· David Senra, Kurt MacAlpine
[00:00:00] S0: That's the only thing I'm interested in. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, and how a lot of the... So if you were to kind of segment- ... who you ultimately engage with from your business. It's probably people agnostic of industry that meet those characteristics. [00:00:00] S0: My friend Sam Hinkie has this great line. He's like, "The person with the longest term view in the room wins." [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: Because it also goes against human nature. I got another question for you. You were in Chicago for the majority of your career, like the last like- [00:00:00] S1: Mostly New York. So born and raised in Canada. [00:00:00] S0: Okay. [00:00:00] S1: Most of my professional career was in New York, and then I moved to Miami. [00:00:00] S0: I want to get to Miami. [00:00:00] S1: Sure. [00:00:00] S0: Like, why- [00:00:00] S1: Sure [00:00:00] S0: ... you're so bullish on it? Why you, the headquarters, you have crazy office space- [00:00:00] S1: Yeah [00:00:00] S0: ... that I went to. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: Why Miami? [00:00:00] S1: It's a great question. So again, I launched the business, so if you think about the timing, I literally launched the business at the start of COVID. [00:00:00] S0: You said April of 2020. [00:00:00] S1: 2020, yeah. [00:00:00] S0: I was like, "Oh, shit."
· Kurt MacAlpine
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. So, look, that creates a tremendous amount of challenges, but also a tremendous amount of opportunities, because effectively, the world stops. Everything about everybody's normal schedule and agenda halted in March of 2020. And that just gives, so either, do you let that impact you or do you take advantage of that? So that allowed us to really accelerate the building of the business, starting to have those conversations and laying a great foundation for the company. So as we're building the business, again, Corient is a separate, distinct, independent entity from CI. So I needed a headquarters for the business, but because of how I built the business, I had totally free reign in terms of where do you ultimately put the headquarters. So there was no kind of particular transaction, no corporate historical ties to any one particular area. So if you think about it with a totally clean slate, where do you want the headquarters for the business ultimately to be? I picked Miami. I picked Miami for a lot of different reasons. I would say one of the things about Miami that really stood out relative, I think it makes Miami unique, not only in America, but in the rest of the world, is how engaged people are locally around creating positive reinforcements for building a community. So, one of my good friends, one of our good friends is the mayor, or former mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez. Francis was the ultimate ambassador. I don't think that I've ever seen a better ambassador for a city than him. Take personal involvement, create connections, build relationships. So, you think about it, there's a decision around where do you want the business to be, and then there's a secondary decision, well, how do you actually establish the business once you've made the decision? And I find a lot of times people will sell the ambition and leave the second part up to the individuals. And I think what Francis in particular, and it's true for the Miami ecosystem that he really created under his tenure there as mayor, is it just created this very incredibly welcoming environment. So I chose to pick Miami as the headquarters, moved to Miami myself, and effectively built the business. And it's been absolutely amazing, because we were by no means a pioneer of moving to Miami. I picked the headquarters at the end of 2020.
· Kurt MacAlpine, David Senra
But we were a little bit early relative to the flood of movement that's happened on the back of us. So the worry that I had at that point in time was, was there going to be enough local talent to hire as the business continues to grow? And the answer was yes, even in its current form when we moved, but it's even more true now given all the great migrations that we've ultimately seen on the back of it. And you know this from your time in Miami, once you get there and spend time there, the quality of life is unbelievable as well. So it becomes, again, you build momentum around something and continue to reinforce the momentum. And, I think we're still in the early days of what we'll see in South Florida. So it's worked out, significantly exceeded my expectations across the board, both in terms of how we've been able to establish a presence and operate the business, the employee, and the colleague satisfaction, and what we've been able to do. [00:00:00] S0: I love how when I asked you where'd you pick your headquarters and then how you designed your business, it was the same exact idea. I started from a blank sheet of paper.
· David Senra, Kurt MacAlpine
[00:00:00] S0: I love how when I asked you where'd you pick your headquarters and then how you designed your business, it was the same exact idea. I started from a blank sheet of paper. [00:00:00] S1: You have to. You have to. I mean, look, again, at some point, businesses, you end up too far down the path and it's very, very hard. So you have to push yourself, right? Is, if you're going to build something from scratch, how do you avoid pitfalls? You have to learn and study mistakes you've made, mistakes other people have made, just successes you've had, successes other people have had. How do you really kind of draw on the best of it? We didn't really cover it today, but we talk a lot about the partnership. One of the things with the partnership, when I launched the partnership, the goal that I had set out for ourselves is, I wanted the structure and features of the Corient partnership to be better than the structure and features of any partnership that had come before us. And the reason I wanted that to be true is, we're building this thing from scratch. [00:00:00] S0: Mm-hmm.
· David Senra, Kurt MacAlpine
[00:00:00] S0: Mm-hmm. [00:00:00] S1: And you want to be able to say, "Look, I've drawn on all of these lessons learned from all these other great partnerships that existed in other industries. How do I take the best of them, improve on the areas that I think are ripe for improvement, and really kind of use that as a catalyst?" So not only was it a partnership, when people actually get in and audit the partnership, they're like, "Wow, this is really built in a way that's friendly." And it's done that way because, again, you just become a student of all of the things that have come before you and try to use it to influence your decision-making. [00:00:00] S0: And it should be if you're going to do this forever. [00:00:00] S1: Exactly. Exactly. [00:00:00] S0: Perfect place, Dan. Thanks for taking the time to do this. [00:00:00] S1: Thanks, man. [00:00:00] S0: Awesome. [00:00:00] S1: Appreciate it. [00:00:00] S0: I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review, and make sure you listen to my other podcast, "Founders." For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through "Founders."