The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Bryon Lake, Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s Chief Transformation Officer, is below.
You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.
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This is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio.
Barry Ritholtz: This week on the podcast, I have another extra special guest. Brian Lake is Chief transformational Officer at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. He got a start at PowerShares in the ETF industry early and really has spent most of his career at the vanguard of disruption. First at PowerShares. They’re eventually bought by Invesco. He rises to become head of International ETFs with them, and for a couple years was based out of London, then comes back to New York, and gets tagged to run ETFs for JP Morgan Asset Management. He just as one of these people that has, through a combination of luck and smarts, has been in the right place at the right time and has very much observed what it takes to satisfy clients, to reach a, a particular outcome, and to use the latest, greatest technology, whether it cannibalizes your prior business or not, to help achieve those outcomes. I found this conversation to be fascinating, and if you want to have some insight into what’s going on at Goldman Sachs $3 trillion asset Management business, you’ll find this conversation to be fascinating. With no further ado, my discussion with Goldman Sachs, asset managements Bryon Lake.
Bryon Lake: Barry, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. 00:01:40 [Speaker Changed] So I saw in, in one of the news outlets you get hired with this completely wacky title, like, like our, our mutual friends, Dave Tic was, was a chief futurist. So we’ll get to the title in a bit, but I wanna start with a little bit of your background that led you to the CTO position, starting with bachelor’s from Taylor University, international Business Economics and Finance. What was the original career plan?
00:02:12 [Speaker Changed] Yeah, no, you, you know, I think I had read a Warren Buffett book early on, so I loved investing, I liked watching stocks and, you know, I’d read the Wall Street Journal that was always around in the home, and so I was able to, to, to really look into that. But I didn’t realize that the entire asset management industry existed in the way, in the way that it did. I think it’s one of those that, because the asset management industry often is working with financial advisors or other institutions, it’s not as consumer of a business. Whereas financial advisors obviously work with individuals. And so I didn’t know the asset management industry existed in the way that it did, so I didn’t know that. But, you know, growing up, my parents were intentional about exposing us to interna, you know, traveling internationally. We were fortunate enough to, to, to do some trips throughout Europe and had just always been amazed by, you know, the different cultures and the different things that go into to that. And so, as we’ll get into, I’m sure that that did end up playing out in my career. I think to be international business at Taylor, you just had to take a language, which of course I took, you know, eight years of Spanish and I can speak maybe 15 words, but that, you know, that’s, that’s how we kind of ended up with that one.
00:03:18 [Speaker Changed] So you start your career after college as an office manager at Fifth Third Bank office manager. What, what, what
00:03:26 [Speaker Changed] Branch bank? Like
00:03:27 [Speaker Changed] A branch. You literally locking up the bank.
00:03:28 [Speaker Changed] It was in a branch. So, so, so now there’s some, some history there. My, my dad worked at Comerica Bank in Detroit com, Comerica Park, the, you know, the, the Tigers Field is named after Comerica. It’s one of the largest banks in, in the, in the country. And, and, you know, some of the formidable years, I remember, you know, spending time, you know, the quality time I would spend with my dad, we’d be going to sporting events, right? And, you know, sometimes he’d bring somebody from work and I’d just sit in the back, back of the car and listen to them talk shop and, you know, those things were just kind of, even if I didn’t understand what was, what they were talking about, the cadence and the perspective, the professional kind of interactions that they were having just kind of always, always fascinated me.
00:04:02 So my dad was at, as a, was at Comerica Bank. I got a job at Fifth Third Bank as literally a branch manager. And what I distinctly remember from that time is you’d get there at about seven 30 in the morning and you’d pull all the deposits that came from, you know, the, the, the previous nights. And there was a bunch of restaurants in the area. And I would hand count 300, 400, $500,000 worth of bills cash. This was a little while ago now. And, and you’d strap it up and then you’d stack, and then you’d have to like, how, how big a pile of money, I mean, oh, and we’re talking like a,
00:04:33 [Speaker Changed] A full duffle
00:04:33 [Speaker Changed] Bag, two tumi next to each other, right? Like two major suitcases that that go into, that’s $400,000 something, something like that. Because this is from a restaurant, you got small bills and all this sort of stuff. And as, and, and, and as interesting as that was, I was like, this is not the forever thing. And then at the end of the day, you’re helping, you know, the tellers balance out there, drawers and all this sort of stuff. And I was like, this is, this is not the finance that I was, that I was really picturing. And so that didn’t last forever, but I do, that was exactly where it started at a fifth third, at a fifth, third branch in Livonia, Michigan. Not, not far from where I grew
00:05:02 [Speaker Changed] Up. How did you find your way to Invesco?
00:05:04 [Speaker Changed] So I went to Taylor University, as we talked about, that’s in the, the middle of Indiana. It’s called Upland Indiana. It’s the highest point above sea level between Fort Wayne and Indianapolis. It’s 10 feet above sea level. This is corn. This is corn, this is cornfield. Well, you must have
00:05:17 [Speaker Changed] A great view from
00:05:17 [Speaker Changed] Upland. You can see it all, you can see as far as the eye can, can see of rows of corn. And, and, but they had a great finance program. And, and, and like I say, the, the culture at that university, which I’m still very connected with, you know, raised some really interesting people. And so I, I graduate from there. I go back home to, to Plymouth, Michigan, just outside Detroit. And I’m living there, kinda the post-college thing. This is when I’m working at Fifth Third. But there was a girl that I had met at Taylor University who lived in Chicago. And so I really wanted to find my way over to Chicago. So I find I find my way over to Chicago and I get introduced to a gentleman by the name of Bruce Bond. And, and you probably know Bruce, but you know, for people listening, Bruce founded PowerShares originally, which was a, which was a startup ETF business.
00:05:59 He now runs Innovator, which is another ETF business. And, and, and this was, you know, over 20 years ago, the entire ETF industry was less than a hundred billion dollars. And, and, and I was interviewing with, with Bruce, and he just so happened to be a Taylor grad as well. And another one of my mentors is in the room, Ben Fulton, who also has been a very successful entrepreneur and was early on at, at, at PowerShares. And I, I distinctly remember I was, I was interviewing and I was, I was telling Bruce, oh, I think ETFs could, you know, really change the investment landscape. And this is really interesting. I was just parroting this article, and at the time the article started with Startup Power shares next to the petting zoo in Wheaton, Illinois. So it doesn’t exactly scream high finance, right? And so I’m interviewing with Bruce and Oh, why do you wanna be here? Oh, I’m really excited about this. And Ben interrupts, he says, who’s the girl? And I said, well, her name’s Casey and I really like her. And so now Casey and I are married four kids later, we got a dog as well. But that was how I got to Power Shares. And so this was, that was oh five. That’s oh five. Yep. And, and so like I said, the ETF industry is a hundred billion dollars now, as you know, it’s $15 trillion
00:07:02 [Speaker Changed] And half of that spy right at the time.
00:07:04 [Speaker Changed] And half of that, half of that spy, and it’s an, it’s an amazing kind of story. The idea behind Power Shares was they were going to be the non-market cap weighted ETF provider, right? So what we now call smart beta, what we now call thematic, what we now call, you know, some of these other things that, you know, d different exposures that nobody was really thinking about at the time. PowerShares was really the innovator in launching many of those. And so I had the really good fortune of sitting in a very small group. So I was a 12th employee at PowerShares. I had a very, you know, I was very fortunate to sit with these people as they were building this business. The industry was going from, you know, like I said, the whole industry was about a hundred billion. To your point, spy was, spy was kind of 50. I’d probably had 10,000 conversations about ETFs within the first three years of my career between the phone and then covering, you know, a territory and working with, with financial advisors, which was a, which was such an edge as, you know, you learn so much just having these conversations repetitively over and over again, right. And, and so that was kind of how I got to Chicago.
00:08:02 [Speaker Changed] So, so Invesco becomes a significant player Yeah. In ETFs by acquiring Power Shares the very next year. Yeah. So you’re there for a year, suddenly you’re acquired. What’s your new role like at Invesco?
00:08:15 [Speaker Changed] Well, this is, I’m, you know, this is a really interesting time for me. And so, you know, and I, I know you like to, to, to ask your guests what books they like to read. I’m gonna, I’m gonna share a book early on. We’ll say that. Okay. I got, I got multiple books for you today, Barry. But the book that it, that I, that I like to read is, there’s a, a book called Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. Oh, of course. Clayton Christensen. Right? And so think about what’s happening now. So you have a large asset manager in Invesco, which was Growth Shop of the nineties. A you know, hundreds of billions of dollar asset manager acquiring this. At the time, I think PowerShares was $6 billion ETF, fast grow, new technology, changing the game on what we’re doing.
00:08:54 [Speaker Changed] Very disruptive,
00:08:55 [Speaker Changed] Very disruptive. But as you know, in the Innovator’s dilemma, the legacy incumbent technology really tries to protect what they’re doing while the up and comer is trying to disrupt what’s happening. And so Invesco acquires the power shares business. They’re gonna, they’re gonna expand their offerings from traditional mutual funds to now include exchange traded funds. That’s 00:09:15 [Speaker Changed] Pretty, pretty forward looking at a time where there was a lot of skepticism. I remember the early days where you and I first met Yes. At some ETF conferences, and you’re just genuinely shocked at how much skepticism and Yeah, yeah. The kids are playing with this newfangled ETF thingy. Yeah.
00:09:33 [Speaker Changed] Which is, which is how so many of the new technologies come, come about, right? Yeah. But what’s in, so Invesco acquires it very astute on their part. But, but what was amazing for me is I had this unique opportunity. I was the first person that they put on the plane from Wheaton, Illinois down to Houston, Texas, or Atlanta, which is where Invesco had offices. And I was the one training them on ETFs. And so we were having this interesting conversation. The light bulb went off for me. I was like, holy smokes. I could see both perspectives. These were, these were incredibly successful asset management, financial service individuals that were trying to digest and understand, which now in hindsight looked so obvious,
but at the time, to your point, looked like, I don’t know if this thing’s really gonna happen. And so that was a really, a really formative time for me.
00:10:13 [Speaker Changed] And, and you know, when you think about certain companies that have been really successful, they’re the ones who have, and, and for over long periods of time, they’ve figured out innovator’s dilemma, they’re willing to disrupt themselves. I’m thinking about, you know, the original iPod was a huge winner for Apple. Totally. And they just kept making it faster, cheaper, smaller, with more capacity. And you could just hear someone saying, guys, we’re selling a ton of these with a gig capacity at $500, you now want to introduce three gig capacity at $200, you’re gonna kill our old sales. Didn’t matter better we do it than someone else. Right.
00:10:51 [Speaker Changed] That’s, that’s exactly right. You know, one of the quotes that we’d throw around a lot at that point is, is that if you didn’t like change, you were gonna, like, I rece even less. Right? And, and, and if you think about that, that was what was gonna happen, this innovation and this, this whole story is about innovation and continuing to look for new ideas. And, you know, as you think about how product gets developed, as you think about how distribution happens, these are all things that in inform all of those, all of those things. But yeah, that was, that was an amazing time That then evolved into, hey, we’ve, we’ve got investors from Asia, from Europe, from South America, that are buying our ETFs listed on the New York Stock Exchange, because by the way, it’s a security. And so all these firms that had trading lines open in New York, were happy to buy an ETF off the exchange in that way. Hey, Brian, would you mind getting on a plane and going and talking to some of these people and figure out what’s going on in, in, in these areas? So, so 00:11:38 [Speaker Changed] You go to Europe in the Middle East, you go to Asia eventually after 12 years of work at Invesco PowerShares, you are running EAFE. Yeah. In terms of ETFs. Tell us about that experience.
00:11:51 [Speaker Changed] That was an amazing thing. I had been doing this global business development, and so you, you know, combine a couple of things that we’ve talked about here. So I, I had had, you know, tens of thousands of conversations around ETFs. I had been given the fortunate opportunity to talk to incumbent asset managers and how they then are digesting ETFs in their portfolios and how that’s going to change the, the industry and what’s happening there. I had done that then globally. So you understand the overall ecosystem. What’s the value proposition to investors to buy these, how are they using ’em in portfolios? And then Invesco says, Hey, would you, would you be interested in moving to moving the family to London and, and running our international business? Everything kind of X us I jumped at the opportunity. I couldn’t have been more excited. I didn’t know, when we talked about my degree earlier international finance, I didn’t know I was gonna move. Right? Right. But we were very open to it. And, you know, credit to my wife for being willing to help raise the family there.
00:12:39 [Speaker Changed] What was it like bringing the kids to London and sort of, Hey, you’re leaving everything behind. Yeah. At least for a couple of years, but it’s gonna be a great adventure. What, what were their reactions?
00:12:48 [Speaker Changed] We, we moved over with a 3-year-old, an 18 month old and a, and like a six month old. And so the house hunt was all looking for a, a flat in London that had a entryway level with the sidewalk so that we could push the stroller in. Right. That was, and in London, I don’t, you’ve been there, like, there’s a lot of steps. And so we like everything that we were, but that was kind of how we were, that that was kind of how we were thinking about it. But it was, but it was an amazing opportunity to go over there and understand the, the, the business landscape. Now, at the time, Invesco had two of the most successful mutual fund managers, Neil Woodford being one of them. And, and, and there was this pull away from ETF because you’ll remember ETF at the time meant passive. And, and the passive active debate was raging on. And people didn’t quite realize yet that the ETF is a technology, right? What you put inside of it is the investment engine. Right. 00:13:43 [Speaker Changed] And it’s a, it’s a vastly superior technology if for no other reason, there are no phantom capital gains taxes like we see in most mutual funds, but especially active mutual funds to,
00:13:55 [Speaker Changed] To to, to name just one of the many, many, many benefits. But, you know, you, you mentioned the, the MP three player earlier, and, and this is the analogy that I always, I always love to use you, you know, MP three is the evolution from the cd, from the tape player, from the eight track, from the, the vinyl record, right? What you put on all of those is the music, right? And so we love the benefits of the MP three player, the, the now what we stream on our phone, right? It gives us convenience, it gives us control, it gives us variety. We now have every single capacity, every single song that’s ever been invented is in our pocket, right? Plus podcasts like this plus audiobook, plus all of these other things. So the convenience for the, the consumer, it’s the better technology. And, and then what we’re having is this interesting debate is, so, okay, so go back, I’m a port, you know, think about an active portfolio manager saying, wait a second, these indexes are eating my lunch. What’s going on with this thing? These ETFs and everything was synonymous. The media was singing synonymous, index, passive, ETF, all the same thing. And so we had to break that apart. We had to make it very clear to investors that the ETF was the delivery mechanism. What you put inside of it was the investment engine.
00:15:03 [Speaker Changed] Then that makes a lot of sense. So how long were you in London with Invesco for?
00:15:08 [Speaker Changed] So with Invesco, that was four years.
00:15:12 [Speaker Changed] And then JP Morgan comes and knocking and they say, Hey, we’re looking for someone to head up our international ETFs. Yeah. And since you’re here in London anyway, let’s, let’s have a conversation. Tell us how, how you found your way over to JP Morgan asset
00:15:28 [Speaker Changed] Management. Yeah. It, you know, and it was, it was one of those interesting things where there had been about a 13 year run there where I was at startup Power shares, fast growth power, fast growth, power shares, and then Invesco Power shares. And even though I had never made a change, those were three distinct cultures, three distinct different cycles of the, of the business, if you will. And, and we are starting to get to this point. And, and some of the things that I’ve explained now in hindsight are very intuitive. At the point they were just starting to dawn on me, wait a second. If you could go into an established asset manager, deliver the disruption, but combine that with great investment capabilities, combine that with great distribution capabilities, combine that with a great brand, you can really change the landscape and, and, and build something incredible. And I, I like building, I, you know, I said some of the mentors that we talked about earlier, they, they were builders. And so I I I made the, the difficult decision to, you know, go to go to JP Morgan at that point in time. Huh.
00:16:23 [Speaker Changed] Really, really interesting. So you’re head of international ETFs in London for JPM. How did you end up back in New York running America’s ETF?
00:16:33 [Speaker Changed] Yeah, I’m, we loved our time in, in, in London. And, and if I really wanna get New Yorkers riled up, I’ll say that we, that New York is, is, is a great city. London is a world class city. The quality of life is high. You’ve got parks, you can, you know, the weekends are a little bit slower than the intensity. Now I, new York’s the alpha city, I’ll, I’ll give it that. But you do have this kind of contrast between the two family.
00:16:55 [Speaker Changed] Isn’t that generally true in Europe? Europe is a lot more kick back. Like, I, I tell a story all the time about being there in the midst of the.com implosion, and you could walk down the street in New York and everybody’s stressed out. Yeah. And oh yeah, the economy’s collapsing, but I have healthcare and retirement. I’ll be okay. It’s a different head space.
00:17:14 [Speaker Changed] I, I feel that that human nature is true across both. There’s still, you know, using our industry’s language, there’s still fee, fear and greed that, that drive almost everything that happens, the culture and the approach is different. So, you know, I used to, I used to tell people, if the objective was to climb that mountain in Europe, you said, let, we’re gonna climb that mountain. Why do we want to climb that mountain? That mountain looks high. What would, what would be the purpose of climbing the mountain? What’s in, what’s in it for me to climb the mountain in the us? You’d say, let’s climb that mountain. People like, let’s go. And they’re halfway up the mountain, then they crash and they roll back down and they’re halfway up the mountain and they crash, they roll back down. Both reach the top of the mountain at about the same time.
00:17:49 The, the approach of how you get to the top of the mountain with, you know, European culture versus US culture is, is always a little bit of an interesting one. Of course, dramatic generalization there, but there is a little bit too kind of that thoughtfulness that that kind of comes, that kind of comes through in, in that. So, so we, you know, we, we move back to the us we’ve got family back in the us and it just, it just made sense for us at that time. We’d had our fourth child in the uk so we’re, we’re, we’re moving back. And, you know, I was fortunate that I, you know, I’d had international experience very early on. So I understood the XUS stuff. I had grown up in the US and, and, and knew that marketplace. And so it was really a combination of those two, those two things. The really important thing that was happening was investors were now starting to acknowledge and understand the difference between ETF wrapper and active and the, those, those really started to be the interesting conversations where
00:18:41 [Speaker Changed] They’re not mutually exclusive.
00:18:43 [Speaker Changed] They’re not mutually exclusive. And, and, and you had a lot of the passive providers that were gonna do their thing. And it was becoming quite obvious that that was a, a commoditized product and a bit of a race to the bottom as far as fees. And that’s great for investors. But if you have differentiated investment capabilities that you can deliver through the ETF technology, that starts to really bring you to an interesting, to an interesting space.
00:19:06 [Speaker Changed] So you’re back in New York, what’s that initial conversation with Goldman Sachs? Like, I wanna, and, and my motivation for asking that question is HH how do we get to the title Chief Transformation Officer? Yeah. It, they could have just said, Hey, you’re head of ETFs us or head of whatever. Yeah, whatever they, whatever they wanted you to do. This seems like it’s a little more comprehensive. Yeah,
00:19:30 [Speaker Changed] I, that, that, that’s fair. So I’ve, we’ve kind of unpacked my journey, you know, and I’ve been fortunate a bunch of those turns, I’ve, I’ve tried to point some of those turns out through the conversation, and, and when you log those, you, you kind of understand that that how the world is constantly changing, and you need to constantly kind of stay out in front of that. Okay. And our industry is, I always say this, the best industry in the world. We literally get to wake up every day helping investors meet their financial goals, whether they’re paying for healthcare, whether they’re trying to retire with dignity. Like that’s something that really motivates me about our industry. And I get really excited about, when we think about how the industry is evolving, there is innovation happening in so many places beyond just ETFs. I could, I could wax lyrical ETFs for a very long time, but now technology has unlocked SMAs direct indexing models. You know, we’re hearing a lot of influential people talk about privates and how those go into portfolios now. So private equity, private credit alternatives, like real estate infrastructure. And when you take a step back, I had the great opportunity to kind of learn this cross section of the entire asset management industry through my, my kind of earlier years, different chapters doing the ETF thing. But now I, I realize I can apply that across an entire asset manager. And so Goldman’s at an interesting spot, everybody knows Goldman, we are a $3.2 trillion asset manager, 00:21:00 [Speaker Changed] Which is a giant, like there are only so many companies, the a
00:21:04 [Speaker Changed] Largest asset manager in the world,
00:21:05 [Speaker Changed] Right? There’s only so many firms that have trillions of dollars as, as a wealth manager.
00:21:10 [Speaker Changed] It’s, it’s a, it’s a big number that’s not lost on us. We’re, we’re top five on active public, we’re top five on private investing. So we’ve got this combination of public and and private capabilities. We’ve got some of these technology underpinnings. And the conversation is really, you and I both know, I think a lot of, a lot of people would agree with us. Our industry is going to look very different five years from now than it does today. That’s, that’s the innovator’s dilemma that we, it never stops. There’s, there’s always this reinvention. There’s always a new technology that comes along that is driving this. And so we, we really are focused to make sure that we are positioned to serve our clients five years from now. And to do that, we need to transform our business. The industry is transforming and golden needs to transform along with that.
00:22:00 And so there comes my title now, you know, I like to joke like the nickname Optimist Prime hasn’t, hasn’t kicked in the way that I really, really thought it might’ve at this point. I didn’t get that gift sent to me by, by some of my friends in the way that I, that I’d wanted. But the, the, it’s, it’s really on the nose of what we’re trying to do, which is we feel very good about the investment capabilities we have, but we know we need to transform our business to serve clients five years from now. And if we aren’t intentional about how we’re doing that, we’re going, we, we may miss that. And, and because I was able to live that as ETFs did that at Invesco as ETFs did that at JP Morgan, I can now apply that across the entire franchise at, at Goldman Sachs, which I, I, I’m having a blast now. It’s, it’s still build with, there’s a lot of work that we have to do that goes into that. But, but that’s what I wake up every day thinking about.
00:22:49 [Speaker Changed] So I’m, I’m hearing two things from you that are kind of fascinating. First, you’ve, you’ve lived through the innovator’s dilemma and recognized how important it is to keep up, to be an agent of change, to not let some, Hey, we’re gonna eat our own lunch before someone else does. Totally get that. Now you come in to this role at Goldman. Tell me about the team you’re putting together. What areas are you looking at? Because that, that sounded like kind of a goofy title when I first heard it, but now that I’m hearing you describe it, it’s, it sounds like management at Goldman has said, Hey, this is really changing quick and we have to be on the, on the, no pun intended, at the, at the vanguard of change, we have to be at the cutting edge. Yeah. Or someone else is going to eat our lunch.
00:23:38 [Speaker Changed] Yeah, no, that, that’s exactly right. And and to your point, if you’re intentional about transforming your own own business and making those tough decisions, you, you stay out in front of this. And, and so, you know, I I got excited about that role. The platform, the organization is, is incredible. When I step back and think about world class asset managers, they, they really have kind of four things that, that, that are kind of pillars that they, that they need to be successful at. They need to have really good foundations. So, so operations, engineering, all the, all the platform that it takes block
00:24:13 [Speaker Changed] And tackle
00:24:14 [Speaker Changed] Blocking and tackling, they need to have modern and innovative products that, that what you build on top of those, that, that the, the investment outcomes for investors performance needs to be exceptional. And, and we’re fortunate at Goldman to have some incredible investors in, in, in some great areas that really help unlock that for us on the public and the, and the private side, you need to have a way to del to deliver that to the marketplace. So you need to talk to investors about that. So you know, how you market, how you distribute that, that, that needs to come in because you, you know, I’ve seen a lot of great product that nobody knew existed, and so it doesn’t go anywhere. And then, you know, the fourth thing is you kinda have to have an OO operating rhythm. You need to know what your identity is as an asset manager. You need to know what your identity is as, as, as you know, as an executive at these firms and, and have a way to execute against that in a, in a process oriented way. So tho those are the things that I really, I really think about as you frame that conversation.
00:25:11 [Speaker Changed] So Goldman is a big shop. You’re obviously not doing all this heavy lifting yourself. Tell us about your team.
00:25:17 [Speaker Changed] Yeah, no, we’ve got, we’ve got an incredible team across all, all of those areas. So
00:25:21 [Speaker Changed] Who are you working directly with?
00:25:23 [Speaker Changed] Well, that’s one of the beautiful things about my role is I can work across all four of those pillars. And so I, you know, we’ve got incredible people on the op side that are, that are thinking about the foundation, incredible people on the technology side that are thinking about, you know, the, the nervous system of the, of the asset manager. Y you know, our product team is incredibly in innovative. The, the investors. You’ve had some of, some of the investors on here before Asis was on who’s, who’s an incredible, and he was great. He’s an incredible investor. He’s a great story Fascinat guy too. And, and, and so working very closely with him and thinking about, you know, what types of strategies do we need to bring and, and, and so on and so forth. I mean, you, you, it does, it does, you know, that’s this cool thing about this title is it, it does gimme some nice scope to, to execute across really the entire leadership team of the, of 00:26:06 [Speaker Changed] The firm. So you are not looking, when I initially heard this, I, my initial thought is Goldman just wanna be a bigger player in the ETF space, but this sounds much bigger and more comprehensive than
00:26:17 [Speaker Changed] That. So, so when I step back and think about what are the fast growing product areas of, of our industry, there’s, there’s three that are worth calling out. So alternatives, there’s gonna be more alternatives in private investments in particular, particularly retail portfolios going forward.
00:26:36 [Speaker Changed] And when you say privates, we’re talking credit equity debt, real estate. Yes, sir. The whole gamut.
00:26:43 [Speaker Changed] Yeah. And, and, and, and you know, better than I, but there’s companies that are staying private for longer. You, you know, the, the, there’s companies that can access plenty of funding while staying private. So the impetus to go public isn’t necessarily there anymore. Right. But people wanna own these world class companies. And so, you know, that’s an important thing on the credit side if you can enhance your yield a little bit. So, okay, so, so alternatives is, is portfolios that own both public and private is going to be a big thing. So alternatives is, is growing to, to grow exceptionally separately managed accounts and direct indexing. Again, we’re, you know, now we’re talking about investor outcomes and by getting a better tax outcome, can, can we use technology to help improve my outcome on this direct indexing allows you to do that. It gives you, did
00:27:25 [Speaker Changed] You guys build a direct index product or buy a direct index
00:27:28 [Speaker Changed] Product? We built, we’ve been doing this for years. And, and this is one of the, the things that I think makes us unique is, is we’ve got a lot of these capabilities that, that we’re, that we’re homegrown within Goldman in-house, that in-house that we’re, that we’re now delivering to the marketplace on the alt side. We’ve been doing that for three decades. Sometimes it was for Goldman’s own balance sheet, sometimes it was the proprietary thing. But now we’ve made that available to investors around the world so that it’s really an access story there. And then of course, ETFs are gonna continue to grow. And as we think about, you know, public equities, you know, ETF probably has the biggest addressable market and the, and, and one of the largest CERs. But you gotta have all three of those, right? I really think those three. So, so those are the three that I, that I really, I really spend a lot of time thinking about.
00:28:10 And when we think about the gener generational wealth transf that’s gonna happen over the next couple of years, that’s, that’s going to be really profound. And I know that’s definitely something that you spend a lot of time because it’s gonna go to the next generation. The next generation’s gonna want to use their new modern, right, right. You know, the, the, the new modern investment capabilities. And so these are gonna, these are gonna feed right into that. There’ll be tens of trillions of dollars in motion. And how we think about, you know, providing those services to clients is, is, is really important.
00:28:38 [Speaker Changed] So I really have always thought of you as a public markets guy, but you’re, what I’m hearing is, yeah, public markets are gonna be a key part of this, but there’s a lot more beyond just stocks and bonds that are publicly traded and a lot more beyond ETFs and mutual funds. Where do you see Goldman going with privates in GSAM? Within the asset management group?
00:29:01 [Speaker Changed] Yeah. No, I think it, it’s one of our top priorities. So we’ve got decades experience in, in, in doing private investments. And, and, and I do wanna be careful because a lot of times people talk alternatives writ large and it, right, there’s a, there’s a lot of specifics in that, you know, we’re
00:29:16 [Speaker Changed] Not talking about hedge funds. We
00:29:17 [Speaker Changed] Talked about private equity, we talked about private credit. You’ve got infrastructure, real estate, you would use all of those in your portfolio for different outcomes. Real estate and infrastructure, maybe a low correlation or increased yield private credit, like slightly increased yield off public credit. Private equity maybe gives you different upside, you know, opportunity versus, versus public equities. And so you, you, you can use those in your portfolios. And so, but again, it’s just an innovation story. And, and these, these types of investments have been available to investors for decades, but not available to all investors and not available through the, the format that investors wanted to access that. And I, you know, ETFs taught us not only the what, but the how, how do I get access to those ETFs unlocked that. And I think we’re gonna continue to see that on the alternative side, as we, as we have breakthroughs on technology, if we have breakthroughs on access, those will become increasingly available to more and more investors so they can build more specific portfolios. Going back to the purpose of why we do all of this, to get the outcomes that they’re looking for. And if you can incorporate those into your portfolio to drive those outcomes, that really is a differentiator with that. And, and it’s important for us to, to do that. And, and so we’re really focused in those areas.
00:30:27 [Speaker Changed] So, so private alternatives have scaled up over the past few decades from a few billion dollars to a few trillion dollars. How large can this sector expand to over the next decade?
00:30:41 [Speaker Changed] So alternatives and privates substantially, tens, tens of trillions of dollars,
00:30:49 [Speaker Changed] Tens of trillions. Yeah. Like this could be a 20, $30 trillion space. Yeah.
00:30:52 [Speaker Changed] Yeah. I mean, think of, think about the, the, the companies, you know, the, there’s, there’s a couple of companies that come to mind right now that are staying private, that are, that are huge. You know, trillion dollar companies are on the way to being multi-trillion, just a couple of companies, let alone the entire thing. And then when you pull in private credit into that, and when you pull in some of these other areas, I, I, I think this will be massive. And 10 years is a really long time. And yeah, that’s another thing that we’ve learned in this industry is that, you know, even when markets wobble a little bit, once you stretch out and look over the long haul, you’ll hardly see it. You know, these, these things, it, it’s barely, barely registers on the chart. And so these, these things do, do grow in that way. And, you know, I’m, I’m bullish on markets, I’m bullish on, you know, innovation and, you know, as technology unlocks these, these wealth capabilities for more and more investors, that is only gonna be a positive thing to do. So
00:31:40 [Speaker Changed] I’m with you every step of the way so far, but, but let’s take off our, yeah. Sunny, sunny goggles and say, what are the challenges gonna be? How, what are the heavy lifting ahead in order to bring these sort of full suite of services, all these different products, especially these newfangled privates into a core portfolio and a basic model. What’s the challenge here?
00:32:07 [Speaker Changed] Education. And we’ve seen this play out, use my, use my past experience in ETFs. I can’t tell you how many, oh, I don’t know if I’m gonna ever buy an ET f oh, I don’t know if I’ll ever buy a fixed income. Et f come on. Like you, you know, I used to keep a list of people that tell me they would never buy an ETF that eventually call, Hey Brian, could you come tell me a little bit more about those ETFs? And so this, in there, there’s always the early adopters, the, the mavericks, right? And then there’s the, and then there’s the bulk and, and, and it kind of pulls through. And so, you know, I think it’s incumbent upon folks like, like our firm, Goldman, you know, things like this where investors, you know, are educated about what’s available to them. I know your, your firm does a lot of work around that as well.
00:32:50 Education, here’s the benefits, here’s how it works, here’s how, here’s the concerns that you should think about, you know, whether it’s the liquidity or whether it’s the return profile, the timings of those things, the cash flow, these are all things that people need to be educated on. But, but you know, let’s use, let’s use active fixed income ETFs as a proxy. Okay? There was, there was years investors, well, like a bond isn’t, isn’t tradable on the exchange and there’s a liquidity mismatch. So, gosh, what do I do? Well now what we know is that when you put fixed income in an ETF, you basically take an analog ve vehicle and make it digital. We’ve taken these clunky bonds and we’ve made ’em digital. Not only that, but we’ve diversified it. So you buy one ETF ticker that diversifies you across a hundred bonds, often those bonds will trade at a tighter spread than if you went and bought the, the basket of the bonds separately. So you’ve got this innovation effect that happens on, on the exchange. You, you can buy one share, sell one share. You’re not buying big a hundred thousand dollars bond at a time. So
00:33:48 [Speaker Changed] Fractional shares, fractional shares,
00:33:49 [Speaker Changed] You can, you can, you can do all sorts of things. And, and, but it took education for people to understand how that was, was going to work. And I, and I, and I think there’s a really easy corollary there for the alternative space, which we need to continue to do that. I, I wanna live in a good neighborhood. I respect a lot of the firms that we compete with that are also leaning in and trying to educate around, around this space. And, and so I think the industry needs to do a good job of coming together and making sure that we’re educating, but it, but we, we, we need to be intentional about that. We can’t just let it happen. We need to lean in and we need to invest, and we need to make sure that we’re educating people around that
00:34:23 [Speaker Changed] Fast forward 10 years in the future, what does success look like in this space? And I’m not just talking about a UM year three becomes four, becomes seven becomes 10. Hold that aside. What does GSAM look like 10 years from now if you’ve been successful in your role as chief transformation officer? 00:34:46 [Speaker Changed] Outcomes for clients are what they were intending to be. So, so there was a clear understanding of what they wanted to achieve, and we were able to deliver that for them. Tying it back to this conversation, there’s going to be some bumps in the road. There’s going to be some turns that we need to make, getting, getting as many of those right as, as we possibly can. Educating well, making sure that we’re communicating extremely clearly on what it is that we’re delivering to in investors. I might even stop there if, if we can, if, if investors are, are pleased with the outcome and we, and we match their expectations on that, and we get a couple of these tough calls right along the way, I think, I think that would be success for us. Huh. I I don’t think we need to go deeper than that. And, you know, wax lyrical about some of these other things. I think those are the things that we need to, to be focused on.
00:35:39 [Speaker Changed] And sort of a, a a broader question. So you’ve worked in New York, we’ve, you’ve worked in Chicago, you’ve worked in London. What are the differences with these total solutions for US investors and overseas investors? How do they look at, how do they look at ETFs? How do they look at the world of investing? How do they look at privates? There used to be a giant difference. You know, occasionally there were ADRs trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Has the world come together and it’s similar or are there still big differences between someone putting money to work in Berlin or, or Paris versus New York and Chicago?
00:36:19 [Speaker Changed] I remember the first time I listened to masters in business podcast. I was running through Battersea Park in, in London and thinking, wow, this is, this is, this is great. And while Barry always says his guests are extra special, man, I must feel really good. And I was watching the back, everybody’s section. I was wondering if I was gonna get the extra special today or Oh yeah, absolute. Just the special or where, where that was gonna go. You raise an interesting point. It, you know, our world is increasingly global information increasingly travels globally. So there is a convergence that’s happening where portfolios are starting to look more and more similar. You, you, you still do have some home bias things that, that play into portfolios that I think will always be the case. Some of that’s just driven by currency. Some of that’s driven by cultural differences. But there is a convergence. The the conversations that I’m having around the world are on the institutional side. They’re a little bit further ahead on, on the alts thing. They’ve been, they’ve been using over there in globally, I would say globally institutions are closer to 20% of their portfolio and alternatives. Whereas, you know, a typical retail investor is less than 5%. Right? And, and I think the retail investor goes closer to that 20% number. And, and that’s true, that’s true really globally.
00:37:26 [Speaker Changed] Five years ago right before the pandemic, I was having conversation with people in Europe and there was sort of perplexed by the, the passive craze in the us Yeah. And now admittedly we had a lot more scandals in the two thousands. Everything from IPO spinning analyst scan, spinning right up to Bernie Madoff, but they kind of scratched their head and looked at low cost passive indexing as like a distinctly American phenomena. I Is that still the case? Have they, like how much of that is, is tax differences? How much of that is they just want a hand on the tiller? What, what’s, what’s the gap?
00:38:08 [Speaker Changed] So, so you land in London Heathrow, and you’ve got options to get to Midtown. You can take a taxi, you can take the Heathrow Express, you can now take the Elizabeth line. I suppose you could walk if you wanted to. The the point being there, there’s a lot of different ways. And, and really the point is, is, is what outcome are you looking for? And I would say that investors now are saying the best portfolios have active and passive capabilities within them. They both play a role. There’s a sliding scale where sometimes different asset classes should be more attractive on the passive side, sometimes more on the active side. We had this with the Mag seven where you saw such concentration risk in some of those names on the indexes that investors maybe, maybe were managing risk by just going, moving away intentionally from owning all, all, all those names.
00:38:59 I like to remind people, the s and p 500 was launched in 1923, had 233 stocks in it at the time. It didn’t expand to 500 until the fifties. It didn’t become an investible product until, until Vanguard and Bogle put it into a, into basically a fund At the time, in 74, in 75, I, I had, I had early seventies in my, in my head as well, not available in an ETF until 1983. So if, if that was the best investment, why, why did it take 70 years for it to be made available to investors and, and and, and what’s telling us that we should stop that? So I’m a huge believer in innovation going forward then the great investments are being in, in, you know, great investment strategies are being invented every day. I think investors are more and more aware of outcomes as opposed to inputs than than they ever have been. 00:39:48 And so all of these tools, and I, you know, there’s thousands of ETFs now. There’s gonna be, you know, there’s gonna be a lot of alternative capabilities. These are, these are just, they’re, they’re like the songs on, on our, you can put the perfect playlist together for yourself and you can combine all these things to get that, that playlist maybe for the workout, maybe for the commute, whatever that is. And so this optionality, it’s great for investors, it’s a good outcome. Yes, they need to wade through it a little bit more. I’m sure there’s great songs that I haven’t heard yet, but that’s how, that’s, that’s where this thing is going as, as all these, these investments become available in that way.
00:40:21 [Speaker Changed] We were talking earlier about that title and how encompassing it is and that your charge is essentially to revamp and innovate in the entire suite of Goldman Sachs asset management products. Everything from what goes into them, the sort of outcomes you’re looking for. It sounds pretty comprehensive. What is it about today that has led to so many companies saying, Hey, you know, we really are a danger of falling behind and rather than rest on our laurels, we have to become cutting edge and, and be the change as opposed to being affected by the change. Like tell us a little bit about your thoughts there.
00:41:07 [Speaker Changed] So investors have made it quite clear what they’re trying to accomplish in their, in their portfolio. So when you see things that are growing as fast as they are, like direct indexing, which is growing at a CAGR of north of 20% a year. When you see things like SMAs that are growing at the rate that they’re growing, when you see ETFs that are growing at that rate, some firms led, some firms are responding to that, but, but ultimately it’s the investors that are, that are leading that conversation. Now, once we realize that stuff like an SMA or a direct index is the delivery mechanism, ETF is the delivery mechanism. And then what you put inside it is the investment capability. That actually becomes an interesting conversation. So many asset management firms using ETFs as the example are now saying, Hey, we’ve got great investment capabilities, we just need to make those available in, in the ETF technology. Which is, which is how investors are trying to get that, that
00:42:01 [Speaker Changed] Exposure and define SMAs for people who don’t know the shorthand.
00:42:05 [Speaker Changed] So a separately managed account is an account where you as an individual can allocate to a strategy and you actually own the individual names and then they can trade it on behalf of you as an individual as opposed to owning a commingled vehicle like an ETF or a or a mutual fund.
00:42:22 [Speaker Changed] Alright, so let’s talk about some new products that have come out, buffer ETFs. Tell us a little bit about that.
00:42:28 [Speaker Changed] Yeah, I mean this, this just continues on the, on the spectrum as we think about innovation, you know, so a quote comes to mind from Rick Rubin. I don’t, I don’t know if anybody’s ever quoted Rick Rubin here, but you know, how do
00:42:38 [Speaker Changed] You, they have the new book definitely caught a lot of people’s,
00:42:41 [Speaker Changed] It, it’s great, right? And, and you know, so the one that that stuck out to me, and obviously he’s famous for producing the Beastie Boys, which, you know, great New York and, you know,
00:42:47 [Speaker Changed] And a ton of other artists. He’s a ton of artists. His range is kind of incredible.
00:42:50 [Speaker Changed] I love it. And, and, and it’s, it’s absolutely amazing. But, you know, he, he makes two important points. One is it’s not like serendipity happens and lightning strikes. You’ve gotta grind it out. Like these artists that have made some of the most creative and best music, they, they, they’re grinding it out and sometimes it hits and sometimes you really gotta work it. And he’s asked, how do you put together an album of 12 hits? You write 20 songs, you pick the 12 best ones. And so I, you know, that’s something that comes to mind for me. I think, I think really what you’re trying to do is find the tension between innovation and solving an investor need. And you and I could dream up something crazy from an innovation standpoint and wouldn’t solve an investor need and be a waste of time and energy. There’s also needs that are going unmet right now where people need to solve those.
00:43:34 And so you’re constantly looking for that tension between the two. And it really is a team sport. You work with investors that are experts at that. You work at, you know, you look at the data, you talk to clients and understand what it is that they’re trying to, to, to achieve. You know, the way I think about it at Goldman is, you know, to use our music analogy earlier, we make a lot of great rock and roll. Wow. We wanna make sure that it’s available in the MP three rapper, you know, the ETF rapper. And so, you know, we launched Active Muni capabilities, which we think is a differentiator. We’re leaders in that space. And then the
00:44:03 [Speaker Changed] Buffers, active Muni tell us about Active Muni.
00:44:05 [Speaker Changed] Yeah, active muni. I mean you, you know, so if you’re thinking about the, the, the high net worth or the ultra high net worth space, they think a lot about taxes. And so when you think about the muni space right now, you get the tax benefits of, of owning those when you can do all the things that we talked about earlier with fixed income ETFs and munis deliver. You know, you have like a great combination. So we launched the different spectrum of those longer duration, shorter duration, high yield, et cetera, et cetera. And so those are, those are really interesting things. On the buffer side, I think this is also a really fascinating space. Embedding options and strategies isn’t a new thing. Sophisticated investors, insurance companies have been doing this for years. Covered call strategies. You know, I used to work with financial advisors, they did that themselves on some of the names that were in, in the portfolios.
00:44:48 But now that the industry has developed to the way that it has, and you can deliver these ETFs the way that we do, you can start to give investors the outcomes that they’re looking for. And when you put ’em into a big UMA or a broader portfolio, these can really play an interesting, an an interesting role. So buffers are great. You can get invested, a lot of people nervous. There’s uncertainty, whether you know the headline risk of the day, right? Whatever that is. And you say, Hey, you know, these are designed to protect you to the downside, five to 10%, 15%, but you could still participate in the upside. So you can keep yourself inequities. And if that helps you sleep at night and it helps you stay invested, you are going to get a better outcome in, in the long run. And so they’re a tool that investors can use. Along with the other tools we launched three, they’re designed to reset on a quarterly basis. And so there’s some thoughtfulness around that of, you know, at the beginning of each month you’ve got one that’s resetting. So,
00:45:35 [Speaker Changed] So we’re recording this literally first day of the, the new quarter. Yeah. Q1, 2025. If it’s gonna be known for anything, it’s gonna be all about the volatility that, that felt like the craziest 5% drawdown we’ve ever experienced. Wait, that was just 5%. Why did it feel like it was, you know, between the news flows and, and, and all the mayhem around tariffs, how do you see market volatility influencing investor behavior? Is, is the move into products like buffered ETFs, just a short term reaction to the volatility we’re experiencing? Or is this a more long, longer lasting phenomena? Yeah,
00:46:17 [Speaker Changed] This is the, this is the Warren in Buffet, you know, near term voting machine, long-term weighing machine, right? Right. The volatility, the markets inter day that, that’s just bouncing around based on the headlines. I think we’re in an increasingly headline driven marketplace. There’s more information available than ever, whether you’re on X, whether you’re watching Bloomberg, whether you’re listening to something. But at the same time, investors need to be reminded that just because they’re more informed doesn’t mean they need to make new decisions. You need to have a strategy. There’s a lot of strategies that work, by the way. But you need to have a strategy and stick to that strategy. And if you do that and you keep an eye on your expenses and you rebalance on a regular basis, you and I both know the outcomes are gonna be good. If you are panicked in a scenario where the market’s drawn down 5%, you maybe weren’t in the right strategy to begin with.
00:47:00 And so these things are common. The market has a 10% draw down pretty much every single year. So you should expect these things. And so to me it’s all about the preparation. If you’re panic making a decision the day that the s and p is down 1%, you’re doing it at the wrong time. You’re not in the right head space to do that. You should have made that decision six months prior when you were, when you were, you know, thinking, you know, soundly about what was going to happen. And I do think that all these tools that are available, whether it’s buffer ETFs or active munis or you know, some of the other strategies that we’re delivering that those, those can benefit. Now we think about direct indexing, it benefits from these drawdowns because the the way the technology can embed losses in your portfolio can help offset some of the gains that you’re gonna have at some point down down the road. And so, you know, I think investors are starting to wake up to that fact as well is like, oh, hold on a second. O over time the, if, as long as this thing continues to go up this in, in intra month, intraday volatility may actually benefit me in a way, because now these different capabilities are available to me. And, and, and again, that’s something that’s a relatively new phenomenon that’s been unlocked by technology that just didn’t exist before that. So,
00:48:03 [Speaker Changed] So let’s talk a little bit about direct index indexing. We’re big direct indexers, I was skeptical about this, I dunno, 10, 15 years ago, because the technology was so klugy, you would literally get these, you know, stacks of reports. But today because of a free trading and b software, yeah, it, it’s fast, easy. You could tilt it in whatever factor style you want. But, but my initial thought on direct indexing was, oh, some people aren’t gonna want tobacco or don’t want guns. Or you go through all the list of don’ts. But that hasn’t been the biggest driver. It seems like the biggest driver is managing capital gains taxes and tax loss harvesting. Tell us a little bit about Go Goldman Sachs asset management’s p direct indexing product pe
00:48:50 [Speaker Changed] People don’t wanna avoid taxes, they want to defer them, right? And so these
00:48:54 [Speaker Changed] Are, but these aren’t deferring taxes, these are these being able to offset gains. So you are not, it’s not like you’re kicking the can down the road. You are actually paying less taxes according to black letter IRS law, there’s nothing exactly speculative this is, this is well understood and perfectly legit
00:49:12 [Speaker Changed] Re really, really well put. And that’s super clear. And so, you know, basically what happens is you, you manage it back to an index. So let’s call it the s and p 500. And so the idea is we’re trying to give you the s and p 500 outcome, but at any given point in time, some of the names in the s and p might be up, some of the names might be down. And if you can trade and take some of the losses on, on the names that are down, you can offset some of the gains that are on, on the up stuff. You, you know, later on, our technology we developed again in-house, you know, we think it’s a really modern and dynamic technology because it’ll trade on a daily basis. And this isn’t a monthly thing or, or some like set rigid time.
00:49:48 We can actually take, take advantage of some of the, the, the intraday volatility and intra month volatility that, that we’ve been seeing lately. And so, you know, it’s a, it’s a fast growing space for us. We’re I think, number one or number two in the country on, you know, direct indexing solutions. And to your point, it is, it is helping individuals improve their tax outcomes. Now, internationally, you know, direct indexing was a little bit more, you, you know, this customization thing, right? And, and we do still see that with some of our institutional accounts in the US it’s really a tax story. Internationally, it’s a little bit more of a customization
00:50:22 [Speaker Changed] Story. Well, when you say customization, I tend to think of value driven. So o’s Jim O’Shaughnessy told the story of, I think they were managing money for the New York Bishop’s retirement plan. And of course if, if you’re managing money for the Catholic bishops, no abort, offic and no companies that are paying for right. Things like that. Like they’re following a specific set of these are our five key principles and we can’t violate them and express that in a portfolio. You can do that with direct indexing.
00:50:55 [Speaker Changed] Technology allows customization, and that, that’s really what we’re talking about there is there’s a customization based on in that, in that sense, values driven investing and that technology has unlocked that and because maybe one size doesn’t fit all. And so now that we have that technology, you can develop specific strategies as, you know, to drive the outcomes and, and the exposures that people are looking for.
00:51:14 [Speaker Changed] Yeah. So, so look around the corner for me. What are some of the new techno, like ETFs are fairly well established, still not very well adapted, but that’s coming along. What are some of the other technologies we’re looking at down the road? Where, where are the next areas that are ripe for innovation and disruption?
00:51:32 [Speaker Changed] I think the client experience is going to be a, a big part of that. How frequently can you get that information? You, you know, one of the hallmarks of ETFs of the separately managed accounts that we’ve talked about direct indexing is transparency. It, it used to be buyer beware, the, the, you know, the financial services company and their ivory tower had more information than you. And so buyer beware. Now it’s the other way around. Investors have more information available to them than ever before. It’s, it’s a bit like, you know, here in New York City, you know, you, you go to a restaurant, you pull up, you know, your favorite app and you won’t go to a restaurant that’s got less than four stars, that’s got less than a thousand people that have rated it. You have that information as a consumer available to you. And that’s true in the financial services industry as well.
00:52:13 And so that, that’s, that’s the thing that’s really exciting to me is that the transparency that we’re delivering to investors is helping them get that outcomes. And they’re, and they’re more, they’re more aware of that than ever. And I think that’s just going to continue to increase. We, we acknowledge that we need to be providing realtime information. We acknowledge that holdings need to be on the website on a realtime basis. If you want access to portfolio managers, they’re more than willing to talk. That’s the type of innovation that I think we’re going to be seeing.
00:52:41 [Speaker Changed] I wanna throw a curve ball at you. Okay. You’ve spoken about doing the dirty work early in your career. Yeah. Which I think of as, you know, get the reps in, do the heavy lifting. But, but tell us about the dirty work and how that helped shape your work ethic today.
00:52:59 [Speaker Changed] You gotta paint the fence, Mr. Miyagi told us, right? Like, there, there was a method to the madness there. A lot of times, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll talk to people and it’s, you know, they’re, they’re, oh, what about this? I’m trying to, I’m thinking about my career and basically what they’re asking me is, what’s the minimum I can do to get promoted or get paid more money, wax on, wax loss, wax on, wax off. Right? Right. And of course we want those outcomes for people, but if you get your mindset to the spot of I want to deliver excellence. I want to do this job the best that I can. And whether that’s just wrapping up the day’s reports, whether that’s taking your call notes, whether that’s making sure that you’re entering your CRM information correctly and accurately. There’s all sorts of things that you can do excellently.
00:53:38 And we see these people all the time, whether it’s professional athletes or whether it’s some of the great artists that we’re aware of, these are people that want to be professionals and excellent at what they do. They’re not doing the minimum to get promoted to the next thing. And so that to me is the dirty work you gotta do. You gotta do the work and you gotta be willing to push yourself to do that work, have the discipline and carry, carry through on that. You don’t get the virtue if you haven’t done the hard work. And, and so you have to put in the work to get the outcome that you want. And, and what you’ll find is that those things increase, I found exponentially. And so once you start to put in the work, it starts to grow exponentially and you start to see that you,
00:54:18 [Speaker Changed] Are you suggesting that hard work compounds over time? I 00:54:22 [Speaker Changed] Absolutely think it, I think it does. And, and I’ll add to that, you build your talent stack over time. And, and I’ve referred to that a little bit. I love that phrase throughout the conversation, but, you know, I had the good opportunity to have a lot of client conversations, then I learned international, then I learned you, you know, how to work with people that think about things differently than you do. Like, once you add up all these things, you, you can make connections and you can think about things in a way that maybe people that don’t have the same talent stack haven’t thought about.
00:54:48 [Speaker Changed] Huh. Really, really, really fascinating stuff. So let’s jump to our favorite questions. We ask all of our guests starting with what’s been keeping you entertained these days? What are you watching or listening to? Okay, so by the way, this is a pandemic holdover question that I I I keep finding everybody’s 00:55:06 [Speaker Changed] Still on the lookout for like, great stuff. Okay, so let’s keep with the theme. And, and so a big, a big thread that’s pulled through our conversation is innovation and music. So the Defiant ones, the, you haven’t seen it, I’m recognized on your face. It’s
00:55:24 [Speaker Changed] No, I’ve, I’ve seen the, the preview for it.
00:55:26 [Speaker Changed] Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. So the, the, you know, you wanna talk about, it’s
00:55:31 [Speaker Changed] Like an Apple documentary or something
00:55:32 [Speaker Changed] Like that. Well, you think about these two individuals, they basically have produced almost every artist that we’ve heard for the last 20 years, right? It’s firsthand interviews with them and their artists talking about, oh, well, you know, Tom Petty, what was it like when you were singing that song and Jimmy Iovine was in the studio with you yelling at you and do it again and another cut? Or what about what about this? Or, you know, Dr. Dre when you were in Compton in LA early on, like, you know, tell me about what the first record scratch on a hip hop album sounded like. Right? So they’re talking about that now. It culminates in the building of the, the Beats headphones, which was of course acquired by Apple, right? That’s even another meta thing for me as well. So there’s this amazing creative juice. They’re, they’re grinding it out. Both of ’em tell a story of like grinding it out. They create amazing music and then it culminates with, Hey, wait a second. Like there’s not high quality headphones out there for people to, okay, so that’s one The Defiant Ones. It’s, it’s not on Netflix anymore, so you gotta go to Amazon Prime and buy it and, and buy it there,
00:56:26 [Speaker Changed] Or at least Rent
00:56:28 [Speaker Changed] Its a s Rogue Warriors. Never heard of that. Another one on two for
00:56:31 [Speaker Changed] Two. I never heard of that one.
00:56:33 [Speaker Changed] SAS, rogue Warriors World War ii, the UK builds an off record kind of rogue warrior group, the original kind of Seal team six, think about ’em like this. And these guys, they, they start in North Africa and they would do secret missions overnight. They’d go on to German aircraft camps and blow up planes overnight, or they’d really disrupt their fuel flow or they would do these things that were more targeted strikes to disrupt the, the flow. So SAS rogue warriors, I think that maybe is a BBC, it’s more international. You gotta get one of these, one of these other apps to watch that one. Those are the things I’m, I’m watching. I like to listen to audio books. So right now I’m listening, like listening to go like, hell, which is Ford versus Ferrari is the movie that you’ve seen. Sure. That was great. It’s based on this book and how’s, how’s the book?
00:57:21 It’s excellent. It it, it goes to many, many different layers of detail than you can get across in the, in, in the movie quotes from Enzo Ferrari about, you know, you want to go fast, find good competition, find somebody that’s willing to die out there. Like these are, these are great things, right? That are, that are and and innovation there as well. Right? So Shelby comes up with the GT 40, which I, I just took my son to a museum over the last week and we were seeing one of the original GT 40. Sure. 40 of course is the 40 inches
00:57:45 [Speaker Changed] Shockingly low. People don’t realize the 40
00:57:47 [Speaker Changed] Inches tall. The 40 inches tall. Yeah. And one of the drivers was, was six two. So they built a little bubble. They gave him a neck over his, over his, over his head on that, right?
00:57:55 [Speaker Changed] Just so the helmet will fit in the car
00:57:57 [Speaker Changed] Just so the helmet would, would fit on that. Now this is interesting, right? So Ferrari independent auto shopped in, you know, northern Italy and then Big Ford, you know, they’re telling this story of like a big corporate bureaucracy and all these things and how do they compete. And, and then here’s, here’s my last book for you, Barry, how music got free.
00:58:15 [Speaker Changed] I recall seeing that title go by
00:58:17 [Speaker Changed] How music got free. So to really bring all of this home for us today, so the MP three, in fact the MP one, MP two, MP three, and MP four are invented in Germany. What they discover is that the human ear can’t understand the fidelity of the MP four. So they don’t need that much information. So they drop it back down to an MP three. The MP three then launches things like Ready Napster, right? So now Napster is, is out there and all of a sudden the entire music industry, the bottom has fallen out on all of their revenues because instead of spending $18 to buy a cd, everybody is stealing music off of Napster. And this is, this is the parallel to the conversation we were having earlier, the delivery mechanism. We’re all listening to the same music, we’re also listening to the same rock and roll, but this invention. So it tells the story of, you know, guys that are working at the pressing plan of the cd, sneaking out, sneaking the major or the, what do they call them? The master, excuse me, right out ripping it onto the computer and throwing it onto Napster. And then it talks about the Sony executive sitting here in Midtown saying, oh my gosh, my revenues are down 40% this year year because nobody’s buying CDs anymore. And it informs like this real life story of how the entire music industry got through,
00:59:28 [Speaker Changed] How music got free, how
00:59:30 [Speaker Changed] Music got free.
00:59:30 [Speaker Changed] I’m definitely ending that to my list. Tell us about your mentors who helped shape your career.
00:59:35 [Speaker Changed] You know, so I, I mentioned my dad, you know, that, that, you know, I learned so much from him and he guided in that way. I was fortunate, my mom and dad, you know, very loving home. And we were, you know, we were, we were great there. You know, we talked about Ben Fulton, we talked about Bruce Bond to stick with the bees, Bobby Brooks, like these are, these are individuals that are in the industry that I’ve got the utmost respect for. I’ve also been fortunate to have some really good bosses throughout the, the, the years that I learned a little bit something different from, from each of ’em. You know, Bruce is an incredible entrepreneur. Ben’s an incredible product person and entrepreneur in the uk I’d worked with some people that had consulting backgrounds and, you know, at the time I wasn’t so sure. But the, you know, they, the way that they think thoroughly and logically is a real differentiator. And, you know, and then some of the client people that I’ve worked with over the way that they can connect with people and, and really build rapport and, and, and ultimately trust those, I I’ve been very fortunate to, to have those people
01:00:28 [Speaker Changed] In my life. Some, some great names. Our final two questions. What sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad interested in a career in either investing or finance?
01:00:39 [Speaker Changed] You know, we, we talked a little bit about this, but if, if you’re more likely, if you’re fresh outta college, you are rich in time and potentially poor in life. And so that is a distinct advantage where you can take that time and invest in yourself, develop that stack that we talked about earlier. The other thing that I would say is I wouldn’t be at Goldman if I didn’t start at PowerShares years ago. And I had the opportunity to be a small fish in a small pond. And then I grew to be a medium sized fish in a small pond. And then I had an opportunity to go to some of these other firms that I’ve been in now, ultimately at Goldman Sachs. And so I do think sometimes people look for the biggest pond and, and the biggest brand. And I, and I, and I think if you can get into a small pond, you get exposure to more skills in a, in a slightly different way. And you can build that skill stack in, in a different way. You know, I often find people, you know, they want to start in the, you know, the analyst program and go, that’s great. And, and firms like ours train people and, and they do an amazing job. But there are non-linear ways to, to access some of these things.
01:01:40 [Speaker Changed] And our final question, what do you know about the world of investing ETFs products innovation and disruption today that would’ve been useful 30 years ago when you were first starting out?
01:01:53 [Speaker Changed] Ultimately comes back to being a people business. You can have the best innovation, you can have the best product, you can do all like the biggest marketing campaign, all the, like, it’s, it, it’s all about keeping the purpose at the center as your north star of what you’re doing. Outcomes for investors, we talked about this. Help them achieve their financial goals, retire with dignity, pay for healthcare, keeping that at the center and, and making sure that you’re aligned with your purpose around the people. I’ve been so fortunate, you know, you and I have been friends now for going on a, a decade, a little bit more probably others in the industry. It’s, it’s the people that really make this thing, this thing go, you know, I know that sounds kind of cliche, but 25 years ago when you’re just trying to make it happen, you’re, you know, maybe it’s this next thing and it’s, and it’s really sitting down, listening and, and connecting with people. 01:02:38 [Speaker Changed] I think that’s a great answer. We have been speaking with Brian Lake. He is a partner and chief transformation officer at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. If you enjoy this conversation, well be sure and check out any of the 500 and somewhat we’ve done over the past 11 years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Bloomberg, wherever you find your favorite podcasts. And be sure and check out my new book, how Not to Invest the ideas, numbers, and behaviors that destroy wealth and how to avoid them, how not to invest wherever you buy your books at. I would be remiss if I did not thank the correct team who helps me put these conversations together each week. John Wasserman is my audio engineer. Anna Luke is my producer, Sean Russo is my researcher. I’m Barry Reynolds. You’ve been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.
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