Capital Club

Matt Browner Hamlin is an activist, organizer, and writer residing in Washington DC. He is the Head of Engagement Strategy & Planning for Greenpeace International. He has previously worked as He is the Managing Director for Digital Strategy of Ethical Electric, a Senior Economic Strategist at Citizen Engagement Lab and an organizer of OccupyOurHomes.org. He was the Deputy New Media Director of SEIU, the Deputy Internet Director on Chris Dodd's presidential campaign, and the Internet Director on Mark Begich's US Senate campaign in Alaska. Matt blogs about politics at Hold Fast, cocktails, bars, and spirits at A Jigger of Blog, and travel and technology at Blogger Hamlin. He has also been a contributor at AMERICAblog. The views and opinions presented in Matt's posts are his alone. They are not representative of the policies or opinions of his employer or past clients.[INTRODUCTION][00:00:07] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for joining the conversation on Colloquium. This episode is brought to you by Excelsior Capital, an investment platform focused on democratizing private equity by providing individuals access to direct opportunities. To learn more about the firm, please visit excelsiorgp.com and connect with Bryan on LinkedIn.[INTERVIEW][00:00:07] BA: Welcome to the conversation on Colloquium. Today I’ve got an old friend of mine, Matt Browner-Hamlin with me. Matt, how are you today?[00:00:37] MBH: I’m doing great, Bryan. How are you?[00:00:38] BA: Good. I’m going to give a little bit of kind of the bio and then we'll get into some of the work that you've been doing. And as context, Matt and I went to college together a long time ago and was a good friend of mine in school. And then as many of us in our kind of pre-Facebook generation, just kind of lost track of each other frankly. And it's been probably a good 10 years since we last spoke. But it's fun to get reconnected. And you've been doing some really interesting things. So I’m excited to get into it.So his background, Matt is an accomplished technology strategist, data-driven campaigner, digital marketer and writer. He is currently the interim chief technology officer at Greenpeace International. Greenpeace is a global independent campaigning organization with offices in 55 countries. Matt has previously worked for a direct consumer renewable energy startup, international human rights, labor economic justice campaigning context, as well as in American politics and presidential incentive campaigns, as well as some other interesting blogging and content creation that you've made over the years, which we'll probably get into. But, first, I really want to dig into kind of Greenpeace itself. I think a lot of people in our minds think of the efforts they had against Japanese whaling and the kind of images of television. But it's actually a much older organization. Can you maybe talk a little bit about how you found yourself at Greenpeace and give folks a little bit more context about the originations of the organization and what the focus is today?[00:02:11] MBH: Yeah, sure thing. And, first, thanks for having me on, Bryan, and it's great to reconnect on this occasion. It's been a long time. And I think a lot of us are using the COVID times to build back old bridges and have conversations that are probably long overdue, but easily slip past when it's hard in our regular life. So thanks for having me on.[00:02:28] BA: Yeah. Absolutely, man.[00:02:29] MBH: So Greenpeace is about to turn 50. I think in 2021 is our 50th anniversary. And the organization has its roots in anti-nuclear campaigning. And the story of its founding actually goes back to a bunch of activists in Canada who were really opposed to ongoing U.S. nuclear testing in the North Pacific. And what the idea of Greenpeace was really about in the very beginning was how do you do something so bold and powerful that it can inspire people to think differently about the world? And in this case it was a bunch of young, mostly Canadian activists, getting on a used fishing trawler and sailing it into the middle of a U.S. military nuclear testing zone and telling that story. Bringing with them videographers, talking to the press ahead of time saying, “We're going out into the middle of the ocean to sail into this area and we're going to make the U.S. military not test nuclear bomb,” by being there physically, by intervening at the points of ecological harm. And having a big throw off concert before they go with a bunch of lefty activists musicians and crowds of people on the docks sending them on their way and not really knowing what was going to happen and telling a story, telling a story of this journey of confrontation and peaceful resistance. And it turned out that the world paid attention. And whether it was from press reports of the build up to this action, to the story of confrontations and with the U.S. military along the way and attempted interventions in the process of trying to sail to this nuclear testing site, people paid attention. And what was I think really powerful for it was the idea, which we talk about internally of a mind bomb, of being able to take an action that sets a bomb off in people's minds. That changes the way they think fundamentally and inspires them to take action. And in this context it was ultimately unsuccessful, direct action, but one which inspired people around the world. And Greenpeace started from there as a really open source, what we would now consider open source movement. Offices sprang up in many countries around the world. There was no governance to it. There was no structure. And it became a vehicle as a concept of the pursuit of both a brighter ecological future.Back in the 70s we talked a lot more about ecology, whereas today we talk about climate. But the idea that you know human impact on the world is something that we should care very much about. As well as a real resistance to the rise of nuclear weapons and nuclear power in the 70s, and obviously this is at the height of the Cold War. More and more countries were testing nuclear weapons. And it was this sort of dual connection of climate and ecology, environment and ecology on the one hand and peace, anti-weapons proliferation, anti-nuclear testing. And that was something that was resonant around the world. And over time more Greenpeace offices popped up. It got to a point where there was a desire for there to be systems and governance and real organizational structure put into place. And from that, Greenpeace International eventually emerged. And today we have offices in 55 countries. Greenpeace International is based in Amsterdam, though I work remotely from Washington, D.C., and we have 28 national and regional offices around the world. And so our work still remains very focused on both climate and ecological issues very much related to stopping climate change. Influencing how we design and produce energy systems in the world. So whether that's increasing renewables or really trying to change the reliance and move away from fossil fuels like coal and oil, or look at political power and how the world functions based on who has what power and who listens to whom. It's really central still on this idea that we can inspire people to act, to lend their voice to issues that they care about and change the power dynamics between government and corporations or people and individual people. So I think there's this through line in the work and what issues we work on, but I think most importantly this is really what you're asking about is, is how we seek to achieve that change.[00:06:57] BA: And I want to dig into a little bit more about kind of how Greenpeace operates and the infrastructure that they've set up. But how did you find yourself there? I mean, you and I were the same class in school. Wesleyan is, for those who aren't familiar, a very active campus in terms of very passionate people about a number of subjects. And when we were there, that was no different. What inspired you to take this path that led you to Greenpeace ultimately?[00:07:26] MBH: Yeah. So I have a photo that my parents have with me going to a Save The Whales Protest outside the United Nations in probably – I don’t know, 1984, 1985, 1986, something like that. It’s four, five-years-old, and it was a Greenpeace campaign around the fishing of wales and setting up global standard for what is and isn't allowed. And it was my first protest and I was there. And so it's sort of fortuitous that I ended up at Greenpeace, because that was definitely one of those things to have in the photo album that now looks really, really like something – A match made in heaven, something that was destined to be. But my parents were both lefties growing up. My mom went to Berkeley and my dad was at Columbia in the late 60s, early 70s, which were both places where obviously there was a lot of campus activism and radicalism. And so I grew up in a household that was quite progressive. And prior to going to Wesleyan with you, I was involved in students for a Free Tibet, which was a part of the kind of mid late 90s anti-globalization movement, which saw many different issues from environments, to economic and labor rights, to human rights really get put into one basket of all these things that people see are wrong in the world and coming together at big marches and protests and rallies and that sort of thing. [00:08:46] BA: I went to the Free Tibet concert in New York.[00:08:49] MBH: Oh yeah?[00:08:49] BA: Yeah. Back, I guess that was – God, it was in high school.[00:08:51] MBH: That was ’96 maybe? [00:08:52] BA: Yeah, it was like the late 90s. [00:08:54] MBH: ’96, ’97.[00:08:55] BA: Yeah, it was unbelievable. [00:08:57] MBH: Yeah. And so for me, the issue that got me into the anti-globalization movement was Tibetan independence, because it felt like an issue that was encapsulating all the different things that came up as individual silos within the anti-globalization movement. There was questions of political freedom, religious freedom, environmental degradation, human rights and so on. And so that's how I got involved. But spent a number of years after college working for students who are Free Tibet on staff. And while I was there, this students for Free Tibet was an organization – Or is still active. It’s an organization that uses direct action. Non-violent direct action is part of its theory of change. And what that means is doing things like direct interventions at the point of harm. And so this is the example with Greenpeace, of sailing a ship into a nuclear test zone, right? That is a direct intervention in the place that is going to be harmed. With the Tibet Movement, it's actually much harder to do the direct intervention at the point of harm because of China's occupation of Tibet. And so what students for Free Tibet would do is do actions that bring attention and visibility to the issue around things like when Chinese leaders traveled outside of China or when major corporations were doing business inside of Tibet. And so that would do things like hang banners off of buildings, block the transit of elected officials. Or not elected officials in the case of China, but officials, governmental officials to meetings that they're trying to go to. And in this space of activism, of direct action activism, there's a number of organizations in North America that do that, that practice this type of work and type of intervention. And students for Free Tibet was one of them. And Greenpeace was another big one. And so a lot of times when we did trainings for our activists or when we did actions, Greenpeacers would come and help us train young people to climb buildings and hang off them by ropes and drop banners, or lock down in front of a building with different techniques to make it really hard for them to be moved without harming the activists and using this as a way to intervene, draw attention to what the issue we're working on is. And so I had a lot of friends at Greenpeace and I had a lot of appreciation for an organization who cultivated this type of activism and this practice of activism, non-violent direct action, is as central to how they tried to have impact in the world. And so I moved on from students for Free Tibet. I got into politics. I got into the labor movements, and eventually I got burned out and ended up at a renewable energy startup because it felt like that was a different approach and something that we can talk about. But what always was clear to me when I left the progressive movement for the commercial side was if I ever came back, I wanted to be at an organization that used direct action as part of their theory of change. That said, in order to win campaigns, we can't just write nice letters or make phone calls to decision makers or try and elect certain candidates instead of other candidates. We have to actually put our bodies on the line as part of the theory of change, because I think that is a powerful way that non-violent change occurs. And it turned out that the place that I ended up back up at was Greenpeace. Again, in part, because of this years of history and appreciation for the organization's values and theory of change. [00:12:27] BA: Can you talk a little bit about how Greenpeace thinks? It seems like it's a dual pronged approach, right? They appreciate the fact that they can't themselves facilitate this change directly, but they can be a catalyst for influencing culture by using this disruption. Can you unpack that a little bit more for us?[00:12:48] MBH: Sure. So I think that the big question is what is power? There are different types of power in the world. A lot of the times the power that we see is really about who has money, right? Corporations have money. Wealthy individuals have money. That money enables them to access decision makers. It enables them to act with a different set of consequences for their actions. And by and large, it doesn't sound like what most non-profit organizations are, right? Most non-profit organizations don't derive their power from money. So what are the other ways that you can derive power? You can derive power by representing people, right? So a lot of – In some ways, elected officials are powerful in part because they represent people, and those people give them the authorization to act in government. But lots of nonprofit organizations and campaigning organizations also build constituencies, right? So a good example is the AARP. The AARP represents millions of older Americans. Their power with businesses, with government, is derived by the fact that they talk to a lot of people every day and those people care what they say and will act if asked. And so the question for a nonprofit organization is how do you actually reach people, right? How do you build power by getting more people associated with you listening to what you're saying and then taking action when you ask them?And over the last number of years at Greenpeace what we've tried to recognize is the greatest opportunity for reaching people. For having influence on what's happening in the world on the issues we care about is in really two settings. One is reaching people through culture, right? Culture is an incredibly powerful vehicle when it comes to how people think, right? So what is on TV? What are celebrities saying? What is the zeitgeist around certain hot issues? It's very much shaped by how people interact with things that are not directly that thing. So most people don't spend their days writing letters to the editor or calling up their congressmen, right? But they do spend their days consuming Instagram and Facebook and watching TV and Netflix and so on. And so finding ways to use cultural avenues to reach people and have them think about environmental issues or think about political issues is one thing that we seek to do. And I'd say that is a challenging thing, right? But there's a reason why you see celebrities post about issues they care about, because they know that they are affected vehicles. The other thing, which I think is a lot more, for lack of better word, something organizations can do with less dependency on a handful of influencers or cultural vehicles is be responsive in moments of disruption. We see disruptions happening around us all the time, right? They might be environmental disasters. They might be global pandemics. They might be economic upheaval. But there's big opportunities for change in these moments of disruption. And what we do as an organization to prepare for them is identify what are the things that would be most likely to enable a sea change in how people think or a sea change in people's interest and availability to take action on certain issues and then prepare for it and think proactively around what that might look like and identify what we have to scan for. What is the opportunity that we're waiting to see emerge so that we can reach more people? So that we can be the first people to invite people to take action when something happens in the world? And that's really critical. I think being able to be nimble and responsive to change that's happening in the world is a fundamental way that change – It's possible to create change. It's possible to build power by reaching more people.[00:16:37] BA: Yeah. When I was doing my homework on our conversation, this concept that you referenced, this mind bomb, I'd never heard the term before. But my immediate response was this seems like almost in the 70s version of leveraging social media or Instagram to have a multiple effect on a number of influential people that could then create a larger system or cultural shift in a mindset.[00:17:07] MBH: Yeah. I think it's exactly right. What are examples of that nowadays, right? So I go back to – Like we'll date ourselves a little bit, but like to when we were probably in high school or early college. I don't remember. And Ellen Degeneres coming out as gay on the Ellen Show and had playing a character who was gay on TV at a time when that was not a thing, right? That was not part of what the programming on networks was. It was not part of what public discourse was about. And so there are ways in which certain things can happen, and suddenly this conversation shifts, right? Suddenly a different frame of references is there possible. And I Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Wells works as an advisor to individuals, families, and organizations to help them wrestle with and answer the strategic questions they face to grow and succeed into the future. With over 15 years' experience, David leverages his background as an equity analyst, 4x entrepreneur, and Board member to collaborate with senior leaders across the US.[EPISODE][00:00:29] BA: Hello, and welcome to The Conversation on Colloquium. Today, I've got an old friend of mine, David Wells, with me. David, how are you today?[00:00:36] DW: I'm doing well, Brian. Doing well.[00:00:38] BA: Thanks for joining us. David and I have known each other for, gosh, longer than I probably care to admit. But he is always been exceedingly thoughtful, smart, hardworking, and I am so happy for him that he is doing well with his consulting business. And he is put together this book, which I think is really needed right now.So, before we get into the conversation, I'm going to do a little bit of background. David is the founder and CEO of Family Capital Strategy, which is a boutique consultancy, that provides strategic insight, investment, governance, development, and family office design for families facing liquidity events, generational transitions and other significant changes.Prior to founding the firm, David has an extensive background conducting strategic and investment analysis. And he served as a partner and Portfolio Manager at a 20-year-old asset management firm, co-founded a long short hedge fund, and was also a senior equity analyst working with large hedge fund and private equity clients. So, a very diverse background and I think given all of that, this will be a very compelling conversation.Before we get into it, the biggest takeaway I had from reading your book, which is called When Anything Is Possible, and I encourage anybody listening to go check it out. And I'm sure we’ll, at the end of this, provide you some opportunities to connect with David and also access the book. But this is a light motif throughout your book, which is it's all about the why. So, maybe before we get into the guts of the book itself, why did you sit down and write this thing?[00:02:11] DW: Yeah, great question. I think it comes down to a couple of things, appreciate the bit of bio on my end and I've been very fortunate over the course of my career to work with a lot of different types of investors, a lot of different types of families. And I think what I was struck with was, we would have conversations and even when I was was a portfolio manager, managing portfolios for clients, you would sit down and have a conversation with someone and as a portfolio manager, you're kind of like a chef, where you've got a bunch of different ingredients that you can put together to build a portfolio. But until you know whether the client wants Chinese food, Italian, or hamburger, it's really tough to put something out there that's going to be aligned. And what I found was, you would get into a conversation with a client, begin to start walking down this path of what are you trying to accomplish with your wealth? What's really the priority set? It's a really squishy nebulous kind of ephemeral concept. And the challenge was that almost to a tee, that conversation would be something that families would say, “I want to make sure that I can travel”, in which pre-COVID, such an important part of modern life is, it's so easy to get around the world, they want to see their grandkids, and they may have a few philanthropic causes that they care about. But that was it, that was kind of the full total of the conversation.And really whatever level of net worth you are, I think you've got a pretty broad range of choices, especially once you start getting into what's called kind of the ultra-high net worth category, which is typically kind of around the $25 million mark, especially as you go from there on up into the multi hundred millions, the question then is not okay, “Well, can I travel to the level of which I'm accustomed?” Yes, you could do that. You could live abroad. The answer is yes or can I see my grandkids and be involved in their lives? Absolutely.So, you lay out those funding priorities, and then there's still a, there's still this massive amount of wealth that's left over. And nobody really knows what to do with it. Maybe it's held for longer term estate planning, maybe it's held for some philanthropic priorities. But for the most part, I think what happens is, as people end up with portfolios, or just an overall view of their wealth, that's not as strategically aligned with what's most important, because it's really hard to surface those kinds of core level priorities that are there, because it it's a little bit of art, and – well, maybe it's a little bit of science and a lot of art, to help people think through those things. And I think in general, the financial community, some folks are more willing to have those conversations, some are not and and the reality is what I found when working with families in my current business, having a series of these dialogues, it may take 15 to 20 hours with the client to really walk through things to lay out priorities, and that's before you even start saying, “Okay, what does that mean in terms of stocks and bonds?” It's just Just kind of getting everything to the table for the first time.So, that was really the genesis of the book was, okay, it seems like people need some sort of a framework of how to have these conversations. My poor wife, I try out all my ideas on her and we've had a lot of these conversations, just in our household, what are we trying to do with our kids? We can do these things from a travel perspective. We can do these things from a house perspective. How do we surface our values as we make decisions, and it's nebulous, because I think there's great financial advice for folks who have a spending problem. Dave Ramsey, right here in Nashville has done so much for helping getting folks out of debt. It's harder to find folks that can offer a really thoughtful, “What do I do after that?”, as you end up in places where you've got more than you “need”, then you're making decisions based off of some other metric. And I just personally found it hard to find something that was a tool that I could use, either at home, with conversations with friends or with clients. So, it seemed like a book that needed to be written. [00:06:00] BA: Yeah, and I would agree as context, my wife's family has a single-family office here in Nashville. And I remember talking to my father-in-law when I first joined the family and learned about the partnership, he said, when he founded it in, I guess, formally, probably like the late ‘90s, the term family office didn't even exist, it just was a limited partnership based in Tennessee for the benefit of his lineal descendants. So, as this concept has really become de rigueur in the financial industry, and everyone seemingly is talking about family offices, et cetera, could you give us a definition of in your mind, what qualifies as a family office?[00:06:41] DW: Sure, the most common saying in family office world is if you've seen a family office, you've seen one family office, or something around that. And while that may be true, I actually find it to be an almost an unhelpful kind of sentiment, because it makes it sound like there's nothing common across family offices at all, that they're so unique and individualized to the family that you can't say anything holistically about them. So, I actually don't think that's the case, I think there's a lot of commonalities around them. And in general, what I view is, the simplest way that I think to explain a family office, is a family office is a tool that the family uses to manage its complexity. And that's kind of full stop.Now, what forms in what shape that complexity is really depends on the family, I typically see it fall into three buckets. One is like this bucket of planning, it's all of the moving pieces across all of the various entities that exist within that and it so it's making sure all the ducks are in a row, the i's are dotted, the T's are crossed. So, you've got that vertical, there's the investment piece, when the family decides to make the business of managing its wealth of second business, the natural home of that is in the family office.And then the third piece is all of this kind of middle stuff, which I kind of call family support, which oftentimes people hear that and they say, “Okay. That's where the family office pays your bills, or walks your dog or books your travel.” And for some offices, that's true. But I think for a lot of families, it's becomes this, if the family has broader goals as a family that aren't necessarily tied to the business, who does that work? If the family wants to schedule time in the summer to get together, and host meetings, like who's going to coordinate that lift? If the family wants to make sure that next generation is having some sort of financial education or history and story of the family work that's done. It's really going to the family office, that's the arms and legs of making sure that work gets done, because I know you and I both are super involved with nonprofits in Nashville, when you've got volunteers in leadership on boards, there's just a finite amount of ask that you can make from people and especially with larger families of wealth.There's just so many moving pieces that that work has to land somewhere. Now granted, it's got to have good oversight and involvement of the family to make sure that they're moving in lockstep, but it's really the family office that becomes the front line for making sure that all of the other priorities of the family are brought to bear.[00:09:11] BA: Yeah, I like your term nebulous. People ask me my definition. And I kind of think of it as some form of small business corpus that is meant to maintain a certain quality of life along a multi-generational time horizon and avoid taxes.[00:09:29] DW: Yeah.[00:09:30] BA: But there's a lot more to it, obviously. And I really want to get into the why that you write wrote the book, but when you start, it's the motivation behind why we want the things that we want in life and associating some kind of purpose with that. Could you kind of unpack that concept a little bit because I think it drives the narrative the entire book.[00:09:54] DW: Yeah, if you think about family offices, or you know, really and certainly you've got that on the largest, most complex, and I think any family that has means of some sort, is wrestling with this kind of three – there are three tensions that they're trying to keep in balance at the same time. The first is, is what is the individual's priority set that they want their wealth to accomplish in their life? The second is, is what is the family aligned on as its direction of where it's going as a group of people, through time and space? And then the third piece is, is that, “Okay, how do we achieve that from a business perspective.”So, in a family system, you're constantly trying to manage those two dynamics, what happens is, is that most of the time, the business of the wealth, whether it's an actual business that's still operating, or it's a robust investment entity, there's always something to do there, there's always an interesting deal, little gap, there's a fire to fight. And so that dominates, that’s 80% of the conversation in a family. Family gets together for lunch, dinner, goes on vacation, we're going to talk about that kind of stuff.Probably the next piece down is is the family, “Okay, let's get all the siblings around the table, let's get a bunch of the cousins together, you guys figure out what's important to you and we'll make it happen.” So, you may see a bit of that, but maybe that's the 20% that doesn't get covered with that. And a lot of times what happens is the individual is really left out of that. And the concern is, is that while families can function as a whole unit, if you disregard what's happening on the individual level, if those get too far out of whack, like that is a natural breeding ground for either disunity, in its lightest form, or like the big food fights and blow ups that you see in in the paper, or if you're a succession fan, like on HBO, you see the story of that family, like you've got individual dynamics that have dramatic impacts on the family itself.So, in my mind, that's why with this book, it was like, “Alright, let's start with the individual and give them the set of tools so that when they are a member of the family, they don't lose their identity, they can bring all of the various pieces and priorities to that. And then they can make a hopefully a more eyes wide open decision about where they want to go as a group.”That's the kind of broader context, I think, under which I was trying to write, but I think to your original question, it does get back to what Simon Sinek said, it's this idea of like, starting with why. What's your priority set? What are the various pieces of life that have to be brought into alignment? And I think that in itself is a really large question. I mean, and that's the work of a lifetime, is to answer that. What I was then trying to do was, “Okay, let's break that into a couple of different buckets. Let's think about what I call kind of a wealth structure, which is all of the stuff that’s going to – it’s kind of like the lines on a soccer field, they define where the game is going to happen. These are the things that are kind of fencing you in a little bit, let's then talk about this concept of wealth identity, what's really important to you, what’s your core values look like.” And then, take that to this next level of saying, “If I'm living out what's most important to me, and in line with my values, what does that look like in the big areas of life?” And there's really only a handful. I mean, on a personal level, it's your family, it's the work that you do, and it's the communities that you're a part of. If you're living authentically, if at the risk of using a kind of a buzzword, you would see some congruence between what's most important to you, and then how you are present in each of those phases.Once you've kind of got that laid out, then you can then shift to the to the actual wealth question, begin to lay out a strategy around consumption investment, what you give to future generations what you give to philanthropy. But if you get that order out of whack, you end up sub optimizing frankly, you may either spend too much, your consumption may overspend what's actually important to you, or you may end up – we saw this a lot in the investment world is you may end up with a portfolio that's too conservative, countless stories of folks who make more money than they ever thought they would make. They end up in these investment allocations, which are designed for belt suspenders, a bunker. I mean, it's come hell or high water, nothing can happen to the portfolio, which I'm not saying that a degree of risk management isn't important, but there's a difference between underinvesting a pool of assets and over indexing on risk. And I think in many cases, I think, because individuals haven't articulated, here's what we're trying to do longer term with our family. Here's what we're trying to do philanthropically in a meaningful way, if they can make peace with that, and frankly, still feel that their investment portfolio can support their spending, suddenly, you actually have a lot more flexibility with that portfolio to do some interesting things other than just own a lot of municipal bonds that pay you essentially nothing.You got to have some of that to make sure that you are risk managed. So, I think it’s kind of an unspoken tragedy to see a pool of assets that is limited on its ability to growth and therefore limited on its ability to make an impact elsewhere because you don't really know, is this aligned with what's most important to me or not?So, that's really the kind of the heart of the why question is, yes, that's super important. But what does it look like to then try and answer that question in a way that certainly is informed by all of the softer parts of life if you're a person of faith, your faith practice your philosophical views on the world, that's all there, but it's then, “Okay, well, in light of that, what does that mean on a Monday morning? How do I make decisions based off of this?”[00:15:27] BA: Right, and that lends itself in segues to this concept of having a strategic plan. And so, can you tell us how you define strategy and how you implement a strategic plan if you are a family of means?[00:15:41] DW: Yeah, absolutely. I actually was asked to lead a session on strategic planning for families by YPO’s Global Family Business Group. And what I was trying to lay out with that group, and I think it's relevant here is that strategy at the end of the day is about making choices. And a lot of times, we have lost because there's a lot of great books out there, Good To Great, Built To Last. There are a lot of great books that are out there that talk a lot about corporate identity. They don't necessarily talk about strategy.Why I love Good To Great, fantastic book, wonderful for thinking about the culture of the organization and how it's run. There's a lot of businesses that have said, “Okay, if I've done that work, then I've got a good strategy.” And there are plenty of examples, and actually, one of the most common knocks on those books is is that the great companies that get profiled, you play for 10 or 15 years, and they're not great anymore. So, what happened? Was it the culture that failed or was in a strategy that's failed? And I think, if you look at the business world, you've got a lot of businesses that don't adapt, they don't move forward. And so, strategy then ultimately is about making a very conscious set of choices around the things that we will do, and most importantly, the things that we will not do, in pursuit of what success looks like for us. And this is where it gets a little bit squishier and when I was writing the book, spent a lot of time trying to think through how do you define success – with a business, it's pretty easy to say growth and profits, return on invested capital, like there's a metric you can point to, and say like, “Okay, this is going to be our line that we're going to measure things against.”In life, it's not that easy. There's not necessarily a single bottom line that you can point to, it probably is multiple bottom lines. If you over index on work and blow up your family, when the accounting is all said and done, you actually may say that you weren't successful, or I do think it's actually possible to over index on family and under index on work. And then there's consequences for that. It’s really how as an individual do you, A, articulate what the finish line is or what is that bottom line that you're going to measure things against? And then what are the choices that you're going to thoughtfully make, to then limit your options to say that, “Okay,... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As we’ve seen more and more investors, funds and family offices starting to move away from manual processes to manage their real estate investments and investor relations to relying on technology to help scale their efforts, we decided to highlight how others can harness the power of technology themselves.As portfolios expand and investor bases grow, the management can quickly get out of hand and the need for technology becomes almost imperative. In order to keep up with the progressive firms that have adopted technology to help with their operations and management efforts, it’s important to first understand the types of software available to real estate investors and second, the data you need to track in order to utilize the software effectively.On July 9, 2020, Brian Adams, Founder & President of Excelsior Capital, spoke about the future of technology’s place in commercial real estate with Abhinav Somani, Managing Director at Leverton Intelligence, Bennett Washabaugh, Co-Founder & CEO of TenantBase, and Carrie Fruge, Strategic Account Director at Juniper Square. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julie Wald is the founder, CEO and Chief Wellness Officer at Namaste New York, a wellness company that serves a vast and influential clientele of high-performing business leaders and celebrities in achieving their health goals. Join us as we unearth the steps necessary to achieve a more balanced life and gain "inner wealth." EPISODE 07[EPISODE][00:00:21] BA: Well, welcome to a conversation on Colloquium. Thank you for joining us. Today I’ve got Julie Wald. It's a real treat for me, one, because her book is phenomenal. And we're going to talk a lot about it. But two, she is one of my best friends and Nashville sister. So it's always kind of fun when you can combine business and friendship in one. So, Julie, thank you for joining us.[00:00:41] JW: Thank you so much for having me.[00:00:43] BA: I’m going to give a brief rundown on Julie. Then we're going to go right into it. So Julie is a wellness practitioner for over 25 years. She is the founder, CEO and Chief Wellness Officer at Namaste New York. She has a bachelor's degree in social work from NYU. She began her career in 1995 as a clinical social worker treating adults, children and adolescents and inpatient-outpatient mental health settings. And in the process of building her mental health practice, she also pursued her personal wellness objectives, and in so doing became a certified yoga instructor along with a lot of other things. And the master of these disciplines has combined with an intense fascination for eastern wisdom and proven to be invaluable assets to professional path. So that's a lot what. I really want to get into is when I was reading your book, and I’m a 38-year-old white guy who's in finance, and pre-COVID was grinding a lot, traveling, getting up early, trying to cram in as much as I possibly could in the day. I’ve got two little kids, a wife who works. The biggest thing that struck me right off the bat was talking about how abundance does not necessarily equate with success or wellness. And the realization and the self-reflection by me that even though I have really nice things, I live in a nice house, I belong to a nice country club, we don't really have any needs or wants. I often find myself thinking that all of these material things that I have or these memberships that I have, they don't really bring me much joy or happiness. And I don't spend a lot of time reflecting on that because it makes me sad. But I do think it's a conversation that for people who are in that 35 to 55 year old demographic, it's a conversation that we should be having. I think it's important. So maybe if you could expound on that a little bit, that concept and how you fleshed it out with some of your clients and people in your network.[00:02:43] JW: Absolutely. So it's really, really interesting, because back when we started our business, and this was back kind of in the early 2000s. Officially we started in 2003. I really ended up in living rooms, in offices with some of the highest performers, most incredibly brilliant and wonderful people in the world quite frankly. And one of the things that became really, really clear to me after sort of doing this work for a number of years is that again and again people would come and say, “I’ve achieved X, Y and Z. I’ve met my financial goals. I’ve exceeded my financial goals. I’ve gained all the letters and the titles that I want after my name.” All of these resume items that check the box and say, “But somehow I’m just not feeling as good as I thought I would feel.” And this often time came particularly after sort of a hyper focus on that external achievement or external wealth for a period of time, which in many ways was the greatest strength of these people, this intense focus, this intense commitment, this intense drive, this intense intelligence. All of those things are huge strengths, but it was those exact same things that became liabilities in terms of cultivating what we call just like that internal resource. So they were really good at creating external resource, but in the meantime the internal resources were kind of ignored and under cultivated. And then at a certain point in life, inevitably, things get hard. Things get stressful. Either you're in the middle of a challenging time in your relationship or with a child who's struggling or confronting even a professional relationship that's not what you had hoped it would be. And all of a sudden that gaping hole, that space becomes a huge pain point in terms of those internal resources. And that was oftentimes when I would meet people. And sometimes it would be because these issues would manifest physically. Like suddenly there would be chronic back pain, or chronic migraine headaches, or insomnia and things like that. And other times people would just come and say, “I feel really good about a lot of things in my life, but I simultaneously feel like I lost the plot. And what do I do with that?[00:05:20] BA: Yeah. I must admit reading the section about Ethan, which again I really encourage everyone to read this book. It's tremendous. The quote I wrote down on my outline is, “I have it all, but I’m not happy. Is this all there is? And when does my life begin?” And those thoughts go through my head a lot, because I’ve had moments myself where, to exactly your point, you internally have signposts that you say, “Once I hit this kind of wealth level or once I become partner or once I become managing director or once I do this big of a deal or once I have this much AUM,” whatever that accomplishment is, you store all this value in it. And some of the saddest moments of my life is when I’ve achieved those internal accomplishments, because I realize nothing's actually changed. And all that perceived value that I put into that accomplishment kind of evaporates. So at least for me, and I think it's endemic within my peer group, is, “Okay. Well, then let's put another zero on it and go for that.” Because that's what's been driving you for years. And I don't think it's the healthiest way to live and it is what I’ve discovered especially after spending a lot of time reading material that you've provided, folks like Brené Brown. I just think there has to be more to it. And this book really details how you can gain that kind of inner wealth that you talk about in the book. So kudos to you. It really does speak to a huge issue I think that's within our population of people, especially white men who just don't have the vocabulary to explain some of the emotions they're experiencing. Has that been your experience as well talking to a lot of other people within the finance world?[00:07:06] JW: Absolutely. In fact for many, many years, my company does both corporate wellness as well as we work with sort of high-performing executives. And particularly in the field of finance, that was sort of that prototype that we would see again and again and again, this theme that would come up again and again and again. And it happens in other industries, but I think when you're dealing for example with people in a startup world or they're more braced for failure and it's a different type of mentality. It's a little bit more if you're familiar with Carol Dweck's work. It's a little more of like a growth mindset. And whereas I found that oftentimes a lot of the clients that I would end up working with sort of had what's called a fixed mindset, which is they sort of believed that they came into the world with a series of strengths and capabilities and not other strengths and capabilities, meaning like maybe you fancied yourself to be good with numbers or have good earning potential or whatever it is. But maybe you never really thought about your capacity for something like empathy, or spirituality, or even something like athleticism. It depends on who you are and who you're talking to. Some people have spent their entire life just with their head in a book and they never thought that they could get joy from their bodies, for example.So when we think of that mindset, you kind of come into the world and then you're constantly sort of up against what you come to the table with and the prospect of failure. And it's kind of like one or the other. And when you have a growth mindset, you believe that you are constantly evolving. And when we believe that we're constantly evolving, there's really no destination, but it's about that commitment to continually learning and growing. And I think that people who can approach their lives from that perspective just become so much more open and spacious to exploring and developing the different aspects of themselves that ultimately lead to the cultivation of inner wealth or that sense of inner abundance, if that makes sense.[00:09:37] BA: It does make sense. Could you, for the listeners, define inner wealth and how that interlaces with this concept of the four pillars that you’ve spell out in the book?[00:09:48] JW: Absolutely. So the four pillars are really the fundamental ingredients that we have found are sort of the baseline for a healthy, happy life. So meaning that without these four pillars, it doesn't mean that you can't have a lot of joy, but there's an imbalance. The foundation is – The fundamentals are not intact. And those four pillars are movement, stillness, connection and nourishment. So that's movement, stillness, connection and nourishment. And really these are the fundamental ingredients that a newborn baby needs to thrive. And nothing changes throughout the life cycle. So oftentimes, and I see this with my own kids who are teenagers. Even as early as you know sort of grade school, parents forget that the importance of, for example, making sure that a child gets enough stillness, gets enough rest in their life. They're just going, going, going. They're running to school, to sports practices. Then they come home and they have homework and they're burning the candle at both ends. And even kids as young as middle school are struggling with an imbalance in these four pillars. Fast-forward to college and working in banking or whatever you may find yourself, you're certainly not paying attention to the four pillars at that point. The foundation gets wobbly. And then you start piling stressors on top. And our ability to function in what's called our window of tolerance for stress gets weakened. So we're not able to find resilience around stress and it starts beating us down. That's when we don't sleep so well, we eat too much, all these other things.So the four pillars are the fundamentals and they're really personal to people. So movement might look like playing tennis for one person. It might look like yoga for another person. It might like just look like doing some stretches in your chair at work for others. It's going to be different for all of us depending on our age, our stage of life, our interests. The same thing goes with stillness. Stillness might be meditation. It might be getting enough sleep at night. It might be just taking time to take a bath. It might be taking a moment to journal right before bed. But giving ourselves a little bit of spaciousness and time for reflection, it's really the other half of all of the movement in our life. It's that time to restore and process everything that we're doing, doing, doing. Like when you were flying all over the country all the time, my guess is you didn't have a lot of time to process all of those experiences on any level. Physically, mentally, you're just go-go-go-go-go-go. The other half of all that going is that recovery time. Then we get to connection, which is really obviously all about our relationships and our ability to be connected to the meaningful people in our life, but it's really also about showing up authentically. So in order to really connect, you have to be real. And then the fourth component is nourishment, which has a lot to do with food, but it also has a lot to do with all of the other ways that we nourish ourselves, through music, through art, through creative endeavors. Some people love to cook, or whatever it might be. But it's really interesting to see how when we fill ourselves up in these different ways we're coming with a fully loaded tank and our ability to manage stressors and difficult situations gets a lot easier. So those are the four pillars. When we talk about inner wealth, it's when the soil is rich with those, where you have movement practices that you call on. You're committed to stillness in your life. You're committed to staying connected. You're committed to nourishing yourself. And it's integrative. It's become habitual for you, because it's like really about a fundamental commitment to certain ingredients or practices because you know that is going to be a recipe for health and happiness. And when you have inner wealth, when you're feeling stressed or overwhelmed, you just open up your little tool kit. It's like a bank account of resources. And you know that, “Okay, I’m going to lean on my support system right now, because I’m connected.” Or, “I know that if I go out for a run, it's going to make me feel a lot better. Or actually if I just take five deep breaths before walking into this really stressful meeting, I will feel exponentially more prepared on a personal level to face the challenges that await me.” And so when we cultivate these pillars or these ingredients in our lives, we end up with this amazing bank account of tools that we can call on that help us find resiliency. And not only that, but feel that sense of fullness and abundance so that if, God forbid, we lost our job, or our fortune, or who knows what's going to happen in this world, right? That we know that we have the internal resources to be okay. [00:15:11] BA: It's really beautiful and well said. And I can see it in my son who is seven in second grade, and he has been taught, to your point. He has the toolkit of things that he can access when he's feeling overwhelmed when he's feeling stressed. He has a pre-sleep process that he goes through. And those just were never conversations that we had, right? It was if you weren't feeling well or you weren't happy, it was work harder. We don't talk about that. Go out. Make money. Money will make you happy. I don't ever recall really kind of talking about mindfulness or having kind of emotional vocabulary accessible to navigate all this. And it just kind of felt like you were put into the world, figure it out. And I love how you're giving people access to these tools. My question is when you're dealing with this population that we've been discussing, how do you prevent them from approaching the four pillars the same way that they've historically approached their work and becoming obsessed with it where they have to achieve a certain pose in yoga or they have to do a certain amount of meditation a day? Do you bump up against that? And if so, how do you deal with it?[00:16:23] JW: Yeah. No. It's a great question. And I think by nature of the way that the pillars balance each other out, if all of the pillars are being practiced at the same time, it helps manage that tendency towards the extremes, right? So for example, you may be a really intense athlete and want to achieve at a really high level in terms of your athletic endeavors, which is great. But if that's so overemphasized that your reflective practices, your stillness practices, your ability to stay connected. If those things are suffering, then something is out of balance. And this is very common. Usually we have one or two pillars that is more dominant than the other. Nobody's sort of evenly distributed between all of the pillars. We're just people and we have our preferences and our tendencies. But we find that when they work in synchronicity with each other, it tends to create more of a balanced approach to things. So that's the idea, is that they sort of have to make space for one another. I also find that when we come to the table with intention around things, around what the purpose of these practices are, I think that's really, really, really important. So I think helping people get in touch with their why helps us manage that tendency towards overachieving. Because usually when we're talking about this demographic and we're talking about a goal or a focus on cultivating inner wealth, it's really oftentimes more emphasized around pillars like stillness and connection and the stuff that lends itself to perhaps if we're talking about like yin and yang. If all that achievement is kind of yang energy, we're educating people on the fact that they need more of that yin energy, more of that softening, more of that surrender, more of that slowing down that that's actually the missing ingredient in their world when we look at the four pillars. So oftentimes somebody comes and they say, “I’m not okay.” We start by mapping out the four pillars and seeing where they're inherently and naturally strong and where they're less strong. And that's how we figure out sort of where to begin.[00:18:57] BA: I could use more stillness in my life, and I think a lot of us could. I want to transition into this idea of the art of living, which I spent a lot of time on this section. And I just want to read a quote which struck me, “That the ability to be on the journey itself as opposed to yearning for a past or future that doesn't yet exist makes every moment and every day the most important one.” And I know for me, nostalgia can be an extremely powerful drug. And it has a way of being warped pretty significantly when you look back at these various periods of your life. And relatedly, like we talked about earlier, you assign this huge value to things in the future. Life will be great once I have the beach house. Life will be great once I have this car, once I build this house, etc. But it's kind of a false promise. So how do you teach people to actually be present and to live that balanced life? Probably an unfair question, but I’m going to ask it anyways.[00:19:55] JW: Yeah, two thoughts. Well the first thought that comes to mind first and foremost, a one-word answer is mindfulness, but we're going to talk a little bit more about that. And another sort of – What came to my mind as you were saying that as you were going through like, “Well, when I just have the beach house and when I just have that car,” because it's so common and prevalent. I had this thought of like, “How many things can I take away in my life and still be happy?” Like so if you think about the opposite, like what if I took away my car and took away my big fancy house? How simple can I get and still be happy? That's an achievement. But meaning being able to think about it in that way, it's really about actually like the stripping off. How many layers do I have to peel off in order to get to an experience where I feel a sense of joy because I feel the feeling of my breath breathing and I feel the feeling of the air against my skin and a bird off in the distance? And when we can be fully present in that moment, the happiest people that I know are able to practice that presence really consistently. And the way Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jerome Myers is a 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮 𝗱𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝘀 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗿𝗶𝘅. Learn what it means to take the metaphorical red pill and enter upon a journey of self realization and compassion as a black entrepreneur. EPISODE 06[EPISODE][00:00:21] BA: This is the Inaugural Podcast of Colloquium. I’m Bryan Adams and I have Jerome Myers with me today. And I’ll be honest, I’m a little nervous. I’ve never been on this side of the table. I’ve always been the one answering the questions for the most part. So bear with me, but I think this will be a good one. Jerome, what is it like to be a black man in America today?[00:00:49] JM: You know, I don't know that my experience is all that different than yours. I think I probably went to different schools than you did. I’m an engineer by training instead of an attorney, but still a professional. I’ve got an advanced degree and I was able to go through the myriad of what they tell you, right? Go to school. Do well. Get a good job. Get married. Have kids. Work for 40 years and quit. And I didn't have any challenges there. I got to do all of those things pretty easily, but in 2010 I went through what I would consider a depression. I didn't actually go talk to anybody to get that diagnosis, but I was sad. I was really sad and this stuff that I’ve been chasing didn't feel fulfilling. And I don't know that that's any different than most people that are in that age group or maybe a little bit older. [00:01:48] BA: How old were you when this went down?[00:01:51] JM: 27. So I just broke six figures the year before. And so it's just like, “Oh, everything's happening,” and that's where it's supposed to be magical, right? You make six figures and all your problems go away because you're rich. And not anywhere close to being the truth, but where I came from that was kind of the idea, is like you make six figures, you can do anything. And so I had to go through and answer those questions and start asking some really tough questions. I started asking what I believe. Why I believed it. Who was I actually? Where did it come from? And I mean I could go on and on. I questioned everything including religion and why I was doing the practices and traditions that I was doing. And for anything that I couldn't ground and why I believed it and I realized that I was just being – I had been programmed as a child and I was just continuing to live that out. I made an adjustment. And I stopped doing things. Bryan, this will be super – I’ll call it simple, but like people say bless you. They said it for years and centuries or whatever, but why? I got that basic with my questions. And what I realized was you're not going to die. So saying bless you because your heart stopped because you sneezed it's the only kind of scientific explanation that I’ve ever heard. It just didn't make sense. And so when you go to things that fundamental and foundational and then you start rebuilding your life and you start to understand, “Hey, this is different.” I think you begin to see the world in a different way. And so I went through that transformation, and it's a really long answer to a pretty short question, but my view of the world has very little to do with me as a black man. I don't have a great instance of racism or me being held back by the man or anything else. In fact, it's probably shameful for me to say, but it's a statement of fact. People outside of my race have done more to advance my position whether it's financial or relationships or any other position that you can think of and privilege than people within my own community. And I don't think – And I can say this with certainty. It's not because they didn't have the opportunity to advance it. They just didn't.And so I frame it that way and I have a totally different conversation than most people. Do I understand what some people are upset about? Absolutely. Am I upset about those things? I think there're been some great atrocities that have happened. But is that my experience? I can't say that it is. I’ve been in plenty of interactions with police officers and the stuff that's been sensationalized, that hasn't been my experience. The worst experience that I’ve had, and this is probably worth going since you've been in the prosecutor's side. So I broke into my house one day. My lady and I were building a new home, which I’m in today, and my buddy came in from Charlotte and it wasn't unlocked, and so it was pre-closed. We went and checked the windows in the back and one of the windows was open so we crawled in through the window. And I just wanted to show them the house because we were so close and we were excited. And so somebody called the police. And so we're leaving. We're in this 300ZX. For those who don't know, it's a really small sports car. And so we get pulled over. It's a felony traffic stop. And it's my first time being a felony traffic stop. And for your listeners who've never been in one, I hope they never are in one. But we're on the side of the Interstate when the police officer catches us and he comes across a bullhorn. Turn the car off and drop the keys out the window. And like I wasn't going that fast. Like he's being outrageous, right? And then more and more cars keep coming up as I’m looking in the side view mirror and there's probably six or eight police officers and separate cruisers there at that point and their shot guns drawn. They're hiding in the crevice of the doors like you see in movies and they say, “Take your left arm out the window open the door from the outside and step out of the car.” And they tell him to do the same thing. He was letting me drive. He just finished doing some go fast work on his engine. And we get out and they tell us not to look back. Again, we're on the side of the highway, Interstate. And so they're like, “Take a step left.” And for me left was closer and closer to traffic. And so now I’m terrified. I’m like, “Are they going to walk me into traffic? Because this is crazy.” And then they walk us back and then eventually tell us get on our knees with our hands behind her head, and they cuff us and then they try to figure out like what's going on. And it was like did I think it was a little outrageous? I did, but they were just told that we were breaking and entering. And so I understand the dichotomy of these guys are criminals. And for your listeners, I don't know if we're going to do video or not, but I fit the description of a thug in a lot of ways. I’ve got dreads. I started growing my hair in 2010. I have visible tattoos. I played linebacker in college football. So I’m a pretty big fella. And for some people, that's scary, especially if you don't know me and you had no interaction. And so I think this is kind of the stereotype that because if you don't have interaction, you can only believe what you've been exposed to, right? And part of my goal, part of my mission is to break stereotypes. And so when I was in corporate, when I decided that I was going to stop getting haircuts and I didn't have to wait until I retired in order to grow my hair long, because I wanted to grow my hair long. I thought there was something to it. And on the journey I found out there was a whole lot more to it than I understood when I started the journey. People told me that I was ruining my career. I was labeled as a high potential employee. I was getting new opportunities without applying for them. I’ve been packed for somebody's leadership. I was working with a coach that the company was kind of providing for me that was working with other senior executives. I was getting leadership development training that wasn't tied to my position, but reserved for supervisors and managers and directors.And so they were making those investments in me directly and I was doing something that was counter culture. And it’s, “Hey, Jerome. Well, nobody that has the position that you want looks like that.” And I never actually said this directly. And now that I’m so far removed and I realize I’m never going back, I’m probably a little more candid than I would be if I thought I was going to go get a job. But the thing that I realized was nobody looks like me anyway, Bryan. My skin is brown. It's very chocolatey. My nose is broad and my lips are full. It doesn't matter if I have a short haircut or not. It doesn't matter if I’m clean shaven or not. They still don't look like me when I walk in a room. And so if appearance is the thing, then I can't fix that anyway. So what difference does this piece really make? And why are we so focused on appearance instead of the creed and character of the person and the quality of their work or the decisions that they could make? And that's where I sit today, but I’m free from what I consider the matrix. [00:10:06] BA: Yeah. So I don't think we're going to have video. And so for people's benefit, what does your shirt say?[00:10:13] JM: I took the red pill. [00:10:15] BA: And you just referenced The Matrix, and you're talking about corporate culture, conformity, almost an alternate reality. What is that metaphor mean to you?[00:10:29] JM: Yeah. I think there's a couple of different things. So we've created a model of life. We call it the centered model for living. I think a lot of people are chasing work-life balance and they never actually achieve it, because when you have balance, there is no movement. And I think everybody who's a high achiever is looking to move. And so what we look for is a centered life where you can show up as your best self. Not as some makeshift, half put together thing, but somebody who is aggressively pursuing that higher state of performance and impact. And so there're six different levels to it. It's self-image. We start there because your relationship with yourself is most important. Then we move to relationships with others and how you interact with them because we feel like if you've got a great relationship with yourself you'll attract others to you who are at a high level from a performance standpoint. Then we move over to work, because after you fix your relationships, your work, getting alignment with your values and the work or the impact that you're making in the world becomes extremely important and you're able to do that because you've grown your influence through your relationships. From there we move to health. I think those first three things are what cause the most stress in your life. The relationship with yourself, your relationship with others and your work. And so we want to get those taken care of so that when you move to health. You don't have a reason to exhibit those self-destructive behaviors. And whatever you're addicted to, that thing, we want to be able to move the catalyst or the triggers from that so that you can have great health. From there we go to prosperity, prosperity always comes after health, because if you have prosperity before health the health will take it away, right? This ease is going to be very expensive to take care of. And then the final thing is significance. That is the only true success in the way that I see the world today. It's the ability to impact others, make the world better. And so the red pill references that scene where Morpheus presents Neo with two options. You can either take the red pill and understand truth and see the world for what it really is or you can take the blue pill and be fat, dumb and happy. And that blissfulness that a lot of people live in, but it's empty and shallow. And so when I say I took the red pill, I wanted truth. I wanted to live out that truth. And in order to live out that truth, we had to make some pretty aggressive adjustments to the frame because I had to reprogram. And so that six-step model is what kind of the outlay of that or the result of that experience.[00:13:10] BA: You say we. Who is we? It's more than just you.[00:13:14] JM: It's always more than just me whether it's just me or not, right? I’m Nigerian, right? My great-great-great-grandfather came across the Atlantic in the belly of a slave show, right? He was cargo on the ship. And so my goal today is to be their wildest dream, right? Unbelievable. Can't believe that we were here and now he's doing this. And so I have the burden of those folks and all the sacrifices that they made and their ability to be survivors in a place where a lot of people just didn't make it through to somebody who's thriving and making a huge impact on the world. So they're always with me, right? But then it's just people like James Bryan and Duron Chandler and folks I’ve met along the way who've joined me on this journey of continuous self-improvement and consuming and finding content that's going to help us go to that next level. I wasn't fortunate enough to sit around the dinner table and talk entrepreneurship. So when I wanted to go do that, I had to start over because I didn't have somebody to go ask. I didn't have a network to go and say, “Hey, I’m starting this thing. I really appreciate your support by you doing this or you calling this person.” I had no idea that that was even an option. I didn't know that was a thing.And so just the people who I’m doing life with and figuring out along the way, as we all are, is the we. And then the people who are cheering from the sidelines who are like I’m not sure that I’m willing to make that sacrifice in order to have that level of freedom. I want to do it for them so that if they ever come along and they decide that they're ready to make that transition, they have the social proof that they can do it. And so it's a community of we. You were we, right? From our first conversation, you've been extremely generous with your knowledge. I mean it’s whatever you need, Jerome. Just let me know. I want to help you. And you've had a couple of interactions before that where you got to assess me and what I’m about, but you've never asked for anything. And I don't even know that I have anything that I can offer you that you couldn't get some other way. But this little symbol here is a West African symbol that is for cooperation and the translation is help me help you, right? And so I think it's extremely important that we get ourselves in position that we can help other people help us, but we're also excited to help other people. And I think like you're a great example of just what I think is only law of the world, which is love. Like you show up and you're willing to help other people whether you think is going to turn around and be impactful for you on the backend, not all of that important. Can you do it all that time? No. But for a small group of people where you can actually have an impact – And I think that's probably the lesson to take away from the people who are listening to this, is do what you can where you are. You don't have to fix the whole world, but you can do something today. [00:16:42] BA: And what's been – As you've gone through this journey, I assume you've gone through all six steps personally, if you're on the other end of this. What's been the most substantive realization that you've made?[00:17:00] JM: I think the first thing I realized was when I stopped doing things for money. I just left the power company and I was working for a consulting firm. And the guy said, “Hey, Jerome. Let's see you charge your admin budget this week. You should have charged a client.” And I said, “Well, I finished the project for the client. It's a transition week. And so I’m on the admin budget for a week until we get the new project over.” He said, “No. You need to charge a client.” It's like, “I’m not charging the client if I don't have any work for that client.” And he said, “Listen, you're never going to charge admin budget again. You're going to charge clients. You need to structure work in a way such that you don't charge your admin budget.” And I say, “Look, I’m not going to steal from our clients.” And it was that day that I decided that I was going to leave that company. It was that day that I decided that it didn't matter that they gave me a ten thousand dollar signing bonus that I was going to have to return, because I didn't stay long enough in order to keep that money. And it was that day I realized that I didn't do things for money anymore. Money wasn't going to be the reason why I was doing what I was doing. There always had to be something else. And so that has hurt me in some ways from a comfort standpoint, because there's a whole lot of things that I could do to make more money than I do today that I choose not to do because I feel like the work that I do is more meaningful and impactful and going to have a greater influence on the way that the world is shaped and formed going forward. But in the same breath, money's like air, Bryan. If you don't have it, it becomes an emergency. And it becomes an emergency right then, right? If you run out of air, you're in trouble. And so for me, finding that balance and not being so militant in going the wrong way, because it's kind of like a pendulum. It was hard. I was in a rough relationship and where I felt like I was just a wallet. And so I resented the fact that I was an earner, right? And that took my gift away to earn at least temporarily because I resented it. And so understanding kind of the laws of the universe and how all these things kind of come together is big. But at the end of the day, I don't live my life for money. Money serves me. Money is a tool is the lesson.[00:19:38] BA: There's a lot to unpack there. I think I asked you three questions and we’re 25 minutes in. But the one thing that I want to dig into a little bit more is this concept of transitioning out of corporate culture into being an entrepreneur. But the focus is not monetary gain. So what is the end game and why did you make that transition? And is that reason different today than if I'd asked you that when you started doing real estate?[00:20:14] JM: The answer to your last question is would it be the same? The answer to that question is yes. More clear today than it was before. I had kind of a North Star, but I didn't really know what it was. Just looking through a telescope instead of being right up on it. Now I’m right up on it. It goes back to the top level of the red pill, which is significance. And so I’m seeking significance. I had what I thought was a lot of money. I had a 6,000-square-foot house. I had a super car. I had those things that I dreamed of as a kid. Like I grew up in a 1,200-square-foot house as a kid, right? So to my first house being 24 and then the next being six, it was unbelievable. I mean I remember my ex's parents saying, “Hey, they live in a mansion.” It's like I can't even fathom coming from a neighborhood where I came from being in that place. And it was always fun to open the door to the house and people asked where my parents were. That was like the most fun part of all of it if I’m totally honest. But significance and being a person who somebody would say, “I don't know if I... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With a pivotal presidential election less than two weeks away, it’s crucial for families to consider and plan accordingly for the potential financial implications of an administration change.Excelsior’s founder, Brian Adams, recently hosted four intergenerational wealth experts in our ongoing webinar series to discuss how families should approach their finances during an election year. The panelists were Aaron Flinn of Waller, Lansden, Dortch & Davis, Chris White of Chronicle Partners, Josh Peifer of Ernst & Young, and William Crenshaw of 2nd Generation Capital, each of whom are working diligently to guide their clients through the uncertainties that this year has brought.In this webinar they discussed:● Managing a variety of family personalities● Conversations you should be having with your financial advisors● Strategic planning and client education● The importance of personal financial reflection● Charitable donation options Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On June 19th, Brian Adams, President and Founder at Excelsior Capital spoke with Biff Pusey, Partner at Kimble Advisory, and DJ Van Keuren, President at Family Office Real Estate about the best practices for family offices and boutique wealth advisors to invest in alternatives. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everything in healthcare has changed over the last three months. From the investments being made to how we operate our healthcare facilities, COVID-19 is impacting the way we’ve operated and will forever change the way we operate in the future.In order to gain a complete understanding of the impact COVID-19 has had and will continue to have on healthcare, we’ve pulled together experts both on the frontlines fighting this disease and also investing in companies that could help prevent major health crises like the one day.In a webinar hosted on June 5th, 2020, we were joined by Vic Gatto CEO of Jumpstart Health Investors, John Morris, MD Chief of Staff, Vanderbilt Medical Center and Miller Morris, M.A, M.P.H., CEO, The Comma Collective as they provided unique perspectives on the topic of healthcare, public health and health investing as they relate to COVID-19. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“The single best risk-adjusted investment you can make.” That may seem like a bold statement, but Dr. David Panton of Navigation Capital Partners gave us good reason to believe it in our recent webinar on SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, hosted by Excelsior’s founder, Brian Adams.
In this conversation they discussed the following: What defines a SPAC
The history of SPACs
The regulations around SPACs
The recent surge in popularity of SPACs
Advantages of SPACs compared to typical IPOs or private equity
The investor journey in a SPAC deal
Ways to invest in a SPAC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.