60: Rewind | Dan Mikulskis on The State of Story in the Fund Industry | Why Fund Mgrs Need to Differentiate | How Allocators Influence the Future for Boutiques
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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.
In this episode, Dan and Stacy 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
Resources mentioned in this episode:
TRANSCRIPT
Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.
[00:00:00] Stacy Havener: Imagine I'm doing that DJ scrapped the record thing. Welcome to Billion Dollar Backstory podcast rewind. We passed the 50 episode mark and there are some gems at the beginning of our podcast series. So while we're on summer hiatus, we're going billion dollar back backstory with some of our most popular episodes.
[00:00:21] Stacy Havener: Hope you enjoy.
[00:00:23] Dan Mikulskis: And I think that sort of gives a kind of conformity to the whole industry, which 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.
[00:00:39] Stacy Havener: 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.
[00:00:59] Stacy Havener: Yeah. [00:01:00] 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.
[00:01:30] Stacy Havener: This is the billion dollar backstory podcast.
[00:01:36] Stacy Havener: 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 Mikulskas. Partner at Lane, Clark Peacock, a consulting firm advising on 300 billion. In a world driven by short term [00:02:00] noise, Dan helps his clients, wealth managers, and pension funds keep a long term perspective.
[00:02:06] Stacy Havener: 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 going to 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.
[00:02:28] Dan Mikulskis: Hi, Stacey. Thanks so much for having me. Delighted to be here. Been really looking forward to this actually.
[00:02:32] Stacy Havener: 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. So for people who don't follow you, and we're going to talk about some of the cool stuff you're doing outside of your day job.
[00:02:45] Stacy Havener: 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 want to be in this biz?
[00:02:57] Dan Mikulskis: I did not come from a long line of investment consultants, [00:03:00] but there are a few sort of echoes there that you can pin down.
[00:03:02] Dan Mikulskis: So I do come from a family of mathematicians with a bit of a penchant for sort of explaining things 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.
[00:03:19] Dan Mikulskis: I was good at math. I enjoyed math through school. And I think I, I think I knew what an actuary was when I was a sort of a teenager or whatever. I 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. I studied math at university and did a bit of actuarial studies and decided I wanted to go that way.
[00:03:36] Dan Mikulskis: And then of course, There's a bunch of sort of happenstance and luck that gets thrown into it as well. 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.
[00:03:52] Dan Mikulskis: I mean, that pretty much was the way those things were sort of. Decide at that point in time. And that was fine by me. And I feel [00:04:00] 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.
[00:04:07] Dan Mikulskis: And I had a front row seat for some really interesting sort of developments.
[00:04:11] Stacy Havener: And 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?
[00:04:24] Stacy Havener: Kind of deep dive math?
[00:04:25] Dan Mikulskis: Yeah, I think so. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. I did certainly in some of my career built a lot of models that, you know, there was a whole area called liability driven investing that was taking off at the time. It's lent itself to sort of quantity actuarial type modeling. And I did a bunch of that.
[00:04:39] Dan Mikulskis: This is when I was at Mercer, where I started my career, did a bunch of that there, and that very much was the sort of foundational stage, I guess, of my career.
[00:04:46] Stacy Havener: But so 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.
[00:04:59] Stacy Havener: And [00:05:00] so these are like word things, Dan. So how did that happen? How did I get
[00:05:03] Dan Mikulskis: in it? Yeah. It's a funny one, isn't it? I mean, I think, without wanting to sound too grand about it, I think I am someone who likes sort of personal growth and doesn't, you know, Sort of choose to define themselves the same way that I maybe did at the start of my career.
[00:05:15] Dan Mikulskis: So I think I've always been sort of looking for to sort of move in different areas. I think that is why I've stayed with investment consulting for me and really almost all of 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.
[00:05:31] Dan Mikulskis: But yeah, I mean, I started a podcast with my cohost, Mary. We started that in late 2019 and I started a newsletter in 2022. And I guess It'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.
[00:05:43] Stacy Havener: No! Look at me! And
[00:05:45] Dan Mikulskis: what made you think the world needed another newsletter to another podcast, but part of the reason, I mean, I consume a lot of podcasts, I listen to a lot of podcasts, I read a lot of newsletters, and I always sort of take this view, and other people have [00:06:00] said this as well, that I write for an audience of one sometimes, as in myself, because I'm a big Makes you a much better thinker, 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.
[00:06:18] Dan Mikulskis: 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 want to read it as well, then that's sort of great as well. And I sort of took the same view on podcasting. I'd kind of formed a view of what kind of podcast I liked and was like, you know, let's do it for a sort of an audience of one.
[00:06:34] Dan Mikulskis: So, you know, it's sort of a sense of what.
[00:06:35] Stacy Havener: 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's just sounded boring. Like, I wouldn't want to listen to that or I wouldn't want to read that. And it sort of forces you.
[00:06:49] Stacy Havener: And I know we're going to talk more about this to tap into another side. Oh, creative side.
[00:06:56] Dan Mikulskis: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love, as I say, I read a lot of newsletters, [00:07:00] so I love to sort of really analyze them and like, right, what did they use that first paragraph for? What, you know, did they put jokes in? Where were the funny bits?
[00:07:08] Dan Mikulskis: 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.
[00:07:21] Dan Mikulskis: 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, but just the structure of it and the flow and the way you want to do it. There's so many different ways you can do it. And podcasting as well, right?
[00:07:35] Dan Mikulskis: 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 coming back by the way, is like just ideas that kind of keep repeating themselves and a little bit of personality as well, dare I say.
[00:07:50] Stacy Havener: Yes, and you are very good at both. So we're going to come back to this. But I want to also you know what I loved there. You just broke down the newsletter, [00:08:00] 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.
[00:08:11] Stacy Havener: So that was pretty cool. So before we come back to storytelling, I want to it. 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. 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.
[00:08:40] Stacy Havener: So from where you sit, 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 take?
[00:08:51] Dan Mikulskis: 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 [00:09:00] Executive.
[00:09:00] Dan Mikulskis: So it's actually a really good little organization that 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 they get lots of engagement. So they do an annual conference.
[00:09:12] Dan Mikulskis: They have probably a hundred odd sales execs sitting in a room and myself and a couple other people. The sort of allocators were asked to speak about the future of distribution, um, which I don't love as a word, by the way, just, just straight off the bat, distribution just took frames. It totally wrong to me.
[00:09:25] Dan Mikulskis: 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 got to face up to the fact that there are too many managers, too many funds, and most funds are going to give you pretty average returns before fees. And before you kick me out and like hate me forever, let me tell you why that's a really good thing.
[00:09:42] Dan Mikulskis: 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 doing this? different to your competition, which obviously, first of all, involves understanding your competition and what they do, which I don't think it's done enough.
[00:09:58] Dan Mikulskis: And then also, and I'm sure you'll [00:10:00] be here for this, but authentically telling your story, which is also a big differentiator, which I don't think it's 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.
[00:10:10] Dan Mikulskis: 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 that were kind of saying like, yeah, no, I really get it.
[00:10:25] Dan Mikulskis: 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're at the very start of your career, you're going to struggle to, to change things. But it was some good conversation. It was a really good start.
[00:10:36] Stacy Havener: Now, I have to ask, do you see a difference between U.
[00:10:41] Stacy Havener: S. managers and non U. S. managers when you meet with them? Like, in their style of doing sales and marketing?
[00:10:49] Dan Mikulskis: Yes, I think so. I think a little bit. There is a bit of a sort of cliché in, I suppose, in the U. K. in that you might often sort of roll your eyes and be like, God, they were so American, sort of thing.
[00:10:59] Dan Mikulskis: And in a [00:11:00] sort of a general style, which is, you know, from a UK perspective, you probably have this horrendous generalization, of course, but
[00:11:06] Stacy Havener: yeah, of course, but what
[00:11:08] Dan Mikulskis: I mean by that is there's almost a little bit brash, kind of not really showing maybe any humility,
[00:11:15] Stacy Havener: sort
[00:11:15] Dan Mikulskis: of my one, not really showing maybe sort of self awareness and.
[00:11:18] Dan Mikulskis: 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 what I would describe as sort of a huge kind of communications deficit. I think there really is a huge communications kind of crisis.
[00:11:35] Dan Mikulskis: If you like in the industry, if you want to be a little bit, maybe a little bit over the 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 a good service, but it potentially is also damaging for their clients.
[00:11:50] Dan Mikulskis: Because I think bad communications can trigger clients into bad behaviors. And just one example of that, right? So, All managers will send their clients a quarterly investment [00:12:00] 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?
[00:12:07] Dan Mikulskis: And often it will 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. 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?
[00:12:24] Dan Mikulskis: And it's like by putting that on the first page, you're telling your client. That is the most important thing, 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 quite a simple thing would be for managers to think a little bit more about what they're putting on that first page.
[00:12:41] Dan Mikulskis: That's their one chance, a quarter potentially, to send a message to their client. What message do you want to send? Do you want to send a message that What the Fed did four months ago is the most important thing in the world for us, or do you want to 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 [00:13:00] differentiating more with better comms.
[00:13:00] Dan Mikulskis: I think
[00:13:01] Stacy Havener: 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?
[00:13:21] Stacy Havener: 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.
[00:13:50] Stacy Havener: Definitely don't be funny, because this is serious business, so just give him the facts. and get out.
[00:13:59] Dan Mikulskis: Yeah, well, [00:14:00] absolutely. And I've thought a lot about why this is what it's worth. I think there are basically three broad reasons why we ended up here in terms of the communications situation. And one that I don't put in that list is which most people would probably jump to is regulation.
[00:14:13] Dan Mikulskis: So I think people often say, Oh, but everything's regulated, so we can't say what we want. And it's like, okay, yes, kind of, but not really. I think that's often an easy out for people that kind of want to avoid it. So I don't even count that as a real reason, but I think there are three structural reasons in the industry why we end up here.
[00:14:28] Dan Mikulskis: 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. Long time 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.
[00:14:48] Dan Mikulskis: 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. [00:15:00] And that's the first reason. That's pointing the finger a little bit at asset managers.
[00:15:03] Dan Mikulskis: I've also got to 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,
[00:15:14] Stacy Havener: and
[00:15:14] Dan Mikulskis: agency issues as 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?
[00:15:28] Dan Mikulskis: 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. 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 bio and every one of their team. I better write about all these different things.
[00:15:43] Dan Mikulskis: And that will 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.
[00:15:57] Dan Mikulskis: Any one of them can quite easily kill the whole thing if they [00:16:00] 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.
[00:16:11] Dan Mikulskis: 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 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, which 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.
[00:16:41] Dan Mikulskis: 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 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 [00:17:00] goodness sake say anything that sort of stands out too much.
[00:17:03] Stacy Havener: Don't have an opinion.
[00:17:04] Dan Mikulskis: Yeah.
[00:17:04] Stacy Havener: 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, and to your point, I think they are battling all three of those issues, but they're also sort of looking at where they want to go, like, I want to be BlackRock, right?
[00:17:33] Stacy Havener: And they watch what BlackRock does and who BlackRock's clients are, and they say, well, I'm going to target those same clients. In the same way when the reality is somebody who hires BlackRock is probably not going to take a flyer on some new boutique. So the boutique is thinking about where they want to go and not really understanding where they are and realizing that there's a lot of capital.
[00:17:57] Stacy Havener: There are a lot of [00:18:00] investors. They're not all the right investors for you at this exact time. So if you're a boutique and you're hearing this and you're like, okay, yeah, but that's who I want to 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.
[00:18:20] Stacy Havener: 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 going to choose you because you're a specialist. They're going to choose you because you have conviction.
[00:18:38] Stacy Havener: They're going to choose you because your portfolio is differentiated. And yet the boutique is sitting there going, I have to dumb all that down because I want to be. Like the BICs.
[00:18:50] Dan Mikulskis: 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 and new managers.
[00:18:57] Dan Mikulskis: And they'll often ask, how do you [00:19:00] LCP think about this asset class? Let's say we're talking about multi asset. How do you think about it? What kind of stuff do you want to 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.
[00:19:10] Dan Mikulskis: And I'm sure we are, but the issue is you ask 10 allocators that you've got 10 very different answers. And when we might say, well, look, we're looking We really like having emerging markets in there. For example, someone else might say, no, definitely don't put emerging markets in because we want to allocate to that separately.
[00:19:22] Dan Mikulskis: Someone might say, yes, we want to see some private markets assets in there. Someone else might say, absolutely not. Because we do that sort of separately. Someone might say, we want you to really run at the higher end of the risk levels. You want good return. Someone else will say, we want low risk. So the issue is you ask 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.
[00:19:43] Dan Mikulskis: 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 to you.
[00:19:54] Stacy Havener: That's exactly right. Which means that you have to be brave enough to repel someone.
[00:19:59] Stacy Havener: Yeah. [00:20:00] Yeah. 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 want to grow. And I need, and so you're like, I don't want to repel anybody. 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 and in an asset class, and this one over here, and you've got all the things.
[00:20:22] Stacy Havener: 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 going to mean some people aren't going to like you and that's okay because that's also why some people will
[00:20:39] Stacy Havener: 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 compare their answers. And to me, this is where like this gap [00:21:00] really shows itself.
[00:21:02] Stacy Havener: 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, and I'd be curious how you'd answer it. Probably should ask you before I tell you how, so how would you answer that?
[00:21:20] Dan Mikulskis: I mean, it's a bit difficult because I've heard this exact thing before. I think I kind of agree with the point.
[00:21:25] Stacy Havener: Okay. So let's keep going with the study. 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.
[00:21:44] Stacy Havener: 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. [00:22:00]
[00:22:00] 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.
[00:22:08] Dan Mikulskis: Explaining what their key differentiators are, quite honestly, 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, I'm going to say I've heard that a million times and that it might be right. I mean, there are some firms that have a objectively brilliant culture and there's a small number, some do, and there are some objectively brilliant individuals out there.
[00:22:29] Dan Mikulskis: But most of the time, those are kind of a given. Like, I think if you're in the top tier of asset managers, your people are going to have to be pretty damn good. Your culture is going to 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.
[00:22:48] Dan Mikulskis: 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 [00:23:00] strength is our people and our culture. And we have five offices around the world.
[00:23:03] Dan Mikulskis: 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 sentence. Like what your differentiator is, if you've really thought about it enough.
[00:23:22] Dan Mikulskis: And if you know, 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.
[00:23:33] Stacy Havener: Yeah. My pet peeve. Is when they add up all the years of experience.
[00:23:39] Dan Mikulskis: Oh, yeah.
[00:23:39] Stacy Havener: It's like, we have, you know, 10, 000 years of combined experience across.
[00:23:43] Stacy Havener: 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 [00:24:00] somebody else's firm in, And it still works. It's not good. That's not good marketing.
[00:24:07] Stacy Havener: 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.
[00:24:27] Stacy Havener: And what makes you special or you're not brave enough to say it?
[00:24:30] Dan Mikulskis: 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, are you making statements where the opposite of that statement would also be a reasonable position, right?
[00:24:43] Dan Mikulskis: Because I think that's where you need to go a little bit, because 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. You would never turn up and say our people are not great. Right. Whereas you, so it's kind of a truism when you're actually getting to the nitty gritty is when you're saying something like we believe a client shouldn't have any more than five fund [00:25:00] managers, let's say, right.
[00:25:01] Dan Mikulskis: That might be something where someone else might say, no, we definitely, they should have more than five. And so it's like, okay, now you're saying something now this is going to, and you know, a fund manager might say, you know, we think that portfolio should always be managed by one individual. Because the box has to stop with that person, and that's it.
[00:25:16] Dan Mikulskis: 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 sort of a good position.
[00:25:25] Stacy Havener: And that's conviction. And that goes back to attract and repel.
[00:25:29] Stacy Havener: 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.
[00:25:49] Stacy Havener: 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?
[00:25:56] Dan Mikulskis: Yeah. I mean, unfortunately often in the industry is you don't get great feedback [00:26:00] on these things as it is another issue. So you don't actually ever really get to
[00:26:04] Stacy Havener: know
[00:26:04] Dan Mikulskis: what it was.
[00:26:05] Dan Mikulskis: It's funny actually, I suppose I've been a bit critical of asset managers in what I said to you. And I think that's, I think that's fair enough. And I'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 sort of a round table discussion with a manager a couple of months ago and the founder sat down and said, Right.
[00:26:21] Dan Mikulskis: Just give you a really brief 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. And I was like, okay, wow.
[00:26:35] Dan Mikulskis: Like now we're talking like storytelling members, like, and I might disagree with that or agree with it or whatever, 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. Yeah.
[00:26:50] Stacy Havener: Oh, gosh, I love that because they sort of cut through the noise and got right to the heart of it.
[00:26:55] Dan Mikulskis: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:26:55] Stacy Havener: And it reminds me of, you know, we've been talking kind of this thread has [00:27:00] 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. I think it's different when you get.
[00:27:11] Stacy Havener: 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 this 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.
[00:27:34] Stacy Havener: 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 because 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 and your thoughts on the investment space.
[00:27:54] Stacy Havener: And so I don't know, like, how did you do that? And why is that so challenging for people in our space? [00:28:00]
[00:28:00] Dan Mikulskis: Well, my thanks. I mean, it's kind of you to say that I feel like I don't do enough of that. I got to say, I feel like I still feel like I'm being slightly too reserved in what I'm saying there. But yeah, I did start it because I wanted to just sort of.
[00:28:09] Dan Mikulskis: 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. I'm a little bit conscious that I feel quite reserved in it, but yeah, 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.
[00:28:34] Dan Mikulskis: And so you just feel a bit more sensitive to it. I think if you're putting out a more of a researchy type piece or a very factual type blog, yeah, sure. You might have made a mistake or something. Look a bit stupid, but. Yeah, that doesn't actually matter that much in the end on that enough times. And you hit publish and you don't worry about it.
[00:28:49] Dan Mikulskis: 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 did I did it? How can people do it better? It's a practice, isn't it? And I think that is, by doing it [00:29:00] 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 just absolutely cringe of the stuff, the way I was writing.
[00:29:08] Dan Mikulskis: I mean, Honestly, really cringy. Even some of my early news that is so cringy, but that's, I think that's good. Right. That's just inevitable. You just have to accept that's what it's going to 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.
[00:29:23] Dan Mikulskis: And I think. This is the positive. I've always 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, absolutely to town on this stuff, you know, just a little bit of personality. That's you so far above the crowd.
[00:29:38] Dan Mikulskis: 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 really, I 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,
[00:29:57] Stacy Havener: I
[00:29:58] Dan Mikulskis: would actually [00:30:00] completely separate those two groups because I think founders, I know they can't be the same person, of course, right.
[00:30:04] Dan Mikulskis: 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, because you just realize how hard it is. to start and get a business off the ground and how close the whole thing is to falling apart for so many years through it.
[00:30:21] Dan Mikulskis: It's a crazy ride. And I enjoyed my time working for the 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.
[00:30:36] Dan Mikulskis: Find I am totally all in on this thing and this is me, my life, everything all in. This is what I'm trying 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 kind of a journeyman type fund manager.
[00:30:52] Dan Mikulskis: If he wasn't working for this fund, he'd be working for some other fund. He or she, sorry, working here, could be working there,
[00:30:58] Stacy Havener: sitting
[00:30:58] Dan Mikulskis: in front of a portfolio, shuffling [00:31:00] 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.
[00:31:09] Dan Mikulskis: 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 the 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, but it's often considered a sort of very technocratic discipline.
[00:31:26] Dan Mikulskis: And, um, Fund managers will just think that it is just a sort of spreadsheet based exercise. Like you were saying, if 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.
[00:31:41] Dan Mikulskis: 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, one fund managers get bit is so much self reinforcing as well, isn't it? That like become big and successful as a fund manager by doing those things, you will definitely keep doing them and you [00:32:00] will instruct other people in your firm to do it that way as well.
[00:32:02] Dan Mikulskis: And you will tell people not to do it in different ways. So that's how I kind of see a lot of it. And also the point I was making earlier before we were on air that I think telling your story is difficult because to tell your story, you have to understand your story and without getting too deep about it, I think that requires.
[00:32:18] Dan Mikulskis: A certain level of maturity and a certain amount of sort of introspection and cries people to have done a certain amount of thinking about themselves. And that is difficult work. And yeah, not everyone's done it, frankly.
[00:32:28] Stacy Havener: 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.
[00:32:42] Stacy Havener: 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. Cause you're like, I mean, my first question always just tell me how you got here. And [00:33:00] it starts out typically with like bullet points on their career.
[00:33:03] Stacy Havener: Well, 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 points resume. Why did you make that leap to leave and go here? Like let's get into it. And it's very vulnerable work.
[00:33:19] Stacy Havener: 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. But if it's a founder in. the asset management business. They also have probably been that fund manager 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.
[00:33:48] Stacy Havener: And it's like a push me pull you. On which side of them is going to win. And the one that typically tries to win is the fund manager And I think it's because of what that kaya [00:34:00] study said it's because they think nobody cares 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?
[00:34:14] Stacy Havener: How are you managing risk? Not who you are as a person, why you're doing this, why your philosophy is different, what makes you special. They don't think anyone gives a shit about that. 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.
[00:34:36] Stacy Havener: In the asset management space.
[00:34:39] Dan Mikulskis: Absolutely. And I think that message connects and lands with people when you speak. Like I say, I've spoken to asset management, people, asset management firms, and people get it. I think when you talk to them about it, but it's, there's one thing, one thing, people getting it and agreeing with it.
[00:34:51] Dan Mikulskis: And it's another thing to change the way a corporation or organization actually works. These things are, are sort of hard, but yeah, no, you, for sure, you got to start by kind of [00:35:00] highlighting good practice and just trying to get people on board with that. I think you got me at that point that, yeah, there are so many.
[00:35:06] Dan Mikulskis: Fund managers, there's so many managers, so many organizations doing that 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'd struggled to stand up.
[00:35:19] Stacy Havener: Yes, 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?
[00:35:30] Stacy Havener: 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 fund managers will say, Well, yeah, but like, you only tell stories if you basically suck. Transcribed 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 [00:36:00] spin on something that maybe is not that great.
[00:36:02] Dan Mikulskis: Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that question because 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.
[00:36:14] Dan Mikulskis: 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. But yeah, I think storytelling is a tool, right? I think to strip 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.
[00:36:28] Dan Mikulskis: You can do great things that you can manipulate with it and you can fudge numbers and stuff either way. So it's not storytelling per se. 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.
[00:36:44] Dan Mikulskis: 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.
[00:36:57] Dan Mikulskis: Founders still own it. Great little [00:37:00] family. It churns 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 this 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 actually a particularly repeatable thing.
[00:37:15] Dan Mikulskis: It's just a complete one off. So that is a bit of a manipulative story because it's giving the impression that something that's not really that helpful. And another one, maybe a lot of funds that were launched. So maybe a decade ago, we launched on the back of a story that kind of amounted to, well, there's a lot of people in China.
[00:37:30] Dan Mikulskis: So therefore GDP is going to go up. Therefore consumption is going to go up. Consumer discretionary China, blah, blah, blah. Invest in China effectively, right? It 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 GDP doesn't necessarily translate to Higher stock prices and stuff.
[00:37:48] Dan Mikulskis: So that was another story that was maybe, I don't know if that was written in the marketing department or whatever. Um, so those are both stories that I think are the sort of maybe the bad kind that there were too much of. The one that there isn't enough of is the one that I mentioned before [00:38:00] where PM or a founder sits down and says, our values were forged by this particular event.
[00:38:05] Dan Mikulskis: 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 transferable and going to be true in a while. Well, then you got to. check whether you think they're really being sincere. And that's really backed up by others for sure.
[00:38:21] Dan Mikulskis: 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 think it's really important to.
[00:38:36] Dan Mikulskis: Yeah. to go deeper than just saying, tell more stories clearly because there's good and there's bad stories for sure.
[00:38:41] Stacy Havener: 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 [00:39:00] it.
[00:39:00] Stacy Havener: Is that what you're trying to 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.
[00:39:16] Dan Mikulskis: Exactly.
[00:39:16] Stacy Havener: 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 going to play out.
[00:39:24] Stacy Havener: And those are two very different things are driven by very different factors and controls. Yeah. I mean, if I'm going to 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.
[00:39:44] Stacy Havener: 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 [00:40:00] 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 of thinking.
[00:40:10] Dan Mikulskis: Yeah. Yeah, I think a little bit, but I mean, you can overuse any skill, right? I'm a big believer that all of our weaknesses are often just come from overused skills. And I think, you know, charisma is a positive quality, but charisma can definitely slip over into manoeuvres. Oh,
[00:40:23] Stacy Havener: absolutely.
[00:40:25] Dan Mikulskis: I've seen that happen anytime.
[00:40:26] Dan Mikulskis: And so I think that's similar with storytelling and stuff. You can definitely overuse storytelling 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 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 staked their whole career on something.
[00:40:46] Dan Mikulskis: I think you get a lot of scope to tell a story as sat there as a founder.
[00:40:50] Stacy Havener: I agree. I think they should be more proud of what they're doing where I, we have a client that I was just prepping with, with him this week for his intro webinar. And he was [00:41:00] very honest and candid and said, like, I'm really not good at this.
[00:41:02] Stacy Havener: 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.
[00:41:24] Stacy Havener: So to him, he felt like that's nothing. And if I share that people are going to be like. Who are you? You're not even successful. And I was like, you have to reset your whole framework because when you build something from scratch, you start from zero. You should be proud of how far you've come, not be measuring how far you still have to go to get to like big status.
[00:41:48] Stacy Havener: And so there's this imposter syndrome, I think that happens to all of us. But certainly when you are founder and you're coming from a place that was very successful, that you sort of have to square.[00:42:00]
[00:42:02] Stacy Havener: I have this question that I'm, I want to write about, so I'm going to ask you, because you're going to help me think it through. It's kind of like phone a friend. So do you think you're hiring a human or buying a fund?
[00:42:14] Dan Mikulskis: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think the real right answer would be you're buying like an investment outcome, but the issue is that only materializes in 20 years.
[00:42:21] Dan Mikulskis: So today you can't you're 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.
[00:42:35] Dan Mikulskis: 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 of 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.
[00:42:51] Dan Mikulskis: To unpack that a little bit, because 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, the [00:43:00] pension fund in the UK would have an asset manager who held a portfolio of stocks. They would turn up, talk about the stocks.
[00:43:05] Dan Mikulskis: You have your fund manager, your person who was 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 because it looks like a fund rather than some actual 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.
[00:43:35] Dan Mikulskis: 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.[00:44:00]
[00:44:00] Dan Mikulskis: And you can see that in stewardship versus distribution teams or fund managers, I think it's just completely
[00:44:05] Stacy Havener: sort
[00:44:05] Dan Mikulskis: of out of whack. So I think, yes, there has been a huge Move from portfolios of stocks 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.
[00:44:18] Dan Mikulskis: And yeah, I would love to see more focus on the personal people that you are in effectively entrusting some of your money. 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,
[00:44:34] Stacy Havener: um,
[00:44:35] Dan Mikulskis: Pit, if you like, or big, uh, big, and it kind of doesn't matter what each investor is, how much they've got, whatever.
[00:44:40] Dan Mikulskis: 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?
[00:44:55] Dan Mikulskis: There are investments that you can do now in funds that you could never do in the old world. You can be more [00:45:00] diversified, invest more globally, do private markets, all that great stuff. So yeah. I don't want to kind of just knock on funds and say that we should go wind the clock back and just have dogs.
[00:45:08] Dan Mikulskis: But I think it's underappreciated the sorts 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 I am definitely here for you're buying a human, you're buying a team of humans that you have entrusted your capital to, and you know, you better hope that they appreciate that, understand it and a kind of take on that responsibility of managing that for you appropriately.
[00:45:34] Stacy Havener: Gosh, I'm so glad I asked you that question because 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. I
[00:45:53] Dan Mikulskis: need to write this up as well because of this.
[00:45:54] Dan Mikulskis: I've had, you know how it is. I've had that thought sort of percolating for years now, I think, and I [00:46:00] need to write it up properly and actually prepping for this is probably giving me as much of a material as I need to start
[00:46:06] Stacy Havener: writing that
[00:46:06] Dan Mikulskis: up. But, um, yeah, it's
[00:46:08] Stacy Havener: super interesting. I also loved your comment about the size of the teams.
[00:46:13] Stacy Havener: 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.
[00:46:34] Stacy Havener: 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. 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 [00:47:00] next gen, the boutiques, the startups, and in a healthy ecosystem, the bigs feed the startups.
[00:47:09] Stacy Havener: 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.
[00:47:28] Stacy Havener: It's so us versus 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 want to 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.
[00:47:54] Stacy Havener: And it's like Vanguard, BlackRock and insert whatever other big you want. And that's it.
[00:47:59] Dan Mikulskis: Yeah, I [00:48:00] mean, that is a real genuine, I think, legitimate concern. I've thought about this quite a lot as well. I mean, I should say, I think passive investment is great.
[00:48:07] Stacy Havener: It's
[00:48:07] Dan Mikulskis: been great and it's served the investors really well in many ways.
[00:48:10] Dan Mikulskis: Often recommend clients do passives. I'm not going to 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.
[00:48:26] Dan Mikulskis: 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 have managed to change the landscape. I often sort of worry a little bit that a lot of the processes in the industry are kind of rigged a little bit towards the bigger firms and get smaller managers all the time.
[00:48:49] Dan Mikulskis: We 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'll just. Send me the, you know, would take a, might take a full time person a month to fill in. And I'm like, yeah, [00:49:00] well, you know, sorry about that. But you know, that is the way that we, that is the way that we work.
[00:49:04] Dan Mikulskis: And I hear you. And in the recent years, I've only seen more of that. Yeah. One example of that is, um. In responsible investment ESG, 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 ESG surveys that go out to all the managers from all the consultancies and that favors the big managers a bit because they can have a team of five people who can sit there filling those in, whereas a boutique is going to really struggle with those.
[00:49:28] Dan Mikulskis: 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. They, I think they need to exist in certain asset classes, right? I mean, I
[00:49:38] Stacy Havener: don't
[00:49:39] Dan Mikulskis: think you need a boutique passive global manager. I don't think you need a government bond manager a lot of the time.
[00:49:45] Dan Mikulskis: And the way that a lot of UK institutional investors have gone, they have moved towards asset classes that favor bigger managers. And that, 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 [00:50:00] more of a scale thing.
[00:50:01] Dan Mikulskis: But 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 the industry is a really important thing. Otherwise, yeah, you end up in a bad place.
[00:50:12] Stacy Havener: Yeah, thank you for that. It's something I want to keep.
[00:50:15] Stacy Havener: We'll have to keep talking about this in our coffee chats. I want to 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 Proust.
[00:50:33] Stacy Havener: Okay, so this is called Proust questionnaire. 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 ask people these questions, usually celebrities.
[00:50:57] Stacy Havener: So you can count yourself in a [00:51:00] special group here, Dan. And I just have a couple.
[00:51:03] Dan Mikulskis: Okay.
[00:51:03] Stacy Havener: For you. Okay. You ready?
[00:51:04] Dan Mikulskis: And is this fully quickfire or do you want a bit of my thinking behind it? I figured you want me to,
[00:51:08] Stacy Havener: 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?
[00:51:13] Stacy Havener: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I've got six questions and this is going to help us get to know you.
[00:51:18] Dan Mikulskis: Great. Here we go. I'm going to
[00:51:20] Stacy Havener: start. I'm starting with the easy ones.
[00:51:22] Dan Mikulskis: Okay. Sure.
[00:51:23] Stacy Havener: Okay. Ready? What book inspires you?
[00:51:27] Dan Mikulskis: Right. So I was thinking about all these last night. I was chatting to my wife about it. It was a really interesting discussion.
[00:51:31] Dan Mikulskis: I think these are all great conversation starters, right?
[00:51:33] Stacy Havener: Yes, aren't they? Yeah. So books.
[00:51:34] Dan Mikulskis: So where I went with that, automatically I was drawn to sports autobiographies. And I guess autobiography is not surprising because they're people stories, aren't they? That's inspiring. I came up with about three or four.
[00:51:45] Dan Mikulskis: Um, but 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 Open. And I think the reason, what was the common thread between the ones, they were all stories of success, uh, big challenges and then [00:52:00] comebacks. So the other sporting, but actually more UK sports people that you might not know anyway, but they'd all had this real rollercoaster career.
[00:52:05] Dan Mikulskis: And the Andre Agassi book, I don't know whether you read it, is really that. But also people who'd thought quite deeply about life and things in general. The Andre Agassi book is a great read if you haven't read it.
[00:52:15] Stacy Havener: I have not. And I'm adding that to my list. I love that underdog thread. That speaks to my heart.
[00:52:21] Stacy Havener: Okay, let's stay on inspiration. Mhm. Except now we're going to say, what place inspires you? Like, what's your happy place?
[00:52:28] Dan Mikulskis: When I read that question, I read it as two separate questions, actually. What inspires you? What's your happy place? I sort of had to answer to it, but in terms of what inspires you, I think I would say the mountains.
[00:52:37] Stacy Havener: Okay.
[00:52:38] Dan Mikulskis: We go skiing quite a lot. We go to the Alps in France. We tend to, so I would say that the Alps in France when we go skiing.
[00:52:43] Stacy Havener: And is that also your happy place?
[00:52:45] Dan Mikulskis: Well, no. So I came up with a slightly different answer to that. So my wife is French by the way. So I've got, obviously got a lot of time for France and based in France.
[00:52:51] Dan Mikulskis: We go there a lot. So there's a happy place. There's a small village called Tyborg in Southwest France, near where my wife is from, on the river Charentes down there that we go to each year. [00:53:00] And my father in law runs a little water ski school on the river as well. So we spend a lot of time there just chilling out by the river.
[00:53:06] Dan Mikulskis: 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 and that there were these huge battles between the English and the French that took place on those fields, sort of 800 years ago ish.
[00:53:22] Dan Mikulskis: Um, and for a while it was actually part of England. There was a big English, um, sorts of, um, uh, terrain in France that was held for a while. And that was the frontier between England and France. So we've only just started really learning the full history of it, but, but they go a little place in Southwest France called Tybalt.
[00:53:37] Stacy Havener: 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. Best
[00:53:51] Dan Mikulskis: Boulangerie in the business in Taibor. Their croissants really are pretty amazing. Oh my gosh.
[00:53:57] Dan Mikulskis: I've got a friend. We actually did it when we got married five years ago. We got married down [00:54:00] there and a friend of mine 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 croissant I had with my wife.
[00:54:08] Dan Mikulskis: It was like, you know, if a croissant can stay with you for five years, I think it's worth it. It's
[00:54:12] Stacy Havener: a place worth visiting. Oh my gosh. I love that. Okay. Now we're going to switch gears a little bit. Let's pretend that You're speaking like at your asset management conference, except it's like a huge stadium.
[00:54:26] Stacy Havener: Okay. It's like all your fans are there and they're about to announce you and they're going to play a song when you walk out onto the stage. What's your walkout anthem?
[00:54:38] 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.
[00:54:44] Dan Mikulskis: And I was quite torn between quite a few different ones, but I think you're going to like the one I settled on, which is 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. I mean, it might not be a hundred percent work appropriate.
[00:54:58] Dan Mikulskis: I have to say, I haven't [00:55:00] 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 when you're not smiling.
[00:55:07] Stacy Havener: 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.
[00:55:16] Stacy Havener: I swear my brain thinks in lyrics. That is so good. Okay. What profession other than your own
[00:55:25] Dan Mikulskis: I'm going to say investigative journalism, and I might be a little bit biased because 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.
[00:55:38] Stacy Havener: Oh, that would be really cool. Okay, flip side, what profession would you not like to do?
[00:55:44] Dan Mikulskis: Well, 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've got a two year old and a three month old and a two year old goes to nursery, which we really appreciate.
[00:55:58] Dan Mikulskis: But I know I could not be a [00:56:00] 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 them really appreciate what they do, but I could not do that.
[00:56:11] Stacy Havener: Oh my gosh. They're treasures.
[00:56:13] Dan Mikulskis: Yeah.
[00:56:13] Stacy Havener: 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?
[00:56:24] Dan Mikulskis: This is such a hard one. I
[00:56:26] Stacy Havener: know
[00:56:27] Dan Mikulskis: what I came back to on that was ages ago. I was reading, I think someone in the, I can't remember who it was, but I was reading someone in the industry had retired and there was an article written about them.
[00:56:35] Dan Mikulskis: And there was a comment on the article by someone that said something like, I worked at X, Y, Z firm in the Joe blogs era. And I remember it. And we were talking about time 20 years. I remember it because with things. And I just kind of thought, Wow. That was something quite special because it was a big firm they were talking about.
[00:56:52] Dan Mikulskis: Very big firm. And to have sort of defined an era in that firm was obviously they had, this person had a huge influence on the culture and a lot of [00:57:00] people sort of just remembered that as a thing. You know, we, we all, you know, we all 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.
[00:57:09] Dan Mikulskis: 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 want to, want to, want to do it all the time. So it's just having people that would sort of say that, Oh yeah, I remember when I was at LCP in the Dan era kind of thing.
[00:57:26] Dan Mikulskis: And, and these,
[00:57:27] Stacy Havener: 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, because there's that whole quote that people will never forget how you made them feel. That's so great.
[00:57:48] Stacy Havener: 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 [00:58:00] newsletter, how can they do that?
[00:58:01] Dan Mikulskis: Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry. I'm a big user of LinkedIn. So yeah. Connect with me on LinkedIn, Dan Mikulskis. And then you can find a link to follow my newsletter, which is on LinkedIn.
[00:58:08] Dan Mikulskis: And podcast is called Investment Uncut. So you can find that on Apple podcasts or anywhere, anywhere you get your good podcasts. So yeah, those are the places.
[00:58:16] Stacy Havener: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Dan. Have a great day.
[00:58:19] Dan Mikulskis: Stacey. Thanks so much. It's been a really good conversation. Really enjoyed it. Thank you.
[00:58:25] 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.
[00:58:44] Stacy Havener: All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm. Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Havener or Havener Capital Partners.
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