Parker Gals | Trust Over Transactions: The Heart of Private Equity (w/ Nori Welles-Gertz, ParkerGale)

0:00Cass: We love deals.

0:01Nori Welles-Gertz: Yeah. It is about deals. But the business itself is about relationships and trust. And we hold companies for five to seven years. You can't just do a transaction for that long. You're really trading on trust and your reputation. That's really all you have. So everything you do compounds into the reputation that you'll have in the market. And I think that's about way more than transactions.

0:34Cass: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Parker Gales Funcast. We are here at the Parker Gale headquarters and I am here with Nori, who is, I never say your last name, Nori Wells-Gertz, who is a principal on the investment team here at Parker Gale with me. And I forced her through various means to be on this podcast because she just likes to work and do deals and I said I we've pushed it off too many times so here we are here we are Nori how are you feeling here we've made it so we obviously know people probably obviously know Parker Gale because we've talked about it ad nauseum there's a theme song even there's a whole thing but uh can you from your perspective give a little bit of like hey how did you come to be at Parker Gale.

1:29Nori Welles-Gertz: I ended up here because I had been in consulting and Cass has heard me tell this story way too many times. But after four years in consulting, which was really about making slides essentially, which I was not terrifically good at. You are much better at slides than I am though. For the consulting world, that was not the thing I wanted to be waking up every morning to do. And I'd worked on a project that involved looking at a bunch of companies in a space and trying to help our client decide whether to build, buy, or partner with these companies. And I really enjoyed that project. It lasted almost a year.

2:08Nori Welles-Gertz: And at the end of that, I realized you could actually do that for a living. You know, break down markets, identify competitors in them, and then buy them and do more than just propose with a slide deck what should be done with them. Yeah. So I decided to make the leap, I guess, from consulting into private equity and started talking to recruiters and everyone who would take my phone call.

2:30Cass: And it just so happened that Parker Gale was hiring at the time because you were leaving for business school. I was leaving. Yes. So Nori was coming in. We overlapped for like one, maybe two months. And then they were like, get out of here. Like, stop showing up. To you, but yeah. Yes. They did not say it to you because I came back from business school and you are still here. and we have both been working together since so it was just kind of a fun overlap period where I was just like here's all my companies see you later some of them are great some of them you'll have fun with yeah yeah and I was just like listen I didn't do some of these things but here's what I would do including a stack of financials that were pdfs with pencil annotations that needed to become

3:13Nori Welles-Gertz: an excel you're welcome yeah it was a good it was a good first experience especially like not in the

3:19Cass: age of AI, like that would not be actually the worst situation. But at the time I was like, oh my gosh, I don't have to do this. They were a real stack. I'm so excited that you're joining the firm. Amazing. Okay. So the first section that we do here on Parker Gales is called indication of interests, maybe a little bit different than the IOIs that you're used to. What is your go-to comfort show? do I know this one the longest running one what is your go-to just what what is your go-to arrested development oh I should know that yeah you do I do know that we make a lot of arrested development jokes I feel like so many people somehow we have like aged out now like we're some of our associates aren't catching our references and funnily if you make an office

4:06Nori Welles-Gertz: joke they pick up every single one and can point to the episode by name right I don't think it's

4:10Cass: an aging out thing that's true that's true but I I think I did how much money or there's always money in the banana stand this week this week it was it was certainly yep um I do egg a lot and

4:23Nori Welles-Gertz: you're the only one that gets it egg her yeah every time yes um wait what is so longest running

4:30Cass: what is your other what else came to mind I feel like you're a documentary person you do like that fact I do like some documentaries correct I also assume that you watch a lot of documentaries I know because you know the most random facts about all sorts of stuff so I in my brain I just associate that with like she must have watched a documentary I think that would take a lot of

4:51Nori Welles-Gertz: it would take so many attention span for that but but you would be actually you should try out for

4:56Cass: jeopardy or something like in your free time when you're not doing deals or going on this podcast finally because I have yet to experience you completely with on a like like a founder will have like the most niche hobby and you're like I know exactly like the tool that you're talking about of exactly like that type of like I don't even know how to give an example of this because I don't know any of the terminology that you say and you're like so deep in it you're like oh it's exactly this type of manufactured piece of equipment and I'm like what

5:31Nori Welles-Gertz: you did do agriculture yeah i was gonna say consulting i got to spend a lot of time in

5:34Cass: bizarre industrial niches so yeah that's true yeah but we can play on that we're just gonna think about jeopardy for your future okay what's something i'm i've made these questions for all sorts of people and i know you so well that this just makes me laugh thinking about what you're gonna say what's something that you can cook without looking at a recipe nori i can make gluten-free pancakes without a recipe we've talked about that yes you know this already

6:03Nori Welles-Gertz: yeah uh that is probably one of the only things i do that involves a recipe which is not like a duration thing should be cooked which i don't know how do you do it how do you do it gluten-free

6:12Cass: pancakes yeah okay it's easy i hope yeah it's a banana a whole banana mashed mashed a cup of

6:22Nori Welles-Gertz: pick your gluten-free flour okay sorghum sorghum mixed with either buckwheat or millet works pretty well okay uh and then it is water okay baking and i never remember if it's soda or powder but i only have one of them in the cupboard it's the one that you have yep that's made from cassava instead of anything else because it's gluten-free and then there's uh applesauce and vanilla and then you just mix it all up and you just cook them yep and it's pancakes so the same way you cook regular pancakes and i actually do need to do that that seems easy i've like avoided

6:57Cass: making things like pancakes for years because we were in the toddler phase with Liv for so long and any time that we would try to if I did anything with baking they love it. She would love it.

7:07Nori Welles-Gertz: Yeah.

7:08Cass: The flour. Oh.

7:11Nori Welles-Gertz: I was going to say with this you don't eat eggs which is my least favorite part of cooking with small children is eggs because they get everywhere.

7:19Cass: I'll try it. Liv and I will have some gluten free pancakes. I'll report back now that I have the recipe. okay so nori what's your perfect saturday which season are we in let's start with summer uh summer saturday and you're not working on a deal i just want to just preface that because honestly imperfect you might actually include work not wrong uh usually summer would involve

7:49Nori Welles-Gertz: mountains in the morning before the thunderstorms roll in. Nice. Usually a hike. Hike. And then in the afternoon, boating of some sort, whether we're near an ocean or a lake. Yep. Put you on a boat. Afternoon workout followed by a swim and then usually a fire.

8:04Cass: Afternoon workout. Did you work out? Well, you already hiked. That's not a workout. Did you? That's a hike. Did you also row in the morning before you hiked?

8:16Nori Welles-Gertz: Depends on how big the hike is. But if you're not in the mountains and you're on the lake, then yes, it's a row in the morning. Some would disagree with that.

8:22Cass: You may disagree with this, that I'm counting like three to four workouts. And you fix it.

8:28Nori Welles-Gertz: There's outdoor activities that are, you know, aerobic in nature maybe, but they're not the workout. Okay. The workout is the workout.

8:35Cass: Okay. Yeah. Winter. Skiing.

8:39Nori Welles-Gertz: The whole day.

8:40Cass: Pretty much. Okay. You wake up. You're on first chair. Or skin up. Or skin up. Ideal is probably skin up. For those who don't know what that means, you are? Going uphill. Going uphill. Yes. Carrying your skis. No. No. Backpacks? How does it work?

8:57Nori Welles-Gertz: Well, you typically do have a backpack.

8:59Cass: And you put your skis.

8:59Nori Welles-Gertz: But the skis are on the snow with skins on them, hence the skinning. And the skins keep you from sliding backwards down the hill. Yeah.

9:08Cass: Amazing. Yeah.

9:09Nori Welles-Gertz: That tracks. And then you get to the top, you take the skins off, put them in your backpack, and ski down. Sold. So you do that in the morning and in the afternoon.

9:18Cass: I'm going to wait until I can be brought up to ski.

9:23Nori Welles-Gertz: But you do that in the afternoon, typically, unless there's a ton of powder and then you switch the order because the powder is better in the morning and you don't want to spend the time skinning up while the powder is good. Amazing.

9:35Cass: Now we're going to get a little bit into your career. So what drew you to private equity in the first place? We were talking about sides moving from consulting and you wanted to maybe break down industries and all that. But like anything else? What else? What else was like this is this is something because it's a big commitment to make a decision to make that careers change over from consulting and to start that route. You might have even thought about doing investment banking to get there. I don't know what you're. I did not do that. Yeah. Investment banking. or thinking about it.

10:12Nori Welles-Gertz: When you're a senior in school, you have a choice, right? It's consulting or investment banking pretty much unless you have other skills.

10:20Cass: Yeah. You were like, I'm not going to go do that to go do this.

10:23Nori Welles-Gertz: I'm going to find a firm that will let me. I thought that consulting was a better haven for indecision. Yeah. Or a springboard for optionality depending on which way you want to spin that.

10:34Cass: I like springboard for optionality. I figured that would be more up your alley.

10:37Nori Welles-Gertz: Yeah. But it really is a haven for indecision.

10:39Cass: Okay. but then you were so you're four years into it yeah which is longer than you're supposed to take but well you're springboarding yeah and then you were kind of thinking about okay I could do this kind of work and then I could do the buying of the company and then the owning of the company but what I guess drew you to like beyond just like and here are the work streams that I'll be able to do

11:08Nori Welles-Gertz: um i talked to everyone like i said it would take my call to understand because i knew investing was what i wanted to do which is more than making the slides yes i have to put money to work and you know have informed decisions behind it uh and i knew interacting with people was a big part of that i'm definitely an extrovert i that's what charges my battery rather than drains it so i didn't want to do something that was just analysis Yeah. So investing with people involved, that pushes you more away from super analytical things, more towards either VC or PE. Yep. And everyone I talked to at Dunn-Bolfe said that venture capital was more firefighting.

11:47Nori Welles-Gertz: You get pulled in when things are either going really well or really not well. Yeah. And you place your bets and it's a lot of higher fire.

11:57Cass: Yeah. that didn't sound exactly well you place a lot and you place a lot of bets yeah there's a ton of bets and you're gonna have a lot of them just right cease to exist right uh i thought it would

12:09Nori Welles-Gertz: be more fun to be well i also thought as a consultant i would have a better shot at something where i could say well i have some operational sort of experience yeah uh which leads you more towards lower middle market right operationally focused fund that's willing to hire consultants

12:23Cass: which hey yeah that sounds familiar sounds like parker yeah yeah so i think of you i think of like if you were to do vc now knowing what i know about you like and how much you're just like cash burn would the cash burn would just like root like it is not my risk profile no yeah yep

12:44Nori Welles-Gertz: um there's also i don't mind making decisions with a lack of perfect information yeah we do

12:51Cass: really a lack of information. A lack of information would be a challenge for me. Yes. Yeah. Because it

12:56Nori Welles-Gertz: doesn't exist. There's no marketing data because there is no market.

12:59Cass: Right. That would be a challenge. I like finding data. Yes. You are very good at, you are very good at finding data and digging through data. That is your like, you know, step two of perfect Saturday would be like, and maybe if I got to plan some data, I feel like if I had to work. Sometimes you do that before the sun's up. Perfect. Okay. And then you've been at Parker Gale for seven to eight years. Since April 23rd, 2018. April 2018.

13:29Nori Welles-Gertz: April 23rd, 2018. Correct.

13:32Cass: Yep. So you started as an associate for a couple of years. Then you made it to VP for a couple of years. Now you've been a principal for a couple of years. Talk a little bit about like that trajectory, kind of how different your role is now than it was as an associate. Why was it different at VP? Why is it different as a principal than it was at VP and how that evolution has changed?

13:58Nori Welles-Gertz: So I think one difference here versus say in consulting, in consulting what the analyst or whatever they call the first level is, because each of the big firms has a different name for it. But the first level, if we, you know, AC, analyst, whatever you want to call it, you're just doing slides. And then you're a work stream leader and you actually have to lead meetings, which is very different. That's very different. When you get up to like engagement leader or whatever you call the higher levels, you actually have to sell work and it's all about selling extensions.

14:29Cass: Yeah, it all ends up being about selling.

14:31Nori Welles-Gertz: If you're at the higher level. Yeah. Yes, or arguably in life, but we can get into that in another time. that track is very different. And when you're, if you love being that entry level, you may not actually like doing the things that are down the track for you. I think in private equity differences, you're doing a lot of the same stuff. Like you're all moving in the same direction on the same objectives, essentially. And you just start to take on more of those things. So it becomes less about doing the work and more reviewing the work. And then it becomes sort of directing the work. It needs to be done.

15:06Nori Welles-Gertz: Prioritizing the work.

15:06Cass: Yeah.

15:07Nori Welles-Gertz: But it's all, you have to kind of know all the things that are happening downstream in order to do that effectively. Yep. Which I arguably, I don't think you really need to know how to make a perfect slide

15:18Cass: to lead a good steering committee meeting. Right. Those are different skill sets.

15:22Nori Welles-Gertz: Yeah, exactly. Versus here, I think you probably spend more time with people than Excel as you move up. Yes. Or you're supposed to spend less time entering things into Excel. You're still reviewing it and sense checking it. And it's more about pattern recognition. So you have to see the patterns in order to recognize them and then be in front of them.

15:39Cass: But having had to be the person who created it is naturally going to help with that next skill versus like, oh, these are different skills that maybe you should be working on in the background. Maybe you should be. But how? Exactly. Yeah. And legal. Like, I feel like that's a big leap for a lot of people. But so as an associate, you're on the call.

16:00Nori Welles-Gertz: You hear the things. You see what people are getting concerned about. You might not know what they mean. Or, for example, that anything that's capitalized is defined somewhere else in the document. you don't always necessarily know that right away, but you learn that pretty quickly. And then you start to learn things that are going to cause problems because they're in there or not in there because you've seen that happen before. And again, it really becomes a pattern of recognition game and then more about influencing people than influencing analysis, but similar things you're looking for and trying to build.

16:29Cass: Yeah, I feel like we work together a lot, obviously. Occasionally. Occasionally. because I'm on the finance side with our companies, with our CFOs, VPs of finance, post-close. You're also working with those same exact people post-close. So we're constantly kind of talking about what needs to be done. I feel like what I have seen for probably both of us, to be fair, but certainly from you as like, I look to you often as where should we be prioritizing? what's the most important thing that pattern recognition over the last six years of working together in these roles like of you seeing something and being like that's going to be an issue or like yeah hey i'm going to put this on your plate to remind the cfo because you're and i'll help you too or like we do a lot of like who's going to be good cop bad cop not that we're bad but yeah i get to be good cop most of the time um it's true um but i feel like you are like really zeroed in on that i feel like pattern recognition of like this is actually going to be really important i'm calling it right now so like let's start getting on it before it becomes a problem and i think you do learn that through like years of seeing things go wrong or getting ahead of things and maybe like something uh you you evaded that.

17:59Cass: So like, oh man, what if I?

18:01Nori Welles-Gertz: Well, I think a lot of it is selling a business.

18:04Cass: Oh yeah. Like when you've sold a couple of businesses, you know exactly what you're going

18:08Nori Welles-Gertz: to be asked. And to be honest, we could really look at what we do when we buy a business to get the same reality check. But a lot of it is, yeah, preparing for the exit from the day that you buy a business so that you'll be ready and then you don't have some crazy fire drill. We talk about that a lot yeah and i think that's probably a big thing from associate to you know leading more of the deals you're preparing for always working backwards you're like okay we're gonna sell

18:34Cass: this thing and call it five years what does this need to look like what do we need to be able to like report at the drop of a hat what do we need to like all of it and like that's the expectation that's the bar yeah and we're getting better at it trying yeah what is something so like speaking of kind of like learning and all of your trivia stuff and digging into the data and like what do you have at your disposal you're always learning what is something that you've learned recently that you wish someone had told you or you wish you had known sooner or figured out sooner i mean

19:08Nori Welles-Gertz: there's a lot of things we learn about very specific things yeah so most i think of our learning i don't know there's many things i get struck by like wow oh this like life lesson yes

19:20Cass: Just slapped me in the face.

19:22Nori Welles-Gertz: Yeah, I've not been face slapped by life lessons recently, I don't think. Yeah, that's good. But most learning we get to do is just very niche. It is niche.

19:31Cass: Which I enjoy, but it doesn't make the best, you know, here's an epiphany I had that I'm going to relay at the next cocktail party.

19:37Nori Welles-Gertz: Yeah. I think if you talk about permitting software at cocktail parties, it doesn't last very long, that conversation. No. So I try not to do that too much.

19:44Cass: My dad told me, so I was taking a lot of accounting courses in undergrad, and he could tell when I was taking more than my fair share of accounting courses versus like gen eds.

19:57Nori Welles-Gertz: Your conversational abilities sort of changed?

19:58Cass: Yeah, he would be like, how many accounting courses are you taking this semester? And he is an accountant, and he was just like, this is unique. Please don't do this to yourself. Like maybe add in a couple English classes next time.

20:11Nori Welles-Gertz: Your English has gotten terrible. Your English has gotten terrible.

20:13Cass: No, but I mitered in English, so he was just like, maybe balance that a little bit, because you could kind of tell that you're thinking about taxes right now. You're just like, what's going on? Oh, which you know how I feel about working on tax. I was going to say, how dark was that place?

20:27Nori Welles-Gertz: It was dark. Yeah, okay.

20:29Cass: Okay, what are you most excited about right now in the industry?

20:34Nori Welles-Gertz: I think what everyone is excited about or is spending their time on would be AI. Yeah, for sure.

20:42Cass: Yes.

20:43Nori Welles-Gertz: say more for us a lot of it is finding the limitations yeah uh but also pushing the boundaries yes not saying that we are pushing the boundaries like groundbreaking uses of ai but it's definitely changing the way that we do things and speeding some things up and then also realizing that there are some things that we are still faster doing uh but it's kind of fun to play with

21:07Cass: it is very fun to play with i feel like the other was it yesterday you were like oh i'm like waiting

21:12Nori Welles-Gertz: for something to run yeah yeah you can't close the computer or it just stops the whole thing you have to start you have to run all from the beginning no yeah it's really not great no i've been trying to teach it to look up permitting software for different jurisdictions i see

21:26Cass: back to permitting software again it's dangerous it is my favorite thing that you built with ai in the beginning yes in the early arts when we were just like playing with it we got told to

21:37Nori Welles-Gertz: play with it yeah what'd you build i built a toy that you could play with uh to determine uh what ski was the right ski for you to use for any given condition based on your physical attributes and preferences it basically scanned all of the ski reviews and all the forums because there's a lot of forums out there where people talk about testing skis their favorite skis things they like they don't like and they always give their height their weight their ability and where they're skiing yeah uh so it's a pretty good data set but i don't have time to do that showing up yeah i've never posted any of it but i enjoy very much that people do this but i don't really have time to do all that so yeah i built a toy that lets you you know uh debate it and sometimes it got most things right sometimes it would offer like this model of ski in this length which doesn't exist because skis are only made in certain lengths right so you have to correct it and get it back on track but it'd be very polite and say oh you're right oh thank you nori i neglected

22:31Cass: that yes you're so smart i don't let mine do that no i told it not to flatter that's good you have too high of an ego anyway so it's good that you i'm just kidding it's a big problem really yeah um what's a commonly held belief about private equity that you disagree with it's transactional yeah that's so true we love deals yeah it is about deals but the business

22:59Nori Welles-Gertz: itself is about relationships and trust and we hold companies for five to seven years you can't just it's a long time do a transaction for that long yes and even after i would argue like you

23:10Cass: could say oh it's transactional at the end you're like trying to get the biggest purchase price you're whatever with the same people it's a small community yeah honestly whether that's the service

23:20Nori Welles-Gertz: providers other firms lenders you know founders ceos all the executives uh it's a small community and you want to, you know, I guess you're really trading on trust in your reputation. That's really all you have. So everything you do compounds into the reputation that you'll have in the market. And I think that's about way more than transactions.

23:39Cass: Yeah. I think about some of the deals that we've done where we've rolled a little bit. And I feel like even there, you're continuing the relationship with the team, right? Because you're still, maybe we still have a board seat or otherwise. and like that relationship suddenly you're like a lower investor but like you're really leaning on like the relationship that you've built over five to seven years to continue to get the information that you want to hear about how things are going at the same level that you did when you were a majority shareholder and we are no longer responsible for putting together the materials

24:14Nori Welles-Gertz: and everything but yeah yeah yes it's uh yeah and i think even after you exit fully you see those people and you never know where the deal will come from or what or a reference or people call

24:24Cass: a CFO that you worked with or a CEO that you worked with and like the best thing that could happen is I wish I could work with them again totally like that's just like whenever we hear anything like that happening that's huge yeah I I love that answer what's a job that looks nothing like yours that you'd secretly be great at well I don't I love my job so I have not spent time

24:47Nori Welles-Gertz: I'm thinking about other things I would do. Yeah. So I did ask both Claude and Chad GPT what looked like the things.

24:54Cass: Oh, look at you using AI. Again, testing things. Okay, so you did see the sneaky question. This one, yeah. You did send me this one. Okay.

25:01Nori Welles-Gertz: Yeah. Some of the answers were good. Some of them was like, that's not. Way off the mark. You know, you do not know me at all. Which I did tell both of them, and they corrected accordingly. Yes, you are right.

25:13Cass: Those silly us. But with no flattery, correct. Oh, yeah.

25:17Nori Welles-Gertz: Yes. The weirdest one was an F1 team director. What? Like the cars? Yeah. I would not have guessed that one. But it was good. It was actually a decent, like high performance. Yes. It's super important, but the drivers are the stars. Yes. So no one really focuses on who the team directors are, and yet your whole job is to make the whole team run in an optimized way. I can so see that.

25:42Cass: I don't know how much you're into F1, though. Not at all.

25:45Nori Welles-Gertz: Right.

25:46Cass: Yeah. so that was again I was like I really don't want to spend my time around but I get it I get it I

25:50Nori Welles-Gertz: get it when you explain there are good things there are other things like investigative journalists which I said not enough teamwork involved but thought process sure it's a lot like what we do yeah um it did say rowing coach which I'm pretty sure it only did that because I rode right but all right yeah I've considered that uh yeah not now but right back in the day and then search and rescue team leader was another one really yeah okay i'd trust you for that dealing with imperfect information yeah consequential decisions yeah honestly good job yeah they were they were decent

26:27Cass: answers yeah yeah i like it um oh man this would be hard for you if you took a three month sabbatical three months three whole months yeah how would you spend it i guess this in which three months In the summer. Oh. I know. We all know what the answer would be in the winter, so. The Southern Hemisphere.

26:50Nori Welles-Gertz: What a hack.

26:51Cass: Okay. Amazing. You'd go to the Southern Hemisphere and you'd ski. At least part of the time, yeah. And then you'd watch documentaries. Oh. You'd join a tribute team.

27:04Nori Welles-Gertz: No. You'd go on Jeopardy. This is what Cass's version of a three-month sabbatical would be, sure. Yeah. I think there would be a lot of skiing involved I don't think I could just do that though I would have to be doing so maybe it's I don't know what are you not allowed to work during a sabbatical? is that what that's defined by?

27:22Cass: that's kind of what I'm getting at maybe you just don't get paid what would you work on?

27:29Nori Welles-Gertz: a thesis I think I would be deal sourcing

27:33Cass: yeah that's fair okay so when you were a little girl let's call it 10 just because i know you're going to ask me to be precise and you were thinking about what you wanted to be when you grew up you probably didn't have private equity on the radar i did i literally googled what is private equity like when i was 22 on my way to a private equity interview well i'm glad it was on the way not after it was not after okay but yeah i had no idea called preparation a little bit of preparation and then i got absolutely knocked out cold in this interview like they were like you have no idea what you're talking about did they ask what an lbo was but you know what i learned from that interview because google things they mansplained to me what private equity was better than google better than google and they were like if i had a hundred dollars let me show you the flow of that hundred dollars from an lp you wouldn't get that from google that's fair yeah it was actually really enlightening and then the next day i had another private equity interview for an internship.

28:38Nori Welles-Gertz: If I had a hundred dollars.

28:40Cass: Guess who used the hundred dollars example? And they were like, wow, that was like a really great way to break this down.

28:46Nori Welles-Gertz: Yeah.

28:47Cass: So, you know, learning pros and cons, but I'm assuming at 10, I was not learning what to do with a hundred dollars in the capital structure of private equity. Correct. Correct. So what, what were you, what, what did you want to be when you grew up? When I was 10, I wanted to be a rescue swimmer. A what?

29:05Nori Welles-Gertz: Yeah. In the Coast Guard, when there is a boat in distress in a storm out at sea, the people that go out to get people to safety off of the boat, because you can't bring a boat next to a boat in distress and safely rescue someone very easily. You bring a helicopter in and somebody jumps out of the helicopter, swims over, gets the people who are in distress, puts them into a loop and takes them back up into the helicopter.

29:33Cass: Why did you know about that job?

29:36Nori Welles-Gertz: uh so i grew up in a military household my dad was a captain in the navy and i wanted i mean that seemed like what you should do to have an exciting career was exciting join the military yeah jumping out of helicopters and my grandfather was a marine like there was a lot of that influence uh and i also don't call him anything but the captain so i stutter when i try to use other words but when I asked the captain what I should do, I liked swimming. And it seemed like something, I don't know exactly why, maybe, I don't know what you think, see a 10 year old and you go, oh yes, you should be a rescue swimmer.

30:10Nori Welles-Gertz: But I was told that would might be a good path for me.

30:13Cass: Okay, wait. And then what did AI say that you should be? A Coast Guard?

30:17Nori Welles-Gertz: Oh, a search rescue team leader, which is, that was why I was, that stuck out to me.

30:20Cass: Did you feed?

30:21Nori Welles-Gertz: No, I did not say anything about rescue swimmers.

30:23Cass: No.

30:24Nori Welles-Gertz: I would have said I love doing private equity deals and described a little bit about what that means and it came up with that and i was like and it had rowing coach there too it's weird i know wait you didn't tell it that you rode

30:35Cass: i think did you give it like your linkedin or something well claude already knows that because

30:39Nori Welles-Gertz: i used it to write my bio for the last ceo summit oh okay so it has the parkergale team

30:45Cass: bio got it so i think it cheated on it cheated a little bit and then although it could use the internet it's there too right and maybe it was just like okay rowing water that's kind of crazy It was kind of crazy. Okay. Interesting. In another life, I believe that's probably what you would do. I don't know. No?

31:03Nori Welles-Gertz: No, I don't know. When I was 10, it seemed amazing.

31:05Cass: Yeah.

31:06Nori Welles-Gertz: But I think I like what I do. It all worked out.

31:09Cass: Yeah. Yeah. What would you, so like, let's go back to your time in consulting. So 10 years ago. Okay. What would you tell somebody who's sitting at that point in their career or yourself 10 years ago? What advice would you give?

31:31Nori Welles-Gertz: I guess the obvious answer would be like go into private equity sooner, but I'm not sure that's the right. No, you needed time to dilly dally.

31:38Cass: And you weren't dilly.

31:40Nori Welles-Gertz: I would say if that's what we want to call it, sure. No, you needed time to like. But to learn all that, to really appreciate where you are. I feel like you have to have gone through what you've gone through. I agree. and done what you've done. So I'm not sure. Maybe it's a cop out of an answer. I'm not sure I would change anything. Yeah. I might encourage myself to maybe think about it sooner. Yeah. But again, I don't know that

32:05Cass: that really changes much. Totally. I love that. We made it to the closing call. All right. Your favorite time, sort of, after the closing call. What's your favorite time at part of a deal? kind of like all of it all of it for different reasons that's such a nori answer

32:25Nori Welles-Gertz: but it's good i don't know you can say sure do you like the end of the race best i mean it's a great time yeah and i i think some people don't like in in rowing you think like the third 500 in a 2000 meter race is like the worst yeah and swimming too the third is a third segment is always the worst but also in the middle of it like i don't know i kind of like that yeah it's the part where you're about to pass out that's why yeah that's why you do what you do

32:52Cass: right yes yeah um and i will say like i i feel like it's similar to like how some people get about a big event in their life in general like it is a little anticlimactic to just get on a call also closing calls are notoriously anticlimactic correct you just say

33:10Nori Welles-Gertz: yes i authorized just like release of my signatures currently with the release of everyone else's yeah yeah i think the worst part is the like same with racing it's like the 10 minutes before the start when you're not sure how it's going to or if you can still you know all that whole thing so like right before the loi gets signed is not my favorite part yes because you're like we're

33:31Cass: starting to spend a lot of time is it a thing or is it not a thing yeah that's the worst part yeah

33:37Nori Welles-Gertz: but also you have to go through like you gotta do it yeah it's good it doesn't always turn out well but there's a chance of money right i like that okay well we're at the closing call either way

33:50Cass: all right hopefully not as anticlimactic as an actual closing call um what's the best book that

33:55Nori Welles-Gertz: you've read this year i have to put the caveat in here that i always do yes it is not read it is listened to we are big listeners yes uh that's my long cardio yes yeah because you usually walk

34:09Cass: to well you walk in general but you usually walk to the office yeah sometimes you're taking a phone call but if you're not are you usually listening to an audiobook actually not typically oh usually

34:20Nori Welles-Gertz: it's during like the my long cardio sessions oh okay because if you're going to be doing one thing

34:24Cass: for like an hour and a half you're just like brain needs to be doing something else yeah yeah i can do music for shorter workouts for sure but like yeah an hour and a half is a long time that's true just sounds. Yeah. You're like, do a leap. I can't. Yeah.

34:39Nori Welles-Gertz: It's a lot. Yeah. Versus if you, if you say, oh, I'm actually learning something at the same time, then you can sort of justify the, that's how to, the infinity machine, the infinity. What's, I haven't heard of the infinity machine. So every book about AI that makes the top lists is always about open AI. Yeah. Cause Sam Haltman's good at that. Or Anthropik's been getting a lot there as well. Cause it's spun out of open AI, But this one's about Google, DeepMind, and Nemesis Abbas. So it's the other side, kind of the other approach, trying to do AI for scholarly things and ending up as a part of Google.

35:15Nori Welles-Gertz: So it was a good kind of alternative track for the evolution of AI. And I think with the labs having such big sway over how these things are going to unfold, it's pretty interesting to understand the differences between these companies, the origins of the companies, and what's going into the philosophies behind them. And I mean, they've done some pretty cool, I mean, even Nobel Prize winning stuff over there. So it's an interesting track.

35:36Cass: Yeah, that's awesome. Adding it to my list. I would recommend. What's your go-to karaoke song? Hard Pass. Amazing. Hard Pass for you.

35:49Nori Welles-Gertz: Yeah, that's not my jam.

35:50Cass: I would not accept Hard Pass for, I don't think, any other guest.

35:54Nori Welles-Gertz: I could make up something, but that is the truth.

35:57Cass: But I will accept it for you. Appreciate it. if all the facts were true of today, of like you're at this point in your career and then like you got kicked out of private equity, you can't work at Parker Gale anymore.

36:11Nori Welles-Gertz: Is this the way you're framing a question that you know I won't answer otherwise? Correct. Okay, got it. Following?

36:16Cass: Yes. You get blackballed from the industry. But in a way that like you, people still respect you. Like you didn't do anything bad, but for some reason, for some reason you can't work in private equity. equity anymore uh-huh what would you do there's a lot of conditional hypotheticals there that i'm not sure i totally i'm just trying to make it so you can't weasel your way back around into private equity is what i'm trying to do

36:43Nori Welles-Gertz: yeah but see that would be the answer to the question is if i got banned somehow i would try to figure out a way to go back into private equity um if private equity no longer existed

36:56Cass: correct would you go to vc i'm letting you go to vc in this example actually i wouldn't think you'd let me do that you could do it so you'd go into vc and then you just wait for companies to get a

37:07Nori Welles-Gertz: little bit more mature and start investing in those no no i'm not allowing that uh no i mean the answer that would be the truth would be if i weren't doing this what i would have been doing is coaching rowing. I think that's right. But I don't think I... I think you'd be doing something else too. I don't think I would have been the right person to be doing that either. Because the most inspiring coaches that I had were the ones who had been to the Olympics. They had been to the top. When they said, this is what it takes to be the best, you'd say, yeah, you would know. Yeah.

37:43Cass: You totally would know.

37:44Nori Welles-Gertz: My coaching college had an Olympic tree. When she went to the Olympics, the coaches gave her a tree. And when the seniors graduated, they would get each a tree that she would literally, it was like a potted tree, not a full-blown tree, but that meant something. Still a tree, still a tree. It's a symbol like that. And having not rode in the Olympics, I don't think I'd be the most impactful or inspiring coach to be working with children. Okay, so like quick pivot,

38:04Cass: you would have to go get an Olympic medal first. And then - If the hypothetical was not,

38:11Nori Welles-Gertz: I didn't get kicked out of private equity, but I'd actually had a successful rowing career. Yeah. Then maybe that's where I would end up.

38:17Cass: Yeah, perfect. And I've been pretty happy with that.

38:19Nori Welles-Gertz: I probably would have done some investing or something on the side. Sure. Yes. Yes. With all that sweet, sweet Olympic gold medal money. Yeah. There is not any rowing money. No. I mean, there's money in rowing, but not from rowing.

38:31Cass: Correct. Yes. Yeah. Amazing. This was as delightful and fun as I thought it would be. I hope you had fun. We made it. I had a great time. Thank you for coming on the podcast and I will see you in the office.

38:45Nori Welles-Gertz: Yeah.

38:49Thank you.