· David Senra, Kurt MacAlpine
[00:00:00] S0: Okay. I love that you just told a story about branding and marketing, because that's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to tell you, like, give some background on how I actually found you, which was kind of hilarious in a twist of fate. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: It involves our mutual friend, Rick Gerson. So, I get all these inquiries into my website all the time. [00:00:00] S1: Yep. [00:00:00] S0: Obviously, there's huge demand for corporate speaking. [00:00:00] S1: Yep. [00:00:00] S0: So, people always... I get a bunch of inbound, "Well, will you come speak at this company, XYZ?" And I'm like, "I don't do any of this." It's like I have a very tight partnership with my partners. It's like, there's one way to work with me. If you want to work with me, it's through the podcast, and it's like comprehensive. It's not just ads on the podcast, it's events. So, that's the way to do it, right? And so, I got a few from ... this company called Corient. And- ... they like, "Hey, we listen to your podcast. We're in Miami too. Would you do this?" And I never responded. And then, I'm essentially embedded into Michael Dell's merchant bank. [00:00:00] S1: Yep. [00:00:00] S0: And I'm close friends with Greg Lemkau- [00:00:00] S1: Yep [00:00:00] S0: ... who's one of the co-CEOs. And I fucking love Greg. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah.
· Kurt MacAlpine, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: I just absolutely love him. We hit it off from day one. And he sent me... They don't do much media, and so he sent me this interview. He's like, "Hey, check out this interview that me and Byron did," the other co-CEO. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: "Tell me what you think, because we don't do much media." And I think it's CNBC's Wealth. I think the program might be called Wealth or something like that. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: And so I'm watching it, and I watch the whole thing, and there's four ad breaks, one sponsor- [00:00:00] S1: Yep [00:00:00] S0: ... the entire time, and it's Corient. [00:00:00] S1: Yep. [00:00:00] S0: And I was like, "I know that name." I searched my email. I was like, "Oh, this is the same company. That's interesting." So then I'm having breakfast in Miami with our mutual friend, and I had already met you at this time, but I didn't know that. [00:00:00] S1: Yep. [00:00:00] S0: And obviously, Rex and finance, so I was like, "Hey, have you heard of... It's a very interesting choice to have four ad breaks, one sponsor." I actually like that a lot. I think it's really smart for other reasons we don't have to go into. And I go, "You ever heard of this company called Corient?" He goes, "Yeah, you met the CEO at my house when we were doing jujitsu." I was like, "You're like a brown belt or something, right?" [00:00:00] S1: Yeah.
· Kurt MacAlpine, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: It's like the guy choking Gee. Gee is our mutual instructor, me and Rex that is. And I was like, "Oh." And then he was telling me that you're in Miami and everything else, and then that's how you got connected to. And then now, ever since I saw that, I see Corient on Bloomberg- [00:00:00] S1: Yeah [00:00:00] S0: ... and everywhere else. So, I'm very curious, one, why sponsor that program? [00:00:00] S1: Sure. [00:00:00] S0: How do you think about it? How do you think about branding? How do you think about advertising and marketing, and how does it tie into your entire mission of trying to build this company?
· Kurt MacAlpine
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah, it's a great question. Again, the brand, by brand standards, is new. The company's six years old. The brand's not even six years old. So, part of it is just creating awareness, right? Awareness for clients, awareness for potential colleagues, awareness for potential partners. And there's a lot of different ways that we think about that. So one is, we do lean into marketing. We think it is a very incredibly impactful and powerful tool. How we choose to lean into it is, call it three or four different ways. One is the advertising, which is a lot of the stuff that you've mentioned. And, just given, again, every industry's changing, right? How people consume television, how they watch things, how they engage with things is so totally different. So, we're kind of trying to respond and reflect to that. So we're trying to advertise either in places where people are watching something live, which is why you see us on business television and sports, areas that people ultimately choose to engage, where they're sitting in a structured and focused setting. We do a lot around digital marketing, so really trying to be micro-segmented, targeting individuals that we want to build and establish relationships with. And we do a lot around experiences, around client experiences and convening people across the business and collaboration. And I don't think of them as individual silos, right? Because there's lots of different ways that people come across Corient. And for me, it's maybe the ad introduces them to Corient, maybe it's a friend or a mutual connection, maybe it's a referral, maybe it's a business partner. And the goal is to help bridge the gap between who is Corient, what do we do, and how can we be helpful to them and their families, ultimately as quickly as possible. And I think we've taken, by wealth management standards, or at least independent wealth management standards, a relatively kind of unique but ambitious approach to advertising. So today, we're advertising in every market that we're in globally. You'll see us on ads in the US, Canada, UK, Paris, France, across the world. And we intend to continue to do that. And again, it's really kind of helped to short-circuit the discovery process from people saying, "Hey, you're a new company. Yes, you have all this scale.
· Kurt MacAlpine, David Senra
Learn about us as fast as possible, and then hopefully we can start to engage and provide value to you and your families." [00:00:00] S0: It's shocking because these are not new ideas. These ideas have been documented for at least 120 years. I've done- [00:00:00] S1: Yeah [00:00:00] S0: ... I've read every single biography on all the great copywriters, the great advertising agency founders. They all say the same stuff. It's like repetition, repetition, repetition. [00:00:00] S1: Yep. [00:00:00] S0: The idea that I didn't just see Corient in one- [00:00:00] S1: Correct [00:00:00] S0: ... segment of the Greg Lemkau interview. I saw it again and again and again. By the time you get to it, I may not use your services, I might not sell my wealth management firm, but at least I know you exist. [00:00:00] S1: Exactly. [00:00:00] S0: And so this is what we're doing with our partners, because in addition to all my partners on both of my podcasts, I also run the podcast strategies for these companies. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: And it's just because I'm obsessed with it and I like to do it. And it's just like, you know where your customers are paying attention to? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: It's very simple. We just pulled the numbers. There's 446 podcasts in the business category, I think 300,000 and something that are still updating, and there's five in the world that matter. [00:00:00] S1: Yep. [00:00:00] S0: There's your strategy. It's very simple, how to do this. And then once you partner with them, you stay with them forever.
· David Senra, Kurt MacAlpine
[00:00:00] S0: There's your strategy. It's very simple, how to do this. And then once you partner with them, you stay with them forever. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. But it comes back to the theme around conviction, right? So a lot of times, advertising is one of these areas where, at least on a relative basis, you're investing a tremendous amount of capital in advance of any sort of underlying tangible benefit. And I think you're right. It is a proven strategy over time, but it depends upon how people are thinking about their business. The reason we have the ambitions we do, the reason we built the business in the way that we have is, I think this should be the forever business in ultra-high-net-worth wealth management. So if you think about it as a forever time horizon, you're going to think about brand building very differently than if there's a temporary- [00:00:00] S0: Exactly [00:00:00] S1: ... kind of lens or a temporary owner to it. And look, in a lot of areas, a lot of industries, financial services in particular, wealth management specifically, there's a lot of temporary owners. So they're thinking about the business in 18 to 36-month increments. They're not thinking about it across generations. And if you're thinking about it in that period of time, you're optimizing for a return and an exit. You're not optimizing for a client experience, an employee experience, building a forever brand. And I think that's probably how- [00:00:00] S0: That's the only thing I'm interested in.