Episode 27:$250B AUM Leadership & Talent Exec Michael Futterman on Preventing Founder Burnout | Why Performance is Table Stakes | How to Stay in the Game Even When It’s Difficult
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Building a boutique is no cake walk. But it’s easier to stay on the grind when your mindset is in check.
Today’s guest, Michael Futterman – the brains behind leadership development for mammoth asset managers (think $600B+ industry giants) and coach for emerging fund managers is just the guy to help you get into a headspace that’ll allow you to edge ahead in this tough race.
Listen in as he dives deep into:
The neuroscience of celebrating small wins
Tips to beat burnout
Why team management is crucial for scaling
Mindset tips for embracing your role as a leader (even if that’s not what you signed up for)
Tune in if you’re ready for an epic business coaching session that’ll level up your mindset so you can play the long game in this challenging space.
About Michael Futterman:
Michael Futterman is an Executive Coach, Team-building Consultant, and Training professional with more than 20 years of corporate experience. Michael has worked in the management consulting and financial services sectors helping to identify, compartmentalize, and overcome human capital and strategic challenges. Most recently, Michael was the head of the Knowledge Labs team at Janus Henderson Investors, a worldwide asset management firm.
Today, Michael’s focus is on working with clients who want to constructively challenge their status quo in both their business and personal lives. Helping clients examine their habits, break down and reframe unproductive thought patterns, and develop more profitable and satisfying behaviors is at the core of his practice. Keynote Speaking, Training and Development, Coaching, and Consulting are all part of his offering.
Michael earned his BA from Ithaca College and his MA in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University. He lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife Marina and his sons Noah and Jacob.
TRANSCRIPT
Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.
Stacy Havener: [00:00:00] So burnout is real measuring small wins prevents burnout. Why? Because internally you start feeling like you're accomplishing something towards the goal or how does that help? Like, why does that matter?
Michael Futterman: So our motivation is driven by a variety of things in our brains and in our environment, but the chemical that is more closely related to it is dopamine.
Michael Futterman: And. When we celebrate effort and when we celebrate small wins rather than just overall achievement, what we do is we give ourselves a little hit of dopamine. We give ourselves a little drip of that. And what that does over time is it raises our overall reservoir of dopamine. Everybody here that's listening has some reservoir of dopamine.
Michael Futterman: Some have more, some have less. And when we tap into that to get us motivated. It diminishes our dopamine. This is where things get really, really complicated. It diminishes our dopamine a little bit, but then that dip [00:01:00] in dopamine then leads to action or inaction. We make a decision like we want to pursue that thing.
Stacy Havener: Hey, my name is Stacey 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.
Stacy Havener: 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.
Stacy Havener: Pull up a seat, grab your notebook, and get ready to be inspired and challenged while you learn. This is the [00:02:00] Billion Dollar Backstory Podcast.
Stacy Havener: When I talk to some founder fund managers, there is a perception that building a boutique should be pretty easy. Let's play it out. They're thinking, I was a really good portfolio manager at a really big firm. I had a great track record and managed a lot of assets. The clients and dollars at my new co are going to roll in fast and furious.
Stacy Havener: They have a short game mindset. The problem is building an investment boutique is a long game. And entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Today's guest is Michael Futterman, an organizational psychologist that ran practice management and leadership development programs for some of the largest asset managers in the world.
Stacy Havener: Think 250 billion, 600 billion, even a 3 trillion firm. Now [00:03:00] he's a founder and coach for entrepreneurs and execs in the investment and wealth management space. Today is a session we all need. It's part business coaching, part therapy session, and all kinds of inspiration. If you've ever felt like, dang, this founder or leadership thing is a grind.
Stacy Havener: Today's episode is for you and me. Take a deep breath, my friends. This is hard work, but it's work that matters. And as crazy as it is, when you are in the ups and downs of entrepreneurship or leading a team, remember, we don't have to do this. We get to grab a notebook and get ready to be coached. Meet my friend, Michael Futterman.
Stacy Havener: Hi everyone, Michael, thank you so much for being here. This is a true honor for me. You and I have had a chance to chat and I'm thrilled to be able [00:04:00] to welcome our listeners into the conversation today. Yeah,
Michael Futterman: I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Stacy Havener: Okay, so let's dive right into my favorite part, which is your backstory.
Stacy Havener: You know, what was the journey that got you sitting here now in this chair as a founder yourself, really helping other executives and founders on their journey? So how did this come to be?
Michael Futterman: Yeah, I got to take you way back on this one. If I pulled out my diploma, some people have their diplomas on their wall.
Michael Futterman: I don't have it. Um, you've got yours? I do. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. It's totally good. I just, I'm not one of those guys that got it like framed, but it says I really should have it now. Now that I'm doing what I'm doing, I feel like I should go back and pull it out because literally on my diploma, my undergraduate, it says recreation on it.
Michael Futterman: That was my undergraduate degree. I love that. I either get that reaction or I get people chuckling at it. And it was a degree, it was really half liberal arts credits. And the other half were around recreation, which is [00:05:00] there's experiential education, which is what I focused on. And then there's therapeutic recreation and all these other areas.
Michael Futterman: What I wanted to be was a back country guide. I thought that I was going to be guiding people, you know, up Everest or taking them, you know, on these far flung journeys. And what I came to realize is that I like my creature comforts a little bit too much to make that a career. Um, and I found that it's really important to embrace who you are.
Michael Futterman: And, uh, I realized that that was not necessarily going to be the path that I wanted to follow, but what I did do is I ended up working as a field instructor for an organization called Outward Bound. And I don't know if your audience is familiar. I know that you are. Yes.
Stacy Havener: Totally.
Michael Futterman: Yeah. Yeah. For those that don't know, Outward Bound is an organization that's been around since the early 1950s, and it really encourages people to challenge themselves in unfamiliar environments, typically outdoor environments, and it's really designed to help people embrace the possibility of who they [00:06:00] could be through these really unique experiential outdoor experiences, whether it's sailing or backpacking or rock climbing or canoeing or any of that type of stuff.
Michael Futterman: So I was a field instructor for them. I focus in New York City, which is kind of strange. You would think that's not a very outdoorsy type of place. But half of the time that I was there, I spent working with part of the New York City school system, uh, in providing experiential education for children. So if they were studying, say, physics, we would take them rock climbing and teach them about, well, if you fall from that height, you're going to accelerate and hit the ground at this velocity if you didn't have your safety equipment on.
Michael Futterman: The other half of it was working with Executives, a lot of times as executives were in financial industries, other times it weren't, but it was really all around helping them to explore the possibilities of team building and group dynamics. And I did that for a while. Until I got tired of making 20, 000 living in New York City, which was challenging.
Michael Futterman: And so I went and I got work [00:07:00] at a boutique consulting firm and I learned all about the process of apprenticeship and, uh, I would describe this as business. So I put that in air quotes, obviously, too. There's a lot of different facets to that. I know that this is a long background, but it's getting at sort of the history of what drove me into the space that I'm in now.
Michael Futterman: And so what, what I did after the consulting firm. As I got my master's degree in organizational psychology, what I found is that whether it was with experiential education or experiential recreation in my undergraduate or postgraduate and the work that I did leading up to my master's degree, I got really jazzed up about working with people and ideas.
Michael Futterman: The whole, I think if there's a guiding principle, it's been the whole what if mindset about Helping people to get to that space like what if we were able to do this, you know, moonshot type of activities and I kind of fell into financial services and my job for the last 20 years or so has been working with business executives and [00:08:00] entrepreneurs around teams, leadership and marketing and that eventually led me to where I am now and I live in Boulder, Colorado and I moved from New York City to join an organization called Janice Henderson.
Michael Futterman: And so we had talked about this a little bit. They're really a leader in pushing this status quo. They're an asset manager and they were pushing the status quo around. How can we add to what is essentially a fungible product, right? There's something like 2000 large cap equity funds out there. How do you differentiate when everybody's kind of looks the same?
Michael Futterman: And so the stuff that I was doing, which we'll talk about, was really to help differentiate the firm as well as provide value to the people that would be consuming the product that Janice was putting out there. So that kind of has been what I've been doing for the last 20 years. I
Stacy Havener: love it. The what if mindset.
Stacy Havener: So basically today, I think that's a good mindset for our conversation. So for everybody that's listening, you're going to just shake out the scaries of like your normal status quo [00:09:00] day. Okay, and you're going to embrace a what if mindset. This is a mindset shift with Michael. That's what we got here. So Janice has this thing with a really cool name.
Stacy Havener: Wasn't it called like the Ideal Lab or something? It had like a really jazzy
Michael Futterman: name. It's gone through a couple different iterations. Now they call it Knowledge Labs, and it's composed of a couple different components. When I was there, it was just called simply Janice Labs. Okay. And what we did, at least in my function, was really working with the clients of the firm, as well as the clients of the clients.
Michael Futterman: So you think about the clients of financial advisors and providing them with value. And we were delivering to them, uh, content on two primary areas. One was around, uh, what I would describe as like teams and practice management. And the other side was really around personal effectiveness. So we had a program on that we developed on, uh, stress and stress management.
Michael Futterman: We had a program that was built around the idea of brain health. As you age, there was another program that was [00:10:00] built around health and nutrition. And so those were very popular to deliver, uh, directly to the clients of our clients, right? The patrons of financial advisors and financial professionals. But obviously it was also very valuable for financial professionals, right?
Michael Futterman: Those programs around health and wellness, they're good for anybody that, that is a human.
Stacy Havener: Yep. A lot of us.
Michael Futterman: Most of us. Yeah. It's most, I'd say most, you know, there are a couple of questions.
Stacy Havener: Couple of question marks, especially in our biz. Couple of
Michael Futterman: questionable
Stacy Havener: ones out there. Yeah. It's interesting. This is kind of a, a challenge, as I said, because when you become a founder and or I guess if you're executive, but really I'm, I'm kind of tapping into the founder mentality here because a lot of portfolio managers who work for a big, maybe Janice, let's say, and then they spin out and set up their own firm.
Stacy Havener: They add another hat to the mix that they don't anticipate. [00:11:00] And that is the hat. Of the entrepreneur when you work at a big and your portfolio manager, you know, you're in your jazzy office, your fancy office, and you're doing your unique ability of investing and all the other stuff is magically taken care of for you.
Stacy Havener: Just sort of happens. It's all happening. The sales is happening. You know, the compliance is happening. All the ops is happening. Everything's happening. You don't know how. And then when you become an entrepreneur, you realize, Oh my gosh, I have to solve this now. And so the reason that I share that is because It's a different level of stress.
Stacy Havener: It's a different level of building. It taps into parts of you that are uncomfortable or that maybe you've never even really worked on. You know, you've been perfecting your craft as an investment manager. You've never perfected your craft as an entrepreneur. And so I've been thinking a lot about [00:12:00] this because It's one of the areas that could derail an investment boutique from succeeding.
Stacy Havener: And I just want you to sort of help us all think through
Michael Futterman: that. Yeah. So the first question I would say, and it's one facet of being an entrepreneur or starting your own firm. How many of the people that are listening to this podcast got into the business or the function that they're in because they wanted to manage people?
Stacy Havener: Yeah. It's the most difficult part of the job, really.
Michael Futterman: For many, many people, that is the most difficult part of the job. There are a couple people that I've met that along the way that have really embraced that and understand that people management, culture management, developing systems and processes for things like apprenticeship, rather than just hiring somebody into a job and expecting them to know exactly what to do and how to do it.
Michael Futterman: Those are really challenging things. And that as an entrepreneur, starting your own. Firm. Those are [00:13:00] things that are going to be real. It's rare that you're going to hire all of the exact right people or even know how to go about the process of hiring and evaluating people. So that's just one example of this.
Michael Futterman: But, but the idea of embracing that discomfort, recognizing that to quote one of my favorite coaches, Marshall Goldsmith, what got you here won't get you there. And needing to change is, is
Stacy Havener: critical. And so how do you help? I mean, I now feel like I've. Stepped into a therapy session and I'm really okay with that.
Stacy Havener: I'm really okay with everyone listening into my therapy session. And so how do you coach founders to do that better? I mean, because it's a journey. It's a journey for all of us to learn this.
Michael Futterman: Well, number one is it's like the old joke about the light bulb and the psychologist. How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb, Stacy?
Michael Futterman: I don't know. It only takes one, but it takes a long time and the light bulb has to [00:14:00] want to change.
Stacy Havener: I feel like I should know that joke and I don't, but I love it. I
Michael Futterman: didn't make the joke up. It's just, it's a classic in, in the field that I've been in. So I mentioned that I went to graduate school. I got a master's in organizational psychology and Part of the work that I was doing there, the focus that I had there was really around teams and organizational dynamics and executive leadership development.
Michael Futterman: And so people have to come to a point that they embrace this idea that there's more for me to know. I'm an imperfect human or I'm in, I'm a work in progress. And one of the challenges I think in this industry that gets in the way of that, and in almost any industry is that we're very outcome oriented.
Michael Futterman: We're very destination focused. I want to hit a billion under management. I want to have X amount in revenue. We want to have this many clients that we serve. We want to be this percentage of the marketplace, whatever your metrics are. [00:15:00] And it's good to have this. I don't want to diminish the importance or the significance of, of having outcomes.
Michael Futterman: They are absolutely critically important. What I think is challenging, and as a newly minted entrepreneur myself growing my business, one of the things that I think gets lost is the progress and the journey towards getting there. That's almost as important, for a variety of reasons that we'll go into, it's almost as important as the destination itself.
Michael Futterman: If all you have is the destination, then it becomes a binary thing. It's either you got there or you didn't. And that means it's success or failure, but I look at it as there's a spectrum of things. So it's the progress that you're making towards the outcome that you can celebrate along the way. And that's one of the things that I really try and focus on with my clients is, is looking at what are the small wins that we're making along the way?
Michael Futterman: What are the improvements that are happening? What is the learning that we're incorporating into what we're doing? [00:16:00] And as long as it's directionally correct, then we're heading in the right direction. That's
Stacy Havener: so good. I mean, you often hear that quote that the journey is the thing, right? And yet it's very difficult for us, especially when you're building because you sort of, as you said, you have an outcome, you have a result that means you've made it.
Stacy Havener: The thing that I've learned through coaching that I've done, and this is a great venue to talk about this, is that that goalpost always moves.
Michael Futterman: You just said, like, you've made it, and my question is, okay, so now what?
Stacy Havener: No, you've never made it, because you tell yourself that, but as soon as you get there, you move the goalpost again.
Stacy Havener: And so, one of the things that I've tried to do, that I've learned, is to measure backwards. I love what you said about celebrating the small wins. I want to pause here, because I can just envision some of the people listening who are like, This is all really nice to have. If you're a big shop, but [00:17:00] like I'm grinding and you want me to celebrate small wins and I like yes You need to you need to and so let's talk about that because it's like yeah This is nice to have when i've made it and i'm using air quotes now i'll think about doing this But why is that like to me?
Stacy Havener: That's? You're not going to make it if you choose that mentality.
Michael Futterman: Well, burnout's very real. And as an entrepreneur, you know, the heaviest thing in my office is my phone, uh, to try and pick it up and call clients. I'm surprised that I don't look like Dwayne Johnson from the amount of phone lifting. It is the heaviest thing.
Michael Futterman: I have a new appreciation for what, having worked at these bigs, you know, UBS, Allianz, and Janis Henderson, let's go back to what you, what you said, right? I'll do it when I make it. Well, look, at that point, when you quote unquote make it, the flywheel's running. And it's going to be moving and throwing off revenue or, or [00:18:00] income or inflows.
Michael Futterman: At that point, the motivation to kind of go back and say, okay, how do we incorporate these ideas now? Like build it with the end in mind. You hear that over and over again, but like, so there's a couple of things. One is burnout. That's the sort of table stakes here. Huge risk. Huge risk. Every day, grinding.
Michael Futterman: I'm grinding, Stacey. Yep. I don't have time to stop and think about these things. Well, let me ask you, who and what is getting your best energy? If you're grinding every day and you're not taking time to recover, if you're not ending your day with, Hey, listen, it may feel like, you know, maybe I didn't bring in any clients today, or maybe we didn't beat the market today, or maybe whatever it is, whatever your metric is for your destination.
Michael Futterman: Where can you go back and say, you know what, even though those things didn't happen, I can't change outcomes. I can't even guarantee outcomes. Only thing I can guarantee is effort. So [00:19:00] celebrating those little wins along the way and recognizing like, one of the books that I'm reading is by a guy named Steve Magnus.
Michael Futterman: I'm going to need to look up the name of the book because I'm reading like four books at one time, which we'll get to at the end. But one of the things that he talks about is when you're trying to measure effort, a lot of time people say like, well, let's go for the PR, right? That's what matters is that I, I did better than I've ever done.
Michael Futterman: I ran faster. I ran more miles. I cycled faster. We hit a bigger revenue target. What he says is look at. The average, and if you're doing average or better, that's a better target. That's a small win because you're going to increase your average. It's a
Stacy Havener: great way to think about
Michael Futterman: it. Yeah. So his book is called Do Hard Things.
Michael Futterman: Oh, okay. Yeah.
Stacy Havener: Steve Magnus. Yeah. So, okay. So keep going. So burnout is real. Measuring small wins prevents burnout. Why? [00:20:00] Because internally you start feeling like you're accomplishing something towards the goal or how does that help? Like, why does that matter? Yeah,
Michael Futterman: it's a really really good and very complicated answer, but i'm going to try and simplify.
Michael Futterman: Oh
Stacy Havener: great Of course. Yeah
Michael Futterman: what we're going to get into here briefly Is brain chemistry and neurobiology. Okay. So our motivation is driven by a variety of things in our brains and in our environment. But the chemical that is more closely related to it is dopamine. And when we celebrate effort and when we celebrate small wins, rather than.
Michael Futterman: Just overall achievement. What we do is we give ourselves a little hit of dopamine. We give ourselves a little drip of that. And what that does over time is it raises our overall reservoir of dopamine. Everybody here that's listening has some reservoir of dopamine. Some have more, some have less. And when we [00:21:00] tap into that to get us motivated, It diminishes our dopamine and this is where things get really, really complicated.
Michael Futterman: It diminishes our dopamine a little bit, but then that dip in dopamine then leads to action or inaction. We make a decision like we want to pursue that thing. So for your audience now, one of the things that we could do is a little thought experiment. So if you think right now for something, think about something that you currently do not have, but you really would like to have.
Michael Futterman: It could be a vacation, it could be a tangible thing, it could be an outcome that you're looking for. So imagine it, really envision, envision you getting it. You have to tell me what it is. It doesn't matter to me. How do you feel thinking about the achievement of it? I'm
Stacy Havener: like trying not to just start cheese grinning, which no one can see because it's a podcast.
Stacy Havener: But yeah, no, if you really imagine it, like I'm trying not to just have a huge grin on my face.
Michael Futterman: Right. And that's the way that people feel. And what you're [00:22:00] getting there is that's a little hit of dopamine is just even the thought. Of getting this thing gives us a little jolt of dopamine. Now what's going to happen over the next couple hours, minutes, whatever is what goes up must come down.
Michael Futterman: That's our body. Our body wants to be in stasis. It wants to equalize. So you just add a little hit and now you're going to go down below baseline. A little bit. And it's in that dip in baseline that you come to realize, I don't have this thing. I don't have it. There's a lack of it. And now I want to go get it.
Michael Futterman: And your brain gets involved here. It says like, is this a good thing to go get? Or is it a bad thing to go get? But now you're going to make a decision. So as you go along the way towards getting that thing, there may be a good distance. Between your thought of getting it, realizing that you don't have it, and then getting it, right?
Michael Futterman: I may want to make X amount of dollars a year, and I'm making X minus 50. There's a [00:23:00] distance between getting to X and where I am today, and there's lots of off ramps. And this is one of the challenges I think with entrepreneurship with even people that are in the bigs or people that have established businesses is we have ideas we have wants for ourselves for our business for people that we love and they're great ideas.
Michael Futterman: But then we start working towards them and there's lots of off ramps. There's lots of places where we can just press the easy button. So the analogy here is, right, you think about the number of people that are climbing Everest and some of these huge peaks in the Himalaya and around the world is becoming greater and greater.
Michael Futterman: Why? Because when you have a ton of money, you can hire somebody to basically carry you like a backpack up to the top of those mountains.
Stacy Havener: No! Are you serious?
Michael Futterman: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but really not that much. So these things that have previously been the domain in the realm of [00:24:00] real effort and real energy output, Have become something that we can press the button to make it really, really easy.
Michael Futterman: You remember when we were growing up, what was your favorite television show growing up when you were a kid, like when you were 10 or 11 years old? Oh
Stacy Havener: gosh. I mean, so that's past this. I'm, I was a big Sesame street person when I was really young, but 10 mean, I was like probably growing pains and family ties and those type of family sitcoms.
Michael Futterman: Okay. Do you remember what day a week it came up? Ooh. It came on one day a week.
Stacy Havener: I want to say Thursday. Yeah. Yeah. I want to say it was like a Thursday. Okay.
Michael Futterman: I remember it was for me. It was the Incredible Hulk with Luz Bergno and Dukes of Hazzard. And those came on back to back on Thursdays.
Stacy Havener: Yeah. Thursday was a big day.
Michael Futterman: Thursday was a big day. You had to wait, right? How many times have you fired up Netflix, or Amazon Prime, or Disney Plus, or Hulu, or 2B, or whatever you use, and you're like, man, there's nothing to [00:25:00] watch. It's the easy button. We've become accustomed to easy. So, I told you this would get complicated. Let me try and pull myself back from like all of these different tentacles of thought.
Michael Futterman: Okay. The idea here is that what makes it hard for entrepreneurs, for business owners, for leaders, is that there's lots of paths off of the track. There's lots of ways to bail out of this thing that is hard and that has a longer duration to what we would call completion. So, in order to stay the course.
Michael Futterman: Celebrating success, small success, small wins, recognizing effort. I've got two kids and I learned early, maybe not early enough, but I learned that I could celebrate their wins. But what was more important was to celebrate their effort. Hey, I see that you're. Working really hard on this. That must make [00:26:00] you feel really proud.
Michael Futterman: I can say, I'm really proud of you for what I see you working really hard. Last night, my younger one was working on his AP World History exam and he was struggling. And I was like, yeah, I see that this is hard, but I'm really excited for how hard you're working. I can see how much you're putting into this.
Stacy Havener: We'll be back in a moment after a word from our premier brand partner, Ultimis Fund Solutions.
Michael Futterman: Since our founding in 1989, we believe that alternative investments are integral part of client portfolios. Unfortunately, delivering high quality hedge funds and private market exposures has always been a challenge for the wealth management industry. These type of alternative investments introduce unique challenges related to taxes, qualifications, paperwork, and reporting.
Michael Futterman: As a result, high net worth investors tend to be significantly under allocated to both hedge [00:27:00] funds and private markets relative to institutional investors.
Stacy Havener: That's Stephanie Lang, Chief Investment Officer from Homer Berg, an 11 billion RIA headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, that serves over 2, 700 clients in 46 states.
Stacy Havener: You can tell they believe in helping high net worth clients access hedge funds and other alternative investments. They are equally as passionate about broadening that access. For all their clients, not just qualified purchasers or a select group of accredited investors. Meet Nick Darsh from Ultimis with some backstory.
Stacy Havener: Hallmark
Michael Futterman: Berg created a 3C1 fund in January, 1999 to provide their high net worth. And institutional investors with ready access to a diversified portfolio of hedge funds. As interest in the fund grew and the constraint of the a hundred investor rule loomed, HB began exploring ways to continue expanding the [00:28:00] investor pool without negatively affecting existing shareholders.
Stacy Havener: We'll hear more about the creative fund conversion work that made it possible later in the show. Now, back to the program.
Stacy Havener: I love that so much on all the levels, a human parent level and as a leader from a business perspective, because to translate that, that's one of the things that's challenging as you're building your team, because just as you've been teaching and coaching us as founders and leaders to celebrate the small wins.
Stacy Havener: A lot of times with salespeople, we celebrate the deal closing. We celebrate the dollars. And to your point, I've really tried to, I've had to learn this myself and I've tried to to coach our leadership team around this too. Celebrate the process. Not [00:29:00] just the dollars or the outcome. So it's such a great kind of addendum to the lesson you're teaching us.
Stacy Havener: Cause it's not just what we have to learn how to do the mindset shift for ourselves to avoid burnout. It's also something that we as leaders and managers. Of our team, especially when it's a boutique and it's a small team, you have to celebrate the small wins of your people and celebrate the work that they're doing and the process that they're following, not just the million bucks that came in or the 10 million or whatever.
Stacy Havener: 100%.
Michael Futterman: And I'll even add another layer on top of that. We can look at AUM or gross sales as our. Desired outcome. And again, I really don't want your audience to think that I'm some sort of like that outcomes don't matter. Right? It's all rainbows and butterflies. Absolutely not. I get it. Those are [00:30:00] important.
Michael Futterman: Those are what put food on the table. And I agree with that. But think about purpose. That's really the other piece of the puzzle here. So the classic example years ago, especially, you know, the one that, um, that Cinec uses is Apple, right? Apple sells a product that everybody else can sell. Same type of thing.
Michael Futterman: But they, for better or worse, sells Apple products. Focused on what are we trying to do in the space beyond just the product? And I'm gesturing cause I've got one in front of me. The product itself, it's think different. That was the one that really made the impression on me is that that's what they're here to try and do.
Michael Futterman: And so every boutique, every financial advisor, they're trying to. Invest money on behalf of their clients to make more money, right? To throw off revenue. But what is the purpose? So if you can embrace that part of this, like that, I know that [00:31:00] by having a conversation with my clients about. Let's use ESG, right?
Michael Futterman: If that's part of your purpose, that should be something to celebrate along the way that we're doing that, that we're engaging in those conversations. And there's a reason why people say trust the process. It's not trust the outcome. That's
Stacy Havener: right. You know, it's interesting. I was actually on a podcast this morning and we talked about this, so I'm just going to bring it up because I'm very curious what you'd say here.
Stacy Havener: This is more maybe on the allocator side, on the advisor side than the asset manager, but maybe there's a lesson here for asset managers too. When you talk with clients, to your last point, when you sit down and talk with clients, The bulk of the time typically is spent on like the performance, like here's your portfolio and here's how it did.
Stacy Havener: Here are the results. Some people, right? And so I think that's my point is like, is that really what we should be focusing on? [00:32:00] Because it kind of goes to what you're saying here about the outcome versus the journey. Like there's more going on in the value that we bring than just that statement. With the percentages and it kind of goes to this idea that there's more to this than numbers like this is yes, it's a numbers game.
Stacy Havener: It's a numbers biz. I get it. But is it really? It's really a people business. So like what else can we be talking about? Besides did you beat the market or didn't you?
Michael Futterman: Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts and a lot of personal opinions about this. I don't think it's an either or. Okay. So I think it's a choice.
Michael Futterman: And there are going to be people listening to this and people that are not listening that believe that it's all about the numbers. It's all that matters. And that's what I'm focused on. And they're hugely, wildly, insanely successful firms, people, organizations that do that. [00:33:00] So I'm not here to say that that's not a bad strategy.
Michael Futterman: However, when I think about satisfaction, when I think about engagement. When I think about meaning in life, and let's face it, we're living in a world that's increasingly complex and at times feels like it's a little bit insane itself. I think people are craving meaning. And so this idea of connecting with people on a more human level, and I'll, I relate it back to financial advisory practices, I know there are a lot of the People listening to this are from that boutique space.
Michael Futterman: I don't think it's tremendously different, but it's table stakes. Everybody has performance numbers. Everybody has their investment philosophy. Everybody has their, their performance against the market. And I think that there's a space here that's emerging and that is becoming more prevalent that it's a means to an end.
Michael Futterman: So I think [00:34:00] there's a reason why. Something like ESG has become both controversial, but also much more of a focus for a lot of the investor segment because people want to know that they're making a difference in the world in the way that they want. So I often say to my financial advisory clients, If you're not having conversations with your clients about what this money means to them, then you're missing a huge opportunity because they can go across the street and get the same products and probably similar performance.
Michael Futterman: So if you don't connect with people on an emotional, on an existential level, what's to prevent them from going across the street? Is your performance really that much better? Is your process that much better? Oh, that's so
Stacy Havener: good. That's like the mic drop moment for me. And I mean, do you really want to live and die by that?
Stacy Havener: Because everyone's going to underperform. So if you say that that's the thing, then you better be [00:35:00] okay when the person who bought that outperformance sells your underperformance and have fun with that roller coaster. I mean, it's brutal. So I love what you said about we're all craving meaning. And I think that's so true as a storyteller.
Stacy Havener: I think that stories can bring meaning to life and as you were talking, I was thinking about the ESG is such a great example because it's so tangible and it's so such a direct line. But if you're even if you're not ESG, okay, like even if you're sitting there, you're a small cap manager or you're a private equity.
Stacy Havener: Manager or V. C. Or private credit. One of the best stories I found that sort of accessible for fund managers is to tell portfolio stories. So instead of talking about the performance, talk about the investments that you made that got you there. Right? And give people a chance to [00:36:00] kind of get closer to what they own, what they're investing in.
Stacy Havener: When you get a manager telling stories about investments they've made and what those companies are doing and what those companies are trying to achieve, the meaning those companies are trying to achieve, it can bring people in. So even if you're not in An area or an asset class that maybe has such a direct tangible ESG impact kind of thread to it.
Stacy Havener: I think there are many ways to talk about meaning with your investors.
Michael Futterman: I totally agree with that. And one of the ways that I like to help people think about this is not so much about who you are, but who you're not is one way to think through that. Oh, I love that. Yes.
Stacy Havener: Talk that through. I love this.
Michael Futterman: Absolutely. I'll give you the example that I love because I'm a avid skier, and one of my favorite mountains in the, maybe my favorite mountain in the United States is Snowbird. It's in [00:37:00] Utah, and Snowbird is a unique mountain in a lot of ways, just like its neighbor next door, Alta. And they did this campaign It was called the One Star Campaign, and it's been adopted by other people now.
Michael Futterman: But instead of their five star reviews, the guy that built it was a guy named Dave Amaralt, and it was genius. And the idea was they posted all of these one star reviews. It's too steep. There's too much snow. There's no beginner to rain. There's no nightlife up here. And they, you know, this was their advertising campaign.
Michael Futterman: It was one star and then the quote. I love it. And I think that that can be really valuable for number one is they're embracing by representing what they're not. They're embracing in a lot of ways who they actually are. which is an expert skier mountain with a ton of snow and really focuses on the skiing.
Michael Futterman: So I think there's a lot of value in that. So we're as much about what we're not, as we are about what we are. [00:38:00] So I think helping people to recognize and be able to tell the story of Yeah, we don't do that. And here's why. It's valuable.
Stacy Havener: Yes. And you know what? It's sometimes easier, too. Because when you ask somebody, like, tell me what you stand for, you know?
Stacy Havener: What are your values? It's just so easy to fall into this trap of truisms. Well, you know, we really value trustworthiness. And it's like, well, I hope so. Good. You know. I hope so, because the alternative is pretty, pretty darn scary, right? So that's kind of a tough, it's tough to get unique and differentiated when you say what you stand for.
Stacy Havener: I think to your point, when you say what you stand against or what you're not or what you don't do, it's easier to tap into that. And it's a great exercise. And something that should give you incredible pride. Your example [00:39:00] with was it snowbird? Is that the name of the mountain? I obviously can't ski there.
Stacy Havener: I'd be terrified, but I love the exercise because in some ways it's kind of like that scene in eight mile where Eminem kind of owns all the. The disses, right?
Michael Futterman: He turns it around on,
Stacy Havener: he turns it around, he turns it around and it actually takes something that's a negative and sort of makes it a positive.
Stacy Havener: It's like, look, I know what you're going to say, so I'm just going to say it. It's a brilliant attract and repel move. I love that. That was great.
Michael Futterman: One of the classic nightclubs in New York city, it's closed now. It's called output and, um, is in Brooklyn. And their tagline was, we're for anybody, but we're not for everybody.
Michael Futterman: Right?
Stacy Havener: So good. It says everything. And I think that's what's challenging for us as we sit here, you know, as entrepreneurs. building something and grinding is there's a mentality [00:40:00] that's like, well, all money's green. So, you know, if somebody wants to give me their money, I'm going to take it. I'm for everyone.
Stacy Havener: Right. And that's super dangerous. It's super dangerous, even though it's a very tempting thing to do. The other thing I think it does is it. Would force us to create really shitty marketing because when you try to be something for everyone, you can't stand for anything at all because you might offend someone.
Stacy Havener: And so, like, we've got to get over that. Like, it's okay to say I serve this type of client. That's my ideal target market. I talked to somebody this morning whose whole practice is on specialty physicians. Great! Then just be that. That's okay to lean into.
Michael Futterman: And the fear that I find, and fear is a big part of this conversation, right?
Michael Futterman: You and I talked, you know, leading up to this about the idea of the firms, they get big and I would call them fat and happy. Right. It's like, Oh, well, what if I don't want to rock the [00:41:00] boat? I don't want to take an unnecessary risk. I don't want to, we're so confined by fear. And I think one of the pieces of advice that I try and get to my clients is what's the smallest amount of change that you can commit to, right?
Michael Futterman: Begin with that. Begin with the deviation from the norm. That is something that you can sustain and commit to. It doesn't have to blow everything up, but it can be a meaningful thing. So I mentioned that I worked for Albert Baum. One of the things that we would have to do is teach people about orienteering and map reading skills.
Michael Futterman: And the idea You take a bearing, and I'm not going to get into the technicals of reading maps and how to navigate the backcountry or even use a compass, but you take a bearing, and if you're off by two or three degrees, over a hundred yards, it's not going to make that much of a difference. Over a thousand yards, it's going to make more, and over miles, it's going to make more and more.
Michael Futterman: So you take a reading of where you are, you identify where it is that you want to go, and then you [00:42:00] measure along the way. So, this all comes back to that idea of celebrating effort, of recognizing improvement, of doing the average or better. Those are ways that you can start to generate movement and generate change that is not overwhelming.
Michael Futterman: We're not looking to completely scrap somebody's business plan or their marketing materials or anything. What we're looking to do is help them ensure that they're constantly evolving and evolving in the direction that they have a passion for, right? It's easy to be like everybody else, to be a carbon copy.
Stacy Havener: I love that. And so basically. Is it it's working backwards in some ways because you identify the goal or the outcome or kind of where you want to go and then what you're saying is, okay, then next, I think the way you worded it was like, what's the smallest change you can make that gets you closer? So I think it allows us, you know, that whole idea [00:43:00] of like, just.
Stacy Havener: Bucketing or chunking a big goal into smaller goals. This is something that's really challenging for boutiques, by the way, especially let's go back to our example. If I was a portfolio manager, Janice, I leave, I set up my own firm. I, you know, I was managing 3 billion and now I'm. Managing 30 million and it happens to be my money and my friends and my family.
Stacy Havener: And you're like, okay, now, now what? And the number is so big and the goal feels so far away that it's easy to sort of throw in the towel. It's easy to say, like, it's not happening fast enough, and I'm not close enough to where I want to be, and so you know what, like, I quit. And so how do we help our clients, and how do we, if we're a boutique founder, have more perspective on what, on playing the long game?
Michael Futterman: So, the research would show that breaking your goals into 12 [00:44:00] week chunks is optimal. So identifying where do I want to be in 12 weeks, focusing as much as you can singularly on that thing. You can have multiple goals. You can have multiple metrics that you want to measure, but the research shows that breaking it into a 12 week period that you're going to be striving towards something.
Michael Futterman: And by the way, if it is something that you want to plan out over a year, break it down into four 12 week periods or whatever it's going to take for you, these quarterly objectives, but really being focused on the actions and activities that need to be done each day to get towards that. So the research shows that the more specific you can be, the better chances there are that you will achieve that goal.
Michael Futterman: And I got to give credit where credit's due. A lot of this research comes from listening to Andrew Huberman and his wildly successful podcast. But the whole [00:45:00] idea around goal setting is, is be specific, break it into smaller chunks. And when we, and going back to the specific piece, if we use something like, I want to learn a language.
Michael Futterman: We can translate this to anything, but I want to learn a language. I want to learn Spanish. I want to learn 300 words in Spanish by the end of January, and the way that I'm going to accomplish that is by spending 30 minutes each day memorizing those 300 words. I'm going to break that down into 20 words at a time, and I'm going to work for those 20 minutes each day.
Michael Futterman: I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to be able to lift 50 pounds over my head 20 times in a row, 3 times a week. So that means that I gotta get, right, you get very granular and specific. Where things get challenging is in the [00:46:00] execution of those things we have to overcome our static inertia, right?
Michael Futterman: Let's get out. Shit, I got to get up and go to the gym and I need to do another 10 things, right? So how do we do that? If we're motivated to go do it, if we want to get up, if we can't wait to get up from what we're doing and go, then the motivation technique is to envision what it will be like when we go to the gym, how we're going to feel when we go there, how we're going to feel about doing the activity.
Michael Futterman: That's when we're motivated to do it. When we're not motivated to do it, when we're like, shit, I got to get up and go to the gym. I don't want to do that. What we want to do is envision failure very vividly. Spend time envisioning, what will it mean if I don't achieve this goal? If I don't get the outcome that I want, and those are just some simple techniques to help get people motivated and moving in the right direction.
Michael Futterman: Human motivation is very challenging. [00:47:00] It's a challenging thing. We had a lot of thoughts in our head. You don't find this problem with dogs or, uh, mountain lions.
Stacy Havener: We'll be back in a moment after a word from our premier brand partner, Ultimis Fund Solutions.
Michael Futterman: When we first launched our internal fund to funds as a limited partnership, it was a great option for us to be able to provide a hundred of our accredited and qualified purchaser clients with access to a diversified portfolio of hedge fund strategies. However, Fast forward to 2016, our firm had grown to manage over 4 billion and serve over 1, 000 clients of various sizes, accreditations, and tax situations.
Michael Futterman: We still firmly believe that high quality hedge fund exposure is important to client portfolios. It provides stability to client portfolios. And generates a return stream that was not available in public and equity and fixed income markets. Unfortunately, the 3C1 structure with its slot [00:48:00] limitations, high minimums, and K1 reporting was no longer ideal solution for our growing And complex client base, we looked at various alternative options with third party hedge fund managers, liquid hedge mutual funds, but also discovered that we had an opportunity to register our fund with the SEC, preserve his extensive track record and solve all of the issues that the three C one structure was creating for our business.
Michael Futterman: That's when we teamed up with Ultimis to begin the process of registering our legacy fund with the SEC and converting it to a tender offer fund.
Stacy Havener: We'll hear more later in the show. Now, back to the program.
Stacy Havener: I love that. The motivation piece. It kind of reminds me of what you were saying earlier about your phone being the heaviest thing in your office. And the other thing it had me thinking about was [00:49:00] fund managers will go say something like this, like, okay, so I have this asset goal, whatever it might be, and in order to get there, like, if I'm following your advice, I'm like, okay, Michael said, I have to break this down.
Stacy Havener: What they're going to do is they're going to say, well, I need to, if I want to get my first hundred million, then I need to get 25 million in the first quarter. Okay. And so then. Okay. Okay. That's what they're focused on. Where I would push back is to say like, okay, but you don't have very much control over how much money somebody is going to allocate to you.
Stacy Havener: So perhaps a different way to think about it is not about the dollars. But it's about the number of investors and the activities. Now, I feel like I'm really been trained by Michael here and the activities and the effort you can do to meet those investors. And you can't control whether it's [00:50:00] 25 million, but you can control how many investors you reach out to and hopefully, you know, get to a place where you're.
Stacy Havener: More predictably, being able to achieve number of meetings and, you know, all those things. It's a huge mindset shift. I
Michael Futterman: think for a lot of people it is. It's taking their focus off of the outcome and building into... The activity or the effort associated with it. So if we're going back to the heaviest thing in my office, which is my phone, I need to send or make 30 phone calls a week and there's 30 phone calls a week will lead to hopefully 15 discussions about the idea of type 2 fun.
Michael Futterman: Those 15 discussions about type 2 fun will then lead to. Seven or eight people who agreed to a free coaching session with me as a thank you for them giving their ideas about type two fun. And out of [00:51:00] those eight or seven, maybe I'll get one or two people who are ready to have a conversation about becoming a client.
Michael Futterman: So I can't control whether they become a client, but I can control how many phone calls I make. Hopefully those phone calls will then lead to... the opportunity to have the conversations about type 2 fun and then so on and so forth. Perfect example. So it helps to create the process, celebrate the effort along the way.
Michael Futterman: Hey, listen, I made the 30 phone calls. That's the part that I can control.
Stacy Havener: Is all of what we just talked about under type 2 fun or what is type 2 fun? And how does it relate to everything we're sort of talking about today? Two things
Michael Futterman: about this. Number one is it has nothing to do with diabetes. At all.
Michael Futterman: Number two is that it's fun. F U N. Not fund. It's a type two fun. So what is type two fun? Yeah, let's start with type one fun. Type one [00:52:00] fun is all the stuff that we do that is fun a hundred percent of the time. So, it's, I noticed that you like walking on the beach. I do. For you, your daily strolls on the beach, that might be type 1 fun.
Michael Futterman: For other people, it might be going to have sushi or pizza. For you, probably listening to hip hop, old school hip hop. Type 1 fun. It's 100 percent of the time, it's fun, and I don't have to use a lot of effort for it to be fun. For me, it's lift served powder skiing. When I get to go to a resort in the middle of the week and there's nobody there and it's a powder day.
Michael Futterman: It's fun. And it's great. We should have those experiences. They're great. There's lots of drinking cocktails on a boat. Type 1 fun. Type 2 fun is the things that we engage in, that we intentionally do, that we know are going to be hard when we do them. So we did talk about this a little bit, but we didn't give it the name.
Michael Futterman: That that I'm associating with it, so it's running a marathon, it's starting a new business, [00:53:00] it's changing firms. If you're a financial advisor, moving from one firm to the other, it's starting a team, it's choosing to take your children to Disney, which I've never done, but I've heard that this is a type two fun activity.
Michael Futterman: It's going to be difficult when you do it. But the keys in it are that we do it intentionally and we do it because we know that we're going to get either stronger or more resilient. We're going to build memories. We're going to have something to brag about at the other end of it. But while we're doing it, we're probably going to say, was I out of my mind in thinking that this was going to be a good idea?
Michael Futterman: But we get through the other end of it and we say, you know what? That was worth it. I grew as a human being. So I'll, I'll have you do another quick thought experiment here. Think about all the things that you did over the last month that would fall into type one fun. You chose to do these things. You, right.
Michael Futterman: You don't have to tell me what they are. Yeah. We're going to keep this PG. [00:54:00] Right? All the type one fun things that you did. So you think like, Oh, right. You could think of them as like they were indulgences. They were things that anybody ever earned them. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do that. Let me make that very clear.
Michael Futterman: So you've got those, you know what they are. Now I want you to think about the single hardest. thing that you chose to do in the last month that you intentionally engaged in. Maybe it was folding the laundry. Maybe it was raking the leaves in your backyard. Cause they've started to fall down. Maybe it was making a difficult phone call to one of your investors or clients, or maybe it was picking up the heaviest thing in your office, the phone, whatever it is.
Michael Futterman: I just want you to think about what that thing is for you. Do you have it? Yes, I do. Which one are you more proud of?
Stacy Havener: Oh, yeah, what a great thought experiment. Yeah, definitely the type two fun and you know what I love about what you said Was you tied it to [00:55:00] entrepreneurship? And I think that's such I mean, that's what I thought of.
Stacy Havener: I mean, every day as an entrepreneur is a rollercoaster. I mean, some days you could wake up thinking this is the best business I ever could be doing. By lunchtime, you want to close the doors. You want to die. Yeah. You want to die. You're like, why did I ever think this was good? This is horrible. And you know what?
Stacy Havener: If you're feeling that as an entrepreneur, welcome to the circus. Welcome to the club. Welcome to the club. But here's the thing. It's so worth it. It's so rewarding. And so I think it's interesting when you say type two fun because some people might say, well, it's not always that fun, but that's the point.
Stacy Havener: Is that the point? It's
Michael Futterman: funny that you say that when I've talked about this with my colleagues and confidants and advisors and people that are, you know, mentors to me, they're like, yeah, but work isn't fun. My response is. Why not? It can be, [00:56:00] right? And isn't that all mindset? Like, there's a certain thing when I'm backcountry skiing or I'm backpacking or I'm on a big, long bike ride and everything hurts or the people that are going to run the marathon on Sunday in New York, they're going to get over that bridge.
Michael Futterman: I've run that marathon. They're going to get over the bridge from the Bronx back to New York and they got to run up Fifth Avenue. And let me tell you, Fifth Avenue, yeah. From 110th street up to probably the corner of the park, 57th or 59th street. That's like an uphill. It's not a huge steep uphill, but that's, it's going to hurt a lot and you're going to want to quit, but they keep going and.
Michael Futterman: When I did it, one of the things that helped me keep going, aside from the charity that I was running for, was really saying like, I got to choose to do this, so this mentality of not, I have to do this, but I get [00:57:00] to do this, is really important. Yes. And also saying like, boy, with a smile on your face, boy, this sucks, right?
Michael Futterman: It can really help to kind of like, it helps you push through those moments where things are the most difficult. All those things, backpacking and backcountry skiing and, and that type of stuff, there's, it's hard. There are times where it's really painful and it hurts and you're hungry and it's uncomfortable.
Michael Futterman: But the idea that. I try and hold in my head and the same thing that I try and do when I'm picking up that phone is I get to do this. Yeah. And boy, isn't this fun? Gosh, that's perfect. Right? Even if it doesn't feel good. You know what?
Stacy Havener: That's so great. And in some ways I'm glad we sort of ended with that because that's such a powerful message for people to take away from this podcast.
Stacy Havener: That even when it feels super difficult. It's still a choice you made and you get to do [00:58:00] it. And if you have that mindset, it really does change the journey in a positive way. Okay, I want to end with, this is not a thought exercise, but I feel like we've done so much, and I don't know what to call this, this is an authenticity exercise.
Stacy Havener: I don't know, I'm going to need to work on my phrasing. It's my version of Proust's Questionnaire. And I have just a couple of questions that let us get a sense of who you are. Yeah.
Michael Futterman: Fuck. Fuck is my favorite curse word.
Stacy Havener: So you know it. That's like James Lipton, right? Okay. That's one of my fave old shows.
Stacy Havener: All right. What book inspires you? I'm a big fan
Michael Futterman: of Cormac McCarthy for fiction. I think that what he writes is brilliant. Be the Hero by Noah Blumenthal. Unreasonable Hospitality by Wilbur Dara.
Stacy Havener: Oh, I haven't read that yet. It's great.
Michael Futterman: Is it? Okay. It's really good. And then the one that I just started last night is Wealth 3.
Michael Futterman: 0 by Kristen Kefeller, Jaffe, and Grubman. And it is a [00:59:00] great book around the evolution of family wealth and wealth planning.
Stacy Havener: Okay, so that's, those are great ideas to add to your reading list. Well, this is going to be interesting, giving your backcountry, outward bound vibes. What place inspires you? What's your happy place?
Stacy Havener: Japan. Not at all what I thought.
Michael Futterman: Ballston Beach in Truro, Massachusetts in late August. Oh, that's a good one. Anywhere in the backcountry of Colorado during the winter, going skiing. It's so good. So
Stacy Havener: great. It's pretty magical being out there. There's, there's really nothing like it. That sense of quiet. It's amazing.
Stacy Havener: That sense of
Michael Futterman: vastness and just peace and quiet and those moments are special. Crazy good. That's why I
Stacy Havener: keep going back. Yeah. And is that type one fun or type two for you? Oh, it's type two for sure. Yeah, exactly. So exactly. All right. Now let's pretend [01:00:00] you're giving a talk to entrepreneurs. And a huge stadium before you take the stage.
Stacy Havener: What song do they play as your walkout anthem? I don't
Michael Futterman: think a lot of people are going to know what this is, but it's Watermelon in Easter Hay by this guy right here, who is Frank Zappa. Oh my gosh. It's one of his classic guitar solos. It's a beautiful song. Okay, don't mind me. It's the song that I walked down the aisle to when I was getting married.
Michael Futterman: It was my My last song. Oh my gosh. Yeah,
Stacy Havener: that's so good. Okay. Well, I do not know that song, but I will be listening to it after this podcast. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Michael Futterman: Astronaut or stand up comedian. One or the other. I'll take either one. It's just so great
Stacy Havener: because it's like not what you expect somebody to say.
Stacy Havener: All right. What profession would you not like to do? Yeah, that comes up a lot. [01:01:00] That's a commentary, isn't it? Okay. And now for a more introspective one. Last question. What do you want people to say about you after you've retired or left the industry?
Michael Futterman: I'd want them to say that I'm a better person for having known that guy.
Michael Futterman: Oh,
Stacy Havener: that's really beautiful. I love that, Michael. This, and you know what, I will say my sort of parting thoughts, and then I want, I want you to give yours as well, is that As an entrepreneur, having a coach may seem like a luxury because a lot of entrepreneurs bootstrap and every dollar really matters. And I can tell you from personal experience that getting a coach, getting somebody I could talk to about the things that are lonely about entrepreneurship or challenging about entrepreneurship changed not only my business, but my life.
Stacy Havener: And so I encourage people to you. To change how you think about coaching. [01:02:00] It is, it is not a nice to have, in my
Michael Futterman: opinion. It's an investment. It's not a cost.
Stacy Havener: That's right. And Michael, if people want to follow along what you're doing, what you're thinking about, how can they do that? Well,
Michael Futterman: certainly the LinkedIn is one of the great ways to get your message out there.
Michael Futterman: And I've been embracing that a lot more and more. If people want to go and read more about type two fun activity, they can go to michaelfutterman. com. Or the worst URL that you've ever heard, which is www. type2, and you got to spell two out, t w o, fun, f u n, consulting, dot. And
Stacy Havener: any
Michael Futterman: parting words? My parting words are that we have a choice in the way that we choose, that we have a choice in how we interpret The events that are happening around us, we can choose to look at them as happening to us, or we can look at them as opportunities for us to respond in a different way.
Michael Futterman: [01:03:00] And I think that that's really at the core of a lot of the work that I do with my clients is helping them interpret things
Stacy Havener: differently. So well said. Thank you for being here, Michael. Thank you, Stacey. If you know a fund manager or a founder in the investment world with a great story, drop a note to Stacey at Stacey Havener.
Stacy Havener: com and tell me about it till next time. I'm Stacey Havener. Thanks for listening. And now a final word from our premier brand partner, Ultimis Fund Solutions.
Michael Futterman: The conversion of Omer Berg's LP into an integral fund, empowered them to grow the fund from 90 million to over 200 million. And expand the reach from 100 investors to nearly 700 new investors and continues to grow today by pursuing the conversion.
Michael Futterman: It Homer Berg was able to lower minimums to 25, 000 welcome accredited investors. In addition to qualified purchasers, the entire [01:04:00] conversion process was highly efficient because Homer Berg chose to partner with ultimates and other partners with a proven track record in this type of structure to structure product transition.
Michael Futterman: The headlines are often too focused on new interval funds from pedigreed providers, this new fund from this cool, big firm, et cetera. Maximizing a fund's potential through a conversion can be powerful too, as we see in the story of Hallmark Berg. Traditional Investment Management and Alternative Investment Management Are convergent.
Michael Futterman: More retail investors are demanding access to non correlated strategies in a liquid asset classes to complement or supplement public markets exposure. Interval and tender offer funds offer managers a flexible wrapper that combines many of the benefits of both 1940 Act and private fund structures.
Michael Futterman: Interest in these products has increased significantly in the past decade, and we anticipate the volume of new launches and structure conversions to continue well into the future.[01:05:00]
Stacy Havener: This podcast is for informational 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.
Stacy Havener: All
Michael Futterman: opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm.
Stacy Havener: Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey
Michael Futterman: Havener or Havener Capital Partners.
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