Episode 77: Founder/CEO of $1.5B First Ascent (Acquired by GeoWealth), FinServ and Asset Management Luminary. Meet Scott MacKillop.

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Nobody knows what it takes to scale to the top like GEOWealth’s strategic advisor Scott MacKillop —he’s climbed literal mountains AND built some of the most successful TAMPS in the game.

In this Episode, Scott and Stacy discuss: 

• His backstory: From dreaming of following his father's footsteps as a lawyer and practicing corporate and securities law to leaping into asset management

• His journey to founding and scaling First Ascent to over $1.5B in assets and his recent sale to GeoWealth

• What mountain climbing taught him about raising venture capital 

• Why he’s a firm believer in the power of a personal brand 

More About Scott:

Scott MacKillop served as CEO of First Ascent Asset Management until its acquisition by GeoWealth, LLC. He now serves as Strategic Advisor to GeoWealth and a champion for independent-minded financial advisors. He is an ambassador for the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard and a 47-year veteran of the financial services industry, having served at the helm of five Turnkey Asset Management Platforms (TAMPs).

Scott is a writer and commentator on the investment management and fintech industries. He brings his unique viewpoints to industry publications, speaking on the topics of fiduciary responsibilities, practice management, and client education. An avid hiker, Scott has summited thirty “14ers,” having hiked extensively in the U.S. and internationally. He also plays lead guitar for the band at his church.

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TRANSCRIPT

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

[00:00:00] Scott MacKillop: A lot of what we sell in the asset management world, it may be a purchase that isn't going to happen for a year or two years or even longer. And so what you're doing is building credibility with people. And if you're not a patient person, this can drive you nuts, but you're building credibility over time with people and you're getting

[00:00:19] Stacy Havener: Hey my name is Stacy Havener.

[00:00:21] I'm obsessed with startups, stories, and sales. Storytelling has fueled my success as a female founder in the toughest boys club, Wall Street. I've raised over 8 billion that has led to 30 billion in follow on assets for investment boutiques. You could say against the odds. Yeah. Understatement. I share stories of the people behind the portfolios while teaching you how to use story to shape outcomes.

[00:00:49] 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 [00:01:00] wish you had in college, mixed with happy hour. Pull up a seat, grab your notebook, and get ready to be inspired and challenged while you learn. This is the Billion Dollar Backstory Podcast.

[00:01:16] My next guest is basically like the Dos Equis guy, but the asset management version. He's been involved in building so many firsts. in the model delivery space, founding and leading some of the industry's most successful tamps, and advising some of the biggest players in the biz. But that's just his day job.

[00:01:37] He's a mountaineer who's climbed over 40 14ers, a musician who learned from Jerry Garcia, and A serial entrepreneur, Scott McKillop's most recent adventure was building first ascent to over one and a half billion in assets before selling the business to geo wealth. In today's episode, he talks about the process of [00:02:00] building the tough work of capital raising and the power of authentic personal brand.

[00:02:07] This is a conversation with one of our industry's greats. Meet my friend, Scott. Scott, thank you so much for being in the Billion Dollar Backstory studio. There's so much to talk about, but I want to start with your backstory. You've had An amazing career in financial services that we're going to get to but like did you always envision Working in this industry because there's so much more to you.

[00:02:35] That's like very eclectic and very Non financial services with air quotes.

[00:02:39] Scott MacKillop: Yeah. No, I I grew up thinking I was going to be a lawyer. Okay, and I actually My father was a lawyer and I loved the Perry Mason show when I was a kid. And I just, the whole lawyer thing just seemed, I felt destined to do that, I think from a very early age.

[00:02:56] And so I went to law school, became a lawyer, [00:03:00] practice law in Washington, DC for about 15 years or so. Had a pretty, pretty good run there. I was a corporate and securities lawyer, did some venture capital work and some ERISA work, but basically I was a securities lawyer. I started as an intern at the SEC back a long, long time ago, and that's how I got on this path of financial services.

[00:03:19] Stacy Havener: Okay, wait. Because that's not what I was expecting you to say. I was expecting you to say like you wanted to be some sort of like mountaineering Travel did that all happen later?

[00:03:32] Scott MacKillop: Yeah. No, so that so there were there were some parallel roads, right? So when I was very young, I guess maybe maybe I was 15 or so a friend of mine Asked me if I would go on this hiking trip.

[00:03:45] He was a so called burrow boy on these trips that went through the Sierras. Yeah. And so he took care of the burrows and he, he wanted to know if I wanted to come along on one of the trips. So I asked my parents and they said sure you can go on one of the trips. So I, we hiked through [00:04:00] the Sierras. That was really my first big exposure to the great outdoors.

[00:04:05] I just loved it. I loved it so much. In fact, that I asked the people who ran the trips, if I could stay and be a burro boy myself. So I actually spent most of the summer up in the Sierras as a burro boy, working with my friend, taking care of the pack animals and taking trips through the Sierras with people who would come on for usually a week or 10 days, something like that.

[00:04:25] And then we'd take them through, go up mountains and, you know, On the John Muir Trail and up Mount Whitney and so forth. And it was just a great experience. So that was really where I got my, my first introduction to the great outdoors. Neither one of my parents were mountaineers or had any interest in that kind of thing.

[00:04:40] Yeah.

[00:04:40] Stacy Havener: Yeah. We're going to have to figure out the parallels of these things, because it's a really important side of you that I think if people follow you, they see, and yet you had a, a pretty. traditional sort of white collar career path.

[00:04:56] Scott MacKillop: Yeah, absolutely. It never occurred to me to deviate from that path.

[00:04:59] [00:05:00] And there was another parallel road, which also developed pretty early on. So I grew up in the Bay area in the sixties, right? So that was a big music scene then. And my, in fact, my first rock concert I ever went to was, I went to see the Beatles at the cow palace. And this was the time when the Grateful Dead was emerging.

[00:05:17] In fact, I took guitar lessons from Jerry Garcia. He teacher. Yeah. And so I took guitar lessons from him. Janis Joplin, big brother played at my high school for a dance. You know, this was when all this was happening. And so I got very interested in music as well. I actually became a guitar teacher when I was in high school.

[00:05:34] And, and so I had this musical thing happening and the mountain thing happening, but it never occurred to me that I was going to do either one of those for a living or that that would become, A major part of my life. I just, I was going to be a lawyer. That's where I was going to go. And that's what I ended up doing.

[00:05:51] It wasn't until much later that I, that I actually figured out the fact that there, there's a huge amount of commonality in what I do in [00:06:00] financial services and these other two things. And it took, but it took me years to really get there. in touch with that.

[00:06:04] Stacy Havener: Well, let's jump to it. Like, so, so tell us about that realization and about those parallels.

[00:06:10] Scott MacKillop: Yeah. So I was, yeah, I was a lawyer for 15 years. I started looking across the table at my clients pretty early on and thought they were having a lot more fun than I was. And they had a much bigger canvas to paint on. And so it took, but it took me a while to get out of the legal bubble. practice and get into the financial services world where I felt like I could just build and create this whole sort of open field idea of, of trying to be involved in things that maybe hadn't quite been done before and, or take something that people had done and do it in a different way.

[00:06:44] And so that's pretty, that's pretty much consistent through my, through my financial services career. And then I realized this is a lot like. My guitar playing. I'm just creating things. I'm making things up. I don't to this day. I don't really memorize songs I just [00:07:00] I'm a lead guitar player in a band to this day and I'm mostly an improviser and you know It's just that creative process.

[00:07:06] I love and then the the the hiking and the outdoors thing. It's the same sort of thing It's a it's a testing of your limits and what can you do and and the intensity of the experience usually just makes me feel more alive and it's the same way if you're playing a solo with a band or something you could totally screw it up or you could have a wonderful experience but it's that it's like putting yourself out there and seeing what you can do i just love that and that's it's common in all three of those

[00:07:35] Stacy Havener: things and also like very non lawyer ish right because lawyers are so It's so black and white and it's a very mathematical type of thinking and very analytical and you're talking about this other side that is so opposite of that.

[00:07:52] Scott MacKillop: Yeah. Well, this is the thing that I realized. I actually did enjoy practicing law and I had a great time doing it, but I got in [00:08:00] touch with the limits of that pretty early on. Probably I was probably four years into my career or something like that when I realized, wow, that what these other people are doing is.

[00:08:09] So much cooler than what I'm doing, but it took me a while to figure out how to get there.

[00:08:13] Stacy Havener: There's a couple of us that think financial services are cool. We have to somehow perpetuate that right to the next generation. So let's, so let's talk about, so you make this leap into financial services. I think it's interesting too.

[00:08:26] And I want to come back to the fact that some of your clients were in VC cause that kind of plays in here a little bit later. So you come into the space and kind of tell us what became your niche, if you will, in financial services.

[00:08:38] Scott MacKillop: Yeah, so I, I started by working for a firm that had been a client of mine when I was practicing law.

[00:08:46] It was a pension consulting firm based in Atlanta, and they were doing traditional asset allocation, manager selection, performance reporting, and so forth for big institutional clients. And I went to [00:09:00] work for them, but on the side of what that firm was doing, there was another operation, Skunkworks, where they were starting to develop what became the first mutual fund tamp.

[00:09:11] And a couple of financial advisors had come to the firm, not really come to the firm, actually, they, they had actually been hanging out at a party somewhere, I think. And ran into one of the pension consultants and they started talking about the two different worlds, right? The institutional world on the one hand, and then what these financial advisors were doing on the other.

[00:09:31] And one of the financial advisors said, well, do you think you could build something like that for us with the asset allocation and the manager selection and, and do the performance reporting and all of that? And so this fellow came back and reported the conversation to us and we said, well, we probably Could do that.

[00:09:47] Actually, we don't know exactly how to do it, but let's see if we can put it all together. So that's how we got started. That's how I got started in the TAMP business was just taking this opportunity that had been presented to [00:10:00] us by these financial advisors. The financial advisors, interestingly enough, they actually became our sales force and worked with us and did a phenomenal job helping us grow the firm.

[00:10:10] And then they went off and formed AssetMarkz. So AssetMarkz was actually Formed by these guys. Yeah, years ago. They had the, they had the picture of this in their minds and we We had the capabilities and so we got together and built it.

[00:10:24] Stacy Havener: I had no idea That tamps were patterned after like pension consulting and it makes total sense when you say it But I just did not realize that that was the genesis of that model

[00:10:37] Scott MacKillop: Yeah well this was at a time when a lot of financial advisors had been Selling tax shelters and the irs just Really cracked down on tax shelters.

[00:10:46] And so one of the primary products that they had disappeared really almost overnight in the eighties. And so they were looking for something else that they could do. And most of them didn't really know [00:11:00] much about the, the whole academic science of building portfolios. And, and they didn't really know much about doing due diligence on managers.

[00:11:09] And, but these were things that, uh, That the pension consultants, of course, made their living every day. So, so it was, it was really a perfect match. It just, it wouldn't have happened if these

[00:11:19] Stacy Havener: guys

[00:11:19] Scott MacKillop: hadn't have bumped into each other out at a party somewhere. I think it was in San Diego.

[00:11:23] Stacy Havener: I love it. And so the TAMP model obviously now is like, this is big business and this is really where you built your career.

[00:11:31] So take us through, so you start this I love the phrase skunk works, by the way. I'm totally bringing that back. That's amazing. And how does it evolve from there?

[00:11:41] Scott MacKillop: So we, we grew the firm to, I don't know, a little over a billion dollars pretty quickly. That was when a billion dollars was a billion dollars.

[00:11:49] Now a billion dollars is like, I just don't think it's

[00:11:52] Stacy Havener: a ton,

[00:11:54] Scott MacKillop: but yeah, well, they're financial advisors that have multi billion dollar practices. But, but back then a [00:12:00] billion, we were the first. First TAMP to hit a billion dollars and that was a pretty big deal and we were growing like crazy and then a firm out in Denver, portfolio management consultants, got wind of what we were doing.

[00:12:13] Now they were one of the first TAMPS to operate in the separately managed account area. So they weren't building mutual fund portfolios, but they were doing what the wire houses that already started in the separately managed account world. When their whole commission revenue stream disappeared, they invented this.

[00:12:28] Managed account thing. And so it was pretty interesting. So Ken Phillips, who ran a PMC at the time, called up and he actually tried to hire me to go work there. And I said, no, I'm pretty happy where I am. So he said, well, if I bought the firm, you'd have to come work for me. So, so yeah, a couple of weeks later, he came back and said, okay.

[00:12:49] Let's do this. PMC bought our firm. And so we built then the first TAMP that had both separately managed accounts and mutual fund portfolios on the platform. So that was another first and that was [00:13:00] fun and exciting. And then PMC got bought by another firm. And I just wasn't, culturally wasn't a good fit.

[00:13:07] So I, I'd been the president of PMC, Ken had left a while back and I was president of PMC, but I just didn't want to do it anymore. So I started a consulting firm with a couple of partners that helped large financial services firms build managed account programs for financial advisors. So I worked for Frank Russell and Nationwide and Bear Stearns and JP Morgan and a lot of firms like that.

[00:13:28] Just helping them, cause this was at a, Period where they were making, those firms were making transitions to more fee based types of programs for their financial advisors. And so we, we helped them do that.

[00:13:39] Stacy Havener: What year, like what year are we right now in this? When you're doing? Yeah, so

[00:13:43] Scott MacKillop: that was like early 2000s.

[00:13:45] Stacy Havener: Okay. So everyone's getting on this train of like, we can build models and we can do these types of things. Gotcha.

[00:13:52] Scott MacKillop: Yep, absolutely. And of course, part of the drive there was the same as it is. To some extent today, these [00:14:00] organizations wanted to avoid having their financial advisors building their own stuff.

[00:14:06] They didn't necessarily have the tools to do it, they weren't all that skilled, and so they were much more interested in having Programs that their financial advisors could use where people who actually knew what they were doing in the investment world and had the capabilities to build good portfolios and so forth would do that and then so forth.

[00:14:25] So that's still, that's still a tension in the industry today. But yeah, so that happened. And then I went to work for one of our consulting clients. This was a firm down in Houston called U. S. Fiduciary. And what we did down there was we tried to build the first. What I think was pretty much the first platform for breakaway brokers who were leaving the wirehouses to come and maintain their brokerage business, but also have a managed account platform that they could operate off of.

[00:14:52] So we built that. This was before Hightower, before Focus Financial, before any of those firms. In fact, Elliot Weisbluth, who was [00:15:00] The founder of Hightower was one of my colleagues there. He, he ran the broker dealer part and I, I ran the tamp part. And then that firm ended up, I won't go into the bloody gory details of it, but

[00:15:12] Stacy Havener: there's all, there's always more to all these stories, of course.

[00:15:15] Yeah.

[00:15:16] Scott MacKillop: But there were, there were egos and power struggles and all kinds of things that took place there. So that, that firm really never quite realized the potential that it could have, I think, but then I went off to Frontier Asset Management. I think you're familiar with them. I think that's where I first met you was back maybe in those days and what we did there, that was a real.

[00:15:36] Pretty small firm when I got there, but this was right around the time when firms like invest net were creating these strategist programs where you could become a strategist on the invest net platform. And then all of the advisors who worked through invest net would have access to your asset management capabilities.

[00:15:51] So we, we got on there. Not all my partners were on board with. That approach, they wanted to work for big billion dollar advisory firms and so forth. And I [00:16:00] said, no, I think this is really going to turn out well. And so we forged ahead and next thing we knew we were 2 billion and growing. So that turned out really well.

[00:16:09] So we were, we were invest nets, first fund strategists of the year, I think when they started awarding that. And then I got this crazy idea somewhere along the line because of the fund strategists. I realized that in the TAMP business, the technology had gotten to a point where it didn't really matter if we were managing a hundred thousand dollar account or a million dollar account.

[00:16:33] We were basically doing the same work most of the time. It was, we were the assembly line. The advisor might be doing something different, but so I started, I started thinking about, well, what if we just charged a flat fee for this instead of a, you know, An AUM fee. And again, my partners weren't interested in that, that idea.

[00:16:50] But here again, it was the sort of creativity thing coming to the fore again. And I just couldn't really let go of the idea. So I left Frontier [00:17:00] and wandered around the world for, I don't know, eight months or so, testing the idea with people that I knew. And at some point, August, I think 2015, I formed First Ascent Asset Management.

[00:17:13] And by then I had a, a group of people that were going to come work with me on this idea. And they got on board in a sequence of months following that. And then we opened our doors 2016, June 2016, I think. And we had the first flat fee tamp. So

[00:17:30] Stacy Havener: it's just like a series of firsts. It's like, this was the first, and this is the first.

[00:17:36] Like, it's just so visionary, Scott.

[00:17:38] Scott MacKillop: Yeah. Well, it's, the funny thing was, I never thought of it that way until later. You know, it just seemed like that was the thing that was in front of us. And I didn't think about, really, whether we were first or not first. It was just like a really cool thing to do. To work on.

[00:17:52] Jumped in, rolled up, rolled up my sleeves, along with a lot of other people who rolled up their sleeves and, and put these things together. So, it was fun. [00:18:00]

[00:18:00] Stacy Havener: And so we're going to take it full circle because we're on this path. This is also just like a great history of kind of the, the model itself, which is cool.

[00:18:08] Yeah. So you, you start First Ascent. One clarifying question before we continue to sort of like, Up to today.

[00:18:15] Yep.

[00:18:16] Why When you did that when you said like we could do flat fee versus aum. Why why why was that important to you?

[00:18:24] Scott MacKillop: so Now by this time in my career, I was thinking about the world differently And I was really thinking a lot more about how to make the world a better place Really?

[00:18:34] I mean, it's the best way to put it. And I thought if done correctly, this will make outsourced portfolio management affordable for lots of financial advisors and for their clients. And if we do this the right way, and we can talk about the details of first a sec, because it wasn't just the flat fee.

[00:18:51] There were a bundle of what I thought were Pretty cool ideas that were wrapped up in that. And I thought if we do all of these things and we execute this, well, [00:19:00] this will be, in my view, of course, this was me thinking this, this will be the best tamp and it'll be the best thing for advisors and it'll be the best thing for their clients and we'll do something that makes our little corner of the world just

[00:19:14] better.

[00:19:14] And so that was really what drove it. It, it was just, it's like driving them at climbing a mountain. Can I get up to the top of that thing? I don't know if I can or not, but let's try to figure it out. So that's, that's really what it was.

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[00:20:45] So you, you're building yet again, serial entrepreneur, like here we go building first descent and then take us to today.

[00:20:54] Scott MacKillop: So we got to a point. So this is the interesting thing I've observed all the way through this is that [00:21:00] the thing you build today. isn't going to be as cool five years from now. And people get, well, first of all, the world just changes.

[00:21:08] It flat out changes. And so the thing that you think was, should be carved in stone, and you can just sit back on your laurels. That's a terrible way to look at whatever it is you do. Things, things will always change and there'll be unexpected. Developments and just people's tastes and technology changes the capabilities change anyway, so a lot of things change And so what happened with us was we built a good business at first descent, but the advisors We had series of portfolios that we built that our investment committee put together and advisors kept coming to us and saying Hey I really like that flat fee.

[00:21:45] I really like maybe this one series of portfolios that you're that you're managing, but I want to be more involved in the asset management myself. I want to maybe I want to customize the model. I don't necessarily want to be making decisions [00:22:00] about those models, but I want to at least have my own version of those.

[00:22:03] So we started running into that much more. And then sometimes even people just said, I just want to be me. I want to like partner with you, like, could your investment committee be merged with my investment committee? And could we just make these decisions together? So this whole trend towards customization started and we didn't have, we took, we selectively took on maybe four or five of those relationships, but our bandwidth really evaporated at about that point.

[00:22:30] So. Cool. I looked at it and I thought this isn't just a weird group of people that we're running into. This is where the world's going, I think, and we need to at least have a more robust capability than we do today to deal with it. They'll always be the people that are happy with the portfolios that we're managing, the model portfolios, but there's, there's this other group that That needs that needs our help, too.

[00:22:53] So we didn't have the technology chops really to to do that or the Bandwidth [00:23:00] but we ran into the folks at geo wealth and geo wealth had built Their firm kind of coming at it from a different angle They had built their firm to be a really a technology platform for financial advisors who wanted to manage their own portfolios and so the more we talked about it, we realized that You If we sat on a technology platform that had those capabilities, then the advisors who wanted to customize things and so forth could do that on the platform and build their own, their own portfolios with our help or without our help.

[00:23:34] And then we could really, we could meet advisors where they were in this journey, no matter where they were, if they were all the way at the end of wanting to manage their own portfolios. Without any intervention or help from us, they could do that on the platform. If they wanted to, on the far other end, if they just wanted to use our portfolios, they could do that.

[00:23:55] GeoWealth incidentally also had a model marketplace. So there was a much deeper offering [00:24:00] there from lots of really fine asset management firms. And then we could do anything in between. And that just seemed like the perfect situation to me. And GeoWealth was, our, our marketplace was totally RIAs. We didn't work in the broker dealer area.

[00:24:14] That was just an interesting story of how we got there too. But if you, if you, if you start an asset management firm like we did, and you have no track record and no assets under management, you don't pass anybody's due diligence screen. Wow, hello. So we, Yeah. Yeah. So you know that. So the only place we really could work was in the RAA space.

[00:24:32] Go to the early adopters. Yeah. And so we, that's where we built our business. And, and GeoWealth had done the same thing. So I think we're still to this day, the only TAMP that only works with RAAs. It's not at some level in the broker dealer business. So we were very focused and just culturally in the same mindset there.

[00:24:51] And then the GeoWealth people just had this technology capability, which would allow us to service people in a way that we couldn't [00:25:00] given the platform that we were sitting on at the time. So, so it was a perfect combination. So GeoWealth ended up acquiring us this probably a year and a half ago. And here we are.

[00:25:09] Stacy Havener: So before I ask specific questions, this is really your career and the parallel of sort of model delivery. Are running pair pursue basically. Right. It's actually quite amazing. You could follow the whole history of that.

[00:25:27] Yeah.

[00:25:28] And so I guess one of the questions I have before I go back to your backstory, but I need to write it down because I don't want to forget.

[00:25:34] You mentioned how difficult it is for asset managers, especially boutiques. And one of the channels that people talk about often is Is the TAMP market because there's, there's a lot of assets there you can get in. If the investment team at the TAMP puts you in a model, you're like best day ever. And so can you just give us some advice for asset managers who are listening?

[00:25:58] Like, is that [00:26:00] market still accessible for RIAs? Like, is that an early adopter channel or has that really become? More of it, of the later stage, like it's the black rock show and it's the Vanguard show and blah, blah, blah.

[00:26:12] Scott MacKillop: Yeah, it's, it's really, again, it's changed quite a bit. So, so now it's, one of the things that I consider unfortunate, it's a natural development for the industry, but as.

[00:26:23] Tamps got bigger and more successful, they had more to lose, right? Yeah. So the idea of somebody like Investnet or AssetMark or Geo Wealth, taking on a manager who is just starting out and has $5 million in their management or $10 million or something like that, is really a long shot at this. At this point, they just won't do it because of the, the risk associated with it.

[00:26:48] Even though they're likely to have a pep talk with you and say, please come back. What you're doing is really awesome. It's just, you're not quite ready for us. But that doesn't mean that there aren't other opportunities [00:27:00] out there because really, if you look around, there are all these firms growing up that are calling themselves tamps today.

[00:27:06] And they, I guess they are at some level tamps. There are a lot of smaller tamps that are trying to set themselves apart. And I think if you can run into them, That's great. There are also these firms, some of which are clients of GeoWealth, that are what we call our enterprise clients. These are groups of RIAs, firms where there's a home office, and then there's an affiliated group of RIAs.

[00:27:28] And those, those people build their own portfolios. They, you know. Figure out what they want there. And so I think there, I think there are some opportunities, but it's, it's very hard for me. I, I know having gone through that, how difficult it is to start from ground zero and work your way in, you really have to scrap and fight.

[00:27:46] Stacy Havener: So it's still. This is what I tell clients and investment boutiques, but it really still is like early adopters. If you are in the asset management space, we're talking family offices, [00:28:00] independent RIAs who can make their own decisions, who love the idea of. A breakaway from Poland sets up their own shop or whatever, right?

[00:28:11] Like they, they love that.

[00:28:12] Speaker 3: Exactly.

[00:28:13] Stacy Havener: And I do remember the days with frontier and invest net and some of the temps where you could still get in as like a mid market boutique, not the bigs, but maybe not. The startup, but it has evolved and it has changed. So, okay. I just wanted people to sort of, cause I'm sure they're like, Oh my gosh, this is a channel I could be accessing.

[00:28:33] Speaker 3: Yep.

[00:28:33] Stacy Havener: So I want to go back to your backstory and talk about some of the fundraising and deal making along the way, because I think this will be helpful for our, our audience to sort of hear.

[00:28:46] Speaker 3: Yeah.

[00:28:46] Stacy Havener: And so you've, you've been involved in acquisitions and most recently you've had an official founder exit and something you started and you've raised money along the way as well.

[00:28:57] So I want to talk about that and just [00:29:00] some maybe things that surprised you on that journey. What the thing I'm always trying to. Drive home to people is that deals don't get done because some number on some spreadsheet looked great And I want you to just talk about what that process was like

[00:29:17] Scott MacKillop: Yeah Well, I think the the example that I started with when ken phillips called up and wanted to hire me That's a perfect example that didn't start out as an acquisition conversation, but it it ended up there and I think What happens is people see the possibilities, they see how you could fit things together conceptually that would be additive to what they're doing, and the whole dollars and cents of it on those spreadsheets come later, it's mainly like I maybe I just like those people.

[00:29:50] They're what they're doing is really cool and they're good people. And I would love to have people like that on my team. And how can I figure out how to make that [00:30:00] happen? I think that drives a lot of it because you, if you look around, there are all kinds of acquisition possibilities, as many acquisitions as there are going on these days, there's the possibility for many, many more, but that never happened.

[00:30:12] And so I think you really have to get past just the. Not just get past, but you don't even really start with the, the financial aspects of it. You start with the human aspects of it and maybe the creative aspects of it, right? Like, oh, this plus this would equal way more than, right? It would be something very, very exponential.

[00:30:34] Because I think the people that really have the fortitude to go through this stuff, cause this is hard work, right? This is, this is like the back, I used to dig ditches back in when I was in high school, I had a job and I used a jackhammer one summer, like this 90 pound jackhammer breaking up concrete.

[00:30:52] That was a way easier job than this stuff. This is, you put yourself out there, right? And you could fail [00:31:00] miserably. And, and the thing that you're trying to do. Might not happen and their most days are not days of great victory, right? Their days of just hard work, churning it out, just having faith and continuing to move.

[00:31:17] And I think a lot of people get sorted out in that process, right? They don't want to go through that or they think they do, but it's like, it's again, it's like, it's like climbing, climbing mountains. I can't even tell you the number of times where I get. Like two thirds of the way to the summit and I go, what

[00:31:32] Stacy Havener: am I doing here?

[00:31:33] Why am I doing this? Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

[00:31:36] Scott MacKillop: Yeah. It's just really hard. It's

[00:31:37] Stacy Havener: really

[00:31:38] Scott MacKillop: hard.

[00:31:38] Stacy Havener: Type two fun. As one of my friends on the podcast said, right? It's like, it's going to be great when it's over, but when I'm in it, it's a grind. So, and I think this is true. Whether it's deal making, so like an acquisition, or even just fundraising in general, I still [00:32:00] see, and I watch it and I'm like, gosh, I've seen this movie before, I still see really talented managers who will.

[00:32:08] Just can't believe that people do business with people and they they just are like, I can't believe that it has to be about the numbers.

[00:32:19] Scott MacKillop: No, I totally agree with you. That's no, that's what I, that's why I love following you on LinkedIn is because the message you're telling is the truth. It's the truth.

[00:32:29] It's the real answer. And it's like any truth. A lot of people don't want to buy it. They don't want to accept it, but it's, it's the truth. And raising money, that was my least

[00:32:39] Stacy Havener: favorite part of

[00:32:40] Scott MacKillop: it. It's just

[00:32:41] Stacy Havener: digging ditches. Yeah,

[00:32:42] Scott MacKillop: that was even, that was even worse than digging ditches. It's like, yeah, going out because, because the first ascent was funded by the first ascent team.

[00:32:52] But at a certain point, the angel investors, friends and family and so forth. Put more money into the deal than, than we as, as [00:33:00] team members did. So I could never really find any institutional or venture capital people. They were more interested in technology driven businesses than they were in asset management firms at the time anyway.

[00:33:11] And so it was like friends and family go out there and make it happen, try to put it together. And we were able to do it, but we were, we were always, I would say we were always underfunded And we would have to go back to the trough and As we proved ourselves, as we grew, as we demonstrated that we could do what we said we were going to do, then more people started to come in.

[00:33:31] But it's just, it's the same thing when you start a firm, getting that first client is hard. Getting the first person to put money in is hard. You know, all of these are just really difficult, difficult. It's not

[00:33:42] Stacy Havener: for the faint of heart. Was there a point in time where And maybe it was always from the get.

[00:33:50] Was there a point in time where you said, I'm going to shed the image of the stereotypical finance [00:34:00] guy? Like I'm going to shed the image of the blue suit. Was there like a point in time that you remember that or did it happen gradually? Because you have a very authentic, very differentiated personal brand.

[00:34:11] And I just wonder, when did that start? Or like, was it after the slag's last exit?

[00:34:17] Scott MacKillop: Yeah, it was an evolutionary process. It was like when I started doing any of these things, I didn't really see where it was going or think of it as the first, it was just like an evolutionary process. Part of it was a reaction, a negative reaction, right?

[00:34:32] I was seeing things and interacting with people who just seemed totally disingenuous to me. They were just, they were, they were full of it. And, and they're. Every time they opened their mouth, it sounded like some sort of corporate script, right? And I hated it. And it just really, I, I just, it was repelling to me.

[00:34:52] And I, I just thought, that's not how normal people want to interact, right? The advisors we work with, I've [00:35:00] always worked with small advisory firms for the most part. These are not giant enterprises. These are real people who, for whatever reason, decided to start their own businesses. And maybe they've been successful and they've built it up to a pretty good size, but they're still small business people.

[00:35:17] They still are. And not only that, they're people. They're real people. And they don't respond well to gobbledygook. And they, they want to know who they're dealing with. Are you an honorable person or not? Are you somebody I can trust or not? Are you somebody who's going to show up when all this hard work we're talking about needs to be done?

[00:35:35] Are you going to be the person who shows up first thing in the morning with your sleeves rolled up and your pickaxe ready to go? That's what they want. And so I thought, well, I can't be the only person who wants to throw up when I hear the corporate spiel, right? There, there've got to be other people who are having the same reaction.

[00:35:52] And so I just started moving more in a direction of, of just trying to be real and trying to explain to [00:36:00] people the good, the bad, and the ugly of whatever it was we were talking about. And at some point that developed, I realized again, the, the parallels between the mountain nearing that I was doing, and even sometimes the music I was doing, and I started to use that as analogies and metaphors for, for The things I was trying to communicate.

[00:36:19] And so that became more and more the kind of the vehicle that I used, because one of your big truths, I think, is the importance of storytelling, right? And it's not storytelling in the negative sense, right? Where you, where you're deceiving people. It's like turning. a reality into a digestible nugget, and that comes through this story.

[00:36:41] And so learning to develop that so that people who don't have a lot of time, Lord knows nobody, everybody's attention span is so small these days, and, and they make decisions in nanoseconds. They just decide if they want to And so you've got to put it in a form where people [00:37:00] can, can grasp what you're saying best, maybe even relate to it.

[00:37:04] And maybe if you're really lucky, even be inspired by it, right? Like you uplift them. So at this point, I'm more interested in just, it's really like giving a gift. It's like, here's something that might be of interest to you. You know, a lot of the stuff that I, that I write about and. Put out on LinkedIn and so forth and write articles about has nothing to do with the company that I work for or selling anything.

[00:37:28] It's just like, Hey, here's a topic that I found interesting and you might find it interesting too. And then try to make it entertaining, try to make it digestible and maybe even inspirational. So that's how I look at it. Yeah.

[00:37:41] Stacy Havener: It's so great. And I think what's awesome about what you, well, everything is awesome about what you said.

[00:37:46] And you know, I'm over here nodding and like, Be like, Cheering if I could. Yeah, really what we're talking about here is this idea of personal brand That there are things that are unique to you Scott [00:38:00] Yeah The guitar things and the mountaineering things and the fact that you're a lawyer and the fact it's all the ands it's all the crosses Of those things together that create something that nobody else can replicate because they're not you.

[00:38:16] So when you communicate and tell stories and include all of those pieces it becomes something that by its nature is unique and differentiated, can't be, can't be copied. Yeah. And that takes some bravery to combine.

[00:38:31] Scott MacKillop: Yeah. Yeah. You have to hold your breath when you do it and, and go out there. But really the alternative is.

[00:38:37] It's just disastrous, right? If you, if you try, if you try to be like everybody else, right, if you try to do, if you look at what large institutional asset management firms do there, you can't deliver a message like that it's, and it's not even a good thing for you to try to deliver that message because those people as successful as they've been.

[00:38:59] They've [00:39:00] really, in large part, lost the ability to make it human, to make it about a person. They, they've lost their face. They're very wealthy and I'm sure they wouldn't trade their place in the world for anything, but they're corporate. Their message is corporate. It sounds corporate. It's scripted. And if you try to imitate that, you'll look stupid and you won't be able to do it as well as they do.

[00:39:20] So I found LinkedIn is a great testing ground for this. I do occasionally put stuff out, which is more like a commercial. It's stuff that was promotional for the firms that I've been associated with and so forth. And the views are like a fraction, a tenth maybe of, of what people don't want to hear that stuff.

[00:39:40] They're not in a buying mood every day, right? There's not, they're not there to, it's not like they went to the grocery store to buy milk or something. It's like a lot of what, what we, Sell in the asset management world in the financial services world, maybe a purchase that isn't going to happen for a year or two years or even longer.

[00:39:58] And so what you're [00:40:00] doing is building credibility with people. And if you're not a patient person, this can drive you nuts, but you're building credibility over time with people and you're getting to know them. I can't even tell you the number of people that I. I run into at conferences or whatever and say, Oh, I feel like I know you.

[00:40:19] And it's like,

[00:40:20] Stacy Havener: yeah, yeah,

[00:40:22] Scott MacKillop: no. And it's, it's, it's because you, you actually do sort of get to know them. And I, and actually a lot of them have become friends of mine. I think I have a lot of people who I really respect and count as friends who I. I've never actually physically met. They're just people that I know through LinkedIn.

[00:40:38] And so I think it's just, that's the kind of bond, and that's the kind of entree that you can't, you can't get by just pushing your performance numbers out there or coming up with some tricky tagline or whatever, maybe.

[00:40:50] Stacy Havener: It's two different playbooks, which is what I love when you were explaining, like, even if you tried to do the playbook that a BlackRock or a [00:41:00] Big uses, you couldn't.

[00:41:02] And it's also true that they can't use ours.

[00:41:07] Scott MacKillop: Yeah, exactly.

[00:41:08] Stacy Havener: Right. Larry Fink is not out there like showing pictures of himself, like hiking up mountains. It's just not happening. And so the trick is to sort of own your lane, like use the playbook. So many of us think that we're at a disadvantage compared to the big firm, but actually the things that we think are our disadvantages could be advantages if we would use them, right?

[00:41:35] Scott MacKillop: Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, if you think about it, I don't know when my wife and I watch television, when a commercial comes on, it's muted or we fast forward through it or whatever. Everybody is conditioned that the first word that comes out of somebody's mouth that sounds like a commercial. Yeah. The wall goes down.

[00:41:51] Everybody knows what it is. We're exposed to so much of that these days. That people just tune out. But if it's an interesting [00:42:00] story, something that maybe they can, that resonates with them or that they can relate to because they, maybe they climb mountains or maybe they play the guitar or maybe whatever it is you're talking about, they relate to the human side.

[00:42:11] Right. And that's, that's where the connection.

[00:42:13] Stacy Havener: I love that. I think that's the theme of our talk today, everyone. Like that's the sauce and, and it does sound. Crazy a little bit like a crazy sauce because we're in the investment industry and but i'm not the only one This is what I love like I feel it's so Rewarding to me to hear you say these things especially in the different Aspects of where you work because we're in the same industry, but we do slightly different things

[00:42:43] Scott MacKillop: Right

[00:42:43] Stacy Havener: the fact that raising vc or selling a business It's the same Foundational truths.

[00:42:51] Scott MacKillop: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I hope everybody hears that loud

[00:42:55] Stacy Havener: and clear.

[00:42:55] Scott MacKillop: Yeah. No, it's a, it's a very important message. That's why, again, I say you [00:43:00] speak truth in your LinkedIn posts. And so I, I need it for reassurance for me too. So I, I take a great comfort in, in hearing you say. Well,

[00:43:07] Stacy Havener: thanks. And I think I need it for me too.

[00:43:09] Half the stuff I write on LinkedIn is me talking to me. So I don't have those moments where I want to throw the jackhammer to the side. Before we go into some questions to help us get to know you even a little bit more, I wonder when you think back on the various milestones in your career, like what surprised you?

[00:43:32] Was there something that surprised you in the journey that you thought was more difficult than you anticipated or easier than you anticipated?

[00:43:40] Scott MacKillop: Yeah, so the thing that surprised me and this that was more difficult, right? And this is, this, this really. Kind of relates back to when, when we started First Ascent, I thought, you have, of course, you have no idea what's going to happen when you do something like that, you bring some new idea, new ideas to the table.

[00:43:58] And I told everybody at the time, I [00:44:00] said, so there's a range of possibilities here, either. We're going to get all of the business. All of the advisors are going to leave all of these tamps because of this thing that we put together, or everybody's going to ignore us entirely. And we'll just never, we'll never get off the launching pad.

[00:44:16] And obviously the real reality was somewhere in between, but what I was surprised about and, and frankly, somewhat disappointed by was. What we created actually was really good and it was really good not just for advisors, but it was really good for clients This was the the fees we were charging especially in the early days were very low and the service was outstanding We had I think four well this four out of the last five years first ascent was ranked as the number one TAMP based on client satisfaction in the Bob Veras, Joel Bruckenstein survey.

[00:44:50] And our online, we had this great online tool for opening accounts that we developed. That was four out of five years was ranked number one for online portfolio [00:45:00] management. It wasn't just me who thought it was good. There were a lot of people who thought it was good. A lot of advisors just Didn't want to go through the trouble of changing from where they were to us because they're, I hate, I just hate to say it this way, but this is the truth that there wasn't anything in it for them, but it didn't, the, the client was going to benefit.

[00:45:21] They were going to have at least as good. If not better asset management at a much lower cost that, but the advisor just didn't want to go through the hassle of repapering accounts and moving things. And that was, that was just disappointing to me because I'm, I, I'm a big fiduciary advocate and I am an unofficial ambassador for the Institute for the fiduciary standard.

[00:45:45] I work with Knut Rostad on that. I was just disappointed that advisors didn't see it and say, Oh, that is going to benefit my clients. Therefore, I'm going to just do it, even though it's a pain in the butt.

[00:45:58] Stacy Havener: It's [00:46:00] such a great point. And I want everyone to really pause on this because when you think about the problems or pain points that your clients have, You think about the problems or pain points that you sort of want them to have.

[00:46:17] So stay with me for a second. So it's like, they should want to have better fees for their end clients. That is the problem. Their fees are too high. But what we forget is there's like a business Element to these things where it's like, at what cost, because if, if now I have to compare the trade of the pain points and the business pain point is something that I think a lot of people overlook.

[00:46:45] So to your, this happens for asset managers too. If you're like, what I'm doing is so different and it's. I don't want to say better, but it's so different than what they have. And we're at a better price point or whatever it is. This should [00:47:00] be a no brainer for them to move. Cause we're solving like all these portfolio things.

[00:47:06] Then there's the fact that guess what? That allocator will have to call up. That firm that they're invested with and say, I'm taking half my money out and giving it to someone else and they don't want to do it. So there's all these things that you don't think about.

[00:47:22] Scott MacKillop: Now this is a really important point because I can't tell you how many times I've heard advisors say, I'm just going to let sleeping dogs lie.

[00:47:29] I'm not, I'm just not going to have that conversation because I don't want to disrupt something. Everybody's happy right now. There's nobody, they're not asking for something different. And if I have a conversation, I got a 50, 50 chance that something bad is going to come out of that. So I'm not going to have that conversation.

[00:47:45] I get it. Yeah, that's

[00:47:47] Stacy Havener: disappointing. Okay. What about on the positive side?

[00:47:50] Scott MacKillop: So the positive side of that was, What we ended up doing was was finding that there was a another group of advisors Who weren't being served [00:48:00] very well by the tamp industry, right? So there were a lot of flat fee advisors the whole idea of flat fees.

[00:48:05] I didn't invent that there were flat fee advisors out there There were no flat fee tamps, but there were flat fee advisors flat fee advisors when you think about they can't use Tamps that, that charge on an annual basis. Cause as their client accounts get, get bigger, that just eats up their fee. So all of a sudden there was this whole group that could Work with us.

[00:48:25] And so that was, that was cool. And then there was another group who'd been waiting around Didn't want to do the asset management stuff anymore. Really didn't want to do it, but, and they were sort of mid career and they were sick of it, but they had never seen a version of outsourcing that was affordable and all of a sudden there was an affordable version.

[00:48:43] And so all of those people showed up at the door and then there were, there were a group of people who were unhappy for their TAMP for some sort of situational reason, right? The TAMP had screwed something up or the TAMP was. Bought by another firm that they didn't like or something. So those people showed up too, but it was like, [00:49:00] Oh, there's this whole group that we didn't even really think about that was, that was just waiting for us.

[00:49:04] So that was a pleasant surprise.

[00:49:06] Stacy Havener: It is, it's a version of attract and repel, right? Because when you put that out, here's what we're all about. And not just the fee, but all the things. There's a certain group that says, Oh yes, that's me. And there's a certain group that says. Well, it would be me, but no, it's not me, which is a great lesson to thank you for sharing that.

[00:49:23] Scott MacKillop: Yeah. No, I think that's really a really important point is that trying to be all things to all people is, you know, bad formula. You have to, as much as you can try to figure out who you, who you're going to appeal to and, and focus your message on those people and, and just accept the fact that there's a lot of people that aren't going to.

[00:49:43] Stacy Havener: Yeah.

[00:49:43] Scott MacKillop: Do business with you, but it's a big world. That's exactly right. You don't

[00:49:46] Stacy Havener: need all the clients there. I had someone on the podcast recently who shared that. So he's a hedge fund and he said, when I meet with allocators, what I do is I tell them, here are all the reasons not to hire me. I'm like, [00:50:00] this should be a play.

[00:50:01] This should be a playbook that everybody runs. Let me just tell you all the reasons why you shouldn't hire me just in case.

[00:50:10] Scott MacKillop: Yeah.

[00:50:10] Stacy Havener: And it's, again, takes a lot of bravery, but important.

[00:50:15] Scott MacKillop: It's disarming though. It's disarming. It's, it's when, when you're sitting, not across the table from somebody trying to pull them over to your side, but you're sitting next to them and going, look, this is what I do.

[00:50:29] This is, these are my strengths. These are my weaknesses. These are the things that I might be able to help you with. These are things that I'm not really going to help you with. It's very, it's very powerful because people, you know, see that this is, it's not the kind of conflictual environment that a lot of sales situations end up being.

[00:50:47] It's more of a consultative problem solving.

[00:50:50] Stacy Havener: Yeah, I agree with you. Okay, I have some questions for you. Sure. Okay, and we'll start. I always say we'll start with an easy one, but someone pointed out to [00:51:00] me today, if you're a reader, this is not an easy question. So I hear that very much. So what book inspires you?

[00:51:09] Scott MacKillop: Well, there, there are two that I've read recently that were in, that I found inspirational. One was Rick Rubin. He's a, Very legendary music producer. He wrote a book called the creative act, a way of being, and that, that was very inspirational to me because it, it also helped me get, as I said before, this whole process of figuring out how all of these roads tie together for me.

[00:51:31] His, his book was very helpful there. It's really, I don't want to try to summarize the book, but it's like, we're all creative animals. And, and if we look at our lives as, as animals. creative acts, if you will, that's a really good framework to approach things in. And then there's another one that I read more recently called the four agreements.

[00:51:49] Yeah. And that one, I, that one just had a, a frame of reference of looking at the world that I, that I just found very profound. And even though the four agreements themselves, if you [00:52:00] say what they are. They sound sort of simple and basic. There's a depth under each one of those, which really touched me anyway.

[00:52:06] I was very inspired. Great

[00:52:07] Stacy Havener: books. And I have friends who read the four agreements like every year just to see that because it's a shorter read, but like, and every time you read it, you're like, God is so good. Even though to your point, there's, it does. Those are great. Thank you for sharing those. Okay. Now I have no idea what you're going to say here.

[00:52:26] What place inspires you?

[00:52:28] Scott MacKillop: So, I like being at the top of a mountain. Otherwise, I wouldn't go up that many of them, right? You know, I've probably, you know, and I'm in the perfect place for it right here in Colorado that, you know, we've got, I think, 54 14ers, you know, what we call 14ers. You know, these are mountains that are over 14, 000 feet tall.

[00:52:46] And I think I've, I've done, I don't know, like 44, 45 teeners in my climbing history. And so those, I, if I, if I didn't like being up there, I probably wouldn't do it. Yeah. It's not

[00:52:59] Stacy Havener: one [00:53:00] of those things that you do if you don't really love, love to be at the top. Wow. Having never done one 14 or I will just live vicariously through you.

[00:53:09] I'll be at sea level if you need me. So we can just like walk on the beach, right? Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

[00:53:16] Scott MacKillop: That's a good place. Yeah. Yes.

[00:53:17] Stacy Havener: Well, yes it is. Now this is going to be an interesting question too. So you are going to speak to an audience of your adoring fans, big audience, in a stadium. You're taking the stage.

[00:53:34] What is the walkout anthem they play?

[00:53:37] Scott MacKillop: Ah, yeah. Well, I actually had to come up with one once, because I think you're involved in the one piece, right? Yeah, oh yeah. So I won CEO of the year asset managers one year, and that was a year when they, They said, Hey, you've got to come up with a song that we'll play.

[00:53:53] Yeah. I don't think they do that anymore, but they, they did that year. And so I, I gave them a Grateful Dead song [00:54:00] called Sugar Magnolia, which I love. Yeah, exactly. And I just, I love the, just the beauty and free floating kind of love theme of that, and just, it's just a very uplifting song to me. And so that, that would be my song.

[00:54:13] That

[00:54:13] Stacy Havener: is great. Also the tie back. I still

[00:54:17] Scott MacKillop: can't stop thinking. Just takes me back. Yeah. You

[00:54:19] Stacy Havener: took guitar lessons from Jerry Gardner. Yeah.

[00:54:22] Scott MacKillop: Bob Weary, I think at one point went to my high school too, before he got thrown out. I didn't know him then. I think he was there when I was there, but he was there such a short period.

[00:54:31] Stacy Havener: It's just so wild to me.

[00:54:32] Gosh, that's so cool. That was

[00:54:34] Scott MacKillop: a very unique period. Yes.

[00:54:37] Stacy Havener: Okay. Now what profession other than your own, would you like to attempt?

[00:54:42] Scott MacKillop: Uh, I'm still to this day waiting for somebody to hear me play with my band and say hey We need to cut a record. You need to be you you need to be a rock star So i'm still waiting.

[00:54:53] I still want to be a rock star even at my advanced years So i'd love to just like veer off of that [00:55:00] financial services and find some way to make money doing

[00:55:03] Stacy Havener: it. At

[00:55:04] Scott MacKillop: this point, I think my chances are pretty slim. Well,

[00:55:07] Stacy Havener: you are a rock star. You're in a band.

[00:55:09] Scott MacKillop: I am in a band. Yeah, that's fun. And I love doing it.

[00:55:12] Yeah.

[00:55:13] Stacy Havener: So that is great. Flip side. What profession would you not like to do?

[00:55:18] Scott MacKillop: Oh, so i'm probably going to offend a large chunk of accountants out there But I would not like to be an accountant I I sort of view like in the same way that I viewed the legal business as sort of limiting But I from the outside as an outsider the accounting world looks like even more limited.

[00:55:34] It's like Very rules based, very numbers based. I'm not, nobody has ever accused me of being a numbers guy. I'm not, that's not me. And so I love the fact that there are accountants in the world. My accountant, but, but I don't want to be one.

[00:55:49] Stacy Havener: And that's what unique ability teamwork at its best. Right?

[00:55:52] Scott MacKillop: Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:55:53] Stacy Havener: Okay. Now this last question is hopefully a long time away. Even still, what do you want [00:56:00] people to say about you after you've retired or left the industry?

[00:56:04] Scott MacKillop: I'd like them to say that I was a creative adventurer who made his little corner of the world a better place. That's what I would

[00:56:13] Stacy Havener: say.

[00:56:14] I think we'll all say that. We might already be saying it, Scott. You are a gift to the industry and all of us who know you.

[00:56:20] Scott MacKillop: Thank you, Stacy. So thank

[00:56:22] Stacy Havener: you so much for being here. It's been a pleasure.

[00:56:24] Scott MacKillop: It's been a great pleasure for me too. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

[00:56:28] Stacy Havener: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

[00:56:34] The information is not an offer, solicitation, or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products or to adopt any investment strategy. Investment values may fluctuate and past performance is not a guide to future performance. All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm.

[00:56:54] Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacy Havener or Havener [00:57:00] Capital Partners.

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