[REPLAY] Paul Black and Mike Trigg – How to Build a $100B Money Manager (Capital Allocators, EP.227)

27:51And his response to us was, yeah, that's because there's an absence of fear here. And I think that that's something that has always resonated with us. It's something that's kind of hard to put your finger on. But honestly, when I've assessed cultures of companies that we've invested in, it's that same sort of intangible quality that I've seen as well. I think there's other markings that we've learned that an allocator could look out for that could lead to the possibility of the culture becoming toxic, a lack of succession planning, the level of engagement that the founder has, how they think about hiring.

28:27Mike, you mentioned the importance of hiring and how some firms do it better than others. What are your current hiring practices when you're bringing somebody in today? Well, I think the thing that we have really stuck to since the beginning is looking for talent in unique places. Paul talked a little bit about the origins of how myself, Pete Hunkle, Sanjay Ayer, how we were all hired, all of which had relatively unconventional backgrounds. I was writing a newsletter at Morningstar. Sanjay had left business school. Pete had an operations background. And in many respects, all of us are self-taught investors because we didn't go through a traditional training program at a large asset manager.

29:13And I think it's created the starting conditions for having people that just think differently and try to somewhat creative and curious. And so we've really tried to stick to that. We hired somebody two years ago that we actually originally found on Twitter. He had a Twitter handle under a fake name. He was someone that we followed, we liked. It was very much, in a way, Paul's experience with me in the newsletter, just saying things that kind of resonated with you personally. And then ultimately, I think we figured out that he lived in London. We reached out to him, direct messaged him, turned out that he was actually doing really, really well in an investment management firm in London, and then just basically courted him to come to WCM.

29:56But constantly trying to stick to that, we really try not to use headhunters. We find that to be an unbelievably inefficient, very conventional process. We don't try to overweight background and pedigree in a big way. We've really tried to keep our standards exceptionally high. I think that's sometimes Paul would argue maybe I've kept them too high. But I think we've gotten a lot better at hiring over the years. I still find it to be, as the leader of an investment team, I find it to be probably the single hardest thing that we do. If I was going to nut that out, Ted, I would say a couple of things.

30:33One, the single hardest position to hire for in a money management firm is research. Because at the end of the day, you don't know if that research analyst is really any good. Typically, they don't have a track record. They don't have an extensive body of work. And so I've found that our most successful hirings have been around people that have certain characteristics that I would say reflect a great attitude. Give me somebody with a great attitude that's reasonably smart, and I can probably work with them. And so there are really three characteristics that I would define in there. One is you really want somebody that's hungry, that has a lot of passion for investing.

31:12I think having passion for investing, maybe they were stock jockeys when they were 15 years old and they started, they got hooked on the business. That's a good thing because if they love what they do, right, in those very difficult periods of time, they're going to stick with it. I think a sense of humility is really important in this business, this idea that you don't know the answer to everything. If you're humble, you probably ought to keep grinding away at your task and trying to get smarter and better. And so humble, hungry, and smart. You've got to have smart people. And smart people to us are not book smart.

31:44They're people that really have a really good sense, a really good common sense, and a really good intuitive feel for the business and for the markets. And so at the end of the day, I think our most successful hires have been people that have great attitudes and are really good cultural fits. And you can kind of suss that out over a period of time, but it takes time. And I think the other one, curiosity and a learning aptitude is just another really big one that I think has been consistent with our best hires. Because ultimately, when you're hiring somebody, you're trying to project what they're going to be like in five years or 10 years.

32:20And people that are just... When you talk to Mike Tian in this firm, you just are struck by the level of curiosity. And on a given year, the new things he's trying to learn from one year to the next. And I think that and being a highly self-aware person, I think are two of the really big things that have been consistent with successful people on our team. So once you've brought these people in, you've talked about this super positive culture. Paul, one of the things you've talked and written about is this idea that there's an element of truth-telling that's really important to keeping that culture in a positive way.

32:54And I'd just be really curious for you to dive in a little bit on how you learn that and then how you express it within WCM? It's an interesting question because it is not a natural part of the firm. It's something we're really wrestling with now because we've been very, very good at caring for our people. To me, if people really know they're cared for and that we would go to bat for them, and I've got a couple of terrific stories about that where we really have gone to bat for people initially. If people know you have their back and that you truly care for them as individuals and people, you're going to have, I think, a lot of success with that individual.

33:37But part of that, and this is the part that I'm trying to get better at too, is truth-telling. It's having those hard conversations that say, you know what, I'm disappointed that you really haven't measured up in this particular situation. It's having that discussion, let's say, with a sales guy that, you know, you've made a lot of money, you've done really well, but are you working as hard today as you were working 10 years ago. Let's just be truthful about that. And those are discussions that we're increasingly have because we almost feel like we've gone too far, frankly, on the caring for people side.

34:11And we haven't gone far enough on, look, part of caring for people is telling the truth and being candid. And that's not going to be as fun for you. But you know, we're going to be really better for it at the end of the day. I mean, Mike, if you want somebody to tell the truth to you, then work with Mike Trigg. Mike Trigg tells me the truth very candidly all the time. And most of the time I accept it really well. And I work really hard to change either my behavior or not my attitude, because I have a great attitude, but mostly my behavior and how I interact with other people. It's a work in progress and it's very difficult.

34:47Caring is easy. I think for us as an organization, truth telling, which we're working on is much more difficult, but we're getting far better at it. And we're at that point now where if you don't do it with 75 people, you're going to have a lot of more issues across the board because not telling someone the truth affects other people in the organization in a negative way. One of the things we've wrestled with recently is in the past, I think we've been quick to sort of describe WCM as a family. And actually, Toby Ludge, the founder and CEO of Shopify, which is an investment of ours, had actually a great internal memo that got leaked last year that talked about and clarified the fact that Shopify is not a family.

35:36And it really resonated with me. While I thought the same thing about the firm in the past, I really view this to be just a group of people that really care about each other, but a group of friends more than a family. I mean, the reality is we're all born with an own family. You've got a mother, you've got a father, you've got siblings, you've got children. That's your family. And it's like, you can't really do anything about it one way or the other. But being a WCM really is a voluntary exercise. No one's forced to be here. I mean, I have the choice not to have a brother or a sister. But don't mistake the fact that I'm saying that we're friends to say, to mean that we can't still deeply care about each other.

36:12In fact, I have always said that a group of friends, some people have said, well, if you're all friends, nobody's going to want to hold each other accountable. And you're going to just be having fun all day and messing around. And I said, it's actually the exact opposite. My experience in my life with my friends has been that I don't want to let my friends down. If I have a boss who's a complete pain in the ass and he treats me terribly or she treats me terribly, would I probably not lose sleep over the fact that I didn't really go the extra mile for that person? Yeah, probably. Yeah, if I didn't like the person, it probably wouldn't bother me that much.

36:48But you know what? If it was a friend of mine who really cared about me, who was really invested in me, who'd gone the extra mile for me, yeah, I don't want to let that person down. And so we're having a little bit of an internal discussion even today about our firm, particularly as we get bigger, about is it family, is it friends? And I'm kind of gravitating more towards this notion of just being a group of friends that deeply care about each other because I think it still speaks to that desire and that need to go the extra mile and be there for one another. One of the things that's been interesting over the last couple of years, when we first sat down, you were$25 billion and most of that was in one strategy.

37:22And today, you have more than that in a variety of other strategies. And I'm curious, outside of that original strategy, as you've brought in some other teams, some other people, what have you learned about what it takes to integrate someone who isn't just investing in international growth stocks with expanding modes with good cultures into a firm that was built on that one philosophy? Well, I think before we even think about indoctrinating them in our investment philosophy, I think the hardest thing is to indoctrinate them in our way of doing things and our culture. And I love telling this story, but when we were first coming out of our abyss, I guess, we started to have, we do a lot of retreats with our different teams and with our whole firm.

38:11And Paul would inevitably get up and he'd start crying at these things. And at one point I was like, would you just stop it? I'm like, listen, we're rebuilding this thing. Stop getting up there and talking about the past and crying. Let's go, man. And I have done a complete 180 on that because, and I've acknowledged that I was wrong about that. And the reason is because it's those stories and explaining them to people over and over again and letting them understand where we've come from and giving them an understanding of why we do things the way that we do, that's really the only way we're going to be able to scale the culture beyond the core group of people that have been here for a long time.

38:54So it's a lot of storytelling, but it's also in the moment, vulnerability and openness as well. We had our retreat this year, took the whole firm to a ranch up in Montana. And Paul and I had, there was a bunch of stuff going on in advance of that retreat. And at one point, Paul had been asking me a bunch of questions about things that have absolutely nothing to do with WCM. And at one point, I took them outside onto one of our patios and I just, I was tearing up and I said, would you just stop it with all these questions about this real estate deal that you're thinking about doing up in, I don't know, was it Idaho or something?

39:36And I said to him, I go, this firm is a gift. And it was, I think a bit of a splash of cold water in Paul's face at that time. And I think I got the outcome out of that that I was looking for, which was to get him focused again. And the only reason I'm really telling you that story is then that Paul then on his own, and he actually said this at the end of the conversation, he goes, you know what? You just helped me make my speech to the entire firm. And so then Paul, on the first night of that retreat, basically got up and told that exact same story to the entire firm. And it was just like showing that kind of vulnerability and practicing it day in and day out is really difficult, but it's the only way that you can continue to help new people.

40:23We can talk all about old stories and there's a little bit of, I always wear, there's a little bit of like the Abraham Lincoln. When I was your age, I walked eight miles to school there and back every single day type of thing. But then when you can also show that in the moment examples of what the leaders are going through to keep this thing going and keep it pure and keep it the way we talk about it, I think living it out every day and talking about that is critical. You want to get the best out of people? As a leader, you show vulnerability. If you show your vulnerability and your honesty about your life or what you're doing at this firm, people will respond to that.

41:02and they will take it to another level. That's been our whole story. Just open vulnerability from leadership and you will get a lot more out of people than you could otherwise. I love the story, Mike, if we have time, if you can just tell him about Greg Ice. The first year he was here, he couldn't even understand this Moak trajectory concept. He couldn't understand the culture work and he was actually ready to leave the firm, right? And you had a talk with him at one of the retreats, which, by the way, are the most powerful events that we consistently do, because you get more out of people with a little alcohol and a little fun than you're going to get out of them otherwise.

41:41But I love his transformation. We could get on the list of people on our team that, honestly, you hire people that have come from other firms. In many cases, in his case, it had been a couple of firms that had been difficult experiences. And so he's on his really impressive background, but this is his third stop and he's getting a little older. And I think in the back of his mind wondering, okay, what if this doesn't work out? And yet we're talking about all these things that, you know, he looks back at it now and laughs because he's like, how could I be wrestling with this culture thing when it actually explained, you know, why my prior two firms had struggled so much, oftentimes, which requires a lot of patience when people don't initially get why like caring can be a competitive advantage.

42:28As you guys know, I'm originally from Kansas City and a big Royals fan. And there's this great quote by our president of baseball operations. And he says, I tell people all the time, there are a lot of smart people in baseball and we're just not going to outsmart them. We're not smarter than anyone else and we're not going to work harder than anyone else either. But we have to care more than anyone else. That's our best chance. We have to care more. And that's the types of people that are typically attracted to this industry. That's a hard concept for them to get there. their heads around. So yeah.

42:59And then what's been great about someone like him is you've seen him sort of evolve into a leadership position where he's managing people and then he's going through his own challenges of somebody that may not originally be getting it and being patient and seeing that cycle play itself out again. And that's ultimately how we're trying to scale the whole thing. What happens in the situation where people want to be at WCM doing great, having a good time. But in your evaluation of someone's work product, it becomes clear over time that for whatever reason, they need to be voted off the island. How does that conversation go?

43:36Well, those are never easy conversations. I think the truth is, in our experience, that it's really been cultural complications and bringing the people around you down that has ultimately led to us to say it's time to part ways. We give people an enormous amount. I mean, my own experience at this firm was, and I've said this before, it's not like I came into this firm and just started shooting the lights out. And so you go into it knowing that you need to give this person time and a long leash to make mistakes and make sure they understand it's okay to make mistakes. The important thing is that are you acknowledging them?

44:15Are you learning from them? Are you getting better from these mistakes? And making it clear to that person that hiding mistakes and you'll go further in this firm faster if you actually acknowledge that you've made mistakes. And so we do a good enough job, I think, on the front end to make sure we don't encounter too many of those situations. But the funny thing is, Paul and I actually had lunch with somebody a couple of weeks ago and we were sort of chatting about this. What I don't think people probably totally appreciate about leadership is oftentimes times when you let someone go in your organization, Paul or myself might have to be the one that has to do it.

44:50But you know what? The reality is nine out of 10 times, your people tell you that that needs to get done before you actually have to make that decision yourself. And that's been, I think in almost every case, I can think of people coming and saying, I can't function as well as I was anymore because of this person. They're bringing me down or saying, hey, I know enough that this isn't the right situation anymore for the firm. It's not good for the firm. And then frankly, it becomes, okay, now I know I need to do something. It's a very difficult question for me to answer because the truth of the matter is when you look at the history and certainly the last 20 years or so, my answer to that question would have been, okay, I've got an underperformer, but as Mike said, they've got a good attitude.

45:34They fit all right culturally. They're kind of doing a great job. And I've always said, and this is probably management 101 wrong, I've always said, you know what? That's okay. They're good people. They got a family. I'm not letting them go. I'm just not letting them go. We're going to build around them. So I'd hire somebody around them and bring somebody else in to help fortify the work that they were doing. And I can tell you that in the last 20 years, I've probably done that seven or eight times where I've just built around somebody that was weak, as long as, as Mike said, they weren't toxic to the culture.

46:07The moment they start bringing down your stars is the moment you've got to move. Now, classic example is we had a research analyst that was actually here before Mike was that Mike worked with for a lot of years. And we kept trying to get him on board. Hey, we're going into international. We're moving more towards moat trajectory or moving more towards the important work on culture. and this individual is just completely committed to DCF modeling and wide-mote businesses, right? This went on for five years. Every six months, I'd talk to him. I'd say, hey, you've got to really get on board. This is where we're going.

46:42This is what we're doing. But he had three kids, and I didn't want to let him go. And eventually, Mike came to me one day, and he said, you know what? I'm really, really being brought down by this guy on a regular basis. It's really bringing me down. Well, as soon as that, then I finally wake up and I go, okay, it's time to move on. We ultimately let them go. So we're much better now. We will still build around weakness as long as it's not toxic and they're a good cultural fit, but we're getting much better at saying, you know what? It's probably better if you leave and go find something you're more suited to.

47:15Very hard decisions. And this is a people business and we care about people, but we do take that to the extreme sometimes. I want to circle back to this conversation about generational transition. You've had this incredible success over this last stretch of time here. How are you thinking about that down the road? Well, let me go back a little ways. You know, at one time, Kurt Winrich was the primary owner of the firm. In 1998, he basically owned 100 % of the company. Today, Kurt owns 20 % of the company. And we went from basically one owner in Kurt to, I believe, at the end of this year, we're going to have 50 different owners in the firm.

47:53All those transitions of wealth have been done at book value within the company, which, you know, basically is the computers, the sofas, the desks, and the chairs. It's not very much. So Kurt has diluted himself from essentially 100 % down to 20%, all at book value. So there was really no money made by him on the transaction to dilute himself. Now, obviously, he owns 20 % of a$105 billion firm versus 100 % of a$200 million firm. It's really worked out well for him. But that's been kind of our model across the board. We will grant shares to people that have obviously demonstrated the ability to add excess return to the portfolio or somehow move the needle on the profitability side.

48:37Now, as many people know, Kurt Winrich is retiring at the end of this year. He owns 20 % of the company. Part of my work on other money management firms was trying to figure out the best way to transition Kurt's wealth that is literally worth hundreds of millions of dollars right now to the next generation. And we could sell 10 % more to Mike, but Mike would have to borrow$200 million to do that. We could say, look, the firm will fund you, but you still have the overhang. What we concluded is the best way to transition wealth is the founders have to be generous. The founders ultimately have to take a significant haircut in order to make sure that the company continues to prosper.

49:20So we've chosen to basically sunset, Kurt. Kurt, that means for the next seven years, he will receive his dividend every year for the next seven years. And then that will retire into treasury and it'll be accreted to everybody else. Now, the downside on that for Kurt, of course, is he could probably go out now and sell his 20 % in the market for 10 times EBITDA. At the end of the day, if you're essentially selling it for seven times EBITDA at an income tax level versus a capital gains tax level, he's actually receiving about four times EVDA for shares that are worth an awful lot of money. So we've just concluded that if you want to keep this going, the founders have to be generous and the founders have to be willing to walk away with a much lower multiple than they otherwise would have made.

50:08And I think it's the best model that we found. There's a big company in London going through this very same thing where it's a $50 billion company. There are a couple of founders that want to cash out, but they want a market multiple. And nobody can afford to pay a market multiple for a$50 billion firm. And what's happening? The talent is leaving. They're losing PMs. They're losing top research analysts. That firm will be worth a fraction of what it once was because the founders aren't willing to be generous. And why do you think it is that you've chosen that path, that Kurt's chosen that path, when that's just so different from other people in the industry.

50:48And you look at, if that's what it takes, just walking away from an enterprise value that you've built over the years in order to sustain a business. Kurt will tell you, it is not all about him. It is not all about him. This firm was not built by Kurt Winrich. This firm was not built by Paul Black. This firm was not entirely built by Mike Trigg or Sanjay or Pete Hunkle. This firm is the collective efforts of a lot of people. Now, you can argue, okay, we were founders. We were there in the early days. We were there when we were trying to keep the lights on, when we were suffering performance from the domestic strategy.

51:22And there's some value to that. But ultimately, we know that we've all done extraordinarily well. We won the lottery, and we don't need to get every last dollar off the table. I'd much rather leave something in Kurtz this way. He'd rather leave something to me and Mike and Sanjay and Pete and Sloan that endures and goes on than he would trying to get his last$100 million. It's a mindset, and it's a life philosophy that really is about caring for others more than you care for yourself. I mean, it sounds corny these days, but it's a living example of caring about other people more than yourself.

51:59And Kurt will tell you he has been wildly overcompensated for the last 20 years, and he's happy to do it. So it starts by the core values of the person themselves. How do you think about leadership at WCM going forward? That's a great question as well. And it's interesting. The good news about Kurt stepping away, he's going to remain chairman of the board. So he will still be with myself, Mike, and Sloan at our leadership training retreats that we go to periodically throughout the year. We'll see him once a quarter for board meetings. And he's actually still going to stay engaged. It's funny. Here's the former co-CEO and chairman of WCM.

52:38You know what he loves to do? He loves to edit the quarterly newsletters and the quarterly updates that we do. That's what he loves to do. He's that guy that loves to be in the background. So he's going to continue to do quite a few things. He won't be in the investment strategy group anymore. But Kurt's influence is so ingrained in this firm today based on his love for people. And we all embody that. And he'll be around enough. So I don't expect a lot of changes. I'll miss seeing him every day. but I'll see him enough during the year and we'll still get a lot of his wisdom. I just called him up the other day on a compensation issue saying, Kurt, you know, I know you really well and I know you could go one of two ways on this.

53:18What do you think? That relationship will continue on. And that's where he's, you've got 35 years of wisdom that we can still tap into. I think it's a scaling question, how to continue to do more of what we have and create more leaders in the firm. I think that's a big focus of mine. Things around equity and compensation, creating a lot of upward mobility for people, talking to them about the idea of being a steward of WCM and having an ownership mindset. One of my favorite things to do is to still write internal thought pieces that touch on maybe some of the behaviors and values that I think have been essential to our success.

53:58I wrote one last year called The Other Stuff, which talked about some of the unspoken core values of the firm, like scrappiness and irreverence and humility. And then we're doing things to think about how to become better coaches and mentors. We started an advisory board that's sort of a group of people, a layer below our leadership team and spending more time with them and trying to groom them into the next set of leaders in the firm. For me, leadership is really just a pretty simple concept that makes situations in people as successful as they can be. And that's, I think, as we become more successful and there's more people that are having lots of success, I think one of the things that Paul and I talk about a lot is, and this started from Kurt, and it's something that we have to carry on.

54:43It's really to get people to think about others more than themselves. And it's really difficult in the type of environment that most asset managers find themselves in. And the way I've tried to describe it to people in the past is like, okay, you've landed on the lily pad of investment management at WCM. You have nothing to worry about anymore. Let's relax. We've got your back. You can make mistakes here. We're going to support you. This should be your last job under most circumstances. And if you can get people to really buy into that and believe you and trust you on that, then all that's really left to do is then focus on the other people around you.

55:21And if we can have, say, an investment team of 12 or 15 people where everybody walks in the door every day and their number one objective is to make everyone around them better. As an individual, if you have 14 people that are, that's their sole focus every day, you're going to go a lot further, faster than you could ever do if you were just focused on yourself. And so if we can continue to kind of preach that message and get people to live that out every day, then I think we're just going to have more examples of leadership and people just making situations, stuff that Paul I'll never see and ideas and situations will improve and we can keep this going, I think, for a really long time.

56:01It's such a great story. Now, Mike, Paul, I can't let you go without a couple of closing questions. And it turns out, Paul, it was a couple of years ago that you came on. The closing questions are completely different. So I'm going to ask you a bunch. And then there's a couple that Mike didn't answer last year. We'll go at the end. So Paul, what's your favorite hobby or activity outside of work and family? I've thought a lot about this and I've come up with watching Ted Lasso. Have you seen Ted Lasso? Best show on television. It's the best show on television. Love Ted Lasso. I also love reading investment books.

56:34I've probably read every single classic investment book. In fact, I'm reading one right now called Capital, written by Charlie Ellis about the Capital Group. Really one of the better investment books out there. If you're an asset manager and you want to know more about how to run a$2.5 trillion firm, read that book. So I like to read thoughtful books on the investment business, but first and foremost, watch Ted Lasso. What's your most important daily habit? Watching Ted Lasso.

57:06I would say taking time every day to break out and try to just sit and be thoughtful about something that has to do, in this case, at work with the firm or being thoughtful about the portfolios and how their portfolios are being run. But I would say in general, for me, it's just taking enough time each day to sit down and think about where are we going as a firm and what can we do to make sure the culture is healthier. There are a lot of aspects to that, but it's really just being still and quiet for a period of time to be able to think. What's your biggest personal pet peeve? By far, lack of gratitude.

57:47We have so much to be grateful for. As Buffett said, you're born in America and won the lottery. You're in the money management firm, a great money management firm that's had a great deal of success. You should be incredibly grateful. And what to me, with gratitude comes responsibility. And that responsibility is making sure that you give back. How about in the investment side? What's your biggest investment pet peeve? DCF models. People that anchor to DCF models is by far my biggest pet peeve because I do believe back in the early days when we made mistakes, we spent an inordinate amount of time on DCF models and we were precisely wrong, by the way, 10 years later.

58:35All right. Which two people have had the biggest impact on your professional life? That's a hard one for me, Ted, because one, I would say 25 years ago, I tried to quit the industry because I was at Bank of America and it was a very miserable time for me. I had a really good mentor and friend who walked me around a lake in Oakland and convinced me not to quit. If I had quit and went and become a camp counselor, I wouldn't be here at WCM doing something I absolutely love to do. I'm sorry to give you more people, but I'd throw Kurt Winrich in there for sure, Mike Trigg and Sloan Payne. These are all my partners.

59:13We have a leadership team that is second to none. There's just something magical about what we each bring to the equation and they've all had massive impacts on my life. What's the biggest mistake you made and what did you learn from it? Don't rely on DCFs. DCFs are - DCFs and Ted Lasso seem to be the two predominant things. I'm sorry. DCFs, Ted, you know this, our business worships at the modeling of discounted cash flows on businesses. And everyone thinks the magic is in the DCF. And very, very little of the magic is there. That's just a tool. And that tool is only as good as the input. So from my perspective, I think there'd be a lot better asset managers out there if they would focus more on the business and the culture versus the valuation.

1:00:10Mike, I'm going to turn to you because now we can get both of you guys in here. What teaching from your parents has most stayed with you? I think not to judge, not to be judgmental, to try to understand that we're all flawed individuals at the end of the day. I've made certainly my fair share of mistakes today. And to have your parents extend you grace and forgiveness and to understand the power of that. And then to be able to be in a position to, in turn, extend that to other people around you in your life, I think is something that I think just is necessary to have a healthy, happy life. Paul, how about you?

1:00:49It's really the idea around keep showing up. Now, it's interesting. I just kind of naturally did that. I have multiple examples of where I need to keep showing up in order to ultimately have success. But yeah, my parents were all about, hey, you just keep showing up every day. And you know what? Eventually, something good will happen. And that is just my life just defines that. You know, there were so many times I could have quit at something. But the fact that I kept showing up and doing good things each and every day has been remarkable. for me. All right, Mike, last one for you. What life lesson have you learned that you wish you knew a lot earlier in life?

1:01:30The importance of just balance in your life, I think, is something that I've really learned to appreciate, particularly probably in the last few years. It can't be all about work all the time. And I know in my life, and I've certainly experienced this with people around me too, when people don't have balance in their life, you drive the people around you crazy. I've certainly done that. You get in your head about some issue or something at work, and then you, it's the typical thing you think about when you can't sleep in the middle of the night, and then you wake up in the morning, you're like, well, I can't believe I didn't sleep for three hours because of that stupid thing.

1:02:05And I think you have fewer of those kinds of moments when you have a lot of balance in your life. And I would include spirituality as another key component that's really helped me understand the importance of what really matters the most at the end of the day. And a lot of these little things, they're outside your control and you can't do anything about it. And you need to just show up and do the best you can every day and try to live a full, balanced life. All right, Paul, why don't you bring us home? What life lesson have you learned that you wish you knew a lot earlier in life? It's the same answer that I gave to the prior question, which is keep showing up because I did not keep showing.

1:02:42The one time in my life I didn't keep showing up, I have regretted for 35 years that I didn't finish it out and see where it might have gone. I was actually a pretty decent college football player, Division I. When I got to the team, they were ranked 16th in the nation. And I played a year and then realized I didn't really love it as much as I used to love it. I was fairly gifted in terms of talent. And I've always wondered, I ended up leaving my senior year and I've always wondered what would have happened if I would have given it everything I had for at least 12 more months. And I short circuited myself.

1:03:25And it's one of those things I've always regretted, but you know what? What's come out of that is in my professional life, I never quit. I never ever stop because I've so regretted doing that one time when I was in college. Mike Paul, congrats on all the success and really excited to see what comes next for WCM. Thank you, Ted. Thanks for listening to the show. To learn more, hop on our website at CapitalAllocators.com, where you can join our mailing list, access past shows, learn about our gatherings, and sign up for premium content, including podcast transcripts, my investment portfolio, and a lot more.

1:04:08Have a good one and see you next time.

1:04:33and further information.