Transforming ETFs with Bryon Lake of Goldman Sachs Asset Management

Barry speaks with Bryon Lake, Chief Transformation Officer for the Client Solutions Group within Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Bryon started at PowerShares in the ETF industry eventually becoming head of International ETFs for Invesco. Bryon then moved to New York to head JPMorgan Asset Management's global head of ETF solutions. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. This is Masters in
Business with Barry Ritholts on Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
This week on the podcast, I have another extra special guest.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Brian Lake is.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Chief Transformational Officer at Goldman Sachs's Asset Management. He got
a start at power Shares in the ETF industry early
and really has spent most of his career at the
vanguard of disruption. First at power Shares, they're eventually bought
by Invesco. He rises to become head of international ETFs

(00:45):
with them and for a couple of 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 is one of these people that has, through
a combination of luck in Smart's, has been in the
right place at the right time and has very much
observed what it takes to satisfy clients to reach a

(01:09):
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 three trillion dollars asset management business.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
You'll find this conversation to be fascinating.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
With no further ado, my discussion with Goldman Sachs Asset
Managements Brian Link Barry.

Speaker 4 (01:38):
It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
So I saw in one of the news outlets you
get hired with this completely wacky title. Like our mutual friends,
Dave Nadig was a chief futurist. So we'll get to
the title in a bit, but I want to start
with a little bit of your background that led you

(02:01):
to the CTO position. Starting with bachelors from Taylor University
International Business, Economics and Finance.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
What was the original career plan.

Speaker 4 (02:12):
Yeah, no, 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 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

(02:34):
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 international you know,
traveling internationally. We were fortunate enough to do some trips

(02:56):
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 fifteen words. But you know, that's that's how we

(03:17):
kind of ended up with that one.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
So you start your career after college as an office
manager at Fifth third Bank office manager.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
What branching up? It was in a branch so so
so now there's some some history there. My dad worked
at Comerica Bank in Detroit co America Park, you know,
the tigers field is named after k America it's one
of the largest banks and uh 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,

(03:47):
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 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. So my
dad was as it was at co America Bank. I
got a job at Fifth third Bank is literally a
branch manager, and what I distinctly remember from that time

(04:11):
is you'd get there at about seven thirty in the
morning and you'd pull all the deposits that came from,
you know, the previous nights, and there was a bunch
of restaurants in the area and I would handcount three hundred,
four hundred, five hundred thousand dollars worth of bills cash
this was a little while ago now, and and you'd
strap it up and then you'd and then you'd have
to like, I mean, oh, we're talking a full Duffel

(04:34):
two too. Me's next to each other, right, like two
major suitcases they go into. That's four hundred thousand dollars
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 teller's 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,

(04:55):
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 and Lavonia, Michigan, not far from
where I grew up.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
How did you find your way to investo?

Speaker 4 (05:04):
So I went to Taylor University. As we talked about,
that's in the middle of Indiana. It's called Upland, Indiana.
It's the highest point above sea level between Fort Wayne
and Indianapolis's ten feet above sea level. This is corn.
This is corn. This is cornfield.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
You must have a great view from there.

Speaker 4 (05:18):
You can see it all. You can see as far
as the eye can can see a rose of corn.
But they had a great finance program, and like I say,
the culture at that university, which I'm still very connected with,
you know, race some really interesting people. And so I
graduate from there, I go back home to Plymouth, Michigan,
just outside Detroit, and I'm living there kind of the

(05:39):
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 you probably know Bruce, but you know, for people listening,
Bruce founded power Shares originally, which was which was a
startup ETF business he now runs into which is another

(06:00):
ETF business. And and this was, you know, over twenty
years ago. The entire ETF industry was less than one
hundred billion dollars. And I was interviewing 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 it at power Shares. And I

(06:23):
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 will Oh,
why do you want to be here? Oh, I'm really
excited about this, and Ben interrupts. He says, who's the girl?

(06:46):
And I said, well, their 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.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
And so this was five.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
So five yep, and and so like I said, the
ETF industries one hundred billion dollars. Now, as you know,
it's fifteen.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Billions that spy, right, half of that half of that.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
Spy, and it's a 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. 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, different exposures that nobody was really
thinking about at the time. Power Shares was really the

(07:25):
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 twelfth employee at power Shares. 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 say,
the whole industry is about one hundred million to your point, spy.
Spy was kind of fifty. I'd probably had ten thousand

(07:47):
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 which was
such an edge, as you know, you learned so much
just having these conversations repetitively, and so that was kind
of how I got to Chicago.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
So Invesco becomes a significant player in ETF's by acquiring
power Shares the very next year. So you're there for
a year, suddenly you're acquired. What's your new role like
at Invesco.

Speaker 4 (08:15):
Well, this is you know, this is a really interesting
time for me. And so you know, I know you
like to ask your guests what books they like to read.
I'm gonna I'm going to share a book early on.
I got I got multiple books for you today, Barry.
But the book that I that I like to read
is there's a book called Innovator's Dilemma by Clinton Christians.
Christians are right, and so think about what's happening now.

(08:36):
So you have a large asset manager and 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 six billion dollar ETF fast grow,
new technology, changing the game on what we're doing.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
Very disruptive, very disruptive.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
But as you know, in the Innovator's Dilemma, the legacy,
the 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.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
It's 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 at some ETF conferences
and you're just genuinely shocked at how much skepticism and yeah, yeah,
the kids are playing with this new fangled ETF thingy.

Speaker 4 (09:33):
Yeah, which is which is how so many of the
new technologies come about. Right, But what's so Invesco acquires it.
Various dude 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
head offices, and I was the one training them on ETFs,
and so we were having this interesting conversation. The light

(09:55):
bulb went off for me. It was like holy smokes.
I could see both perspectives. These were these were incredibly
success full asset management financial service individuals that were trying
to digest and understand which now in hindsight looks 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.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
And you know, when you think about certain companies that
have been really successful, they're the ones who have at
full 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, and
they just kept making it faster, cheaper, smaller, with more capacity.

(10:37):
And you could just hear someone saying, guys were selling
a ton of these with a gig capacity at five
hundred dollars. You now want to introduce a three gig
capacity at two hundred dollars.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
You're going to kill our old sales.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Didn't matter, better we do it than someone else.

Speaker 4 (10:51):
Right, That's exactly right. You know. One of the quotes
that we'd throw around a lot at that point is
that if you didn't like change, you were going to
like irrelevance even less. Right, And if you think about
that was what was going to 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 inform all of

(11:13):
those all of those things. But yeah, that was an
amazing time that then evolved into Hey, 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, we're
happy to buy an ETF off the exchange. In that way, Hey, Brian,
would you mind getting on a plane and going and

(11:35):
talking to some of these people and figure out what's
going on in these areas?

Speaker 2 (11:37):
So you go to Europe, in the Middle East, you
go to Asia. Eventually, after twelve years of work at
Vesco Power Shares, you're running e f E in terms
of ETFs. Tell us about that experience.

Speaker 4 (11:51):
That was an amazing thing. I had been doing this
global business development and so you know, combine a couple
of things that we've talked about here, So 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

(12:13):
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 them in portfolios? And then investor says, hey, would
you would you be interested in moving to moving the
family to London and running our international business everything kind
of xus. I jumped at the opportunity. I could have
been more excited. I didn't know when we talked about
my degree earlier international finance, I didn't know I was

(12:34):
going to move. But we were very open to it,
and you know, credit to my wife for being willing
to help raise the family.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
What was it like bringing the kids to London and
sort of hey, you're leaving everything behind at least for
a couple of years, but it's going to be a
great adventure.

Speaker 4 (12:47):
What were their react We moved over with a three
year old and eighteen month old and like a six
month old, and so the house hunt was all looking
for 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 have you
been there, Like, there's a lot of steps and so
we like everything that we were but that was kind

(13:07):
of how we were. That was kind of how we
were thinking about but it was but it was an
amazing opportunity to go over there and understand the business
landscape now. At the time, in Vesco 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

(13:30):
passive and the passive active debate was raging on and
people didn't quite realize yet that the ETF is a technology.
What you put inside of it is the investment engine, right.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
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.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
To name just one of the many, many, many benefits.
But you know you mentioned the MP three player earlier.
And this is the analogy that I always love to use.
You know, MP three is the evolution from the CD,
from the tape player, from the eight track, from the
vinyl record. Right. What you put on all of those
is the music, right, And so we love the benefits

(14:18):
of the MP three player. 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 see,
every single song that's ever been invented is in our pocket.
Plus podcasts like this, plus audio books, plus all of
these other things. So the convenience for the consumer, it's
the better technology. And then what we're having is this

(14:40):
interesting debate is so okay, So go back. I'm a
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. So we had to break that apart. We
had to make it very clear to investors that the
ETF was the livery mechanism. What you put inside of

(15:02):
it was the investment engine that.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
Makes a lot of sense. So how long were you
in London with Invesco.

Speaker 4 (15:07):
For so with Invesco that was four.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
Years and then JP Morgan comes a knock in and
they say, hey, we're looking for someone to head up
our international ETFs and since you're here in London anyway,
let's have a conversation. Tell us how you've found your
way over to JP Morgan?

Speaker 4 (15:28):
Yeah, you know, And it was it was one of
those interesting things where there had been about a thirteen
year run there where I was at Startup power Shares,
Fast Growth Power Fast Growth power Shares and then Investco
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 we were

(15:49):
starting to get to this point and some of the
things that I've explained now in hindsight are vary 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

(16:11):
and build something incredible and I like building. You know,
I said that some of the mentors that we talked
about earlier they were builders, and so I made the
difficult decision to, you know, go to JP Morgan at
that point in time.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Huh 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.

Speaker 4 (16:33):
Yeah, we loved our time in London. And if I
really want to get New Yorker's riled up, I'll say
that that New York 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, New York's
the alpha city, I'll give it that, But you do

(16:53):
have this kind of contrast between the two.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Is that generally true in Europe? Europe is a lot
more kicked back. Like I tell a story all the
time about being there in the midst of the dot
com implosion, and you could walk down the street in
New York and everybody's stressed out, and oh, yeah, the
economy is collapsing, But I have healthcare and retirement.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
I'll be okay. It's a different headspace.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
I feel that the human nature is true across both.
They're still you know, using our industry's language, there's still
fear and greed that they drive almost everything that happens.
The culture and the approach is different. So, you know,
I used to tell people if the objective was to
climb that mountain. In Europe, you said, we're going to
climb that mountain. Why do we want to climb that mountain.
That mountain looks high, what would what would be the

(17:35):
purpose of climbing the mountains? What's in it for me
to climb the mountain. In the US, you'd say, let's
climb the mountain. People say, let's go, and they're halfway
up the mountain and they crash and they roll back down.
And then half they up the mountain, they crash, they
roll back down. Both reach the top of the mountain
at about the same time. The approach of how you
get to the top of the mountain with, you know,
European culture versus US culture is always a little bit
of an interesting one. Of course, dramatic generalization there, but

(17:58):
there is a little bit too kind of that thoughtfulness
that that kind of comes uh, that kind of comes
through it in that So so you know, we moved
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 moving back. And you know, I was
fortunate that, you know, I'd had international experience very early on,

(18:20):
so I understood the x US 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 rapper and active and those those really
started to be the interesting conversations.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
Where they're not mutually exclusive.

Speaker 4 (18:43):
They're not mutually exclusive and and and you had a
lot of the passive providers that were going to do
their thing, and it was becoming quite obvious that that
was 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

(19:03):
really bring you to an interesting to an interesting space.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
So you're back in New York. What's that initial conversation
with Goeman Sachs? Like I wanna and my motivation for
asking that question is how do we get to the
title Chief Transformation Office, Sir? They could have just said, hey,
you're ahead of etf' us or head of whatever whatever
they wanted.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
You to do.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
This seems like it's a little more comprehensive.

Speaker 4 (19:29):
Yeah, that's fair. So we've kind of unpacked my journey,
you know, and I've been fortunate a bunch of those turns.
I've tried to point some of those turns out through
the conversation, and when you log those, you kind of
understand that how the world is constantly changing and you
need to constantly kind of stay out in front of that. Okay,

(19:50):
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 health care, 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

(20:14):
so many places beyond just ETFs. I could wax lyrical
bt ETFs for a very long time, but now technology
is 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

(20:38):
step back, I had the great opportunity to kind of
learn this cross section of the entire asset management industry
through my kind of earlier years, different chapters doing the
ETF thing. But now 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 three point

(20:58):
two trillion dollar asset manager.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Which is a giant. Like there are only so many companies.

Speaker 4 (21:03):
With the largest asset manager in the world.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Right, there's only so many firms that have trillions of
dollars as a wealth manager.

Speaker 4 (21:11):
It's a big number. That's not lost on us. We're
top five on active public, we're top five on private investing.
So we've got this combination of public and private capabilities.
We've got some of these technology underpinnings, and the conversation
is really you and I both know. I think a

(21:31):
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 the innovator's dilemma that we it
never stops. There's always this reinvention. There's always a new
technology that comes along that is driving this. And so
we really are focused to make sure that we are
positioned to serve our clients five years from now, and

(21:54):
to do that, we need to transform our business. The
industry is transforming and Golden needs to transform along with it.
And so there comes my title. Now. You know, I
like to joke like the nickname Optimus Prime hasn't hasn't
kicked in the way that I really really thought it
might have. 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 it's it's

(22:16):
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 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

(22:38):
that across the entire franchise at Goldman Sachs, which I'm
having a blast now. It's it's still build. There's a
lot of work that we have to do that goes
into that, but that's what I wake up every day
thing about.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
So I'm hearing two things from you. They're kind of fascinating. First,
you've lived through.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
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.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Totally get that.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
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's 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,

(23:31):
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 or someone else
is going to eat our lunch.

Speaker 4 (23:39):
Yeah. No, that that's exactly right. And and to your point,
if you're intentional about transforming your own business and making
those tough decisions, you stay out in front of this
and and so you know, I got excited about that role.
The platform the organization is incredible. When I step back

(23:59):
and think about world class asset managers, they really have
kind of four things 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 lock in tech
locking and tackling UH. They need to have modern UH
and innovative products that what you build on top of

(24:21):
those that the the the investment outcomes for investors performance
needs to be exceptional and and we're fortunate at Goldman
to have some incredible investors and 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 deliver that to the marketplace. You need
to talk to investors about that, so you know how

(24:41):
you market, how you distribute that that that needs to
come in because you know, I've seen a lot of
great products that nobody knew existed, and so it doesn't
go anywhere. And then you know, the fourth thing is
you kind of have to have operating rhythm. You need
to know what your identity is as an asset manager.
You need to know what your identity is as as
you know as an executive that these firms and and

(25:02):
have a way to execute against that in a in
a process oriented way. So those are the things that
I really, I really think about as you frame that conversation.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
So, Golman is a big shop. You're obviously not doing
all this heavy lifting yourself. Tell us about your team.

Speaker 4 (25:17):
Yeah, no, we've got We've got an incredible team across
all all of those areas. So who you're working directly with, 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
oup side that are that are thinking about the foundation,
incredible people on the technology side that are thinking about
you know, the nervous system of the of the asset manager.

(25:39):
You know, our product team is incredibly innovative. The investors.
You've had some of some of the investors on here before.
Asias was on who who's an incredible And he's an
incredible investor, He's got a great story 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 so on and so forth, I mean, it does
it does? You know? The what's this cool thing about

(26:00):
this title is it does give me some nice scope
to execute across really the entire leadership team of the
of the first.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
So you're not looking When I initially heard this, I
with my initial thought is Goldman just want to be
a bigger player in.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
The ETF space.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
But this sounds much bigger and more comprehensive.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
So when I step back and think about what are
the fast growing product areas of our industry, there's there's
three that are worth calling out. So alternatives, there's going
to be more alternatives and private investments in particularly particularly
retail portfolios going forward.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
And when you say privates, we're talking credit, equity, debt,
real estate, the whole gamut.

Speaker 4 (26:43):
Yeah, and and you know better than I, but there's
companies that are staying private for longer. You know, there's
companies that can access plenty of funding while staying private.
So the impetus to go public isn't necessarily there anymore.
But people want to own these world class companies and
so you know, that's an important thing now on the
credit side, if you can enhance your yield a little bit.

(27:03):
So okay, So so alternatives as portfolio is that own
both public and private is going to be a big thing.
So alternatives is growing to grow exceptionally. Separately managed accounts
and direct indexing. Again, we're you know, now we're talking
about investor outcomes. Am I getting a better tax outcome?
Can can we use technology to help improve my outcome?
On this? Direct indexing allows you to do that.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Did you guys build a direct index product or buy
a director.

Speaker 4 (27:27):
In We've built We've been doing this for years and
this is one of the things that I think makes
us unique is we've got a lot of these capabilities
that that were that were home grown within Goldman and
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 a proprietary thing, but now we've made

(27:48):
that available to investors around the world, so that it's
really an access story there. And then of course ETFs
are going to continue to grow. And as we think
about you know, public equities, you know, ETF probably has
the biggest addressable market and one of the largest kaggers,
but you've got to have all three of those. I
really think those three. So so those are the three
that I that I really, I really spend a lot

(28:09):
of time thinking about. And when we think about the
general generational wealth transform uh, that's going to 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 is going to want
to use their new modern r than the new modern
investment capabilities, and so these are gonna these are gonna

(28:30):
feed right into that. There will be tens of trillions
of dollars in motion. And how we think about, you know,
providing those services to clients is really important.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
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 going to 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?

Speaker 4 (29:01):
Yeah, No, I think it's one of our top priorities.
So we've got decades experience in doing private investments, and
and and I do want to be careful because a
lot of times people talk alternatives writ large, and there's
a lot of specifics in that, you know.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
Not talking about hedge fund.

Speaker 4 (29:17):
We 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 can use those in your portfolios. And

(29:39):
so but again it's just an innovation story. And these
these types of investments have been available to investors for decades,
but not available to all investors and not available through
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 going to continue to

(30:00):
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 it's important

(30:24):
for us to do that, and so we're really focused
in those areas.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
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?

Speaker 4 (30:41):
So alternatives and privates substantially ten tens of trillions of dollars.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Tens of trillions, Yeah, like this could be a twenty
thirty trillion dollars space.

Speaker 4 (30:53):
Yeah, I mean think think about the companies. You know,
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 around 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, when you pull in some of these other areas,
I think this will be massive. And ten years is

(31:13):
a really long time. And that's another thing that we've
learned in this industry is that you know, even when
markets wabble a little bit, once you stretch out and
look over the long haul these things, it's barely barely
registers on the chart. And so these these things do
grow in that way. And you know, 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,

(31:38):
that is only going to be a positive thing to.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
So I'm with you every step of the way so far.
But but let's take off our sonny sonny goggles and
say what are the challenges going to 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 new fangled private it's into a core portfolio

(32:02):
and a basic model. What's the challenge here?

Speaker 4 (32:08):
Education?

Speaker 3 (32:09):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 4 (32:10):
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 never buy an ETF.
I don't know if, however, buy a fixed income ETF.
Come on, Like 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 there's always the early adopters, the mavericks, and

(32:33):
then there's the and then there's the bulk and and
it kind of pulls through and so, you know, I
think it's incoming upon folks 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. Education. Here's
the benefits, here's how it works, here's how here's the

(32:54):
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, is 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. Wow,
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,

(33:17):
what we know is that when you put fixed income
in an ETF, you basically take an analog vehicle and
make it digital. We've taken these clunky bonds and we've
made them digital. Not only that, but we've diversified it.
So you buy one ETF ticker that diversifies you across
one hundred bonds. Often those bonds will trade it a
tighter spread than if you went and bought the basket

(33:38):
of the bonds separately. So you've got this innovation effect
that happens on the exchange. You can buy one share,
sell one share. You're not buying big one hundred thousand
dollars bond at a.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
Time, so fractional share you can.

Speaker 4 (33:49):
You can, you can do all sorts of things, and
but it took education for people to understand how that
was was going to work, 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 want
to 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.

(34:11):
And so I think the industry needs to do a
good job of coming together and making sure that we're educating.
But we need to be intentional about that. We can't
just let it happen. We need to lean in and
we need to invest in. We need to make sure
that we're educating people around that.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
Fast forward ten years in the future, what does success
look like in this space? And I'm not just talking
about AUM. Yeah, three becomes four, becomes seven, becomes ten.
Hold that aside, what does GSM look like ten years
from now? If you've been successful in your role as
chief transformation officer.

Speaker 4 (34:46):
Outcomes for clients are what they were intending to be.
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

(35:06):
of those rights as we possibly can, educating well, making
sure that we're communicating extremely clearly on what it is
that we're delivering to investors. I might even stop there
if we can. 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

(35:28):
the way, I think I think that would be success
for us. 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 be focused on.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
And sort of a broader question.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
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 highlight, 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,

(36:03):
occasionally there were ADRs trading on the New York socc 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 Paris versus New York in Chicago.

Speaker 4 (36:19):
I remember the first time I listened to Masters and
Business podcasts. I was running through Battersea Park in London
and thinking, Wow, this is this is this is great.
And Barry always says his guests are extra special. Man,
that must feel really good, and I was watching them
back I was wondering if I was going to get
the extra special today or the special or where that
was going to go. You raise an interesting point. You know,

(36:40):
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 still do have
some home bias things 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 differ diferences,
but there is a convergence. The conversations that I'm having

(37:03):
around the world are on the institutional side. They're a
little bit further ahead on the alts thing. They've been
using over there. Globally, I would say globally, institutions are
closer to twenty percent of their portfolio alternatives, whereas you know,
a typical retail investor is less than five percent, and
I think the retail investor goes closer to that twenty
percent number. And that's true, that's true really globally.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
Five years ago, right before the pandemic, I was having
a conversation with people in Europe and there was sort
of perplexed by the passive craze in the US. And now,
admittedly we had a lot more scandals in the two thousands,
everything from IPO spinning, anim spinning right up to Bernie Madoff.

(37:47):
But they kind of scratched their head and looked at
low cost passive indexing as like a distinkly American phenomena.
Is that still the case? Have they?

Speaker 3 (37:59):
Like?

Speaker 2 (38:01):
How much of that is is tax differences? How much
of that is they just want a hand on the tiller?
What's the gap?

Speaker 4 (38:08):
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 point being, there's a lot of different ways,
and really the point is is what outcome are you
looking for? And I would say that investors now are

(38:31):
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

(38:51):
investors may maybe we're managing risk by just going moving
away intentionally from owning all those names. I like to
remind people the S and P five hundred was launched
in nineteen twenty three, had two hundred and thirty three
stocks in it at the time. It didn't expand to
five hundred until the fifties. It didn't become an investable
product until until Vanguard and Bogel put it into a

(39:14):
into basically a fund at the time in seventy four
seventy I had I had early seventies in my head
as well, not available in an ETF until nineteen eighty three.
So if if that was the best investment. Why did
it take seventy years for it to be made available
to investors? And and and what's telling us that we
should stop that? So I'm a huge believer in innovation

(39:35):
going forward. Then the great investments are being 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. And so
all of these tools, and 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

(39:57):
they're they're like the songs on our You can put
the perfect playlist together for yourself, and you can combine
all these things to get 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 weighe through it a little bit more. I'm
sure there's great songs that I haven't heard yet. But
that's how's that's where this thing is going. As all

(40:20):
these these investments become available in that way.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
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's Sachs asset
management products, everything from what goes into them, the sort
of outcomes you're looking for. It sounds pretty comprehensive. What

(40:46):
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 edge and be the change as
opposed to being affected by the change. Like tell us
a little bit about your thoughts there.

Speaker 4 (41:07):
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 kager of
north of twenty percent 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 lead, Some firms are responding to that, but

(41:31):
ultimately it's the investors that are that are leading that conversation. Now,
once we realize that stuff like an SMA or direct
indexes 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,

(41:51):
using ETFs as the example, are now saying, hey, we've
got great investment capabilities, we just need to make those
available in the ETF technology, which is which is how
investors are trying to get that exposure.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
And define SMAs for people who don't know the shorthands.

Speaker 4 (42:05):
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 co mingled vehicle like an ETF for
or a mutual fund.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
All right, so let's talk about some new products that
have come out buffer ETFs. Tell us a little bit
about that.

Speaker 4 (42:28):
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 you.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
They have the new book. Definitely a lot of people.

Speaker 4 (42:41):
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 is, you know, great
New York and.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
A ton of other arts, a ton of artist range
is kind of incredible.

Speaker 4 (42:50):
I love it 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 in lightning strikes. You've got
to grind it out. Like these artists that have made
some of the most creative and best music, they're grinding
it out and sometimes it hits, and sometimes you really
got to work it. And he's asked, how do you
put together an album of twelve hits? You write twenty songs,

(43:11):
you pick the twelve best ones, and so you know,
that's something that comes to mind for me. 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

(43:32):
right now where people need to solve those 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 look
at the data, You talk to clients and understand what
it is that they're trying 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

(43:53):
of great rock and roll. We want to make sure
that it's available in the MP three rapper, you know,
the ETF rapper, and so you know, we launched active
munich capabilities, which we think is a differentiator. We're leaders
in that space.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
And then the bustle Active UNY tell us about active meetas.

Speaker 4 (44:05):
Yeah, active met. I mean, you know, so if you're
thinking about the high net worth or the ultra high
networth space, they think a lot about taxes, and so
when you think about the MUNI space right now, you
get the tax benefits of owning those. When you can
do all the things that we talked about earlier with
fixed income ETFs and muni's delivered, you know, you have
like a great combination. So we launched the different spectrum
of those longer durations, short duration, high yield, et cetera,

(44:28):
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 Advice. They did that themselves on some of the
names that were in the portfolios. But now that the

(44:49):
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 them into a big
uma or a broader portfolio, these can really play an interesting,
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,

(45:10):
and you say, hey, you know, these are designed to
protect you to the downside five to ten percent, fifteen percent,
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 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

(45:32):
around that. You know, at the beginning of each month,
you've got one that's resetting.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
So we're recording this literally first day of the new quarter. Yeah,
Q one, twenty twenty five. If it's going to be
known for anything, it's going to be all about the volatility.
That that felt like the craziest five percent rowdown we've
ever experienced. Wait, that was just five percent?

Speaker 3 (45:52):
Why did it feel like it was?

Speaker 2 (45:54):
You know, between the news flows and all the mayhem
around tariffs. How do you see market volatility influencing investor behavior?
Is the move into products like buffered ETFs just a
short term reaction to the volatility we're experiencing or is

(46:15):
this a more longer lasting phenomena.

Speaker 4 (46:17):
Yeah, this is the Warren Buffett you near term voting machine,
long term weighing machine. Right, the volatility the markets interer
day 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

(46:38):
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 going to be good.
If you are panicked in a scenario where the market's
drawn down five percent, you maybe weren't in the right

(46:59):
strategy to begin with. And so these things are common.
The market has a ten percent 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 SMP is
down one percent, you're doing it at the wrong time.
You're not in the right headspace to do that. You
should have made that decision six months prior, when you're

(47:20):
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,
are active munis, or you know, some of the other
strategies that we're delivering, those those can benefit Now we
think about direct indexing, it benefits from these drawdowns because
the way the technology can embed losses in your portfolio
can help offset some of the gains that you're going

(47:41):
to have at some point down down the road. And so,
you know, I think investors are starting to wake up
to that factor as well as like, oh, hold on
a second. Over time, if as long as this thing
continues to go up, this intra month, intra day volatility
may actually benefit me in a way because now these
different capabilities are available to me. And again that's something
that's a relatively new phenomenon that's been unlocked by technology

(48:02):
that just didn't exist before that.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
So let's talk a little bit about direct indexing. We're
big direct indexers. I was skeptical about this, I don't know,
ten fifteen years ago because the technology was so cludgy.
You would literally get these you know, stacks of reports.
But today, because of a free trading and b software,
it's fast, easy, you could tilt it and whatever factor

(48:27):
style you want. But but my initial thought on direct
indexing was, oh, some people aren't going to 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 servicing. Tell us a little bit
about Goldman Sax asset managements direct indexing products.

Speaker 4 (48:50):
People want to avoid taxes, they want to defer them, right,
and so these are.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
But these aren't deferring taxes. These are these being able
to offset gains. So you're 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 bechu. This is well understood and perfectly.

Speaker 4 (49:12):
Legit really really well put and that's super clear. And
so you know basically what happens is you manage it
back to an index. So let's call it the S
and P five hundred and so the ideas we're trying
to give you the S and P five hundred 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 the names
that are down, you can offset some of the gains

(49:34):
that are on the up stuff. 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. This isn't a monthly thing
or or some like set rigid time. We can actually
take take advantage of some of the the inter day
volatility and intra month volatility that we've been seeing lately.

(49:55):
And so you know, it's a fast growing space for
US where I think number one number two in the
country on you know, direct indexing solutions. And to your
point is it is helping individuals improve their tax outcomes. Now, internationally,
you know, direct indexing was a little bit more you know,
this customization thing, right, and we do still see that

(50:17):
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 story.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Well, when you say customization, I tend to think of
value driven. So 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 you're managing money for
the Catholic bishops, no abortificance and no companies that are
paying for things like that, like they're following a specific

(50:46):
set of These are our five key principles and we
can't violate them and express that in a portfolio.

Speaker 3 (50:53):
You can do that with direct index.

Speaker 4 (50:55):
Technology allows customization and that that's really what we're talking
about there is there's a customization based on that in
that sense values driven and 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 the exposures that people are looking for.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
So look around the corner for me, what are some
of the new technology 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 are the next areas that are ripe
for innovation and disruption?

Speaker 4 (51:32):
I think the client experience is going to be a
big part of that. How frequently can you get that information?
You know, one of the hallmarks of ETFs, of the
separate managed accounts that we've talked about direct indexing is transparency.
It used to be buyer beware. 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

(51:52):
way around. Investors have more information available to them than
ever before. It's a bit like you know here in
New York City. You know, you go to a restaurant,
you pull up you know, your favorite app, and you
won't go to a restaurant it's got less than four stars,
it'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.

(52:13):
And so 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 acknowledge that
we need to be providing real time information we acknowledge
that holdings need to be on the website on a

(52:34):
real time 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.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
I want to throw a curveball out.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
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.

Speaker 4 (52:59):
You got to ain't the fence, Mister Miyagui told us
right like, there was a method to the madness. There
A lot of times 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 wax on,
wax off, right, right, And of course we want those
outcomes for people, But if you get your mindset to

(53:21):
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. And we see
these people all the time. Whether it's professional athletes or

(53:42):
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 got to do. You
got to do the work, and you've got to 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

(54:04):
so you have to put in the work to get
the outcome that you want. 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.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
Are you suggesting that hard work compounds over time?

Speaker 4 (54:21):
I absolutely think I think it does. And I'll add
to that, you build your talent stack over time. And
I've referred to 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 know,
how to work with people that think about things differently
than you do. Like, once you add up all these things,

(54:42):
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.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
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 entertaining these days? What are
you watching or listening to? Okay, so, oh the way,
this is a pandemic holdover question that I keep finding.

Speaker 4 (55:06):
Everybody's still 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 that you haven't seen it, I'm recognizing your faces.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
No, I've seen the preview for.

Speaker 4 (55:26):
It, Jimmy Ivine and doctor Dre. So the you know
you want to talk about like.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
An Apple documentary, Well, you.

Speaker 4 (55:33):
Think about these two individuals. They basically have produced almost
every artist that we've heard for the last twenty years. Right,
it's first hand interviews with them and their artists talking about, Oh,
you know, Tom Petty, what was it like when you
were singing that song and Jimmy Ivine was in the
studio with you yelling at you and do it again
in another cut? Or what about what about this? Or
you know doctor Dre when you were in Compton in
la early on, like, you know, tell me about what

(55:55):
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 Beats headphones, which was of course acquired
by app. Right, that's even another meta thing for me
as well. So there's this amazing creative juice they're grinding
it out. Both of them tell a story of like
grinding it out, they create amazing music, and then it

(56:17):
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 not on Netflix anymore, so
you've got to go to Amazon Prime and buy it
and buy it there at least sas Rogue Warriors. Another
one on two for two.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
I never heard of that.

Speaker 4 (56:33):
One, sas Rogue Warriors World War two. The UK builds
an off record kind of rogue Warrior group, the original
kind of Seal Team six. Think about them like this,
and these guys 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

(56:53):
disrupt their fuel flow, or they would do these things
that were more targeted strikes to disrupt the flow. So
sas Rogue Warriors, I think that's maybe is a BBC.
It's more international. You got to 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 audiobooks, so right now I'm listening, like listening to
Go Like Hell, which was four versus Ferrari is the

(57:16):
movie that you've seen, but that was great. It's based
on this book, and how's the book. It's excellent. It
goes to many many different layers of detail than you
can get across in the In the movie, quotes Fromenzo
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 driving and innovation there as well. Right, So

(57:37):
Shelby comes up with the GT forty, which I just
took my son to a museum over the last week
and we were seeing one of the original GT four
forty of courses.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
The shockingly that people don't really.

Speaker 4 (57:47):
Forty inches tall, and one of the drivers was was
six foot two. So they built a little bubble the
game next verse in over his over his head on that.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Right, just so the helmet will fit into thought.

Speaker 4 (57:57):
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
then here's here's my last book for you, Barry, How
Music Got Free.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
I recall seeing the title go by.

Speaker 4 (58:17):
How Music Got Free? So to really bring all 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

(58:37):
then launches things like ready Napster. Right, So now Napster
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 eighteen dollars 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

(58:59):
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 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

(59:20):
forty percent this year because nobody's buying CDs. Anymore, and
it informs like this real life story of how the
entire music industry.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Got, how music got free, how music got I'm definitely
tell us about your mentors who helped shape your career.

Speaker 4 (59:36):
You know, so 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 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 years that I learned a

(01:00:00):
little bit something different from each of them. You know,
Bruce is an incredible entrepreneur. Bends an incredible product person
and an entrepreneur. In the UK, I'd work with some
people that had consulting backgrounds, and you know, at the
time I wasn't so sure, but you know, 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

(01:00:21):
connect with people and and really build rapport and ultimately
trust those I've been very fortunate to have those people
in my life.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
Some great names.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
Our final two questions, what sort of advice would you
give to a recent college grad interested in a career
and either investing or finance.

Speaker 4 (01:00:39):
You know, we talked a little bit about this, but
if you're more likely, if you're fresh out of 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

(01:01:01):
would say is I wouldn't be a Goldman if I
didn't start at Power Shares 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
and a small pond, and then I had an opportunity
to go to some of these other firms that I've
been and now ultimately at Goldmansacs. And so I do
think sometimes people look for the biggest pond and the
biggest brand, and I think if you can get into

(01:01:22):
a small pond, you get exposure to more skills in
a slightly different way, and you can build that skill
stack in a different way. You know. I often find
people you know they want to start on the you know,
the analyst programming and go. That's great. And firms like
ours train people and they do an amazing job. But
there are nonlinear ways to access some of these things.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
And our final question, what do you know about the
world of investing ETF's products, innovation and disruption today that
would have been useful thirty years ago when you were
first starting out.

Speaker 4 (01:01:53):
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 like.
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

(01:02:13):
center 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 decade,
little bit more probably others in the industry. It's the
people that really make this thing, this thing go. You know,
I know that sounds kind of cliche, but twenty five
years ago, when you're just trying to make it happen,
you know, maybe it's this next thing and it's really

(01:02:35):
sitting down, listening and connecting with people.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
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 you out any of the
five hundred somewhat we've done over the past eleven years.
You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Bloomberg, wherever

(01:03:02):
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 do not thank the
Cracked team who helps him put these conversations together each week.

(01:03:23):
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,