Generating Alpha Podcast
00:40:46 · Amir Fischer
[00:40:46] S0: And you just spoke about the perspective that your clients have given you surrounding the world today. But overall, what are the most important lessons you think you've learned from your clients? And on the other side, what do you think are the most valuable lessons your clients have learned from you guys?
00:40:59 · Michael Anders
[00:40:59] S1: I don't know what our clients have learned from us, but we certainly have learned from our clients about collaboration, curiosity, partnership, humility. We, for some reason, feel a deep sense of gratitude and luck, not only have surrounded ourselves with a client base that is exceptionally smart and relevant, but our clients are exceptionally kind. And the partnership we've been able to build with them as their caddy has really allowed us to learn and grow and build a firm that we're really proud of. And so, I think there's been lots of experiences. We have a few clients that are leaders and pioneers in the financial services space and being able to call on them to think about, even with an Iconiq launching a new business, thinking about scaling a business, thinking through COVID of how do we deal with this, how do we think about going back to work, all of those things were lessons learned from a particular cohort of our clients. Thinking about technology and where it's going and how does Iconiq embed that and how do we embrace technology as a firm has been helpful. Also, ability for us to listen and learn from many of these tech CEOs and bring that over to traditional business leaders who historically didn't run a tech company, they ran a consumer company or a luxury goods company. But those companies are all becoming techified by the day. How do they embrace enterprise software? How do they embrace AI? So, we've become this natural conduit between all these currents that are affecting every side of our business and ultimately helping Iconiq itself be an interesting business that's at the forefront of change?
00:43:05 · Amir Fischer
[00:43:05] S0: I'm a big believer in the concept of building meaningful relationships and mentorships. I think if I had to describe what I've been doing for the past year or two would just be building meaningful relationships. And I think as the world goes on and on, that relationships will become more important than ever because there's gonna be much more noise and much less signal. So it's gonna be very important to separate that signal from that noise. So my question to you is what advice would you give to the next generation about building meaningful relationships and how important mentorship is for them?
00:43:34 · Michael Anders
[00:43:34] S1: Well, I think it's critically important for really the reasons you said, and I think it's going to become more and more important. I think you can't push someone to appreciate mentorship. I've found some people seek it and others don't. And the ones that seek it are seeking it generally for an authentic purpose of wanting to learn. They tend to be curious. They want to grow. Some people get that through reading. Some people can find mentorship in other ways. But for those of us who really value personal relationships, mentorship is really something that you seek out and pursue. And then I think the second layer of that is you can get mentorship in lots of different ways from lots of different people. Personally, I've found mentorship from people where I just naturally connected with. I think when you're forcing it, you can absolutely learn from anybody. But the deep relationships that have lasted, in my case, almost an entire lifetime have come from a genuine, authentic curiosity natural connection. I think that matters a lot. And then the other thing that I would say in terms of just relationship building, I think we have gotten to a place where, especially exacerbated by social media and AI, where the speed at which we move has almost pushed us to a place where we've become transactional and it's hard to avoid that. And so going back to one of Iconiq's tenants, building relationships, not because you expect something in return, but because you authentically, genuinely want to meet someone, you want to connect with someone, and you want to learn from someone, but nothing specific or transactional, I think those are the most important relationships. And so that idea of creating goodwill, of paying it forward, of genuinely caring, we call it uncommon care, I think those are great ingredients in building meaningful relationships. And it sounds so obvious, but most people don't do it. And I think that's something that we're very proud of at Iconiq is that those relationships are real, they are authentic, and they're grounded on this wanting to provide this uncommon care, this genuine interest and curiosity.
00:46:26 · Amir Fischer, Michael Anders
[00:46:26] S0: I very much agree with you. And I think that especially in this kind of short term, very transactional world, thinking about the long term and not trying to force anything and rush anything too fast is what makes things really stand out. And this is one question I ask at the end of every episode. So I just turned 16. If you were to give one piece of advice to a 16 year old right now, what would it be? It could be career advice, life advice, any type of advice. [00:46:53] S1: My advice to a 16 year old right now would be the same advice I give to all my kids and certainly my now 16 year old, which is to be curious, to keep an open mind, to be empathetic that no matter how hard a day may be for you or for my daughter, it's worse for someone else. And how do we genuinely care about those that are suffering more than us? And how do we want to partner in a material authentic way? I think relationships are critically important in the world. And the more curious and empathetic and kind that we can be, the better off we'll do in business, too, if that's important. [00:47:45] S0: Well, Mike, it's been an absolute pleasure. I really appreciate you coming on, and I think our listeners really enjoy this. [00:47:50] S1: I hope so. It's been a real pleasure. And as I said, I'm so impressed with the conversations you've had and how insightful your questions are. So thank you for having me, and thank you for having these conversations. [00:48:02] S0: Thank you. I appreciate it.