· Kurt MacAlpine
[00:00:00] S1: Correct. So it's a combination of, call it the runway that the individuals have, and then also the ambitions around building, right? Because again, the industry is almost entirely oriented one way. We're oriented a different way. So there's this natural, if I'm having a conversation with somebody who's interested in joining the business, it's really, the way I would describe it is, we tend to be someone's first choice or their last choice, right? Do you believe in partnership? Do you want to be an owner of the business? Do you want to collaborate with your colleagues for the ultimate benefit of our clients, or are you looking to recreate kind of the silo that you have at whatever firm you're ultimately contemplating leaving from? So, when we're having conversations, think of it as like the ultimate screening mechanism, is people will understand and gravitate toward it and latch on, and we'll be their absolute first choice, or they'll say, "That's just not for me," and we're not going to be their first choice. But it's rare that we would come in second, just given the structure is so different, which is fantastic, because it creates this ultimate selection bias or this mechanism around who's interested in joining. And again, because we're oriented and structured the way that we are, like, I need strategic, cultural, and financial alignment across the business in order for us to be able to achieve the ambitions that we've put in place for the company.
· David Senra, Kurt MacAlpine
[00:00:00] S0: That decision is so important, because it fuels every single other advantage that you have moving forward. [00:00:00] S1: It does, and one of the challenges is, again, I think people get comfortable in optionality, right? So just as an example, we have a fully integrated business. [00:00:00] S0: I find optionality disgusting, by the way.
· David Senra, Kurt MacAlpine
[00:00:00] S0: I find optionality disgusting, by the way. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, but it starts to create complexity that people, I don't think, understand. So, if you're ... proposing to acquire a business, and then you start to compromise in terms of the structure, the service offering, how people collaborate. You are effectively, over time, compounding a lot of smaller problems that create a lot of underlying complexity. And at some point, businesses get too complicated where it's very, very hard to reset. So we've been very, very disciplined, again, the structure, the compensation model, how people operate. It all has to naturally fit together. And my view is that if we're not advancing towards achieving our objective of being the best in the world at serving ultra-high-net-worth clients, I don't want to create optionality to get there. I want to focus on, well, what's not resonating and how do we continuously improve those areas so we can get on that pathway? So, call it all of our complexity that we create is how advisors serve clients. It is not in terms of how we govern ourselves internally. Hence, the one compensation system, incredibly important. One P&L, no chargebacks, incredibly important. Partnership structure, everybody important. One brand, one offering. So, as you really unpack all of these decisions, there's a lot in the structure and the design that I think positions us well to achieve what we're trying to do.
· David Senra, Kurt MacAlpine
[00:00:00] S0: Deel is how the best founders turn the world into their talent pool. I've been studying how history's greatest founders operate for a decade, and one thing they all have in common is they understand that recruiting and hiring the very best talent is your most important priority. A players recognize other A players, which is why top companies like Ramp, Shopify, ElevenLabs, Uber, and DoorDash all use Deel. Many of the top founders I know have personally invested in Deel after using their product. And what they discovered is that Deel is the best company in the world at building infrastructure for global hiring. Deel will help your business hire, pay, and manage any worker anywhere in the world, so you can retain the best talent anywhere and spend the rest of your time focusing on what you do best, delivering value to your customers. The founder of ElevenLabs has a great description of the value Deel can give your company. He said, "We built ElevenLabs to break down language and communication barriers. With Deel enabling us to hire and support exceptional talent anywhere, we can accelerate our innovation and bring more voices, stories, and ideas to every corner of the world." Deel is trusted by over 40,000 companies and growing fast. Learn how they can help your business by going to deel.com/cenra. That is deel.com/cenra. I think we have an overview of Corient now. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah.
· Kurt MacAlpine, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: We'll come back to, there's a couple other things I want to talk about, which again, is this, the day you do the acquisition, the branding, everything is completely integrated. [00:00:00] S1: Correct. [00:00:00] S0: But the story of how you built this is so wild. I want to go back- [00:00:00] S1: Sure [00:00:00] S0: ... to when you took over the company, and then we're going to launch into Corient. [00:00:00] S1: Yep. [00:00:00] S0: The acquisition you did, the fact that the stock market hated what you were doing- [00:00:00] S1: Yep [00:00:00] S0: ... and you were just resolute in the face of this drastically falling stock price. [00:00:00] S1: Yes. [00:00:00] S0: So if we go back, it's like, okay, I laid out this plan to this sleepy Canadian company. [00:00:00] S1: Yep. [00:00:00] S0: I'm going, "This is what I want to do." Then can you bring us from that point until, and basically how you've been building Corient? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, so there's a couple things. So one, the first thing is you have to have conviction in the business and the idea, as we've talked about a lot. I had a tremendous amount of conviction in both the opportunity for the business and in tune ultimately what we could do for clients. The second piece, as you mentioned, is volatility. So, you have to kind of put that a little bit in context as well, is can you... Public companies don't typically love transformation stories. [00:00:00] S0: Well, hold on. We got to define volatility. [00:00:00] S1: Sure.
· Kurt MacAlpine, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Sure. [00:00:00] S0: How volatile was your stock when you're doing this? [00:00:00] S1: Sure. So, in 2021, we were, I think, the best or second-best performing financial services stock in North America. 2022, the second-worst. [00:00:00] S0: Right. Yeah, that's volatility. [00:00:00] S1: And so you see a lot of tremendous volatility. So then you can start to unpack. So, there's a couple of layers to that, right? So, one layer is public markets don't necessarily love transformation stories. Now, to be fair to the public markets, we were taking effectively a Canadian asset management business and using the cash flow to build and launch a new ultra-high-net-worth global wealth management business. So, pretty meaningful- [00:00:00] S0: That's a hard right turn.