Episode 341 - PWL’s Next Chapter

27:12They started to say, well, how do you do this? And we didn't have the expertise of how to scale this without losing that client touch, without losing that closeness, that intimacy with clients, which we will not lose going through this. This is about amplifying what we all believe in. It's about magnifying our messages. It's about helping people, for example, on the other side of the border that happen to listen to either the podcast or Ben's YouTube channel, et cetera. So it just seemed like a possibility to just be worthwhile continuing discussions. But I mean, we talked back and forth and said, well, we're fine without you.

27:46We just kind of carried on and then we reconnected. So it was a really slow, methodical, thoughtful, skeptical. We forced skepticism into our thinking process around this. So we think we've done a pretty good job around this, but that's my recollection. Ben, you and I talked a lot through that. What do you think about all this at that time? Yeah. I mean, you mentioned our skepticism and we were, no offense, Mike, super skeptical of all those conversations that we had as people started reaching out to us. But every time we talked to you, Mike, and other people on the OneDigital team, that skepticism decreased and decreased until we got to a point where it was like, this is really what they say it is.

28:20And this fit really is as good as it seems. But yeah, I mean, like you said, Cameron, we started out saying, it's kind of cool that we can have these conversations with firms like OneDigital and others that had reached out to us, but we're fine on our own. And while that was true. And I think you say, Mike, that you guys like to acquire firms that don't need to be acquired or don't want to sell. So that is true. It would have been fine, but it became increasingly obvious that going down this path would make us better than we could be on our own. Yeah. Look, I talk all the time, Kim, about the fact that Adam and I started the company 25 years ago.

28:55We've been at this for a quarter century. And at some point when you're a private equity backed firm, you go from the concept of, look, we want to grow organically, we want to grow acquisitively, but you feel like acquisitions are part of what is required when you're PE backed. And again, after literally decades of doing this, all of a sudden, you're sort of like, if an opportunity doesn't make us better, it's not about getting bigger. So much of what goes in the marketplace, people talk about size and somehow equate size to how effective that firm is. And there's an implied correlation between the two.

29:38I'd argue the vast majority of PE firms are actually less capable once hundreds of acquisitions are done. I never forget the day, I think Cam, you and I have been talking for probably eight, 10 months, and you basically said, we can't do this. I just can't get there intellectually, emotionally. It's just not the right time. And I was so bummed. And I remember, I think it was probably a month later, I texted you and said, I'm not going away. And you just kind of sent back a smiley face. We started talking again. And I think we just finally came to the realization that one, One, we can do something really cool together.

30:16Two, I think we bring interesting capabilities and talents and experiences to the table. And I think we just came to the realization we can be better together and serve more clients more effectively together. And when you find that, you just figure it out. Yeah, and acquisition sounds so business school MBA kind of speak. And it's more about bringing people that are aligned together to create something great that I would argue Canada desperately can benefit from. There's so much demand for what we represent. And I say we is the planning community in Canada, not just the people here. And there's an obvious opportunity to bring people like all of us in this community together in one super structure to be better at what we all do and to help more people.

31:05To help more people, it requires a certain amount of platform and scale and abilities and expertise and balance sheet. That's the reality. This is a model that we've witnessed from here in Canada in the US, where you get these scaled, amazing advice, client-centric firms that have built and scaled and deliver incredible services. That's what we want to do. Yep. I remember that text, Mike, when you told Cameron that you weren't going to go away. We started talking to you again. At that time, we had made up our minds that we were going to keep going on our own. But then when those conversations started up again, it just became increasingly obvious how you guys were thinking about how we fit into what you want to build and how you can augment what we're doing.

31:49And so then we were like, okay, let's take this seriously and look at it. And then as we spent more time with the people, that cultural fit that you talked about earlier, it just became so obvious. Every conversation, every interaction that we had, we came away from it being like, yep, that was another great person. But I'll tell you, the other thing that's really cool, there's attributes that you look for when you're talking to teams on the other side. And I remember I've been oriented towards Cam. I met Cam first. Cam was the largest shareholder inside PWL. And we got to a point where it's like, we really need to dig in and think more about this strategically.

32:23and I'll forget the cam said like okay I'm ready to re-engage you got to talk to Ben because Ben's not there so now spend time with Ben and the level of respect that was shown and the level of if it doesn't work for Ben it's not going to work for me and if it doesn't work for Ben Ben's a proxy for a whole host of other people inside the firm so pivot over there and spend time with Ben and you and I started going through this conversation. So it's just the right way to figure out whether or not you're meant to come together. And it's all about strategy and common vision and building for the long term.

33:01There's nothing synthetic about this. It's all about build for the long term. As you often say, not leading with a spreadsheet, which I can tell you from other conversations over the years, they're often spreadsheet driven. Look, we were at a conference recently where the exact quote was, put culture at the bottom of your list and then get around to that at the end. And yet most advisors, I think, would suggest it's the number one issue they're trying to understand. The problem is culture doesn't fit into a spreadsheet. Long-term equity growth doesn't really fit into a spreadsheet the right way.

33:37There's a lot of other things that allow you to line up the math that kind of becomes the litmus of where people position entities like ours. Anytime I think you lead with that, I don't think you end up building great companies. I think you end up building bigger companies, but I don't think you build a great company that way. I think we're going to build a great company together. So now that you're here in Canada, how do you think about applying what's worked to date in the Canadian marketplace? I think I've kidded with you that over the past 25 years, we probably made every mistake we could make.

34:10So we're going to come to Canada and say, let's not make those same mistakes in doing certain things. So it took us time to realize that culture is the number one, number two, and number three thing. And so you guys, you're basically a proxy for OneDigital in the marketplace, and you're going to lead in terms of where we go have additional conversations. But I do believe that some of the core strengths of OneDigital, we have a deep understanding of scaling businesses and building operational prowess or building operational processes for scaling. I think we're going to lead from a technology development and AI standpoint.

34:56I think we've spent a huge amount of time and have a significant group of people in what we call people and culture that fits so well with Tessa and your organization in terms of how we think about aligning with the people that take care of our clients every single day. Right. So there are decades of learning on how you go from. So think about if we're going to go from 100 team members in Canada to a thousand team members in Canada, what does that look like? And how do you do that so that everybody loves walking in the side door every day and clients feel that passion? There's a nuance and a finesse to how to do that in an effective way.

35:39And I think we can really bring a lot of learnings over the past couple of decades on how to do that the right way. There are qualitative aspects to it, quantitative aspects to it, but it's a lot of learnings that we've experienced that we're going to bring to Canada. And then I think you guys will help us modify whatever needs to be modified for the Canadian. it. That makes a lot of sense. You touched on this and answering Cameron's question, but how would you describe, based on your experience with other acquisitions and what you see in PWL, how would you describe how being part of OneDigital is going to make PWL better?

36:14Well, I think that if you think about it from an internal, how do you continue to create opportunities for your teams? I think when you think about going from 100 people to 1000 people marketplace. It creates amazing career path opportunities for folks that are inside PWL today, for teams that are going to join PWL in the future. For the first time, Ben, and you and I've talked a little bit about this, I've gone through that phase where AI now and what AI is going to do in our business. I've had that mind-blowing experience where I'm like, it is going to change the advice-giving business. It is going to change how work gets done inside your four walls and our four walls.

36:56So I think we're going to lead in that regard, and it should significantly help on the growth trajectory in Canada. Look, we're going to be a capital partner. We want like-minded teams in Canada to understand we are open for business. We are going to build something significant in the marketplace together that we don't think exists in Canada today. So done the right way, we create a gravitational pull of teams and talent to your organization. And when we get that right, it's going to create a gravitational pull of clients to the same thing. Because I think we're both 100 % in agreement that the solution that's needed at scale in Canada today doesn't exist.

37:40And that's the flag we want to put in the ground and basically say, let's become that company. So it's a lot of this operational technology and scaling acumen coupled with capital that's going to, I think, supercharge this build. And it's something I don't think either of us could have done. Something I find really interesting is the fact that you and your partner, co-founder, Adam Bruckman, are still very, very active in the business and love it clearly. How would you and Adam articulate the objectives you have for One Digital Canada? The interesting thing is we talk about this with our investors as well, which is just one of those serendipitous things where our lead PE firm is Onyx out of Toronto.

38:23So we have Canadian investors that are now watching us make the move to build in Canada. But I think you present a unique opportunity for us. And that is apply all our learnings, start with an amazingly talented the team. But how do we look at what has evolved over the past 10 to 15 years in the US market and apply? We think we're on the early side of an evolution in the Canadian marketplace that is going to similarly play out than what we've seen play out in the States. And so Adam and I are like, it's almost like being able to go back in time and say, what decisions would we have made differently?

39:08And let's go make those decisions now in Canada, because the market is just structurally almost the way we were in the States 10, 15 years ago. And I don't mean that in a pejorative way. I just mean it is in an interestingly evolutionary way in terms of the role banks play today and how significant they are. So it's a little bit different. So Adam and I talk about, we can incubate something special and do it with this amazing team. But I think we're going to make really good decisions and head down a path. And you and I have talked about, I don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but I think we're going to end up with amazingly talented people that take care of clients the right way.

39:53And we're going to scale it differently than what we've seen in the States. It's like, years in Canada because we can apply the lessons in there. Yeah, that's really exciting. Cameron, I'd like you to comment and Mike, maybe you can share some thoughts too once Cameron shares his just as the investor in PBL. But Cameron, can you talk about how this affects stuff like our service offering, how it's going to affect our clients, how it's going to affect our team? We're a purpose-built firm. We're built to deliver advice. That's our one job, right? Everything we do is revolved around the client relationship.

40:29and this whole coming together is about improving that, building a better platform to be able to help more people. But our advice teams are absolutely vital as part of what we do. They are effectively our product. Our service is our product. And we've long dreamed about helping, as we said earlier, many, many more people because we think it's desperately needed. As you said off the top, Mike, Canada's got some of the highest fees in the world and some of the lowest levels of embracing of systematic or index type portfolios. You combine that with great advice, we think those are great tailwinds around which to build.

41:04We've long felt that. Ben and I have talked about that for years. The opportunity is pretty obvious in Canada and there is no scaled platform like that in Canada. There's some great advisors doing great work as were we, but we're all kind of in our own pockets. But the dream of bringing more and more people together to amplify what we're already doing, I think is super appealing and have impact on this country. And it's also going to be a whole lot of fun. But the team is very excited. We've had many meetings already, of course. And growth is good. Growth is good for clients. Growth is good for the team.

41:37Growth is good for careers. This is all a good news story. Any thoughts, Mike? Again, we are humbled by the opportunity. We think it's a unique opportunity in our life cycle. Just because of, we've talked before about where and how Dimensional fits, where we've built Dimensional, we're building it into the DNA of what we're building as a company. So there's something interestingly symmetrical in terms of how we're thinking about that, like you are. I just come back to, it's up to us to get this right and align with the right folks for the right reasons at the right time. but you guys have already teed up a bunch of discussions and this really is a first for us where we have aligned with a team that has so much visibility and so much credibility in the marketplace that we really are shoulder to shoulder as partners saying we think we're at the starting line of something really special have a conversation with us and understand more about this because it's pretty cool and it's pretty unique yep i've been involved in some conversations with clients that we've reached out to and some of them have been worried about stuff like that, which is why I asked about it, but our service is not changing.

42:52If anything, it's going to get better. Stuff like our fees are not changing. Our employees, people worry about an acquisition, you're going to lose a bunch of your good people. Not happening. Not happening. We're keeping everybody. Clients are going to maintain the same relationships with the same advisors. All that stuff is staying the same. The way that I really look at this is that as much as it is true that OneDigital has bought PWL or invested in PWL, you guys are really building around what we have now. So it's not a matter of buying what we had and stripping it of certain things and using certain things.

43:25It's like you're taking this thing that you think is pretty cool and you want to make it better and you want to grow it in Canada. But on day one and day two and year five or whatever, stuff's not going to change. That's not why you bought us. Yeah, you're not going away, Ben. I'm not going away. Correct. In fact, I'm as energized as I've ever been about what we can create together. Yeah, I think people get nervous about change. But from the perspective of our clients, I don't think anything's immediately changing. And any changes in the future will be for the better. Yeah, I'm thinking, Cam, you and I exchanged texts, I think, a couple days ago.

44:02And it's so rewarding when you sit in my seat and you get a text from someone going, I can't believe how much fun this is. It's opened this whole new door to the possibilities of what might be. I always use this sports analogy. We don't want to talk to people necessarily when it's late fourth quarter and they're trying to figure out what to do. We want to meet a bunch of people at halftime and say, can we play the second half together in a way that is much more compelling for the teams that we align with and for clients? That kind of feels like what we're talking about here. One of the things that Cameron and I have talked about a lot over the years is how we could become the mothership for this type of thinking that the planning first approach, the fiduciary advice, the index slash systematic type of investing, the markets work investing, whatever you want to call it.

44:51How can we become the place where all of those advisors want to be? Can you talk, Mike, about how being part of OneDigital affects our ability to become that mothership for like-minded advisors? Yeah. Look, I think that you've outlined it. It's like a client-centric, low-cost, systematic investing. It's planning first and being a fiduciary. It's just one of those things, Ben, where it never ceases to amaze me how noise in the marketplace can create short-term thinking and people chasing shiny objects when all the math will tell you There's a better way to do this for the long term. And so we're very much of the mindset that we have found the team that we can build around Canada.

45:33But the other aspect of this is you guys have such a presence and visibility in the States and globally that we view this as it is a catalyst. It's like a watershed event for us where we're helping people understand this is the path we are going on. So it's almost like we are taking a pretty large, a billion and a half dollar firm, top line revenue, that is approaching a bunch of startup businesses like an investor saying, let's take all these lessons. Let's apply them to these new verticals. Let's understand it's all about aligning with the right teams at the right time to then grow and be a catalyst for other folks that are looking for the same thing.

46:19It's a unique opportunity, but I think you guys have influence across the entire globe. And we want people to understand we think very similar to the way PWL thinks. And it's still early in the game for us. It's going to impact our DNA. I'd love to hear from both of you guys on the profile of advisor that we would like to attract to PWL slash One Digital Canada? Pretty simple. I mean, it's people that will make us better. There's a lot of great advisors out there that I think are in firms that they might not necessarily be aligned or shoulder to shoulder with an agreement with all their colleagues.

46:59And there is an amazing energy that happens when you bring great people together. We see it here, Ben, every day. When you've got this unbelievable, right across the entire firm, all 100 people, whether it's marketing, financing, we're all in total alignment about what we want to do. I would even make a spotlight on the advisory group. When you get advisors that really agree with how we invest, how we do planning, how we can use tools to do better financial planning, how we can improve, how we communicate with people, how we can use tools that, for example, Brayden's been creating like the CPP tool and other tools he's built.

47:35This whole thinking, all the thinking that's come out of the podcast, all the research that you have done, This all trickles through how we communicate, how we think, how we work with clients. It's an unbelievable energy that happens. And advisors know if they embrace that. The advisors out there know if they believe in that. And I think there's an incredible opportunity to bring people that might want to be part of something bigger together in this environment. Now we have the experience, the energy, and the culture to be able to amplify what we've been doing and what we dreamed. You and I have dreamed about this, Ben, for years.

48:10Years. Because it's not in the marketplace today. It isn't. In the marketplace, we are roughly something like$3,$4 billion of clients' money that we help manage. That's a lot of money, but in the marketplace, that's not. There's firms in Canada that have many, many, many muzzles more than that. From a big picture standpoint, we have a great opportunity to make a difference for a lot of Canadians and make a difference for a lot of financial planners in this country and create something pretty cool, let alone, like I said earlier, the crossover effect into the US marketplace. We have a lot of listeners in the US.

48:44There's a lot of advisors that listen in the US. I think we're all creating something equally special on that side as well. So what would you add to that, Ben? You know a lot of advisors. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the incredible things about PWL for advisors is the fact that they're on a team of incredible advisors. The stuff that comes out of our advice team is just crazy. And the volume of cases that we see, complex cases, and the learning that happens within that advice team is just mind-blowing. We've had advisors join with years of experience doing fairly advanced financial planning, tell us they learn more in their first six months than the last, whatever, five years of their career, just because of the volume and the expertise that we have on the team.

49:26So I think that is very exciting for someone that wants to be part of that, for someone that thinks about planning and is a real nerd and wants to do the best thing for the client. I think it's a very exciting thing for that type of person to be part of. And they might want to focus on the craft of financial planning, working with clients and not have to worry about employment contracts or payroll or lease improvements in their office space or whatever. That's great. I've done that for years. So that's what you want to do. But a lot of people don't want to do it. They want to master the craft of planning, which is just a beautiful thing to be able to focus on.

49:59That's the thing is our advice team is focused on giving advice and serving clients. And we have got a lot of the other stuff figured out. I mean, PWL has got a pretty robust infrastructure at all levels. And so advisors focus on advice and they're fully supported. And we have lots of new clients that are interested in working with us coming in all the time. And so for an advisor that wants to be a great advisor, focus on advice, focus on being a bit of a planning geek and do the right thing for clients, I think it's a pretty exciting place to be. But you mentioned that growth, Ben. The reality is, and Mike, you know this better than us probably, the growth in the industry is very, very low when you take out market growth.

50:36Most advisory firms are not growing and most of the growth is going to the largest, I think, few dozen firms think is what the data shows. So growth is hard. So we have started to figure out that nut of getting regular people to reach out for some service. And that is another opportunity that I think we can do together is to amplify that and accelerate that kind of growth and get more of our social media exposure going out there. Mike? What they said. I keep coming back to, we are very culturally aligned. We are approaching this with a healthy dose of respectfully guide us on how you think this build should go.

51:21And let's learn from each other in terms of what our experiences have been to date. But I think we're going to find a lot of philosophically aligned folks that want to get to a more efficient, less conflicted environment. And the most interesting thing to me is there are an ocean of advisors out there that are trying to understand what comes next. And I have a huge amount of empathy for folks trying to figure out how is OneDigital and PWL different than, and then you fill in the blank, how are they different than these five or 10 or 15 other players, many of whom have been in the financial planning, wealth management space a lot longer than we have.

52:03And I think that to do that the right way, you really need to spend time. You need to get to know people. You need to, I think, spend less time in the spreadsheet and more time in the conversation and dinners and lunches to understand, do you see the world with a similar lens? And like I said, when you get that right, the music just sings. And when you get it wrong, it's a real problem from the very beginning. So we're going to spend time getting to know people. And I think we're going to find that a lot of people are going to find what it is we're building. Very cool. I have one question for Cameron before we go to the last question for Mike.

52:41We've been going through this process for, I mean, you mentioned that you first talked to Mike about 18 months ago. We started getting more serious about it more recently, and we've been through a serious, serious due diligence process much more recently over the last few months. And it's been an incredible learning process going through that and assessing our different options. It was kind of like getting a practical MBA as opposed to an academic one. You kind of seeing how stuff really happens, which was amazing. but I'd be curious, Cameron, now that we've come out the other side of that, what are you most excited about looking forward?

53:14I would frame it as what do I dream about? This is something Mike has said often to both of us, Ben, is what do you dream about? What could we possibly do when you think about that? You dream about having a firm that's much larger, that has many more services offered, that is attracting new graduates that want to join the profession of financial planning, that you figured out how to build a training program where you're able to onboard. We read statistics like the number of people at Vanguard or other large firms in the US are hiring these great planners out of the different universities in the US.

53:50I dream about that, being a great place for people to want to come either as recent grads or have their teams join. We know incredible professionals, Ben, that would have major impact on how we do what we do and be able to do it better. but to become this hub of excellence in financial planning and investments in communication and helping people make better decisions to what sort of services would we want to include. Now we have the ability for expertise and balance sheet to talk to all kinds of different kinds of service providers. What that might be, you can only imagine. It could be an insurance field, could be in benefits, could be in property and casualty.

54:26I don't know. I'm just dreaming here. But these are the things that are now possible. But you take this core, which is client obsession, and do the right thing, evidence-based, anything is possible now. So it's been an amazing few months once you start to think that what you dream, and I know it kind of sounds hoagy, but it's true. When you dream of this stuff, now we can do it. And who knows who we're going to meet? Who knows who's going to reach out? There might be people out there, advisors out there that have wanted to go down this path of converting their clientele to evidence-based or systematic investing, didn't know how to do it.

55:00Well, we could help that happen. We now have mechanism to do that. We have a lot of advisors that listen to this. It's well known that there's a succession problem coming because the average advisor in North America is me and my age, gender and age. That's the reality. A lot of people don't have that succession part figured out. Well, we could help be part of that if somebody wishes. I could riff on this all day long, but that's where my head goes. Yep. You said that becoming a hub of excellence for advice and financial planning and communication in Canada by attracting more of the best people.

55:35We already have some of the best planners. I tweeted last week that Melissa, one of our planners got the second highest score on the CFP exam out of roughly 400 candidates. I say that we have the best planners in the country and it's not a joke. We really do. And attracting more people like that and becoming increasingly a hub of excellence, I think is very exciting. And then like you said, Cameron, the idea of being able to add other complimentary businesses where we can really wrap our arms around the client and be able to offer, hypothetically, obviously this is just dreaming, but that's what we're doing here, being able to offer tax and legal and insurance all under one roof, all under one brand, all under one line of communication.

56:16That to me is extremely exciting for our advisors, but also for our clients. And continue to build out tools, like some of the tools that Brain's been building, the CPP calculator, I think it's probably become one of the de facto sources of excellence in making that decision. A thousand Canadians turn 65 every day and we put it out there for the public to use and it's had wild adoption. This is one example. It just helps make us better, make the country better, make advisors better. Yeah, definitely. Jump in, Mike. Anything to add to that? No, look, I mean, I'm a pretty chatty fellow, but I can listen to you guys all day long.

56:54And you know what? I think you hit on something that I love and that is a big part of the way I'm wired is dreams. I'm 25 years in, I still dream about the experiences that I want to have with my friends and family. And I dream about the company that I think we can build that is going to be truly amazing. The bigger we have gotten, the bigger my dreams have gotten in terms of what we can become. and there's no end game yet. It's just a very interesting dynamic and I get excited about listening to what gets you guys excited because it changes the aperture of my dreams and it's pretty cool. Perfect segue, Mike, to the final question.

57:43How do you define success in your life? So I think I started down this path where when I think about just my life, my family, my friends. I'm an Irish Catholic boy from Buffalo. I'm the son of an iron worker. Started very modest in terms of what shaped my view of what I could do and where I could go and how that would all come together. Feel truly blessed to have found a partner in the business 25 years ago. We're like brothers, we're like best friends, and that group has just grown and grown and grown. So when I think about the two sides of the coin, sort of that picture of Janice looking forward, looking backwards, when it's about life, I get really excited about dreaming, about creating experiences for my friends and family.

58:33And, you know, position that you give back more than you take in this world, which I think we need a lot more of that. From a work standpoint, I dream about building a company of consequence that doesn't exist in the world today that is desperately needed. And I feel like this is an incremental step in that direction. Can we truly impact the lives of millions of people in the future with a solution that is the right solution at the right time in the marketplace, whether it's Canada or the States? So my dreams are getting bigger and I love that part of it. And I get to dream with a growing list of people that are helping me reshape that almost every single day.

59:14So I feel really blessed in that regard. How about you guys? Ben, are you turning the success question around with us? Yes. Oh my. We were asked this, we did the CFA wealth management conference in Toronto, and we were interviewed about our experience with the podcast and how it's affected our business and stuff like that. And we were asked this question then. So I had never really thought about it until then, but I think my answer is still roughly the same, which is that someone who's successful in life is a standard psychology definition. I don't know. You enjoy how you spend your time day to day, but you can also look back and be satisfied with your overall standing in life.

59:53Because you can enjoy your time day to day by sitting in a hot tub, but then you might look back in your life and be like, man, I haven't done anything. So I think it's finding that balance between enjoying how you spend your time day to day and minute to minute, but then also being able to look back and be like, yeah, I'm really happy with where I am. Man, you guys have good answers. I don't remember what I said there, but I think it was something along the lines of, I just love getting up in the morning. I love getting up and being charged right out of the gate. At 4 a.m. I don't know what time you get up.

1:00:24I head to the gym and I just love consuming ideas and I love executing on ideas. I love bouncing ideas off of Ben and the team here. I'm dialed in, dialed up every single day as Lisa can tell you. And I just feel lucky to have ended up in a career in an industry where you could do that and have this level of creativity that just so much fun every single day. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, there's challenges. Yeah, we screw up along the way, but it's that desire to want to solve stuff. And we just have this unbelievable team that we've been able to come together with that it's a total blast every single day.

1:00:58And I've seen this in the time spent with you, Mike, and the team that it's the same thing. It's great people coming together to solve stuff. I've had people reach out to me already from all over the place inside OneDigital just saying, let's work on stuff. We don't have all the answers. Let's just figure it out together. I just love that. To me, that's success. Of course, great family and healthy kids and all that. All of us would say that, of course, because we're all family people. I dread the day where I get up and I'm like, oh, I don't want to do this again. I've never felt that in all these years.

1:01:3034 years ago this month is when I started laughing as an advisor. It's been amazing. And look, for additional context, I get asked all the time, we're about to do our fifth private equity trade. I'm 62 years old. I've been chopping wood for a long time, but I love what I do. And I love experiencing things like this. And it almost becomes like a drug where you're like, what is this going to look like three years from now? What is it going to look like five years from now? And when you're focused on becoming better for your clients with people you actually enjoy going to have a beer or a glass of wine with after work or a cup of coffee.

1:02:11It doesn't happen as often as it should, particularly when you are a firm that does acquisitions. Somehow by flipping that switch, this isn't supposed to happen the way it happens. This is normally the way people think when you make one hire at a time and you build a company one hire at a time. And what I think we're proving is you can actually do it via acquisition as well. You just have to approach it differently. Well put. Great to have you on, Mike. Super fun. Appreciate it, guys. I can check this off my bucket list now. I've been a rational client there. We'll have to get you some swag. All right, guys.

1:02:48Thanks a million and thank you for your trust in making this happen. Thanks, Mike.

1:03:02Thank you.