it right. Do you think it's too late? No. Why? It's never too late. Well, I'm an optimist. I don't think it's too late. And I think that there will be always winners and losers. And I think the hedge fund space has had its challenges. But I think it will be a sustainable asset class. And I think they will learn these behaviors and they'll be very successful funds. I wanted to touch on another book that you wrote. Okay. I know which book that would be because there's only two. Well, why don't you go ahead and talk about it?

40:11Sure. So Army of Entrepreneurs is my first book. And what was so magical about that book is I believe, then again, I'm an optus, that any human being can be more entrepreneurial at work and that being more entrepreneurial at work creates a better experience for the company, but also individually. So I've seen adults, it's hard to teach adults new tricks, but we did. We taught adults new tricks and it worked. So when I had my daughter 10 years ago now, I was fascinated by, if you could teach adults to be more entrepreneurial, it's a child. Children are so moldable. How do you teach a child to be more entrepreneurial?

40:47And how much of it is nature versus nurture? My parents were teachers. They were not in business. And I ended up being an entrepreneur. And my brother is an artist and author, so he's actually an entrepreneur too in his own way. So people would always ask my parents, what did you do to create these two entrepreneurial kids? And they wouldn't have an answer. So the second book was really the journey to figure out, could you actually create a more entrepreneurial child and how do you do that? So I partnered with a professor at Brown who studies child psychology and brain science. So I brought the entrepreneurial side and he brought the science.

41:21And we wrote this book about how to create a more entrepreneurial child, which was really kind of a fun thing to do. And what'd you find? Well, I'm very careful not to claim victory because I have, I guess you just turned 11, An 11-year-old, so I can't say I've raised an entrepreneur yet. But what we found was what you'd expect, that you were born on a certain spectrum of entrepreneurial behavior, but that environment can absolutely create more entrepreneurial behavior, right? So we focused a lot in the book on what are those environmental factors. And, for instance, optimism. Optimism is proven to be – that can be trained.

41:57Like you could be born on the spectrum of optimist versus pessimist, but your environment can create a more optimistic person. So there are certain traits that can be highly influenced. What are some of the other ones you can train? So optimism was definitely one. Resourcefulness was another. I mean, one thing I'll never, ever forget when my daughter went to preschool, when we had the first meeting with the preschool teachers, they said to the parents, you know, no offense, parents, but we're going to tell you, stop carrying your kids up the stairs and let them walk. Stop zipping their jackets and let them try it themselves.

42:32You realize as parents, we want to do everything for our kids. We don't even let them have the joy of trying and failing to zip up their jacket or tie their shoes or whatever. We're just doing it all for them. And it was like a magic moment for me where I realized, oh my gosh, I'm not letting my kid experiment enough and try and fail enough. So like little things. If you actually start focusing on your parenting behavior that way, you start really changing it because you're like, oh my gosh, I'm not letting her do X, Y, Z. So taking risk, calculated risk is really, really important. And I know we live in a scary world where we want to protect our children, but we're often sucking all of the opportunity to take risk out of it.

43:14So it's a balance. Were there anything that you found that you were hoping could be trained, but you learned really was more nature than nurture? Not really. I mean, I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised that, as you would suspect, if you concentrate on steering your children in a certain way, you can actually have influence. There wasn't too much negative news, which is good. So what's next for you? What's next? Well, I always say to people, if I wrote down on a notepad, this is the firm I want one day. When I was sitting in my crappy office when we had like four employees and it was all looking very dark.

43:50This is the firm I wanted. So I'm like, oh, what's next? I think we're in such a magic moment as a firm. And I say that with humility because it took a long, hard road to get here. But I think outside of an economic event, the next five to 10 years should be very good for our firm. I think, again, the emerging market is raging. I think we have years before it becomes mature. And I think we have a lot to offer our clients in so many ways as they mature themselves. So I think we're just going to keep on doing what we're doing and execute and try to scale the magical culture we've had, which is probably the biggest challenge because the larger you get, the harder it is to scale culture.

44:31And so is there another book about the function of what you're doing in the come? Well, interestingly enough, Army of Entrepreneurs was published in 2011. And I feel like, oh my God, that's so 2011. The world's changed, right? So I'm talking to HarperCollins about doing an updated book on Army of Entrepreneurs and the New Generations because the new generations have certainly changed the workplace completely. And when you run a firm like ours, you have 60 % millennial and Gen Z population. So we've learned so much about how to motivate and retain that workforce that it just makes sense to update with all the special things in the first book, but all the new things that are to come.

45:13Gen Z just hit the workforce. What have you learned about the millennials? Because I know people often struggle to manage millennials. So what's really interesting is – I'll talk about millennials. So Gen Z is the newest, newest, newest workforce. They're like literally our most junior people. and they were raised predominantly by Gen X. So apparently the Gen Zs are going to be very gritty and tough and stick in their jobs because they were told not everyone gets a prize and you may not always win. And it's going to be a really interesting shift. The millennials, actually, I give them - They're not that.

45:48Well, they're not that, but I give them a lot of credit. They have changed the game at work. And a lot of things that they wanted out of work and life are right. And I think that they generally are going to have more balance in their lives. I think they're going to not wake up as much as Gen X did, miserable in their 40s and 50s because they didn't pursue what they wanted to pursue. What they have really right is just their focus on meaning and purpose and what matters. And they're brave. They are so brave, meaning if they don't like what you stand for and it doesn't align with their beliefs, they just walk out.

46:24And they walk out with no safety net. They are brave. We were not that brave. So I give them credit for a lot of things. But they've definitely challenged us too because millennials, unlike Gen Xers, we would stay at a job for 10 years happily. That's just not the way they're wired. So they've changed a lot of the workforce, but they've changed a lot for the good. I think a lot of people probably be excited to know that Gen Zs are flipping that switch a little bit. It's interesting. So I saw a presentation on Gen Z. And the thing that really resonated with me was like, millennials grew up on Harry Potter.

46:56Gen Z grew up on the Hunger Games. And they believe not only does only one person win, you might die in the process. So I thought that was really a big shift from whimsical to dystopian almost. Yeah, yeah. I wanna turn to some closing questions. Before we do, if you had just one nugget of wisdom that you wanted to share with someone who's coming into the office, has a fund, wants to grow, wants to stabilize their client base, what would it be? Figure out your differentiated narrative. The thing that when you say it about your firm, people get excited or want to write something down. I think differentiation is the name of the game.

47:36I thought you were going to ask me overall in life, and I was going to say the two most important words I ever learned were just ask. And my original partner in business taught me the just ask. And one of the really cool things about not growing up in another environment with a lot of rules is like, that was the only rule I ever knew. So I've gone through my entire career saying, what's the downside? I'm just going to ask. And when you ask and you ask the right way at the right time, I find about 70 % of the time you get something. And it's amazing how few people actually ask. Asking for something or asking a question of something you don't know?

48:16Asking for something that you want. So one of my best examples, I went to the CEO roundtable discussion and I had this wonderful chat with the CEO of a major global engineering and architecture firm. And in my brain, I was like, wow, I'd love to work with this company. I'd love to get a piece of business from this company, but you know, you don't do that. So we were leaving and trading cards and saying, you know, it was so nice to meet you. And we walk out, we're on the street corner, we're just about to leave each other. And my just ask meter went off and I said to him, you know, I don't want to be grabby, but if you ever need a PR firm, I hope you'll call me.

48:52And he goes, oh my God, I'm so glad you said that. We're actually looking for a PR firm. He had chatted with me for 30 minutes. I figured what I was saying resonated with him. He knew what I was doing. But if I didn't ask on the street corner, he became a client for eight years. If I didn't ask on the street corner, I wouldn't have gotten. I have another story, one of my favorite, with a really, really, really big, well,$25 billion hedge fund, been a client for 10 years. We gave the first pitch. They fell in love with us. They said, all right, you're going to get it. All you have to do is meet the founder.

49:25So we thought, we're like shoo-in. We should have done more homework. We met the founder, very intimidating man, and it wasn't a good meeting. It was terrible, in fact. And I'm like, oh, crap. We just blew it. So we walk out, and the guy who liked us the first time calls me like, oh, Jen, I'm sorry. That wasn't so great. I'm like, I know. I know. I know. I know. I was so embarrassed. So we hang up the phone, and then I called him back. And I'm like, do you think you could get us another meeting with him? And the guy's like, I don't think so. And then he called me back. He's like, I got you another meeting with him.

49:59They almost respected the fact that I was like gritty. Like I'm like, ask for another meeting. We had a great second meeting. We got the client 10 years later. So I just think the just ask thing is very powerful. So you prefaced it with two things. You said first, just ask, but at the right time and in the right way. What's the right time? Well, you have to have a lot of emotional intelligence around everything you do in life. Well, the right time could be anything. Like you have to get the other person's vibe. Are they having a bad day that day? Are they distracted? Are they wet from walking out in the rain?

50:32Like everything you do in Just Ask has to be orchestrated around right place, right time. Or like yesterday, one of my clients was having a crisis. And in my brain, he hasn't found his contract yet. And I really want it. Am I going to ask him for the contract when he's right in the middle of a do or die? moment. No, I'm not. So I think it's like anything else. It's common sense. And what's the right way? I always say the right way is with humanity, meaning I think the reason in the story about the$25 billion hedge fund they gave me a second chance is it kind of reminded them of them. There was humanity in it.

51:08I've said, I really like you guys. I know we screwed it up and it would mean the world to me if you gave us another chance. You don't have to do it. I get it. I think there was humanity in the moment. I think they're like, you know what? We like this chick. She's got grit, you know? And I do think on the private side, especially no matter how large the firms get, you're dealing with people who own the place. It is their money, their firm, their business. And it becomes very personal. Luckily, I didn't grow up in someone else's corporate environment where I believed you couldn't just be a human.

51:40That's one of my other goals in life. It's like, just do it the way you think you should do it as a human being. And that's always been my guidance. Are there any other of these sort of guiding principles either that you use here or in your life? Yeah, I'm sure I have a whole book from, I'm gonna have to do book number three. But yeah, I think there's a lot of them. This sounds like a negative one, but another one I sort of say is like, let your enemy be your energy. There's a lot of me too going on and all this sort of stuff. And when I have felt left out or insulted or biased or whatever, I've always turned it into a point of energy.

52:18Like, I'll show that person. I'll do that. I'm going to do that. And I think that's the entrepreneurial spirit within me. But a little bit of competitiveness or controversy sometimes can fuel a whole lot of good energy too. So I probably could write down like 25 of these little genisms. How about one more? Another big one for me is solve, don't dwell. Put all your energy into solving problems and don't dwell for a second when things go wrong. Because again, people put too much energy on the dwell and not enough on the solve. But I read this great book by Jim Collins once, and he talks about something called luck moments.

52:56And he says, every human being has pretty much the same portfolio of luck moments, good ones and bad ones. And the people who shoot the moon are the people who recognize when it's a luck moment, a good luck moment, and they focus and they max it out. They don't get distracted. They're like, this is the moment. And they're also the same people that take a bad luck moment and turn it into a good luck moment. And I would say the story about the hedge fund, bad luck moment into good luck moment. I mean, that story has been so important to me. I tell that story to everyone here because I'm like, this is what can happen when you just are genuine and human, right?

53:31So bad luck moments into good luck moments is really, I think, very powerful. And that's that solve, don't dwell thing. All right, we got to keep going. Think of another one. Another one. Oh, whatever. I have so many mantras. Don't be a black and white thinker. I don't think there's never one way to solve a problem. There's like 150. And I think people tend to be incredibly black and white, and they don't play the gray enough. From my experience, there are a lot of people in the investment world that succeed in part because they're black and white thinkers. How do you work with that type of client?

54:05Well, there's a lot of those people, right? The nice thing is in my world, in the world of reputation and communication, there's almost never one answer. So I think it's getting your client to respect this world is different than your world. Because you're right, math, there's one problem. There's one answer. And I think people who are in this industry, they grow up on math. I love this story. So when I went to Columbia Business School, the first semester was statistics, accounting, finance, and human behavior. Of course, I'm freaking out about the first three. All my colleagues were freaking out about the human behavior class.

54:41I was like, what is up? I'm like, all right, my brain is wired completely differently. And it's not like they thought it was a stupid class. They were literally like afraid of it. So I'm like, all right, wiring is different. So I think it's just getting your client to appreciate that they're in their business for a reason and I'm in mine for a reason. And the way they see the world isn't always the way you need to see the world to be successful on my side of the fence. All right, Jen, let's turn to some closing questions. What is your favorite hobby or activity outside of work and family? Well, there's not much time left.

55:15But no, my favorite hobby, if I could do it more, would be scuba diving. Nice. So you do some? I do. Yeah, I dive a couple times a year. What's your biggest pet peeve? My biggest pet peeve is, well, maybe two things. Even for myself, and it happens. It happened today with you. I hate being late, and I don't like people who are late. I guess that's a pet peeve. I think another pet peeve is people who say that can't happen. I don't like that. I always feel like maybe that can't happen that way, but what could we do instead? So I'm getting to yes, gal. So that's a pet peeve too. And I guess a third pet peeve, I'm first generation American.

55:56And I guess it was drilled into my head how much I should appreciate the opportunity that we have here, even with all the U.S.'s problems. So I think another pet peeve is people who don't appreciate what they were naturally afforded by being born in this country. What reading do you almost never miss? In my profession, you have to read voraciously. So I think my never misses list is the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Vanity Fair, and The Atlantic. That gives me a really good mix. Yeah. Probably take care of it. Great. What teaching from your parents has most stayed with you?

56:34My parents actually ended up teaching me a lot without me realizing it, but upon later reflection. So my dad was a big naturalist, so he taught me to appreciate nature. He was also really into poetry. And I find that all the poems he drilled into my head have actually been oddly like these guiding lights. Do you have a favorite? I guess I have two. Well, I have a lot, but a couple that one is like sort of positive and one is sort of depressing. But I think the Robert Frost Road Less Traveled, you know, and I feel like that's my business, right? I chose to go in the direction that no one else did and that afforded me a lot.

57:12So I use that Frost poem a lot in my presentations. There's also this odd poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox called Solitude. It's very depressing, but it has some real truths. And it sort of starts, I won't be able to recite the whole thing, but I can recite the first few lines. It was, laugh in the world, laughs with you, weep and you weep alone. And it's really a poem that reminds you that the world wants to hang with an optimist, a bright light, someone with passion, someone with energy, and that as much as, of course, we should all support each other on our problems, no one wants to really hang with somebody who is always dour.

57:51And I would say I subscribe to that. How about your mom? So my parents spoke six languages each. When they didn't want us to understand what they're talking about, they just chose three or four languages to speak. So I think they taught me the importance of being open-minded, being worldly, respecting other cultures. And I think I look back on my parents, and the one thing I think about all the time is we live in a snarky world. I don't think my parents said one negative thing about anyone behind their back the entire time I was growing up. And I really look at that as like a wow. I don't think I know anybody like that, including myself.

58:31That's fantastic. All right, last one. What life lesson have you learned that you wish you knew a lot earlier in life? To be honest with you, I think I got very lucky early in life. Like I said, it looked like a bad luck moment that I couldn't get the job of my dreams, that big firms weren't hiring in New York City, that I ended up working for this random guy in a crappy office, whatever. But like, look what a luck moment it actually ended up being. So I would say I had the privilege of learning a lot of things early that other people learn later because I didn't have a lot of rules around me.

59:07When you have a lot of rules around you, you actually start thinking those things are right. And I think that I learned early how to do things my way. But no, I know how lucky I've been. Are there life lessons you try to teach your younger people early in their careers? Oh, definitely. Some of them I mentioned. The solve, don't dwell. The don't be a black and white thinker. just ask, behave with humanity, all of those things for sure. And I definitely drill it into my daughter. Great, Jen. Thanks so much. Thank you, Ted. Thanks for listening to this episode. I hope you found a nugget or two to take away and apply in your investing and your life.

59:47If you'd like what you heard, please tell a friend and maybe even write a review on iTunes. You'll help others discover the show and I thank you for it. Have a good one and see you next time. Thank you.