May 6, 2025 • 33 mins
Bob Bush, senior investment executive and the President, CEO and Co-Founder of Mutombo Coffee, shares the life lessons he learned on early-morning bus rides, and reflects on being allowed to fail (a little bit), talking his way onto Wall Street, getting “behind the numbers”, the head and the heart connection, helping develop Dubai, defining “social impact”, and being valuable instead of just being important.
Special for Action Catalyst listeners: visit the link below, or use code "Action25" at checkout at MutomboCoffee.com to receive 25% off your order.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Adam Outland (00:00):
It's great to meet you Bob, and I'm excited to talk
(00:05):
about your most recent endeavorsaround this. One of the things I
really love is exploring thejourney to the current
destination. When you seesomeone who's generated unique
success, I feel like your resumeunique is a good explanation.
(00:32):
Really excited to dig into it,because it's so different than a
lot of the experience thatpeople have that have been on
the show in the past. So hear alittle bit of the journey. Of
(00:52):
course, we can talk about thecurrent destination as well.
Bob Bush (00:59):
Yeah, love to do that. I mean, sometimes I think the
journey looks more like avagabond, and other times it's a
little bit more purposeful. Butin all cases, it's been wonderful.
Adam Outland (01:10):
I love it. So tell me, you know early days, what
were some of your conceptions ofwhat your you thought your path
was going to be? What track wereyou on when you were at a young
person, and then what changed?
Bob Bush (01:21):
Thank you for that good question. And I'm not one
to really do a lot of reflectingand reflection. I do a lot of
introspection, but not a lot ofreflecting. And I would say the
first journey of any meaningthat might be interesting to the
listeners is a journey that Itook, in fact, my first year of
(01:41):
high school, I was born andraised in Southern Illinois, the
Mississippi River bifurcates,Missouri and Illinois. So I'm on
the East St Louis side, lookingat the arch on the St Louis
Missouri side. And for fouryears, I commuted by bus, often
two busses, occasionally threebusses to get to high school.
(02:02):
And so I would say my mostsignificant data point on this
journey, as meandering as it'sbeen, is that commute. You know,
I'm 1314, years old. Can't driveyet, needed to get to. I went to
a Jesuit boys school across theriver, very fine School in St
Louis, that commute and beingand I was undersized. I was a
(02:23):
bespectacle kid. I was a geekykid. My book bag weighed almost
as much as I did. So you knowthose images of these little
kids with their backpacks andstuff, and so I'm kind of
dragging my, my pounds of booksto classes every day, just the
interaction with the public,right? The lady who's, you know,
(02:44):
at 6:30am she's just finishedher shift, or maybe the guy who
just finished his his midnightshift. And then there's the lady
who's on her way to work,because she's, you know, working
in a as a as a baker, and allthese different sort of types of
people as I'm making my way toschool, and I wasn't scared and
(03:06):
intimidated at all about it, butI'm like, How did my parents
allow me to do that? Right? Andthey said they were scared, but
I wanted to go to a good school.I enjoyed the challenge of that,
and I wasn't bothered by the twoplus hour commute. I was up at
530 whatever I got done, Iwasn't sitting at my desk by
(03:27):
eight for those four years. Sothat was the first journey, and
I remember thinking as I wouldgo back and forth, either going
towards the arch or away fromthe arch. It was a tale of two
cities, and I actually wroteabout that for my entrance exams
for college. How is it that sucha short piece of river that's
(03:48):
less than a mile wide, thedifference could be so grand and
so great, and so I'm leavingwhat would be called the inner
city of East St Louis, goinginto this beautiful campus with
very bright kids, and it comesfrom the St Louis side. I'm
sitting behind people whoseparents own some of the biggest
(04:09):
companies in the Midwest,certainly in St Louis sports
teams and engineering companiesand law firms, and that Taylor
two cities was very stark, but Ilearned through my classmates,
etc, that there was much more wehad in common than not.
Adam Outland (04:25):
Oh, that's really extraordinary. And, you know, I
think, you know, you get into adifferent environment. What I
heard in your story thatactually made me want to ask
another question. First is itsounded like you said you You
made this choice that you wantedto go to the school.
Bob Bush (04:37):
Yeah. And I can tell you, it's tough to make any
young teenager or kid, you know,at a certain point do anything.
It's just almost impossible. Soone of the things that my
parents did is allow you to makechoices, allow you to fail a
little bit, but not too much. Ascared me is okay. Maybe a
broken arm is okay for. Someparents, but let's not lose a
(05:00):
limb, right? Yeah. And so yeah,it was truly a choice to go
because I I had a fire and anappetite for I was very
intellectually curious, andunfortunately, the programs and
the schools that were sort ofthe easy commute were going to
meet my academic interests, andso I had to there were two
schools that across on the stlouis side that I that were
(05:23):
considered nationally ranked andworld class. I didn't know what
the Ivy League was called andall that stuff. Then I just knew
that I showed a little bit ofaptitude, and I wanted to be
around, you know, an intensesort of learning environment.
And so it was 100% my choicethat my parents supported. The
tuition was quite expensive. Isometimes worked after school,
(05:47):
and it taught me discipline andbut I it was a wonderful
academic setting. So it'scertainly it was my choice, and
it was a choice that really putme on a very firm footing as I
went to other steps in that journey.
Adam Outland (06:01):
Yeah, well, you take out any any part of the
rest of your story, and youalready have, you know, a
predictive amount of successthat you know is coming out of a
young teenager. Because theother thing I do know about
teenagers is that they're nottypically very inspired to work
extra hard.
Bob Bush (06:19):
Unbelievable.
Adam Outland (06:20):
So to actively make the choice for academic
rigor and to get on a bus ofstrangers, to get down there
says just a lot about the kindof character you had.
Bob Bush (06:30):
Two, brother. Two busses, sometimes three. But it
was fun. Learning was fun.Learning is still fun. I'm still
hyper curious. So it wasn't Ididn't consider it rigorous or
challenging, it was just kind ofa natural thing. So I guess I've
been blessed in that one.
Adam Outland (06:45):
So take that observation and then move that
forward through college to yourentry into the professional
world, like the things that justoccurred naturally to you. Yeah,
okay, I'll take three busses toget to a school that's
academically rigorous that I canlearn from, of course. That
makes sense. How did thatinterplay into your early career
as a professional?
Bob Bush (07:04):
Oh, boy, so lots and so I'll tell you a story. I I
was a philosophy major. Went toa small college, Amherst
College, about 1600 kids. Infact, my college was about the
same size as my high school, andI chose there because it was one
of the toughest colleges to getinto. I'd never been to Boston,
certainly not to Amherst. And wewent to looked at the big, you
(07:27):
know, Ivy League schools, and Ifell in love with the little
college setting, and studiedphilosophy and English
literature, read Latin andGreek. And so I'm I'm around
looking at all what my friendsare doing and classmates, and
they're going to Wall Street,they're going to consulting
firms, they're getting theirMBAs. And so wanted to learn
(07:47):
more about that. But mind you, Ihadn't studied finance or any of
that stuff, but I applied toWall Street because that's where
my friends were going. And Iheard you could make a lot of
money doing it. And much to mysurprise, they said, What does a
philosopher have to do withmaking money on Wall Street? And
I said, Well, I don't know, butI did pretty well in school. If
I don't have the same answerthat all the other kids give
(08:10):
you, I bet I'll give you aninteresting one. So they said,
Okay, you young whippersnapper,we're going to put you in sales.
And I said, No, I want to be inmergers and acquisitions.
They're like, You gotta bekidding. The M A guys, they're
the Masters of the Universe.Like, you gotta have a very
strong economic and maybephysics are certainly math,
(08:31):
grounding, etc, financegrounding. What do we do with
you there? And I said, Well,I'll learn it. Give me a chance.
And so I talked my way intobeing a financial analyst at a
major Wall Street firm, and theykicked my butt because I didn't
know nothing. 80 hour weeks, 90hour weeks, some 100 hour weeks,
(08:56):
and I was put on the largestleverage buyout in the history
of finance, RJR Nabisco, and Iwas one of the analysts on that
deal. And so I went fromstudying philosophy to doing
high stakes, large buyouts as ananalyst, and I had to make up
for what I didn't know. But I'mquite competitive, and I enjoyed
(09:19):
learning it, and I was a geek,so I didn't mind if I miss
social activities and stuff. Iwas sort of single minded about
learning this craft, but I hadto bust my hump, and
occasionally I was hazed and allof that. And that's just part of
it. There were not a lot ofAfrican Americans on Wall Street
doing that kind of work at all.And so the notion of having a
(09:42):
mentor or having the supportsystem, they, you know, they
throw you in the middle of thebaton, and you swim or you
don't. And I just sort of, well,let's just get on with it. And
so I kind of Mr. Magood my waythrough all of these things that
others would say are challengesand and because, by the grace of
God, I. Always landed on myfeet.
Adam Outland (10:02):
Yeah, with that analyst role, you being as
curious as you are, like, whatwere a couple of key
observations that you made as ananalyst that said, I can make a
career out of this thing?
Bob Bush (10:13):
I'm not so sure. Cuz now, looking on hindsight, I
don't want to appear to besmarter than I was then, but
certainly so there's theobservations I was making real
time, of course, and thenthere's the looking back 40
years observations. And so Idon't want to sort of conflate
them, but it's kind of difficultto couple them, but sort of one
(10:35):
of the things that is a threadfrom my experience in high
school and the experience I hadbeing in another pulled
environment with financialanalysts and these Wall Street
bankers and stuff is that therereally isn't that much
difference, a little bit ofgrit, a little bit of hard work,
being coachable, having somediscipline. It's all the same
(10:57):
kind of stuff. So oneobservation was, whatever the
challenge happened to be,despite the fact I didn't sort
of walk in with the same sort ofskill set, what I did have, from
my liberal arts background andmy philosophy background was
very helpful. I got somefundamental understanding of how
to approach a problem, how tosolve a problem, how to think
(11:19):
through a problem, thinkingabout methods and processes,
etc. And so I then I realizedthat why I navigated the
philosophy in the first place?Because I'm not particularly
intimidated by chaos or mess ordata that doesn't seem to align.
I have a bit of a naturalability, thank goodness, but
some training to go into,whether it's any field, I think,
(11:42):
and through a little bit of hardwork start myself out. And so I
think that was one of the keyobservations, is that this is
just another problem to solve.
Adam Outland (11:52):
Beautiful. Philosophy is a lot of things,
but there are a lot of rubricsfor problem solving baked into
philosophy. And I feel like somuch of navigating business and
growing business is a matter ofof untying the knots and solving
the problems that are bothinside and inside the business
and and the big problems thatare the business is designed to
(12:13):
solve for everyone else.
Bob Bush (12:15):
That's right. Well, you know the biggest knot,
right? It's the people problem,that's the biggest knot.
Adam Outland (12:23):
People are your biggest problem and your
greatest asset. So, so how doyou get just help us skip over
to this component. You know,your your role as a senior
investment executive took you toa lot of different geographies.
I mean, well, outside of the US,what drove you in that
direction? Or maybe it wasn'tyour choice.
Bob Bush (12:43):
Well, another sort of dot on this journey. We had a
friend and an undergrad whosister lived in Dubai in the
early 90s, and she was verycute, and he was very cool, and
he says going to visit mysister, as she lives in Dubai,
said, I'll come along. Neverbeen to Dubai. And so we went to
the desert, and I hung out withKareem and spent some time with
(13:05):
him and his family, etc. So thatI first traveled to Dubai was
personal one, and just for fun.And while I was there, I was
talking to a gentleman who was aBedouin, and he was dressed in
local garb, and he said, Whatare you doing here? And I said,
I'm on vacation. And he startedlaughing, right? This is the
early 90s, so he's struggling.Well, what are you doing on
(13:28):
vacation? I said, Well, I'dnever been and my friend is
here. So we started chatting,and he said something to me,
very profound. He said, We don'tneed you here. And I said, What
do you mean? He says, we cansend our kids all over the world
to your schools. So if you everwant to come back and you want
to do something here, it's notwhat you know, it's not your
(13:51):
learning, it's how youcommunicate and whether you
understand my culture and youcan communicate with me. And he
literally took his hand and hemoved it from his head to his
heart. You make that the headheart connection. And I would
love to have you back, but ifyou think you're going to go and
you're with your fancy schools,to come back and teach us
(14:13):
something or help us withsomething, don't need you for
that. And I really thought aboutthat because I was contemplating
going to business school anddoing more finance, etc, and I
shifted to go to studyinternational relations, Arabic
at Johns Hopkins School ofAdvanced International Studies.
So rather than getting atraditional finance degree, I
(14:35):
went and started languageskills, economics, cultural
orientations in Washington, DC,that actually helped orientate
me to, yeah, this is not aboutjust the dollars and the cents.
There are people behind this,right? You know, there's the
famous the famous phrase thatpilots don't fly planes, they
fly people. And so if you reallywant to get behind the numbers,
(14:58):
you got to understand. Whatthose numbers represent?
Adam Outland (15:01):
Yeah, it's not just about recording the data.
It's it's how your ability tointerpret it that really makes a
difference, right? And kind ofmakes or breaks someone's
ability, you know, career pathin that area, I can see that.
And I think the internationalcomponent, I mean, just it must
have been such a good learningexperience in and of itself, to
(15:22):
travel like you gave in thatgreat anecdote, meet with people
and break down differentbarriers that we all have in our
own mind and perceptions of theworld around us. So this brought
you to your experience with, youknow private equity, you know
venture capital, in theexperience that you had and
where that led you. What weresome of the bigger transactions
(15:44):
that you were a part of thatprovided significant lessons for
you?
Bob Bush (15:48):
Right, and so the role that venture can play in capital
formation and economicdevelopment, the role that PE
plays, I've had the good fortuneof I moved to Dubai in the early
2000s to to work. I was anadvisor to the Prime Minister of
the UAE and the ruler of Dubai,to talk about how to make Dubai
(16:09):
a viable and sustainableimmigrant that was world class,
and what kind of services couldbe offered. And I was a small
part of a great team that helpsdevelop the economic development
strategy of a wonderfulimmigrant and a wonderful
country, and so using thetraditional tools of M A and
(16:29):
financial structuring andengineering and and
understanding optionality andall these things to bring it
into a very practical way,helping to develop a country,
develop a region. Fabulous. Iwas head hunted for the role,
and they wanted someone that hadthis curious admixture of of
skills and experiences. So therandom guy I meet in Dubai is
(16:53):
why I study the Middle East andAfrica, because I've done
finance. I had the finance I hadworked in an entrepreneur work
working a couple of FinTechcompanies before it was called
FinTech around capitalformation. Because while I was
in graduate school, I finallydid go to graduate school, I
(17:13):
received a fellowship to travelthrough Africa, and I backpacked
through Africa for almost ayear, visiting capital cities,
and one of the the first place Ilanded was in Accra, Ghana,
because Accra had just launchedits its equity exchange and
Trying to understand how capitalformation could have an impact
(17:35):
on the development of Ghana, thecountry, all these little bits.
And I didn't know sort of wherethese things were going to go,
but it's headhunted. It's like,Well, you got the
entrepreneurial bit, you got theeconomic development bit, you
know about the region. You gotfinancial training. You seem to
(17:56):
be able to get acculturatedpretty quickly. Would you come
from New York and and work withus here in Dubai? And I remember
telling some of my friends, andthey were once, one funny story
is one of my friends said, youknow, Bob, this is money making
Manhattan. What are you going togo do in the desert? And I said,
(18:18):
you know, I don't know, butthey're saying all this crazy
stuff. If they can do half ofit, this is going to be a very
interesting journey, and if itdoesn't work out, I can always
come back to the US Now,fortunately, not married, no
kids, right? I didn't have thosetethers, so that's how I ended
(18:38):
up moving to Dubai in 2003 andthen working on what has to be
considered one of the mostamazing formations, country
formations and formations in thelast 100 plus years of what they
did in what was a desert intonow a top 10 global destination.
Adam Outland (18:55):
No kidding, and to be on the ground floor to
experience that. So there's astereotype Bob that maybe isn't
completely pervasive, but thatfolks who choose private equity
and venture and these thingsthat you know, you know, they
don't really care about socialimpact. But this isn't obviously
a true stereotype. There's manythat are involved, including
(19:17):
yourself. And so what you know,you obviously it took a slightly
unconventional path to get intothe path that you did through
philosophy undergrad, so youalready were outside the box.
But what led you down the pathof creating social impact, and
how has business helped with that?
Bob Bush (19:35):
Yeah, I think you can sort of see the dots right. So
before you can criticizesomething, you might want to
become an expert at it.Everyone's got an opinion, but
every opinion is not informed.And so just starting with, what
does social impact mean? Right?That's environmental
sustainability, that's financialsustainability, right? That's
(19:59):
that, you know, those elements.Have some type of capital
component, and whether thatcapital is relational capital or
social capital or financialcapital, I just see PE or
finance is just one of the toolsthat is necessary to creating
impact. And that social impactis financial impact, that social
(20:19):
impact is economic impact, thatsocial impact is environmental
impact, etc. And so getting someproper training, and then
working in a in an immigrant andwith other governments to sort
of figure out how we can takethese traditional access to
capital issues, access to marketissues, and create business
(20:41):
models around them. To me, thisis a culmination of all of those
other things that I've done tosee if I can take what to your
point, or skills, or one type ofimpact shareholder, ROI, and see
how you can if you have any kindof facility, right? And you
know, one of the, one of thechallenges that the world of
(21:02):
Silicon Valley has and the worldof Wall Street have is, what
kinds of questions are youasking? You ask the kind of
question about the kind ofproblem you want to solve, and
then the money goes to that. Andyou can, you know, do we really
need flying cars? But if that'sthe question, you can you can
(21:23):
come out a viable businessmodel, there'll be someone
that'll help you fund buyingcars, absolutely to your point
of sort of coming from theoutside, whether that's the
outside, or having to commute togo to St Louis for school. I've
always had the blessing of beingable to look at something a
(21:44):
little bit more broadly thanmost, and I apply that natural
instinct and these traditionalskills to go, can I take this
totality of all these otherexperiences I've used in some
perhaps traditional ways, andbring those skills into
something by asking differentquestions and hopefully getting
(22:04):
better output and and I rememberone of the first images that I
ever had that gave me a globalperspective, and my father and
mother still have it. There wasa an African boy who was
skeletal. Could not have beenmore than six or seven years
old, eating from a bowl that hada few pieces of rice, and I
(22:25):
remember asking them, and Istill ask today, why does that
have to exist in our world withso much surplus? That's a
question that I had as a littleboy, and a version of that
question I still ask myself, aswe now are dealing much more
focused on the agriculture andcoffee and cocoa and these
(22:46):
things. So it may look like it'sthis sort of security, strange
path, journey to get into socialimpact, but I think in the way
we define social impact, right?We're not a charity, commerce.
Can we use the commerce overcharity? My partner may rest in
peace, has has a very viablefoundation that has done a lot
(23:07):
of foundational work and hasgiven millions of dollars in
education and health care. It'sa nonprofit. When we started
this, he and I said, I we wantthis to be a social enterprise
that needs to use the samemetrics of of operational
efficiency and capitalefficiency as any other
business, because that'sviability. And we're going to
(23:31):
use this model and the thingsthat we've learned. So sir, you
are the passion and I'm thepurpose, and together, we're
going to see if we can ask somegood questions to have some impact.
Adam Outland (23:43):
I love it. I remember as a 20 something year
old having a an early midlifecrisis, very early midlife
crisis, where I was thinkingabout, what's the purpose of
life, what's the impact I wantto have, you know, and that kind
of led me to like, what's theproblem I want to solve? And I
thought, Wow, there's so manyproblems to solve, so I should
(24:04):
probably be in politics. Youknow, I'd studied government and
politics as a result, andthere's a point where I just
shut myself in my room for acouple of days to just really
write out all the things thatwere in my brain and to process
where, where I wanted to go and,you know, looking back on my
studies, you know, studyinggovernment, politics at
(24:24):
University of Maryland actuallyled me to this belief that being
a politician actually is quitelimited in the type of impact
that you can have. And that'strue and not true, probably, but
I came to a personal conclusionthat one of the biggest
challenges were, are the people?What we started, people are the
biggest problem, the greatestasset, right? And I thought to
(24:46):
myself, you know, if we couldchange or impact education, and
maybe even in unconventionalways, we could help young people
develop a higher EQ, some of thethings that are not taught in
schools, but how we manage our.Emotions, so that their emotions
can't be hijacked by others. Youknow that they could have more
self confidence and self value,that they can reverse engineer
(25:08):
their goals? I mean, thesethings that had helped me have a
transformative experience in mylife, that maybe that was the
best place of impact, and thatled to a career of coaching and
development and building abusiness that does the same. And
so I hear your story, and Ithink I agree with you that a
big part of life is making surewe're solving the most important
(25:29):
problems, and everybody's got adifferent perspective on that,
but we have some brilliantpeople in this world that are
chasing relatively sillyproblems to solve, or in some
cases brilliant people thatchoose maybe to just be
important in this world insteadof being of value. You know,
what I hear you doing is beingof value. And so what are the
(25:50):
biggest problems that you thinkare worth solving?
Bob Bush (25:53):
Wow, man, like, how long is this show? My goodness
first. Thank you for that. Youknow, do your own reflection.
And I love how you summed it up.You know, there are people in
the world that choose to be moreimportant instead of being more
valuable. And it kind of linksto the conversation that we had
(26:13):
a little bit earlier aboutunderstanding valuation mergers
and acquisitions, the valuation,the value to value an asset, and
understanding the values of anasset, right? And as much as
people can be a problem withregards to efficiency and
getting things done that thevalues are have to be about,
(26:33):
then it have to bedistinguishable from the dollar
value. And this is a way that,when I'm sort of approaching a
problem, you know, I I'm verymindful of the, you know, what
are we measuring? How do wemeasure it? And is this, is this
going to be a values drivenmetric, or is this a valuation
driven metric? And they're bothimportant when you're talking
(26:57):
about creating a sustainablemodel. And so in to get you your
question about what kinds ofproblems to solve, every problem
at some point has this tension,are we thinking short term? Are
we thinking long term? Or wewant to, we want to, you know
whether it's health care,there's a cost benefit analysis.
(27:18):
Well, if we can get the vaccineout six months earlier, it is
going to have X percentage ofpeople that can help, but Y
percentage of the people are notgoing to be helped because we
haven't, because there's maybesome additional things that we
can do. There's alwayscontraindications, right?
There's always risks, there'salways the obverse side of that
(27:41):
coin. And so to me, it's not somuch which problem is more or
less important. It is. How doyou tackle whatever problem
you're you're doing right?Because I don't want your
listeners, and I certainly don'tthink this way to think that.
Big problems, major problems.Oh, my problem is, I'm trying to
(28:02):
save the world from malaria.There are problems in your
neighborhood, there are problemsin your school. The question is
the mindset around it, so let'snot think about it in terms of
big problems or little problems.It is whatever problem there is
before you bring it, bring aninterdisciplinary, bring a
(28:22):
diverse, bring a viable bring aperspective, a mindset,
recognizing that value andvalues are not the same thing.
Adam Outland (28:30):
Yeah, yeah, well done. I think that's a good it's
a great perspective. You know,big problems are important to
solve, but at the same time,they don't have to be hairy and
audacious and worldwide, infact, you know, we need a lot
more people solving the localproblem that adds up to a big
solution. And it's really abouthaving a problem solving mindset
(28:50):
and how to tackle them.
Bob Bush (28:51):
That's right.
It's great to meet you Bob, and I'm excited to talk
(00:05):
about your most recent endeavorsaround this. One of the things I
really love is exploring thejourney to the current
destination. When you seesomeone who's generated unique
success, I feel like your resumeunique is a good explanation.
(00:32):
Really excited to dig into it,because it's so different than a
lot of the experience thatpeople have that have been on
the show in the past. So hear alittle bit of the journey. Of
(00:52):
course, we can talk about thecurrent destination as well.
Bob Bush (00:59):
Yeah, love to do that. I mean, sometimes I think the
journey looks more like avagabond, and other times it's a
little bit more purposeful. Butin all cases, it's been wonderful.
Adam Outland (01:10):
I love it. So tell me, you know early days, what
were some of your conceptions ofwhat your you thought your path
was going to be? What track wereyou on when you were at a young
person, and then what changed?
Bob Bush (01:21):
Thank you for that good question. And I'm not one
to really do a lot of reflectingand reflection. I do a lot of
introspection, but not a lot ofreflecting. And I would say the
first journey of any meaningthat might be interesting to the
listeners is a journey that Itook, in fact, my first year of
(01:41):
high school, I was born andraised in Southern Illinois, the
Mississippi River bifurcates,Missouri and Illinois. So I'm on
the East St Louis side, lookingat the arch on the St Louis
Missouri side. And for fouryears, I commuted by bus, often
two busses, occasionally threebusses to get to high school.
(02:02):
And so I would say my mostsignificant data point on this
journey, as meandering as it'sbeen, is that commute. You know,
I'm 1314, years old. Can't driveyet, needed to get to. I went to
a Jesuit boys school across theriver, very fine School in St
Louis, that commute and beingand I was undersized. I was a
(02:23):
bespectacle kid. I was a geekykid. My book bag weighed almost
as much as I did. So you knowthose images of these little
kids with their backpacks andstuff, and so I'm kind of
dragging my, my pounds of booksto classes every day, just the
interaction with the public,right? The lady who's, you know,
(02:44):
at 6:30am she's just finishedher shift, or maybe the guy who
just finished his his midnightshift. And then there's the lady
who's on her way to work,because she's, you know, working
in a as a as a baker, and allthese different sort of types of
people as I'm making my way toschool, and I wasn't scared and
(03:06):
intimidated at all about it, butI'm like, How did my parents
allow me to do that? Right? Andthey said they were scared, but
I wanted to go to a good school.I enjoyed the challenge of that,
and I wasn't bothered by the twoplus hour commute. I was up at
530 whatever I got done, Iwasn't sitting at my desk by
(03:27):
eight for those four years. Sothat was the first journey, and
I remember thinking as I wouldgo back and forth, either going
towards the arch or away fromthe arch. It was a tale of two
cities, and I actually wroteabout that for my entrance exams
for college. How is it that sucha short piece of river that's
(03:48):
less than a mile wide, thedifference could be so grand and
so great, and so I'm leavingwhat would be called the inner
city of East St Louis, goinginto this beautiful campus with
very bright kids, and it comesfrom the St Louis side. I'm
sitting behind people whoseparents own some of the biggest
(04:09):
companies in the Midwest,certainly in St Louis sports
teams and engineering companiesand law firms, and that Taylor
two cities was very stark, but Ilearned through my classmates,
etc, that there was much more wehad in common than not.
Adam Outland (04:25):
Oh, that's really extraordinary. And, you know, I
think, you know, you get into adifferent environment. What I
heard in your story thatactually made me want to ask
another question. First is itsounded like you said you You
made this choice that you wantedto go to the school.
Bob Bush (04:37):
Yeah. And I can tell you, it's tough to make any
young teenager or kid, you know,at a certain point do anything.
It's just almost impossible. Soone of the things that my
parents did is allow you to makechoices, allow you to fail a
little bit, but not too much. Ascared me is okay. Maybe a
broken arm is okay for. Someparents, but let's not lose a
(05:00):
limb, right? Yeah. And so yeah,it was truly a choice to go
because I I had a fire and anappetite for I was very
intellectually curious, andunfortunately, the programs and
the schools that were sort ofthe easy commute were going to
meet my academic interests, andso I had to there were two
schools that across on the stlouis side that I that were
(05:23):
considered nationally ranked andworld class. I didn't know what
the Ivy League was called andall that stuff. Then I just knew
that I showed a little bit ofaptitude, and I wanted to be
around, you know, an intensesort of learning environment.
And so it was 100% my choicethat my parents supported. The
tuition was quite expensive. Isometimes worked after school,
(05:47):
and it taught me discipline andbut I it was a wonderful
academic setting. So it'scertainly it was my choice, and
it was a choice that really putme on a very firm footing as I
went to other steps in that journey.
Adam Outland (06:01):
Yeah, well, you take out any any part of the
rest of your story, and youalready have, you know, a
predictive amount of successthat you know is coming out of a
young teenager. Because theother thing I do know about
teenagers is that they're nottypically very inspired to work
extra hard.
Bob Bush (06:19):
Unbelievable.
Adam Outland (06:20):
So to actively make the choice for academic
rigor and to get on a bus ofstrangers, to get down there
says just a lot about the kindof character you had.
Bob Bush (06:30):
Two, brother. Two busses, sometimes three. But it
was fun. Learning was fun.Learning is still fun. I'm still
hyper curious. So it wasn't Ididn't consider it rigorous or
challenging, it was just kind ofa natural thing. So I guess I've
been blessed in that one.
Adam Outland (06:45):
So take that observation and then move that
forward through college to yourentry into the professional
world, like the things that justoccurred naturally to you. Yeah,
okay, I'll take three busses toget to a school that's
academically rigorous that I canlearn from, of course. That
makes sense. How did thatinterplay into your early career
as a professional?
Bob Bush (07:04):
Oh, boy, so lots and so I'll tell you a story. I I
was a philosophy major. Went toa small college, Amherst
College, about 1600 kids. Infact, my college was about the
same size as my high school, andI chose there because it was one
of the toughest colleges to getinto. I'd never been to Boston,
certainly not to Amherst. And wewent to looked at the big, you
(07:27):
know, Ivy League schools, and Ifell in love with the little
college setting, and studiedphilosophy and English
literature, read Latin andGreek. And so I'm I'm around
looking at all what my friendsare doing and classmates, and
they're going to Wall Street,they're going to consulting
firms, they're getting theirMBAs. And so wanted to learn
(07:47):
more about that. But mind you, Ihadn't studied finance or any of
that stuff, but I applied toWall Street because that's where
my friends were going. And Iheard you could make a lot of
money doing it. And much to mysurprise, they said, What does a
philosopher have to do withmaking money on Wall Street? And
I said, Well, I don't know, butI did pretty well in school. If
I don't have the same answerthat all the other kids give
(08:10):
you, I bet I'll give you aninteresting one. So they said,
Okay, you young whippersnapper,we're going to put you in sales.
And I said, No, I want to be inmergers and acquisitions.
They're like, You gotta bekidding. The M A guys, they're
the Masters of the Universe.Like, you gotta have a very
strong economic and maybephysics are certainly math,
(08:31):
grounding, etc, financegrounding. What do we do with
you there? And I said, Well,I'll learn it. Give me a chance.
And so I talked my way intobeing a financial analyst at a
major Wall Street firm, and theykicked my butt because I didn't
know nothing. 80 hour weeks, 90hour weeks, some 100 hour weeks,
(08:56):
and I was put on the largestleverage buyout in the history
of finance, RJR Nabisco, and Iwas one of the analysts on that
deal. And so I went fromstudying philosophy to doing
high stakes, large buyouts as ananalyst, and I had to make up
for what I didn't know. But I'mquite competitive, and I enjoyed
(09:19):
learning it, and I was a geek,so I didn't mind if I miss
social activities and stuff. Iwas sort of single minded about
learning this craft, but I hadto bust my hump, and
occasionally I was hazed and allof that. And that's just part of
it. There were not a lot ofAfrican Americans on Wall Street
doing that kind of work at all.And so the notion of having a
(09:42):
mentor or having the supportsystem, they, you know, they
throw you in the middle of thebaton, and you swim or you
don't. And I just sort of, well,let's just get on with it. And
so I kind of Mr. Magood my waythrough all of these things that
others would say are challengesand and because, by the grace of
God, I. Always landed on myfeet.
Adam Outland (10:02):
Yeah, with that analyst role, you being as
curious as you are, like, whatwere a couple of key
observations that you made as ananalyst that said, I can make a
career out of this thing?
Bob Bush (10:13):
I'm not so sure. Cuz now, looking on hindsight, I
don't want to appear to besmarter than I was then, but
certainly so there's theobservations I was making real
time, of course, and thenthere's the looking back 40
years observations. And so Idon't want to sort of conflate
them, but it's kind of difficultto couple them, but sort of one
(10:35):
of the things that is a threadfrom my experience in high
school and the experience I hadbeing in another pulled
environment with financialanalysts and these Wall Street
bankers and stuff is that therereally isn't that much
difference, a little bit ofgrit, a little bit of hard work,
being coachable, having somediscipline. It's all the same
(10:57):
kind of stuff. So oneobservation was, whatever the
challenge happened to be,despite the fact I didn't sort
of walk in with the same sort ofskill set, what I did have, from
my liberal arts background andmy philosophy background was
very helpful. I got somefundamental understanding of how
to approach a problem, how tosolve a problem, how to think
(11:19):
through a problem, thinkingabout methods and processes,
etc. And so I then I realizedthat why I navigated the
philosophy in the first place?Because I'm not particularly
intimidated by chaos or mess ordata that doesn't seem to align.
I have a bit of a naturalability, thank goodness, but
some training to go into,whether it's any field, I think,
(11:42):
and through a little bit of hardwork start myself out. And so I
think that was one of the keyobservations, is that this is
just another problem to solve.
Adam Outland (11:52):
Beautiful. Philosophy is a lot of things,
but there are a lot of rubricsfor problem solving baked into
philosophy. And I feel like somuch of navigating business and
growing business is a matter ofof untying the knots and solving
the problems that are bothinside and inside the business
and and the big problems thatare the business is designed to
(12:13):
solve for everyone else.
Bob Bush (12:15):
That's right. Well, you know the biggest knot,
right? It's the people problem,that's the biggest knot.
Adam Outland (12:23):
People are your biggest problem and your
greatest asset. So, so how doyou get just help us skip over
to this component. You know,your your role as a senior
investment executive took you toa lot of different geographies.
I mean, well, outside of the US,what drove you in that
direction? Or maybe it wasn'tyour choice.
Bob Bush (12:43):
Well, another sort of dot on this journey. We had a
friend and an undergrad whosister lived in Dubai in the
early 90s, and she was verycute, and he was very cool, and
he says going to visit mysister, as she lives in Dubai,
said, I'll come along. Neverbeen to Dubai. And so we went to
the desert, and I hung out withKareem and spent some time with
(13:05):
him and his family, etc. So thatI first traveled to Dubai was
personal one, and just for fun.And while I was there, I was
talking to a gentleman who was aBedouin, and he was dressed in
local garb, and he said, Whatare you doing here? And I said,
I'm on vacation. And he startedlaughing, right? This is the
early 90s, so he's struggling.Well, what are you doing on
(13:28):
vacation? I said, Well, I'dnever been and my friend is
here. So we started chatting,and he said something to me,
very profound. He said, We don'tneed you here. And I said, What
do you mean? He says, we cansend our kids all over the world
to your schools. So if you everwant to come back and you want
to do something here, it's notwhat you know, it's not your
(13:51):
learning, it's how youcommunicate and whether you
understand my culture and youcan communicate with me. And he
literally took his hand and hemoved it from his head to his
heart. You make that the headheart connection. And I would
love to have you back, but ifyou think you're going to go and
you're with your fancy schools,to come back and teach us
(14:13):
something or help us withsomething, don't need you for
that. And I really thought aboutthat because I was contemplating
going to business school anddoing more finance, etc, and I
shifted to go to studyinternational relations, Arabic
at Johns Hopkins School ofAdvanced International Studies.
So rather than getting atraditional finance degree, I
(14:35):
went and started languageskills, economics, cultural
orientations in Washington, DC,that actually helped orientate
me to, yeah, this is not aboutjust the dollars and the cents.
There are people behind this,right? You know, there's the
famous the famous phrase thatpilots don't fly planes, they
fly people. And so if you reallywant to get behind the numbers,
(14:58):
you got to understand. Whatthose numbers represent?
Adam Outland (15:01):
Yeah, it's not just about recording the data.
It's it's how your ability tointerpret it that really makes a
difference, right? And kind ofmakes or breaks someone's
ability, you know, career pathin that area, I can see that.
And I think the internationalcomponent, I mean, just it must
have been such a good learningexperience in and of itself, to
(15:22):
travel like you gave in thatgreat anecdote, meet with people
and break down differentbarriers that we all have in our
own mind and perceptions of theworld around us. So this brought
you to your experience with, youknow private equity, you know
venture capital, in theexperience that you had and
where that led you. What weresome of the bigger transactions
(15:44):
that you were a part of thatprovided significant lessons for
you?
Bob Bush (15:48):
Right, and so the role that venture can play in capital
formation and economicdevelopment, the role that PE
plays, I've had the good fortuneof I moved to Dubai in the early
2000s to to work. I was anadvisor to the Prime Minister of
the UAE and the ruler of Dubai,to talk about how to make Dubai
(16:09):
a viable and sustainableimmigrant that was world class,
and what kind of services couldbe offered. And I was a small
part of a great team that helpsdevelop the economic development
strategy of a wonderfulimmigrant and a wonderful
country, and so using thetraditional tools of M A and
(16:29):
financial structuring andengineering and and
understanding optionality andall these things to bring it
into a very practical way,helping to develop a country,
develop a region. Fabulous. Iwas head hunted for the role,
and they wanted someone that hadthis curious admixture of of
skills and experiences. So therandom guy I meet in Dubai is
(16:53):
why I study the Middle East andAfrica, because I've done
finance. I had the finance I hadworked in an entrepreneur work
working a couple of FinTechcompanies before it was called
FinTech around capitalformation. Because while I was
in graduate school, I finallydid go to graduate school, I
(17:13):
received a fellowship to travelthrough Africa, and I backpacked
through Africa for almost ayear, visiting capital cities,
and one of the the first place Ilanded was in Accra, Ghana,
because Accra had just launchedits its equity exchange and
Trying to understand how capitalformation could have an impact
(17:35):
on the development of Ghana, thecountry, all these little bits.
And I didn't know sort of wherethese things were going to go,
but it's headhunted. It's like,Well, you got the
entrepreneurial bit, you got theeconomic development bit, you
know about the region. You gotfinancial training. You seem to
(17:56):
be able to get acculturatedpretty quickly. Would you come
from New York and and work withus here in Dubai? And I remember
telling some of my friends, andthey were once, one funny story
is one of my friends said, youknow, Bob, this is money making
Manhattan. What are you going togo do in the desert? And I said,
(18:18):
you know, I don't know, butthey're saying all this crazy
stuff. If they can do half ofit, this is going to be a very
interesting journey, and if itdoesn't work out, I can always
come back to the US Now,fortunately, not married, no
kids, right? I didn't have thosetethers, so that's how I ended
(18:38):
up moving to Dubai in 2003 andthen working on what has to be
considered one of the mostamazing formations, country
formations and formations in thelast 100 plus years of what they
did in what was a desert intonow a top 10 global destination.
Adam Outland (18:55):
No kidding, and to be on the ground floor to
experience that. So there's astereotype Bob that maybe isn't
completely pervasive, but thatfolks who choose private equity
and venture and these thingsthat you know, you know, they
don't really care about socialimpact. But this isn't obviously
a true stereotype. There's manythat are involved, including
(19:17):
yourself. And so what you know,you obviously it took a slightly
unconventional path to get intothe path that you did through
philosophy undergrad, so youalready were outside the box.
But what led you down the pathof creating social impact, and
how has business helped with that?
Bob Bush (19:35):
Yeah, I think you can sort of see the dots right. So
before you can criticizesomething, you might want to
become an expert at it.Everyone's got an opinion, but
every opinion is not informed.And so just starting with, what
does social impact mean? Right?That's environmental
sustainability, that's financialsustainability, right? That's
(19:59):
that, you know, those elements.Have some type of capital
component, and whether thatcapital is relational capital or
social capital or financialcapital, I just see PE or
finance is just one of the toolsthat is necessary to creating
impact. And that social impactis financial impact, that social
(20:19):
impact is economic impact, thatsocial impact is environmental
impact, etc. And so getting someproper training, and then
working in a in an immigrant andwith other governments to sort
of figure out how we can takethese traditional access to
capital issues, access to marketissues, and create business
(20:41):
models around them. To me, thisis a culmination of all of those
other things that I've done tosee if I can take what to your
point, or skills, or one type ofimpact shareholder, ROI, and see
how you can if you have any kindof facility, right? And you
know, one of the, one of thechallenges that the world of
(21:02):
Silicon Valley has and the worldof Wall Street have is, what
kinds of questions are youasking? You ask the kind of
question about the kind ofproblem you want to solve, and
then the money goes to that. Andyou can, you know, do we really
need flying cars? But if that'sthe question, you can you can
(21:23):
come out a viable businessmodel, there'll be someone
that'll help you fund buyingcars, absolutely to your point
of sort of coming from theoutside, whether that's the
outside, or having to commute togo to St Louis for school. I've
always had the blessing of beingable to look at something a
(21:44):
little bit more broadly thanmost, and I apply that natural
instinct and these traditionalskills to go, can I take this
totality of all these otherexperiences I've used in some
perhaps traditional ways, andbring those skills into
something by asking differentquestions and hopefully getting
(22:04):
better output and and I rememberone of the first images that I
ever had that gave me a globalperspective, and my father and
mother still have it. There wasa an African boy who was
skeletal. Could not have beenmore than six or seven years
old, eating from a bowl that hada few pieces of rice, and I
(22:25):
remember asking them, and Istill ask today, why does that
have to exist in our world withso much surplus? That's a
question that I had as a littleboy, and a version of that
question I still ask myself, aswe now are dealing much more
focused on the agriculture andcoffee and cocoa and these
(22:46):
things. So it may look like it'sthis sort of security, strange
path, journey to get into socialimpact, but I think in the way
we define social impact, right?We're not a charity, commerce.
Can we use the commerce overcharity? My partner may rest in
peace, has has a very viablefoundation that has done a lot
(23:07):
of foundational work and hasgiven millions of dollars in
education and health care. It'sa nonprofit. When we started
this, he and I said, I we wantthis to be a social enterprise
that needs to use the samemetrics of of operational
efficiency and capitalefficiency as any other
business, because that'sviability. And we're going to
(23:31):
use this model and the thingsthat we've learned. So sir, you
are the passion and I'm thepurpose, and together, we're
going to see if we can ask somegood questions to have some impact.
Adam Outland (23:43):
I love it. I remember as a 20 something year
old having a an early midlifecrisis, very early midlife
crisis, where I was thinkingabout, what's the purpose of
life, what's the impact I wantto have, you know, and that kind
of led me to like, what's theproblem I want to solve? And I
thought, Wow, there's so manyproblems to solve, so I should
(24:04):
probably be in politics. Youknow, I'd studied government and
politics as a result, andthere's a point where I just
shut myself in my room for acouple of days to just really
write out all the things thatwere in my brain and to process
where, where I wanted to go and,you know, looking back on my
studies, you know, studyinggovernment, politics at
(24:24):
University of Maryland actuallyled me to this belief that being
a politician actually is quitelimited in the type of impact
that you can have. And that'strue and not true, probably, but
I came to a personal conclusionthat one of the biggest
challenges were, are the people?What we started, people are the
biggest problem, the greatestasset, right? And I thought to
(24:46):
myself, you know, if we couldchange or impact education, and
maybe even in unconventionalways, we could help young people
develop a higher EQ, some of thethings that are not taught in
schools, but how we manage our.Emotions, so that their emotions
can't be hijacked by others. Youknow that they could have more
self confidence and self value,that they can reverse engineer
(25:08):
their goals? I mean, thesethings that had helped me have a
transformative experience in mylife, that maybe that was the
best place of impact, and thatled to a career of coaching and
development and building abusiness that does the same. And
so I hear your story, and Ithink I agree with you that a
big part of life is making surewe're solving the most important
(25:29):
problems, and everybody's got adifferent perspective on that,
but we have some brilliantpeople in this world that are
chasing relatively sillyproblems to solve, or in some
cases brilliant people thatchoose maybe to just be
important in this world insteadof being of value. You know,
what I hear you doing is beingof value. And so what are the
(25:50):
biggest problems that you thinkare worth solving?
Bob Bush (25:53):
Wow, man, like, how long is this show? My goodness
first. Thank you for that. Youknow, do your own reflection.
And I love how you summed it up.You know, there are people in
the world that choose to be moreimportant instead of being more
valuable. And it kind of linksto the conversation that we had
(26:13):
a little bit earlier aboutunderstanding valuation mergers
and acquisitions, the valuation,the value to value an asset, and
understanding the values of anasset, right? And as much as
people can be a problem withregards to efficiency and
getting things done that thevalues are have to be about,
(26:33):
then it have to bedistinguishable from the dollar
value. And this is a way that,when I'm sort of approaching a
problem, you know, I I'm verymindful of the, you know, what
are we measuring? How do wemeasure it? And is this, is this
going to be a values drivenmetric, or is this a valuation
driven metric? And they're bothimportant when you're talking
(26:57):
about creating a sustainablemodel. And so in to get you your
question about what kinds ofproblems to solve, every problem
at some point has this tension,are we thinking short term? Are
we thinking long term? Or wewant to, we want to, you know
whether it's health care,there's a cost benefit analysis.
(27:18):
Well, if we can get the vaccineout six months earlier, it is
going to have X percentage ofpeople that can help, but Y
percentage of the people are notgoing to be helped because we
haven't, because there's maybesome additional things that we
can do. There's alwayscontraindications, right?
There's always risks, there'salways the obverse side of that
(27:41):
coin. And so to me, it's not somuch which problem is more or
less important. It is. How doyou tackle whatever problem
you're you're doing right?Because I don't want your
listeners, and I certainly don'tthink this way to think that.
Big problems, major problems.Oh, my problem is, I'm trying to
(28:02):
save the world from malaria.There are problems in your
neighborhood, there are problemsin your school. The question is
the mindset around it, so let'snot think about it in terms of
big problems or little problems.It is whatever problem there is
before you bring it, bring aninterdisciplinary, bring a
(28:22):
diverse, bring a viable bring aperspective, a mindset,
recognizing that value andvalues are not the same thing.
Adam Outland (28:30):
Yeah, yeah, well done. I think that's a good it's
a great perspective. You know,big problems are important to
solve, but at the same time,they don't have to be hairy and
audacious and worldwide, infact, you know, we need a lot
more people solving the localproblem that adds up to a big
solution. And it's really abouthaving a problem solving mindset
(28:50):
and how to tackle them.
Bob Bush (28:51):
That's right.
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