Episode 05: $300B LCP’s Dan Mikulskis on The State of Story in the Fund Industry | Why Fund Mgrs Need to Differentiate (For Real) | How Allocators Influence the Future for Boutiques

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In this episode, Dan Mikulskis and I discuss:

• His backstory: From growing up in a family of mathematicians, to investment consulting, to writing and podcasting

• The communication gap between fund managers and allocators — and his advice to bridge that gap

• How founders and fund managers can get more comfortable sharing authentically

• His shift in perspective on storytelling — and what type of stories we need more of 

• How allocators influence the future for boutiques
  

About Dan Mikulskis

As a partner at Lane Clarke and Peacock, a UK consulting firm advising on $300B, Dan Mikulskis helps wealth managers and pension funds make better decisions. He meets with hundreds of asset managers every year. Get perspectives from the other side of the table and the other side of the pond.   

At LCP, Dan currently advises 4 of the largest 30 pension schemes in the UK. He is a member of LCP’s Responsible Investment team, leading thinking around how to invest for Net Zero. Dan also co-hosts LCP’s weekly investment podcast, Investment Uncut, and edits LCP’s investment magazine, Vista. 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Book: Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi

Transcript

Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.

Dan Mikulskis: And I think that sort of gives a kind of conformity to the whole industry, but I think is a huge issue by the way, in asset management. The level of conformity in terms of how people dress, how they talk, how they just do everything in an industry that should be based around doing things differently to everyone else.

Stacy: Hey, my name is Stacy Havener. I'm obsessed with startups, stories, and sales. Storytelling has fueled my success as a female founder in the Toughest Boys Club, wall Street. I've raised over 8 billion that has led to 30 billion in follow on assets for investment boutiques, you could say against the odds. Yeah, understatement.

I share stories of the people behind the portfolios while teaching you how to use story to shape outcomes. It's real talk here, money, authenticity, growth, setbacks, sales and marketing are all topics we discuss. Think of this as the capital raising class you wish you had in college mixed with happy hour.

Pull up a seat, grab your notebook, and get ready to be inspired and challenged while you learn. This is the Billion Dollar Backstory podcast.

Hello and welcome to the Billion dollar Backstory podcast. I am your host, Stacey Havener, and today's guest is my friend, fellow writer. And podcaster. Dan Mikulski, partner at Lane Clark and Peacock, a consulting firm advising on 300 billion in a world driven by short-term noise. Dan helps his clients, wealth managers, and pension funds keep a long-term perspective, measure what matters, prepare well for uncertainty.

And make better decisions. Dan and his colleagues meet with hundreds of asset managers every year. He's gonna give us the goods on what works and what doesn't. Perspectives from the other side of the table. And the other side of the pond. Dan, welcome to the show. 

Dan Mikulskis: Hi Stacy. Thanks so much for having me.

Delighted to be here. I've been really looking forward to this 

Stacy: actually. I know, me too. All our chats are great, so I feel like we're giving listeners just a fly on the wall opportunity here. Hmm. So for people who don't follow you, and we're gonna talk about some of the cool stuff you're doing outside of your day job.

Can we do a little backstory? I mean, that's the crux of the podcast. You're an investment consultant. How did that happen? Like did you come from a long line of investment consultants? Did you like always wanna be in this biz? 

I 

Dan Mikulskis: did not come from a long line of investment consultants, but there are a few sort of echoes there that you can pin down.

So I do come from a family of mathematicians. Oh, with a bit of a ponant for sort of explaining things to to other people I suppose. So both my parents were math teachers at various points in their career. My mom did that for a whole career, so it wasn't so much of a stretch for me to focus in on becoming an actuary, I guess.

You know, I was good at math. I enjoyed math, uh, through school, and I think I, I think I knew what an actuary was when I was a, sort of a teenager or whatever. Sort of had a bit of exposure to that school and for whatever reason, decided that was something I, um, I sort of wanted to focus on. Started mass at Uni University and did a bit of an actuarial studies and decided I wanted to go that way.

And then, of course, There's a bunch of sort of happenstance and and luck that gets thrown into it as well. Right. So I think when I was applying for jobs that this sort of filtering that went on was, oh, he's a mathematician, but he's sort of a little bit sociable as well, so we'll put him in the investment consulting piece rather than in the really traditional actuarial piece.

Making that pretty much was the way those things was sort of. Decided at that point in time, and that was fine by me. And yeah, I feel extremely privileged that I sort of landed in investment consulting at that point in time, which was about 20 years ago. The industry was going on through a huge amount of change and, and I had a, like a front row seat for some really interesting sort of developments.

And 

Stacy: when I was reading, actually, I was reading this and I heard it on the Schroeder's podcast when you first started, were you really doing a lot on the quant side, like modeling and things? I mean, was that the path first, right? Kind of deep dive math? Yeah, I 

Dan Mikulskis: think so. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I did certainly start my career.

Built a lot of models that, yeah, there was a whole area called liability driven investing that was taking off at the time and that. Lent itself to sort of quantit actuarial type modeling. And I did a bunch of that. This is when I was at Mercer, where I started my career, did a bunch of that there and, and that very much was the sort of foundational stage, I guess, of my career.

But so 

Stacy: now here we are and you have a podcast, which is awesome, called Investment Uncut, and you have a newsletter, which is one of my faves, called Your Thursday Investment Fix. And so these are like word things, Stan. So how did that happen? How did 

Dan Mikulskis: I get there? Yeah, it's a funny one, isn't it? I mean, I, I think when that wanted to sound too grand about it, I think I am someone who likes sort of personal growth and doesn't sort of choose to define themselves the same way that I maybe did at the start of my career.

So I think I've always been sort of looking for to sort of move in different areas and I think that is why I've stayed with investment consulting for, you know, really almost all my career. Just because it does allow you a lot of different ways to go. You're not necessarily. Boxed into a particular role like you can be in other areas.

But yeah, I mean, I started a podcast with my co-host, Mary. We started that in late 2019, and I started a newsletter in 2022. And I guess that's not exactly early in the game on those two things. Is it? So you might well be asking why so late on those things. No. Made you think. Well, what, what made you think the world needed another newsletter or another podcast?

But, but, um, part of the reason, I mean, I consume a lot of podcasts. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I listen, I read a lot of newsletters and I always sort of take this view and other people said this as well, that. I write for an audience of one sometimes as in myself, because I'm a big believer that writing makes you a much better thinker.

It really clarifies your thinking when you write and the discipline, especially of writing a newsletter, you suddenly discover that you didn't understand things quite as well as you did, or that your strongly held beliefs were actually kind of based on not really very much. And so I always think if I can write something that I as a reader would like to read, Then that is a win, basically.

And then if other people wanna read it as well, then that's sort of great as well. And I talked at the same view on podcasting. I kind of formed a view of what kind of podcast I liked and was like, you know what do it for a sort of an audience of one. So, you know, it sort of seems to have worked. 

Stacy: I love that.

And also I bet it's made you a better storyteller. Because when you're writing or even when you're podcasting, you start realizing like, well, that just sounded boring. Like I wouldn't wanna listen to that, or I wouldn't wanna read that. And it sort of forces you, and I know we're gonna talk more about this to tap into another side.

That creative 

Dan Mikulskis: side. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love, as I say, I read a lot of newsletters, so I love to sort of really analyze them and like, right. What did they use that first paragraph for? Yeah. What, you know, how did they, did they put jokes in? Where were the funny bits? Where were the serious bits? How did they change it?

How did they structure it? Were there three main things? Were there five? Did they. Bullet, point it out, all these little nuances. And there are some, you know, there's so many good examples out there. There's a few newsletters that I always follow that I try and read just before I write mine, just to get myself in the swing of like, how they've kind of just structured it more than anything.

I'm not like nicking their content or anything. Yeah. But like, just the structure of it and the flow and the way you wanna do it, there's, there's so many different ways you can do it. And podcasting as well. Right? It's a real art, asking good questions and trying to develop, develop threads through, not just through one episode, actually through a series.

I think that's what gets people. Are coming back. By the way, it's like just ideas that kind of keep repeating themselves and a little bit of personality as well. There I say yes 

Stacy: and you are very good at both. So we're gonna come back to this, but I wanna also, you know what I loved there, you just broke down the newsletter, like such an analyst.

You were like, okay, how many main points do they have? What did they do? In the beginning? Like it was great to see both sides of your brain interacting on something creative. So that was pretty cool. So before we come back to storytelling, I wanna give people. A different perspective. Like I said in the intro, I mean, you are on the other side of the table, so to speak.

You're on the allocator side. Yeah. I can't imagine how many managers come through your office and I can't imagine that some of those conversations are great and some of them are god awful. So from where you sit and, and I know you spoke at a conference on this recently. There are so many funds, they're all trying to grow.

What's your 

Dan Mikulskis: take? Yeah. Well, I mean, great question. As you say, there was a conference I spoke at recently. There's an organization here in the uk, the Association of Investment Management Sales Executives. It's actually a really good little organization, sort of brings sales people together from across the asset management industry.

It's actually surprisingly very collaborative and quite a sort of good place for mentoring and stuff, and that they get lots of engagement. So they do an annual conference. They have probably a hundred odd sales execs in in room, and myself and a couple other. Sort of other cases we're asked to speak about the future of distribution.

Yeah. Which I don't love as a word, by the way, just, just straight off the bat distribution just frames it totally wrong to me. And we maybe go into that. But yeah, they asked me, what do you think is the future of distribution? And I said, look, okay. I think we've gotta face up to the fact there are too many managers, too many funds and most funds, we are gonna give you pretty average returns before fees.

And before you kick me out and like, hate me forever, let me, let me tell you why that's a really good thing. Because if you know that and understand that as a manager, you can base your entire strategy around that and focus on differentiating, telling me as an allocator, you know, why are you. Different to your competition, which obviously first of all involves understanding your competition and what they do, which I, they think is done enough.

And then also, and I'm sure you'll be here for this, but authentically telling your story, which is also Ah, awful big differentiator. Yeah. Which I don't think is done sort of anywhere near enough. And we explored those ideas a little bit in the conference and then there was a lovely bit of socializing afterwards.

So they called it hot tabling where I sort of. Got whisked around about four or five different tables of people. And there was just a lot of, there was a lot of love for those ideas and especially a lot of folks who were a bit earlier in their careers there were kind of saying like, yeah, no, I really get it.

And it was always, but, but, but you know, these ideas always get kind of vetoed and it was like, okay, yeah, I hear you. That is tough. If you are in the very start of your career, you're gonna struggle to, to change things. But it was some good conversation. It was a really good start. Now 

Stacy: I have to ask, Do you see a difference between US managers and non-US managers when you meet with them, like in their style of.

Doing sales and marketing? Yes, I 

Dan Mikulskis: think so. I think a little bit, there is a bit of a sort of cliche in, in, uh, I suppose in the UK in that you might often sort of roll your eyes and be like, God, they were so American, sort of thing. And in a sort of a general style, which is, you know, from a UK perspective, you probably have this horrendous generalization of course.

But yeah, of course what the sense, what I mean by that is as someone yeah, a little, a little bit brash, kind of not really showing maybe any, any humility Yeah. That you sort of might want not really showing maybe sort of self-awareness. And those are sort of key, key components of it. But I mean, so yes, I see a difference between us and other managers, but I would say generally, I think across all managers.

I see, yep. What I would describe as sort of a huge kind of communications deficit, I think there really is a, you know, huge communications kind of crisis, if you like, in the industry. If you wanna be a little bit, maybe a little bit over top about it. Which I've thought a lot about, and I think that that's bad, right?

Because I think it means it lets the managers down because it doesn't help the managers differentiate themselves from each other. So it doesn't do them right, a good service, but it potentially is also damaging for their clients because I think bad communications can trigger clients into bad behaviors.

And just one example of that, right? So. Managers will send their clients a quarterly investment report. Yeah. Clients will get loads of those. Probably skim through it, but they probably will look at the first page. And so what have you got on the first page? And often it'll be, might be some rubbish compliance disclaimer.

Okay, fine. Slightly better than that. It might be last quarter's performance. Okay. All right. Not great because you're telling your client that's what matters. The last quarter's performance, or it might be, Some blurb around what the Fed did four months ago, but did they raise rates or whatever. And it's like by putting that on the first page, you are telling your client that is the most important thing.

Yes. What the Fed did four months ago and what our performance was last quarter. And that could trigger your client into bad decisions. Focusing on that. I do think a li quite a simple thing would be for managers to think a little bit more about what they're putting on that first page. That's their one chance a quarter potentially to send a message to their client.

What message do you wanna send? Do you wanna send a message that. What the Fed did four months ago is the most important thing in the world for us. Or do you wanna send a different message? So it isn't just about managers own self-interest, but of course also managers could do themselves a favor by differentiating more better comms.

I think 

Stacy: it's so good because what you said there, gosh, I'm like nodding and just high fiving you. You are not putting yourself in the shoes of the reader if you start your news or your quarterly letter like that, because if you did, then you'd ask yourself, is this interesting to me? If I got this newsletter, would I want to read it?

And if you're honest, you're gonna be like, not really. It's boring. And so it's such a wasted opportunity to show who you are, how you think, I don't know, maybe be funny or entertaining, or. Just not boring. And I feel like there's such a pressure and I don't know if it's coming from an internal or external source or both of don't show any personality.

Definitely don't be funny because this is serious business. So just give them the facts and get out. 

Dan Mikulskis: Yeah, well, absolutely. And I've thought a lot about why this is, for what it's worth. I think there are basically three. Broad reasons why we've ended up here in terms of the communications situation and well, one that I don't put in that list is, which most people would probably jump to is regulation.

Mm-hmm. So I think people will often say, ah, but everything's regulated so we can't sure. See what we want. And it's like, okay. Yes, kind of. But not really. I think you not really think that's often an easy out for people that kind of wanna avoid it. So I don't even count that as a real reason. But I think there are three structural reasons in the industry while we end up here.

The first one relates to sort of structures of asset management, the percentage fees, and the long time scale over which you get your. Outcomes lend themselves to large incumbents. They lend themselves to scale. You want scale because percentage fees obviously work great at large scale. Longtime scales means it's quite hard for newcomers to show that they're better because you don't find out for 20 years or whatever.

Sure. Um, and so that favors large incumbents. And as soon as you have large incumbents, it's a don't rock the boat, be all things to all people kind of mentality. And that really suppresses a lot of these things we're talking about. That's the first reason. That's pointing the finger a little bit at Asset Asset Manager.

So I've also gotta turn it around to myself a little bit, I think, because another big issue is agency issues in the industry. You've often got people whose job it is to choose managers for other people, people like me, for example. Mm-hmm. Sure. Agency issues is well documented, I suppose, in psychology.

That creates all sorts of issues, which you can sort of summarize as saying, well, if you say to me, Hey Dan, can you write me a 40 page presentation on which fund manager I should choose? The issue is I might come up with a different answer than if you just say, Hey Dan, which fund manager should I choose?

Right. Wow. As soon as you say 40 page presentation, then I might start thinking, well, hang on. I better write about the process. I better do a page of the buyer and every one of their teams. Yes, I better write about all these different things and that will I. Might put me down a different road. So I think that's one thing.

And then also having many stakeholders in these decisions. So I can imagine lots of managers listening to this might sort of be saying, Hey, Dan, dude, this is all very well, but I've got 20 stakeholders for every bid I'm doing. Any one of them can quite easily kill the whole thing if they don't like the flavor of what they hear from me that day.

So I can't be too, I can't be too authentic because someone might dislike it. And then the whole thing, I lose the whole. You know, the whole bid that I'm making. So I think that's another real tricky one. And the third area is just, I think the sense that investing is a purely technocratic discipline. Like completely divorced from values sort of thing.

I mean, you can sort of say that's the kind of. Chicago school. Yeah. Taken to the extreme kind of thing, I guess if I was being slightly challenging there. And I think that sort of gives a kind of conformity to the whole industry I think is a huge issue by the way, in asset management. The level of conformity in terms of how people dress, how they talk, how they just do everything in an industry that should be based around doing things differently as everyone else.

Ironic that, but that creates a lot of conformity. So I think add all those three things together and it is a recipe for an industry that, yeah, that doesn't rock the boats. That's very. You know, conformist where what gets you on in the firms is the same as what gets the firms to be successful. Which is to be all things to all people.

And don't, for goodness sake, say anything that sort of stands out. Sort of too much. 

Stacy: Don't have an opinion. Yeah, don't have an opinion or have all the opinions. It's interesting, and I wonder if that phenomenon is more relevant in different stages of your evolution as an asset manager. So like, We mostly work with boutiques.

Hmm. And to your point, I think they are battling all three of those issues, but they're also sort of looking at where they wanna go. Like, I wanna be BlackRock. Right. And they watch what BlackRock does and who BlackRock's clients are, and they say, well, I'm in Target. Those same clients. In the same way when the reality is somebody who hires BlackRock is probably not gonna take a flyer on some new boutique.

So the boutique is thinking about where they wanna go and not really understanding where they are and realizing that there's a lot of capital. There are a lot of investors, they're not all the right investors for you. At this exact time. Yeah. So if you're a boutique and you're hearing this and you're like, oh, okay, yeah, but that's who I wanna be when I grow up.

And you skip kind of that adoption curve thing that I always talk about, which is, you know, you can't skip the early adopters. And in our industry, that's not the consultants, typically. It's not the groups with the 20 stakeholders and the reasons that an early adopter would choose you. Are the exact opposite of everything that you just said.

They're gonna choose you because you're a specialist. They're gonna choose you because you have conviction. They're gonna choose you because your portfolio's differentiated, and yet the boutique is sitting there going, I have to dumb all that down because I wanna be. Like the bicks. Yeah, 

Dan Mikulskis: yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that's exactly right.

I mean, I, I get contacted occasionally by managers, boutiques, whatever, looking to launch new funds or products or new managers and they'll often ask, how do you l c P, you know, think about this asset class, let's say talking about multi-asset. How do you think about it? What kind of stuff do you wanna see in a fund?

Which is exactly the right question to be asking me. But the issue is, and they should ask loads of people that question, obviously not just us, and I'm sure we're, yeah. But the issue is that you ask 10 allocators that you'll get 10 very different answers. And what we might say, well look, We really like having emerging markets in there.

For example, someone else might say, no, definitely don't put emerging markets in cause we wanna allocate to that separately. Someone might say, yes, we wanna see some private markets assets in there. Someone else might say, absolutely not. Cause we do that sort of separately. Someone might say, we want you to really run at the higher end of the risk levels.

We want good returns. Someone else will say, we want no risk. So the issue is you asked 10 people, you don't have to build it really just for one of them, I think because you can't try and ask 10 people average out all those characteristics and aim for that. You have to just really hone in on. Try and sniff out who you think might actually be most likely to go with it and then build it exactly around what they want, rather than some average of what 10 people have said 

Stacy: to you.

That's exactly right. Which means that you have to be brave enough to repel someone. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's very, and that's very difficult when you're sitting there with a fund and you're like, I need to reach critical mass, or I wanna grow and I need, and so you're like, I don't wanna repel anybody.

Yeah. Yep. Which doesn't work, especially if you're a boutique, think as, as you grow, and now you've got this team over here that's operating maybe like a little boutique in a, in an asset class and this one over here, and you've got all the things. It's a different conversation. But when you just sit there saying, I'm a specialist, then be that.

Be that thing and realize that it's gonna mean some people are gonna like you and that's okay, because that's also why some people will.

I loved what you said about the communication crisis and gap, and it reminds me of this study that my friends at Kaya did, and it's a really interesting study for a lot of reasons. But they asked allocators and asset managers a set of questions and kind of compared their answers. And to me, this is where like this gap really shows itself.

So one of the questions they asked was, Basically, how do you value or weight quantitative due diligence versus qualitative? Is one more important than the other, essentially? And the allocator said it. I'd be curious how you'd answer it. Probably should ask you before I tell you how. So how would you answer 

Dan Mikulskis: that?

I mean, I, it's a bit difficult cause I've heard this exact thing before. Oh. So, you know, I think I kind of agree with the 

Stacy: point that you, okay. So let's keep going with the study. Yeah, keep, okay. So basically, so the study says qualitative and quantitative allocators believe are equally important.

Qualitative may sometimes be even more important. When you ask the asset managers what they think is most important to the allocator, they all say quantitative. And so to your point on a gap, you have two sides who are not speaking the same language. And I wonder if you, how do you like, do you agree with that?

It reminds me of what you said about this communication crisis. 

Dan Mikulskis: Yeah, absolutely. I agree with it and I think the way I see that manifesting itself is that I don't feel managers tend to do a good job of explaining what their key differentiators are, quite honestly. Yeah. I mean, the number of presentations you see that start with saying, well, the key thing about us is our culture and our people, and it's like, yeah, okay, fine.

Look, I mean gonna say I've heard that a million times and like it might be right. I mean, there are some firms that have a objectively brilliant culture and there's a, you know, there's a small number. Some do, and there are some objectively brilliant individuals out there, but most of the time those are kind of a, a given, like I think if you're in the top tier of asset managers, your people are gonna have to be pretty damn good.

Your culture is gonna have to be pretty decent. It's other stuff that I think is the real differentiators. And yeah, I feel often managers haven't worked hard enough on what the kind of differentiators are versus their competitors. There's, and different allocators will probably have arrived at a slightly different version of what they think those things ought to be or what kind of might be.

And I do think that rather than starting presentations by saying, Yeah, our strength is our people and our culture, and we have five offices around the world. And here's a map showing you where San Francisco, New York, and Tokyo are. And we've got sort of some 653 billion of assets under management or whatever.

And it's kind of like, this is just exactly the same as every other presentation I've seen. Whereas yeah, someone you can say in one sense, Like what your differentiator is if you've really thought about it enough and if you know. Yeah. And I think the problem is that, um, yeah, quite often managers don't necessarily know, or for some reason they're sort of feel pressured into saying the kind of bland stuff that everyone else says.

Stacy: Yeah, my pet peeve. Is when they add up all the years of experience. Oh yeah. It's like we have, you know, 10,000 years of combined experience across. You're like, this is so irrelevant. It doesn't help me at all. We did some training internally yesterday. I said, you know, to me, when you're writing something, marketing or sales, if you could take the company name out and put somebody else's firm in.

And it still works. It's not good. Hmm, that's not good marketing. That's not good copy because it should be so specific that you can't swap out the firm. And if you have that in your mind, when you now read anyone's presentation or their website copy, or things they say about culture, like that could literally be anyone.

And that's a red flag to me that you haven't gotten clear enough on what makes you special or you're not brave enough 

Dan Mikulskis: to say it. Yeah, that's a really good point. And just to extend that a little bit, I think another test you can apply to some of these things, and I've thought about this when I'm pitching for business and stuff.

Is it, yeah. Are you making statements where. The opposite of that statement would also be a reasonable position. Right? Because I think that's where you need to go a little bit. Mm-hmm. Cause if you're not doing that, then they're kind of just truisms. So if you're kind of just saying, our people are great.

Oh, I like, I mean, you would never turn up and say how people are not great. Right. Where, whereas you, so it's kind of a truism when you're actually getting to the nitty gritties when you're saying something like, we believe a client shouldn't have any more than five fund managers, let's say. Right in my position, that might be something where someone else might say, no, we definitely, they should have more than five.

So it's like, okay, now you're saying something. Now this is getting interesting. Yes. And you know, a fund manager might say, you know, we think that a portfolio should always be managed by one individual because the bucks has to stop with that person and that's it. Someone else might completely disagree with that, and some allocators might hate that, but you're starting to lay your cards on the table there, aren't you?

And, and actually take a position that where the inverse could also be a, a sort of a good 

Stacy: position. And that's conviction. And that goes back to attract and repel. Yeah. Because if you did that in a presentation, you know, if you did that in a pitch, the person receiving that information be like, I don't philosophically agree with how Dan and his firm approach things, so this is not a good fit for me.

And then you go back to your corner and your team's like, whoa, great job, Dan. You know, you just lost us, that client. But did you, or did you actually weed out a client that might not have been a good fit? 

Dan Mikulskis: Yeah. I mean, unfortunately often in the industry is you don't get great feedback on these things. Is is another issue really.

So you, you don't actually ever really get to know Yeah. What it was. It's funny actually, I suppose I've been a bit critical of asset managers in what I said here and I think that's, I that's fair enough. And then we've got broad enough shoulders to sort of take it on the chin, so to speak. But I will say you do see some good examples.

I sat down at a, a sort of a round table discussion with a manager a couple of months ago and the founder sat down and said, Right. Just give you a really brief, uh, rundown of where we come from. Our key values were forged in the financial crisis, and we thought there was far too much leverage. So we wanted to start a firm, leave our existing firm, start a new firm where we bought quality assets and didn't lever them.

And that was it. Yeah. And I was like, okay. Wow. Like now we're talking like someone storytelling memo. Like Yes, exactly. And I might disagree with that or agree with it or whatever, or think, right. But at least it was something, it was better than our differentiators of people and culture and we've got a thousand years of combined experience, you 

Stacy: know.

Oh gosh. I love that because they sort of cut through the noise and got right to the heart of it. Exactly. Yeah. And it reminds me of, you know, we've been talking kind of this thread has been throughout about authenticity and sort of what happens, especially if it's a founder, fund manager. Again, you know, from where we sit, that's typically how the boutiques we work with are structured.

Think it's different when you get. Larger and you've got more people, and it's not the same dynamic, but let's just say founder fund manager situation. Kind of the story you just shared with us, or maybe broadly, but why are founder fund managers, fund managers in general, people in our industry so afraid to be themselves.

I mean, you must have gone through this. Even in your newsletter, like I love your newsletter. It's one of the few I read. I always think it's weekly. Maybe it's cuz I want it to be, but I'm always looking for it. And you do a really good job of blending kind of who you are as a person and who you are professionally in your thoughts on the investment space.

And so, I don't know, like how did you do that and why is that so challenging for people in our 

Dan Mikulskis: space? Well, me thanks. I mean, it's kind of used to say that I feel like I don't do enough of that. I gotta say, I feel like, I still feel like I'm being slightly too reserved Okay. In what I'm saying there. But yeah, I, I did start it because I wanted to just sort of, I.

Say stuff that mattered in a kind of plain English way without kind of beating around the bush so much, you know? And so, yeah, I do a little bit of that. I feel like I could do more. I see a lot of people who are able to share a lot more about themselves, much more authentically. So I do still f I'm a little bit conscious that I feel quite reserved in it, but.

Yeah. At the same time, compared with a lot of the other content I've put out over the years, it feels different when I hit publish on that each fortnight because I think I am putting a little bit more into it. And so you just feel a bit more sensitive to it, I think. Yes. Whereas if you're putting out a, a more of a researchy type piece or a very factual type bloke, yeah, sure.

You might have made a mistake or something look a bit stupid, but. That doesn't actually matter that much in the end on that enough times and you hit publishing, you don't worry about it. Whereas the newsletter, I sort of stress over and sweat over a bit more because I just Yeah, because of that. Yeah. I mean, so how, how did I did it?

How can people do it better? It's a practice, isn't it? And I think that is, yeah. By doing it regularly, you definitely get better at it. I mean, I always read old stuff that I wrote, even stuff like I wrote a year ago. When I say old, I'm absolutely cringe. Of the stuff the way I was writing. I mean, yeah, honestly, really cringey even somebody only knew that as so cringey, but that's, I think that's good.

Right? That's just inevitable. You just have to accept that's what it's gonna be like. And I think, yeah, you only get there if you're prepared to sort of turn it into a practice, kind of keep doing it. And I think. This is the positive, obvious, been quite negative towards the asset management industry in some ways, but the positive is you can really stand out without having to go, you know, to Absolutely.

To town on this stuff. You know, just a little bit of personality. What sets you so far above the crowd? It's almost absurd, I think, right? So I feel like all I've done is inject like a tiny bit of personality and stuff into it, and. It's gone down really well and people say it's so different. I think anyone would find that.

I, I really don't think it's that, that difficult just to put a tiny little bit of, um, authenticity into things and think about it a little bit from that angle. You mentioned founders and fund managers. Yeah. I would actually completely separate those two groups because I think founders, I know they can be the same person of course, right?

Yeah. But I think founders are special. I think just generally in the world. I've worked for founders once and I think everyone should at some point in their career, cuz you just realize how hard it is. To, to start and, and get a business off the ground and how close the whole thing is to falling apart for so many years through it.

Yeah. And it's a crazy ride and I enjoyed my time working for, for founders. So I think founders are special and I think founders are always in a really special position to be able to tell the story and really cut through to people. You know, when you can sit there and say, look, you know, I've staked my career, my whole career on this fund.

I am totally all in on this thing and this is me, my life, everything all in. This is what I'm trying you to say. That is a really special way you can differentiate against anyone. I think the issue with fund managers, the complete opposite of that is a situation where, you know, it's a kind of a, you know, journeyman type fund manager.

If he wasn't working for this fund, he'd be working for some other fund. He or she, sorry, could be working here, could be working there, just sitting in front of a portfolio, shuffling things around for a few years and moving to another role kind of thing. And that is night and day with a founder who's kind of like gone completely all in on something they actually believe in with a team around them.

So I think founders can absolutely draw on that and have to obviously to stand any chance of getting things off the ground. Need to sort of draw on that sort of a superpower or whatever you might call it. But yeah, fund managers generally, I think. Yeah, I'd go back to that point a little bit that it, it's often considered a sort of very technocratic discipline and fund managers will just think that it, it is just a sort of spreadsheet based exercise, like you were saying.

If the numbers are there, I'll present the numbers. People will see, they're great. I'll talk a little bit about process. You know, why should I need to get into things like my story, our story, who I am, who we are, kind of thing. Why would that matter to anyone? And I think people resist that quite a lot. And then the conformity of the industry sort of suppresses any challenge to that.

That kind of idea. And then of course when fund managers get big, it is so much self-reinforcing as well, isn't it that like, yes, if you become big and successful as a fund manager by doing those things, you will definitely keep doing them and you will instruct other people in your firm to do it that way as well.

And you will tell people not to do it in, in different ways. So, and that's how I kind of sit, see a lot of it. And also the point I was making earlier before we wanna air that. I think telling your story is difficult because to tell your story you have to understand your story and yeah, without getting too deep about it, I think that requires.

A certain level of maturity and a certain amount of sort of introspection and requires people to have done a certain amount of thinking about themselves. And that is difficult work. And yeah, not everyone's done it, frankly. 

Stacy: Yes. I think that's so true on the work that the sort of self kind of reflection that you have to do to be able to tell your backstory or any story about you or what you're building and it's not easy.

You know, when we do those sessions. With clients, I usually do them and I don't allow them to bring anyone to the conversation, just them because it's so vulnerable. Which seems crazy cuz you're like, I mean, my first question always just tell me how you got here. Hmm. And it starts out typically with like bullet points on their career while I worked here and then I worked here, and then I worked here and I ran that fund and I did that and I'm here.

And you're like, okay, now let's do it again. Right, because this is not bullet point's resume. Why did you make that leap to leave and go here? Like let's get into it. And it's very vulnerable work, as you said. I think what's super interesting too is this idea that founders do have sort of this visionary component to them or they wouldn't take the leap.

Hmm. But if it's a founder in. The asset management business. They also have probably been that fund manager. Yeah. That you talked about. Right? So now you have these two sides that are competing and trying to live together in building a new boutique. And it's like a push me pull you. On which side of them is gonna win.

And the one that typically tries to win is the fund manager. Hmm. And I think it's because of what that CAA study said. It's because they think nobody cares. Hmm. They think what people care about. Meaning what allocators care about is the performance. What's in the portfolio, what research did you do on that?

How are you managing risk? Not who you are as a person, why you're doing this, why your philosophy's different, what makes you special? They don't think anyone gives a shit about that. Hmm. And so I think it's more of an, it is, as you said, like it's an industry issue that we all sort of need to keep talking about and shining a light on and encouraging people that it is okay to be a human.

In the asset management space. There are people here. Absolutely. 

Dan Mikulskis: And I think it, that message connects and lands with people when you speak. Like I say, I've, I've spoken to asset asset management people, asset management firms, and people get it, I think when you talk to 'em about it. But it's, there's one thing, one thing, people getting it and agreeing with it and it's another thing to change the way sort of, yeah.

A corporation or organization actually works. These things are, are sort of hard. But yeah, no, you for sure. You gotta start by kind of highlighting good practice and just trying to get people on board with that. And I think going back to that point that yeah, there are so many. Fund managers. There's so many managers, so many organizations doing that.

Yeah. To differentiate, you have to go there. I think you really do today. Maybe you didn't, maybe you didn't 10, 15 years ago, I'm not sure. But today you really do. I think otherwise you, you struggled to stand out. Yes. 

Stacy: I hear from fund managers too that if I, you know, if we, if so, if I was like, you have to listen to this podcast with Dan because it's not just me saying it.

You're hearing it from an allocator. Right. And I think that matters too. So I really appreciate you sharing candidly. The good and bad that you see from your vantage point. A lot of fun managers will say, well, yeah, but like you only tell stories if you basically suck. Right? If you were good at what you do, you don't need to tell a story.

Which kind of gets to this thread that I've heard a lot of people in our space talk about as it relates to storytelling, which is, is it basically just manipulation and you're trying to put spin on something that maybe is not that great? Yeah, 

Dan Mikulskis: I'm really glad you asked that question cuz I used to believe that as well, actually.

I think the fact that if you were good enough, you didn't need to better tell a story because it would just all speak for itself. And so therefore, if you were telling a story, it probably meant that you weren't good enough. I used to believe that, honestly, and that's probably one of the biggest things that I've changed my mind on over the last, I don't know, decade or whatever I, yeah, I think, yeah, storytelling is at all right.

I think to distribute it back to its basics, you can even say it's like, Microsoft Excel or something. And you can use it, well, you can use it badly. You can do great things with it. You can manipulate with it, and you can fudge numbers and stuff E either way. So it's not storytelling per se, and and I think you can even go as far as to say that in asset management there's maybe too many of the sort of, Bad kind of stories and not enough of the good ones.

I think. And when I say bad kind of ones, I mean, I think if you are, if you took a lot of fund managers and asked them to sort of tell a story, they might come up with a story about a stock in the portfolio. So they might say, Hey, we're in this great company, tiny little company out of, I don't know, Idaho or something, selling furniture.

Founders still own it. Great little family. It turns out brilliant profits every year, but no one knows about it because they don't bother going out to Idaho and it's just too small to get into his bubble or something like that. That's a good story, I will admit. But then you probably find out the stock is like half a percent of the portfolio and that that is not, not actually a particularly repeatable thing.

It's just a complete one off. So yeah, that is a bit of a manipulative story cause it's given the impression that that of something that's not really that helpful. Another one may be a lot of funds that were launched. Sort of maybe a decade ago were launched on the back of a story that kind of amounted to, well, there's a lot of people in China, so therefore GDPs gonna go up, therefore consumption's gonna go up, consumer discretionary, China, blah, blah, blah, invest in China effectively.

Right. Was sort of a story. And again, that hasn't really worked for loads of complicated reasons in that the higher population growth, the higher G E P doesn't necessarily translate to. Higher stock prices and stuff. So that was another story that was maybe, I don't know if that was written in the marketing department or whatever.

Um, so, so those are both stories that I think are the sort of maybe the bad kind that they were too much of. The one that there isn't enough of is the one that I mentioned before where PM or a founder sits down and says, our values were forged by this particular event and what that taught us was this.

And that means that what we always will do is X, Y, and Z. And now you're thinking, okay, that is something that feels like it's transferrable and gonna be true in a while, and you gotta. Check whether you think they're really being sincere and that's really backed up by other stuff for sure. Yeah. But I think that is the story that is often lacking and the individual stock stories are the ones that are used a bit more manipulatively to say, well, yeah, let's just pick something out that sounds good.

And we'll seduce everyone by sort of showing our brilliance that way. So yeah, I, I think it's really important to, to go deeper than just saying, tell more stories clearly, because there's good and there's bad stories for sure. 

Stacy: Yes. And I think the theme part that you hit on is really interesting. So if I weave a narrative about some theme, you could say there was some of this in the innovation space.

Like, let me just, this is a theme and it's a thing, and it's the next thing and it's the greatest next thing, and everyone should be in it is a little bit of a different narrative. Then let me tell you a story about me, my team, and what drives us, right? It's like I'm telling a story about what's happening in the market, of which I have no control.

Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yeah. But if I tell you a story about what I'm choosing to do with whatever is happening in the market, I do have control over how that narrative is gonna play out. And those are two very different things. They're driven by very different factors and controls. Yeah. 

Dan Mikulskis: That's nice of looking at it.

Ashley, a handful about 

Stacy: that. Yeah. I mean, if I'm gonna tell you a story about what's happening in the market, why am I the expert on that? I don't control that, but I certainly do control how our team is going to invest. Given what's happened in the market. Hmm. And I think you're right. The storytelling gets a bad rap.

And I think there is this pervasive thought that it, it is spin, it is putting lipstick on a pig. And so people feel like, well, I shouldn't do it because it actually hurts me if I tell a story as opposed to helps me. And I think you've highlighted that that's. Maybe an old way 

Dan Mikulskis: of thinking. Yeah, yeah. I think a little bit, but you, I mean, you can overuse any skill, right?

Yeah. I, I'm a big believer that all of our weaknesses are often just come from overused skills. And I think, yeah, but, you know, charisma is a positive quality, but charisma can definitely slip over into manipulation. Oh, absolutely. I've seen that happen many times, and so I think that's similar with storytelling and stuff.

You can definitely overuse storytelling and, and it can become manipulative. But yeah, I think, yeah, give people some credit. I think people can sort of smell that a little bit and I think people will give a lot of time to an authentic story, especially if it's really grounded in, like I say, in a founder or something who's clearly just stake the whole career on something.

I think you get a lot of scope to tell a story as, as sat there as a founder. 

Stacy: I agree. I think they should be more proud of what they're doing. We're I, we have a client that I was just prepping with with him this week for his intro webinar, and he was very honest and candid and said like, I'm really not good at this.

I'm very uncomfortable. And there were all these things he didn't want to say, including his a u m, including like how many people are on his team and, and he's running a half a billion dollars. For a new firm. And I, I said to him, well, that's really good. Like, why? But his vantage point was he came from a big Hmm.

So to him he felt like that's nothing. And if I share that, people are gonna be like, who are you? You're not even successful. Hmm. And I was like, you have to reset your whole framework because when you build something from scratch, you start from zero. Hmm. You should be proud of our fr how far you've come, not be measuring how far you still have to go to get to like big status.

And so there's this imposter syndrome. I think that happens to all of us, but certainly when you are a founder and you're coming from a place that was very successful that you sort of have to square.

I have this question that I'm, I wanna write about, so I'm gonna ask you cuz you're gonna help me think it through. It's kinda like, yeah, phone a friend. So do you think you're hiring a human or buying a fund? Yeah, 

Dan Mikulskis: that's a really good question. I think the real right answer would be you are buying like an investment outcome, but the issue is that only materializes in 20 years.

So today you can't, you're really buying that, right? That's one of the issues at the heart of the industry is that the thing you're really buying is 20 years away. And so I think you're right on the day you're buying something that is the difference between it. Yeah. I think we should focus more on the human, on the fact that you're buying a human.

Yeah. One of the big changes that I've seen in my sort of 20 years in the industry is moving from portfolios of stocks to portfolios of funds. And I think, I mean, I'm talking mainly about institutional investors, but I think the same is true individuals actually, and I'm obviously talking a little bit about the uk, but I think again, it's a bit of a global phenomenon.

To unpack that a little bit Cause it goes to your point. I think that has driven a lot of behavior. Some of it's good, but a lot of it's bad. And back in the days when I first started in the industry, a pension fund in the UK would have a, an asset manager who held a portfolio stocks. They would turn up, talk about the stocks.

You have your fund manager, your person who is managing those for you. Now the pension fund will have a portfolio of maybe 10, 12 funds. Now, obviously those funds contain stocks. They are run by fund managers, but I think it is an important nuance for having that extra wrapper, that extra layer in there changes the behavior quite a lot in that it separates the asset owner from the things they're actually owning.

Cause it looks like a fund rather than some actual mm-hmm. Companies that do real stuff pump out. Pollution, maybe innovate, disrupt, do all sorts of different things, employ people, do all sorts of stuff. That gets sort of lost a little bit. And I think from the fund management perspective, the mindset shifts from one of being a steward that's been entrusted with this portfolio to run on behalf of the client, to then having these great things that are called funds that kind of just grow brilliantly and give you great revenues.

And the asset management mindset becomes dominated by packaging and distributing these things called funds, which are these great things that people. Pay you escalating amounts of money to keep going kind of thing. And you can see that in the size of the stewardship versus distribution teams or fund managers.

I think it's, it's just completely sort of out of whack. So I think, yes, there has been a huge move from portfolios of stock to portfolios of funds, and there is too much emphasis on this idea that I'm buying a fund and that fund has this expected return, this risk. This characteristics and stuff, and I, yeah, I would love to see more focus on the personal people that you are in, in effectively in trusting some of your money.

Yeah. Actually the other issue with funds, I think, is that from the fund manager perspective, once you've got a fund, every investor is the same. It's like you kind of lose, they're just chucking their money into this big sort of, um, Pit, if you like, a big, uh, big party. And it kinda doesn't matter what each investor is, how much they've got, whatever, they're just units in the fund.

Whereas in the old world of stocks, you had these different investors that you would just have a bit more of a connection to and you were managing on behalf of them. Whereas that fund piece in the middle, I think has, has really separated those two. There are obviously really good aspects of that, right?

There are investments that yeah, you can do now in funds that you could never do in the old world. You can be more diversified, invest more globally, do private markets, all that great stuff. So, I don't want to kind of just knock on funds and say that we should go win the cop back and just have book various stocks.

Yeah. But I think it's underappreciated the sort of the negative side of that big transition to funds and that if we could try and open up funds a little bit and look at the people and the teams inside them a little bit more. So now I, I am definitely here for. You're buying a human, you're buying a team of humans.

Yeah. That you have entrusted your capital too and you know, you better hope that they appreciate that, understand it, and kind of take on that responsibility of managing that for you appropriately. 

Stacy: Gosh, I'm so glad I asked you that question cuz the nuance about how it, the mindset of being the fund manager as it relates to the investor was really interesting.

I had not thought of that. I'm gonna. See, this is good. This is clarity in conversation here. Again, 

Dan Mikulskis: I, I, I need to write this up as well because I've this, I've had to, you know how it is. I've had that thought sort of percolating in my mind for five years now I think, and I need to write it up properly. And actually prepping for this has probably given me as much of, um, material as I need to start.

Yeah, it's, start writing that up, but, um, Yeah, 

Stacy: we'll see it like it. It's super interesting. I also loved your comment about the size of the teams. Gosh, what an interesting qualitative point to evaluate When you're doing due diligence on a manager, how big is their distribution team? How much spend are they on distribution versus on the actual management?

Like are they asset gatherers or asset managers? Yeah, exactly. That's a very interesting point. Okay, so similar. This is a little bit of a, like opposites I guess, but maybe not in the way I'm thinking about it. I listened to this great podcast, I'll send it to you after, and I'll put it in the show notes.

It was actually about the VC space. Hmm. And it was basically saying that in, in order to have a healthy ecosystem, you need to have the bigs, but you also need to have sort of the next gen, the boutiques, the startups. And in a healthy ecosystem, the bigs feed the startups. So if you look at like the whole PayPal Mafia thing and you watch what those guys have done, they build a company, it's successful, they make a lot of money.

They invest in the next generation of new companies coming up. And when I listened to this podcast, I thought, oh my gosh, our industry is horrible at this. It's so us first them, there is no thought to ecosystem. There is no thought to like the next, the bigs kind of seeding and feeding the next generation behind them.

And I just, it's another one of these things I'm like thinking about and wanna write about. And I'm curious your take on that. Like, I'm scared. That the boutiques are just gonna be gone and everybody's gonna have like three choices of who they can invest with. And it's like Vanguard, BlackRock, and insert whatever other big you want and that's it.

Dan Mikulskis: Yeah, I mean that is a real genuine, I think, legitimate concern. I've thought about this quite a lot as well. I mean, I. I should say I, I think passive investment is great. Yeah, it's been great and it's served investors really well in many ways. I often recommend clients to passive, so I'm not gonna sit here and knock passive, but then you do have to ask yourself some questions around, some really weird questions around where is the industry going, if that's the direction that everyone, everything goes in.

I definitely agree with you that a healthy ecosystem has some boutiques, has some people that are innovating, that are daring to do things differently. You know, founders that have. Been able to acquire enough experience or capital or whatever through other ways who can then go out on themselves and do stuff a little bit differently.

And there are obviously some of those that have done very well and, and have managed to change the, the landscape. I often sort of worry a little bit that a lot of the processes in the industry are, are kind of rigged a little bit towards the bigger firms. And, and get smaller managers all the time who might get in touch with me and say, Hey Dan, I love all your chat about boutiques, but have you just seen the questionnaire that your research team, you just sent me, that that, that, you know, would take a, might take a full-time person a month to fill in?

And I'm like, yeah, well, you know, sorry about that. But you know, that is the way that we, that is the way that we work. And I hear you and in the recent years I've only seen more of that. You know, one example of that is, um, In responsible investment, E S G, which is something I do think managers should think far more about and is really important.

Unfortunately, what that's meant is a huge array of E S G surveys that go out to all the managers from all the consultancies, and that favors the big managers a bit. Cause they can have a team of five people who can sit there filling those in. Whereas boutique is gonna really struggle with those. So honestly, I wrestle with that.

I don't have a great answer for how you can sort of solve it as an industry other than I agree with you that. Yeah, boutiques ought to exist. I think they need to exist in certain asset classes, right? I mean, in certain, agreed. I don't think you need a boutique, passive, global manager. Agreed. I don't think you need a boutique government bond manager.

A lot of the time and the way that a lot of UK institutional investors have gone, they have moved towards asset classes that favor bigger managers and that Yeah, that is just a little bit natural and it's not necessarily. Right to resist that because they're just investing more in bonds and more conventional asset classes, which are more of a scale thing.

But you know, that being said, in general, a lot of investors out there, I think boutiques and smaller firms need to exist. As I say, I think founders are special and to challenge that the industry is a really important thing. Otherwise, yeah, you end up in a bad place. 

Stacy: Yeah. Thank you for that. It's something I wanna keep, we'll have to keep talking about this in our coffee chats.

I wanna end with something a little bit different. And I've explained this in different ways to people, so, and it dates me, like, it makes me feel like I'm really old. So I will start with the original, sort of the origin of this questionnaire, which is prust. Okay. So this is called Prust questionnaire.

Okay. And if you Google it and read about it, it's basically these questions that are designed to give you a sense of who a person is. They would call it like a quote parlor game, but. People like James Lipton and Vogue Magazine have kind of adapted these questionnaires and asked people these questions, usually celebrities.

So you can count yourself in a really special group here. Dan and I just have a couple. For you. Okay. 

Dan Mikulskis: You ready? And is this fully quickfire or do you want a bit of my thinking behind it? I figured you want me to 

Stacy: explain a little question. Um, I think we can, we have time. Let's do a little bit of thinking behind it.

Okay. So I have, what do I have? 1, 2, 3, 4, or five? I've got six questions. Mm-hmm. And this is gonna help us get to know you. Great. Yeah. Here we go. I was, I'm gonna start, I'm starting with the easy ones. Okay. Sure. Okay. Ready? Ready. What book inspires you? 

Dan Mikulskis: Right. So I was thinking about all these last night I was chatting to my wife about, actually, yeah, it was really interesting discussion.

I think these, these are all great conversation starters, right? Yes. Aren't they? Yeah. So, so books. So where I went with that, automatically I was drawn to sports autobiographies and I guess autobiography's not surprising cuz there's people's stories, aren't they? That's, yes. Inspiring. I came up with about three or four, um, the, the one I found a bit difficult to settle on one, but I'll go with the um, Andre Agassi's autobiography.

It's called Opal. And I think the reason, what was the common thread between the ones I, they were all stories of success. Uh, big challenges, and then comebacks. So they are the sporting, but they're actually more UK sports people that you might not know anyway. But they'd all had this real rollercoaster career.

And the Andre Agassi book, I dunno if you read it, is really that, but also people who'd thought quite deeply about. Life and things in general. Deandre Aey book is a great read. If you haven't read it yet, 

Stacy: I have not, and I'm adding that to my list. I love that underdog thread that speaks to my heart. Okay, let's stay on inspiration.

Mm-hmm. Except now we're gonna say what place inspires you? Like, what's your happy 

Dan Mikulskis: place? When I read that question, I read it as two separate questions actually. What inspires you? What's your happy place? I thought I had to answer to it, but in terms of what inspires you? I think I would say the mountains.

Okay. We go skiing quite a lot. We go to the A. In France we tend to, so I, I would say that the Alps in France when we go skiing. And is that also your happy place? No, I came up with a slightly different answer to that, so, okay. My wife is French, by the way, so I've got, obviously got a lot of time for France and places in France.

We go there a lot. So there's a happy place. There's a small village called Thai Borg in southwest France, near where my wife is from on the river, Sharon down there that we go to each year. And my father-in-law runs a little water ski school on the river as well. So we spent a lot of time there. Oh my gosh.

Just chilling out by the river. And now we've got. See very young kids jumping in with the kids and it's just a beautiful countryside. Man's Top it off. It was actually, it's a tiny village, but it had a pivotal role in history in that there were these huge battles between the English and the French that took place on those fields sort of 800 years ago-ish.

Wow. And for a while it was actually, Part of England. There was a, a big English, um, sort of um, uh, terrain in France that was held for a while and that was the frontiers in England. In France. So we've only just started really learning the full history of it, but there you go. A little place in southwest France called Tai.

Stacy: Thank you. That was so honest too. And I love when it's like an off the run small place that no one knows. And I think it speaks to like where inspiration actually comes from. I love that. That is so good. Okay. Oh, 

Dan Mikulskis: by the way, sorry. Yeah. Best bu lingerie in the business in Tide. Their croissants really are pretty amazing.

I've, I've got, oh my gosh, I've got a friend. We actually did it when we got married five years ago. Married. We got married down there and a friend of mine, uh, five years later, still talks about the croissant he had the day after our wedding. I met up with him a little while ago. He was like, I still talk about that K croissant I had with my wife.

It was like, you know, if a queston can stay with you for five years, I think it's worth it. It's 

Stacy: a place worth visiting. Oh my gosh. I love that. Okay, now we're gonna switch gears a little bit. Yeah, let's do it. Let's pretend that you're speaking like at your asset management conference, except it's like a huge stadium, okay.

It's like all your fans are there, Dan, and they're about to announce you, and they're gonna play a song when you walk out onto the stage. What's your walkout anthem? 

Dan Mikulskis: I really thought about this. I went to my running playlists on Spotify that I've put together over the years when I've done runs and stuff, and I was quite tormenting to quite a few different ones, but I think you're gonna like the one I settled on, which is a okay.

A song that always just makes me smile. And I think it's a song that's aged really well and that's, um, juicy by the notorious B I g Oh my God. I mean, it, it might not be a hundred percent work appropriate, I have to say I haven't That's okay. Checked whether it goes a bit off piece with the lyrics there.

But anyway, it's just a song that always makes me smile. You can't listen to that song, not smile. That's 

Stacy: no. I think that's kind of true for most of his songs. Also, I love that rap is just here with us in this conversation as it is always for me. I swear my brain thinks in lyrics. That is so good. Okay.

What profession, other than your own, would you like to attack? 

Dan Mikulskis: I'm gonna say investigative journalism and I might be a little bit biased cause I'm re, I do love investigative journalist books. I'm reading the book on Wirecard, the Wirecard Ford at the moment. I'm sure like a lot of things, it's not quite as glamorous as it's made out in the books, but, Yeah, there you go.

Stacy: Investigative job. Oh, that would be really cool. Okay, flip side, what profession would you not like 

Dan Mikulskis: to do? Well, all all the ideas I came up with on this were actually professions that I hugely respect and consider to be really important, but just know deep down that I could never do. So I suppose I, I've got a a two-year-old and a three month old, and our two-year-old goes to nursery, which we really appreciate, but I know I could not be a nursery assistant because looking after one two-year-old is hard enough.

But having. The responsibility, let alone the issues that come with having a whole load of them is totally beyond me. So I have a lot of time for them and um, really appreciate what they do, but I could not 

Stacy: do that. Oh my gosh. They're treasures. Yeah, aren't they? Yeah. It's so true. Okay, last one. What do you want people to say about you?

After you've retired or left the industry, 

Dan Mikulskis: this is such a hard one. I, I know what I came back to on that was ages ago I was reading, I think someone in the, I can't even remember who it was, but I'm re reading. Someone in the industry had retired and there was an article written about them and there was a comment on the article by someone that said something like, I worked at x, y, Z firm in the Joe blog era and I remember it and we were talking about time, 20 years.

I remember it, uh, because ex all these things and I just kind of thought. Wow, that was something quite special. Cause it was a big firm, they were talking about very big firm and to have sort of defined an era in that firm was obviously they had a hu this person had a huge influence on the culture and a lot of people sort of just remembered that as a thing.

You know, we, we all, you know, we sort of turn up to work and that's fine, isn't it? But there are certain periods of your career where you've felt like you've been part of a team that's just been. Doing important work or just special and different in some ways. And I think anyone can do that, can bring a team together in that way if you think about it enough and, and wanna, wanna, wanna do it all the time.

So it's, it's just having people that would sort of say that, oh yeah, I remember when I was at, yeah. L c p in the Dan era kind of thing. And, and these, 

Stacy: oh, I love that. That's super special, and I think it speaks to a lot of what we talked about today, which is not just kind of the results of the Dan era, let's say, but how people felt.

In the Dan era. That's because there's that whole quote that people will never forget how you made them feel. Hmm. That's so great. Dan, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your insights. If people want to follow along, we've talked about your podcast and your newsletter, how can they 

Dan Mikulskis: do that?

Yeah, I mean, I, so I, I'm a big user of LinkedIn, so yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn, Dan Mcsk, and then you can you find a link to follow my newsletter, which is on LinkedIn and podcast is called Investment Uncut. So you can find that on Apple Podcasts or anywhere, anywhere you get your good podcasts. So, um, yeah, those are the 

Stacy: places.

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Dan. Have a great day. Stacy, thanks 

Dan Mikulskis: so much. It's been a really good conversation. Really enjoyed it. Thank you.

This podcast is for informational 

Stacy: purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. The information is not an offer, solicitation, or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products, or to adopt any investment strategy. Investment values may fluctuate and past performance is not a guide to future performance.

All opinions 

Dan Mikulskis: expressed by guests on the show are 

Stacy: solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect 

Dan Mikulskis: those at their 

Stacy: firm. Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacy Havener or Havener Capital Partners.

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