Episode 107: Bob Lind, Co-Founder of Lind Capital Partners, Specialist in Off the Run Credit Investments on Building an Investment Boutique Around Non-Rated Municipal Bonds

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What do you do when the market tells you there’s no room for another fund? You tell a better story and carve your niche anyway.

In this episode, Stacy sits down with Bob Lind, Co-Founder of Lind Capital Partners, a boutique manager specializing in one of the most overlooked corners of the credit market: non-rated municipal bonds.

They dive into how Bob went from selling himself into his first research job to building a firm around a misunderstood asset class and why ditching the pitch helped him find the right investors. 

They also cover: 

• Why non-rated doesn’t mean “junk” (and how Bob spots value where others won’t look)

• The inflection point that sparked the launch of Lind Capital (hint: it involves a friend, a Fidelity broker, and a missed opportunity)

• How Bob went from BlackRock-comparison pitches to founder-forward storytelling

• The power of showing up as yourself and why authenticity wins with allocators

Plus: how to listen better in meetings, the magic of behavioral discovery questions, and the one Bruce Springsteen song that got Bob through everything.

About Bob Lind:
Bob is a co-founder of Lind Capital Partners. He has built the firm around his passion for finding opportunities in inefficient markets and providing innovative ways to deliver access to individual investors. With nearly 40 years of experience in the municipal bond market, there is little Bob has not done. Today, he leads the portfolio management team and strategic initiatives for LCP.

Prior to founding Lind Capital Partners, Bob managed a $500 million high yield municipal bond portfolio for Deutsche Bank, where he leveraged his prior sell-side experience and institutional relationships. Bob began his career as a municipal analyst at Nuveen before moving into institutional sales and trading at Kemper Securities and Raymond James, where he underwrote, traded and sold municipal bonds.

Bob received a BA in History from Kenyon College and an MBA in Finance and Accounting from the University of Chicago. He is a passionate bread baker/pizza maker, feeding and nourishing his 25+ year-old home-grown starter. Outside of the office and the kitchen, he enjoys paddle tennis, golf and telemark skiing.

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TRANSCRIPT

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

[00:00:00] Stacy Havener: I believe in boutiques, the specialists, the niche experts. Enter my next guest, Bob Lin, co-founder of Lin Capital Partners, a specialist in ready for it, non-rated municipal bonds. Niche strategy game on. Bob and I talk about what it was like to grow up in the biz in a very unique sliver of the market at big firms like Deutsche Bank.

[00:00:28] Stacy Havener: What made him decide to hang his own shingle? Focusing on an asset class that is misunderstood in an industry built around the status quo of rating agencies. How has he leaned into his specialty with authenticity? How has he found his ideal investors? We explore niche investing today with my friend and client, Bob Lind.

[00:00:55] Stacy Havener: Hey, my name is Stacey Haner. I'm obsessed with startups, stories, [00:01:00] and sales. Storytelling has fueled my success as a female founder in the Toughest Boys Club, wall Street. I've raised over 8 billion that has led to 30 billion in follow-on assets for investment boutiques. You could say against the odds.

[00:01:15] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Understatement. I share stories of the people behind the portfolios while teaching you how to use story to shape outcomes. It's real talk here, money, authenticity, growth, setbacks, sales and marketing are all topics we discuss. Think of this as the capital raising class you wish you had in college mixed with happy hour.

[00:01:40] Stacy Havener: Pull up a seat, grab your notebook, and get ready to be inspired and challenged while you learn. This is the Billion Dollar Backstory podcast.

[00:01:55] Stacy Havener: Bob, welcome to the Billion dollar Backstory podcast. This is a joy for me [00:02:00]because we've been working together for a minute now. I know your story and it's a great one, and I'm thrilled to invite our listeners into this conversation. So thank you for being here.

[00:02:12] Bob Lind: Well, thank you for including me. My journey with you started as I was, had just launched an interval fund.

[00:02:18] Bob Lind: Yeah. And I saw one of your walks on the beaches and the question you posed was, does the world need another mutual fund?

[00:02:26] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Does the world need another fund? Gave

[00:02:28] Bob Lind: was no, of course not. Of

[00:02:30] Stacy Havener: course not.

[00:02:31] Bob Lind: And I was a little crest follow, but I kept listening. Good job. And the, the epiphany was. Tell me why the world needs your mutual fund.

[00:02:40] Stacy Havener: Yeah, that's right. Tell me about, and here we're

[00:02:42] Bob Lind: today.

[00:02:43] Stacy Havener: Yeah, so let's go back to that because your journey starts kind of, you know, we talk about the messy middle a lot and I wanna get to like sort of the founding of Lend and why you specialize in what you specialize in. But before we [00:03:00] get there, I wanna go back in the green room.

[00:03:03] Stacy Havener: I made a comment about no one can see this 'cause this is an audio podcast, but there's a really cool sort of mailbox behind Bob and he said it was an homage to his heritage. So that's where I wanna start. I wanna go way back and say, did you always know that you wanted to be in the investment business?

[00:03:21] Stacy Havener: Is this like your dream when you were a kid? Is this what your family was into? Take us back?

[00:03:27] Bob Lind: Uh, no. The, the quick answer to that is no. When I graduated from college, we were kind of in the coming out of a recession, and all I really wanted to do was get a job. I really wanted to move out of the house.

[00:03:38] Bob Lind: Mm-hmm. Outta my parents' house. Mm-hmm. My dad was a corporate attorney. My mother was a stay-at-home mom and raised her three kids. Mm-hmm. So the only interviews that I could get on the college campus was for a door-to-door copier salesman. Wow. They were selling life insurance in Cleveland. I went to school in Ohio.

[00:03:55] Stacy Havener: Okay.

[00:03:55] Bob Lind: Uh, and neither of those was particularly attractive. I was at a high school, swimming meet of my [00:04:00] sisters, met a friend of my parents who said, what are you gonna do? My parents both looked at me eagerly and I said, I'm gonna find a job. And he said, why don't you come talk to us at Naveen?

[00:04:10] Stacy Havener: No way. So

[00:04:10] Bob Lind: I did, and I started the process of interviewing at Naveen.

[00:04:14] Bob Lind: About three months later, I got my first job as a credit analyst at Naveen. I spent three months trying to convince the guy in research that they should hire me for research, and the person in sales that they should hire me for sales. And ultimately, I called the human resources guy I was talking to and said, I'm ready to start on Monday.

[00:04:31] Bob Lind: Pick a spot.

[00:04:33] Stacy Havener: Did you know you wanted, like when you were growing up, did you know you wanted to be in the field?

[00:04:39] Bob Lind: I didn't know anything about it.

[00:04:40] Stacy Havener: Yeah, it was,

[00:04:41] Bob Lind: uh, my dad was a corporate securities lawyer,

[00:04:43] Stacy Havener: Uhhuh, so I

[00:04:44] Bob Lind: knew that he did, you know, shelf offerings and IPOs and offerings, but I certainly didn't know anything about the municipal bond business.

[00:04:50] Stacy Havener: Okay. So here we are now. You've got this job. Good on you, because that's a tough time to find any job and it's just a great reminder that. [00:05:00] Our career paths are not straight lines, as somebody said on LinkedIn today. And I was like, yes. Isn't this the truth? So were you covering municipal bonds from the get?

[00:05:09] Bob Lind: I started, uh, day one I was a history major with a math minor in college and liberal arts school. Mm-hmm. And, uh, day one there was no training program. I sat down on my desk and the head of the department gave me five financial statements to review and do a report on, and I quite honestly didn't have any idea what they were.

[00:05:27] Bob Lind: So that night I went home. I went down to Northwestern and registered for a night school class in accounting, and my journey began, I started analyzing revenue bonds for Nuveen and some of their, uh, UIT and other managed portfolios.

[00:05:40] Stacy Havener: Wow, that's awesome. So did you instantly say like, this is cool, I like what I'm doing.

[00:05:47] Bob Lind: I really liked the fact that I had a job and I was moving out of the house. But as, as each successive day and week went on, it became more and more interesting, and I saw more and more opportunity.

[00:05:57] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Uh,

[00:05:58] Bob Lind: I spent two years doing research at [00:06:00] Naveen. I spent two years as, uh, on this underwriting desk doing origination.

[00:06:03] Bob Lind: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:04] Stacy Havener: Uh,

[00:06:04] Bob Lind: and at that point I was ready to kind of commit to the business. So I had applied to graduate school for an MBA. Naveen had this fantastic program, they would pay for your children to go to college.

[00:06:16] Stacy Havener: No way. That's amazing. I've never heard of such a thing.

[00:06:19] Bob Lind: I was newly married with no children and I was staring down the face of, I think 20 classes at the University of Chicago at.

[00:06:26] Bob Lind: I don't know, $1,200 a class. I hate to think what it costs today. And I couldn't afford it. So I went to, I actually had a scheduled a meeting with A CEO and pled my case and he said, nice try. It's not gonna work. So I left and went to Kemper Securities Group where they helped pay for my, uh, education. Ah, and it was actually a nice transition because there, I started kind of my journey of creating specialty businesses in the municipal bond world.

[00:06:49] Bob Lind: I ran a bank qualified business for Glen Ellis and Loy, which became Kemper Securities Group. And you know, I had my own p and l to manage and my own business to build and my own salespeople to [00:07:00]work with and my own customers to try to develop. So it was kind of an exciting time. And then all that time I was gonna night school at University of Chicago.

[00:07:07] Stacy Havener: Wow. Okay. So does this start taking us up to. The messy middle where you, no, not

[00:07:14] Bob Lind: quite. Not quite. Okay. You, so we still have, I've been in this business a long time.

[00:07:17] Stacy Havener: Keep going.

[00:07:19] Bob Lind: So I, it was one of those corporate epiphanies for me. The CEO we were at, at Kemper, we were rumored to be for sale. Okay. And the CEO came down to headquarters and went on the national hoot and holler the squawk box and said, you guys are very important to us.

[00:07:34] Bob Lind: The securities business is part of the tripod. We have insurance, we have investment management, and we have. Broker dealer sales.

[00:07:41] Stacy Havener: Okay.

[00:07:42] Bob Lind: The next morning, the Wall Street Journal published a story that said Kemper has been sold to Conseco.

[00:07:47] Stacy Havener: That's a name from the past. Wow. Okay.

[00:07:50] Bob Lind: So I left with a group of other people and we went to Raymond James and Associates and built out an institutional sales force.

[00:07:56] Bob Lind: They had had a presence that had been largely regional in St. Petersburg, [00:08:00] and we opened up offices for Raymond James in Chicago, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles. I think Houston, Atlanta, all over the country. So that was the next piece of my puzzle. And that, you know, I was starting to learn about how to build a business.

[00:08:13] Bob Lind: Yeah. Organizationally, office space. I mean we, I picked the, the desks and the terminals and everything else. Oh my gosh. So it was a, that was a learning experience. And at Raymond James, interestingly, I started as an underwriter. We hired a couple salespeople from First Boston who had an expertise in high yield munis, and they had relationships with high yield UNI portfolio managers.

[00:08:34] Bob Lind: And that was not a business we were doing at Raymond James. So having just completed my MBA, really liking the two guys that we'd hired, I volunteered to build out that business and take that on. Mm-hmm. So that's kind of where my non-rated and high yield business started. Okay. A couple years in the securities business, particularly on the municipal side, is built with specialist traders and generalist salespeople.

[00:08:58] Stacy Havener: Hmm.

[00:08:59] Bob Lind: Which I think works [00:09:00] well for investment grade product. But when you're getting into really specialized and credit stories, you're gonna need specialization in terms of the sales. So I convinced management to build out a specialty unit within the firm that dealt with every aspect, origination, underwriting, sales, trading, and research to deal with the non-rated and the high yield market.

[00:09:20] Bob Lind: So we built that business. And we had a great team and we were working with all the institutional purchase buyers. We were dealing with origination, we're doing all aspects of that market. And the generalist salespeople turned over their client contacts, relationships, and we worked in tandem with them,

[00:09:35] Stacy Havener: Uhhuh.

[00:09:35] Stacy Havener: But it

[00:09:35] Bob Lind: was an opportunity for me to get to know all the buyers, which was really helpful at that point.

[00:09:39] Stacy Havener: Yeah.

[00:09:40] Bob Lind: One more step.

[00:09:42] Stacy Havener: One more step. Okay. So that's, we're one step closer. At some point the crisis is gonna come in here. I know it is.

[00:09:48] Bob Lind: It's only two years away. Okay. Deutsche Bank hired me and one of my associates from Raymond James, and we put together a team of three and we ran a $500 million non-rated muni portfolio for Deutsche Bank using the [00:10:00] bank's balance sheet.

[00:10:01] Bob Lind: Okay. And there it was interesting because I worked with regional broker dealers, the originators who. Had relationships but didn't have balance sheet. This is pre-crisis, so Goldman and Lehman, or now Barclays. Mm-hmm. And all the other firms were walking into borrowers and offering a quote unquote a bought deal.

[00:10:17] Bob Lind: And the regional guys weren't able to do that, so we provided the balance sheet and they provided the relationship and so we built a $500 million non-rated Muni portfolio. In that process, we were in the process of aggregating for the second Muni CDO to be launched. Sometime in 2008 or oh nine and uh, that obviously didn't happen.

[00:10:37] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:38] Bob Lind: So I got called into a meeting with my colleague and everyone was looking at us and yelling at us for the poor performance of the portfolio. And it was due to the financial crisis. The mono line insurers, which constituted 60% of the new issue, market had blown up and rates had just completely exploded.

[00:10:57] Bob Lind: So the writing was on the wall and they turned off the balance [00:11:00] sheet and shut down that business. Simultaneously, here's the crisis or the, the epiphany. Uh, simultaneously, my high school friend of mine who had spent his career in CMBS origination was unwinding his business as well. He called me and said, I'd like to buy some non-rated or high yield munis.

[00:11:16] Bob Lind: Mm-hmm. So I said, well, here's, here's the bonds you should buy. I said, I don't think you should buy a non-rated senior living community. You're not gonna have any way to follow it, but here are some B double one, triple B plus muni bonds issued on behalf of Marathon Oil in Louisiana. It was a billion dollar financing tax exempt.

[00:11:32] Bob Lind: He said, who do I call? I said, call this trader at Goldman Sachs. Here's the cusip. They're gonna offer 'em at nine and a quarter tax free. He said great. He called his broker at Fidelity. Dave called me back 15 minutes later and said, they won't sell 'em to me.

[00:11:46] Stacy Havener: And I said,

[00:11:47] Bob Lind: I said, why not? He said, I'm a retail investor.

[00:11:51] Bob Lind: I offered to sign a letter I I've offered to sign anything. And they said, no.

[00:11:55] Stacy Havener: Wow. And I

[00:11:56] Bob Lind: said, just for grins. Call him back and see if you can buy the MRO six and three eights of [00:12:00] three seven.

[00:12:00] Stacy Havener: He said, well,

[00:12:01] Bob Lind: what are those? I said, those are the corporate taxable bonds issued para pursue with the tax exempt.

[00:12:06] Bob Lind: I suggested you buy.

[00:12:07] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:08] Bob Lind: His response was 15 minutes later, he said he, he called me back and said, how many do you wanna buy? And I said, what was the yield? He said, 9%. I said, Dave said to me, they're offering to sell me taxable bonds at 9%, but refusing to sell me the same bonds at nine and quarter percent tax free.

[00:12:25] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm. Why? To me, yeah. What was going on there?

[00:12:29] Bob Lind: They just won't sell 'em to retail. Okay. And the epiphany for me was, and I was always able to buy those types of bonds for my own portfolio where I worked.

[00:12:37] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Okay. But the epiphany

[00:12:38] Bob Lind: for me was how hard it was for somebody else. And Dave said, you know, we gotta figure out how to exploit that.

[00:12:42] Bob Lind: So Lend Capital Partners was born. Wow, probably that afternoon. Wow.

[00:12:47] Stacy Havener: And thanks for sharing that, Bob. I love a lot of things in this story. I love the specialization. I mean, what a niche, right? What a niche. I mean, was there a market? There certainly wasn't a market for the end [00:13:00] user. It sounds like there was a market for the institutional buyer.

[00:13:04] Bob Lind: Yeah, there's always been an institutional market. I think all mutual funds, investment grade and high yield own non-rated. Mm-hmm. And floor rated bonds. It's just a question of their percentage.

[00:13:13] Stacy Havener: Okay.

[00:13:13] Bob Lind: And the individual has always been able to buy them locally. Meaning if there's a charter school that's, well, this was pre charter schools, but if there's a senior living community that's doing financing, residents, friends of the community can invest through the underwriter.

[00:13:27] Bob Lind: But it's almost impossible for somebody in Chicago say to buy something and invest in something like the Providence Place Mall in, in Providence, okay. Is, is a non-rated bond.

[00:13:37] Stacy Havener: And you did this like in the middle of a crisis, which I mean, I guess is a twist on, you know, never let a good crisis go to waste.

[00:13:44] Stacy Havener: It's like, look, here we are, we've got this opportunity, that story, that anecdote about your friend, I mean. You realize something and you stepped into it with a lot of bravery and a lot of courage, and that's what you specialize in now, right?

[00:13:58] Bob Lind: Admittedly, it wasn't really the right time to [00:14:00] do it. It was a great time from a investment perspective, right?

[00:14:02] Bob Lind: Because humans were so attractive. But the vehicle structures we were limited to, we were doing limited partnerships. Mm-hmm. And every single high net worth individual or family office that we talked to was locked into, uh, limited partnerships. So the vehicle itself was not, the timing for that was not ideal,

[00:14:19] Stacy Havener: but that's often the case.

[00:14:21] Stacy Havener: I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of fund managers nodding because when you. See the opportunity to invest and you need the capital, the capital often isn't ready to, you know, the asset owners to give it to you, right? Yeah. Yeah. That is like a whole nother podcast, right? That is a big challenge in an opportunistic market because the buyers are lagging the opportunities that you see as the asset manager, and so let's pause for just a second.

[00:14:53] Stacy Havener: Why non-rated Munis? Like in the example you gave of a Chicago investor sitting there who can't [00:15:00] buy Providence Place Mall Bond, just like what's the case for it? For people who maybe are just like, okay, I get it, but like why?

[00:15:11] Bob Lind: Well, I think the first question that people ask is why does the bond come as non-rated?

[00:15:15] Bob Lind: And that, in my opinion, is purely a cost benefit analysis, which isn't. To imply or infer it would be double or AAA because it wouldn't. Mm-hmm. But it is costly for a 15 to $25 million borrower to go to Moody's s and p or Fitch. Get a rating upfront, but then the ongoing surveillance, the ongoing requirements of disclosure to them, information required from a human resources perspective, internally, it's expensive and often these non-rated facilities, uh, borrowers have strong local support.

[00:15:51] Bob Lind: And so there's not a need for that 'cause they can get their issue placed without having that rating. Now we have intentionally focused on deal sizes from [00:16:00] 15 to 125 million.

[00:16:01] Stacy Havener: Okay?

[00:16:02] Bob Lind: Which keeps the Nuveen, Invescos, BlackRocks, GAS, et cetera, out of our market, and keeps the retail support at a manageable level.

[00:16:12] Bob Lind: So you don't need. 400 to $500 million of retail investors to get your deal placed. I think because the, to answer your original question, yeah. I think because they're non-rated, it takes an enormous universe of buyers just out of the equation upfront.

[00:16:28] Stacy Havener: Yeah. 'cause

[00:16:28] Bob Lind: they, so many investors use the rating agencies for their due diligence and credit work.

[00:16:33] Bob Lind: Right. And secondly, because of where we're focused on the smaller deal sizes, it keeps the. Institutional investors largely out as well, so there's less competition, less money chasing those assets.

[00:16:46] Stacy Havener: It's so fascinating to me because I remember when I first, sort of like mid-career when we started working with credit managers and we had people talk about the rating agencies and really sort of the, it's almost like [00:17:00] an alpha arbitrage opportunity here because it is counterintuitive.

[00:17:06] Stacy Havener: I mean, it makes sense when you think about it, but counterintuitive as an investor to think that the rating agencies are actually a business. That's a business. Yep. And they charge a fee to get the rating and you kind of can't unhear that. You're like, okay, wait a minute. Lot layers to that. Lot of potential arbitrage, alpha opportunities, hiding in the disconnect here.

[00:17:32] Stacy Havener: So is that, I mean, in some ways thinking about differentiators, I mean this doesn't always happen by the way, but just the fact that you are in that niche is almost in and of itself a differentiator.

[00:17:44] Bob Lind: Oh, without a doubt. Because, and again, everybody, all the mutual funds own the bonds. Yeah. But nobody, and if you were to look at all the major high yield funds in or and investment grade funds, yeah.

[00:17:55] Bob Lind: They all own the same bonds, but nobody owns the bonds. That we own. [00:18:00] And that's the major distinction. And as a result, you're able to produce excess return.

[00:18:05] Stacy Havener: And so how do you think about risks? So I'm in a devil's advocate, so if I'm an allocator and I'm like, okay, I get it. Rating agencies are a business just like we all are.

[00:18:16] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm. But there's risk, like you said, you know, these wouldn't necessarily be, you know, these are not AAA issuers here. Um, these are not

[00:18:27] Bob Lind: set it and forget it. No.

[00:18:28] Stacy Havener: Yeah. This is not set it and forget it. So how do you think about the risk then? You have to obviously do your own work to analyze these bonds.

[00:18:35] Stacy Havener: The rating agencies are not involved, but how do you square the idea that these are riskier than other bonds that you could buy?

[00:18:45] Bob Lind: Well, they are riskier than a AA state, of course. General obligation bond. Yep. Or aaa, Harvard University, for example. But you know, at the end of the day, a bond is a financial contract.

[00:18:57] Bob Lind: So unlike an equity security, if [00:19:00] you're right from a credit perspective, you get your money back. Mm-hmm. And I think one of the great strengths that. We have, when we founded the firm was Dave, Mr. Marathon Oil. Mm-hmm. Uh, when he joined the firm, he came with a credit background and his background in CMBS origination and no offense to real estate investors, but he came in with a healthy skepticism of borrowers and the trust, but verify.

[00:19:23] Bob Lind: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:24] Stacy Havener: Uh,

[00:19:24] Bob Lind: with a heavy emphasis on verification. So the initial surveillance or due diligence in terms of an investment mm-hmm.

[00:19:30] Stacy Havener: Was

[00:19:31] Bob Lind: critical. But more importantly was the ongoing surveillance. So he set up a process where, as a team, we've met every quarter since inception, and discussed every bond in every portfolio.

[00:19:42] Bob Lind: And from a a distribution perspective, we have probably a hundred to 125 credits within the complex. And our credit to analyst ratios 25 to 35 to one. So if you think about a mutual fund with 3000 line items. Oh my

[00:19:58] Stacy Havener: gosh. Yeah.

[00:19:58] Bob Lind: And even [00:20:00] if you have 15 analysts, you're using diversification for your credit surveillance in some ways because you're, yeah, you're limiting your risk and your exposure.

[00:20:08] Bob Lind: Our portfolios have, as SMA portfolios have 30 to 40 credits. Our interval fund will have 75 to a hundred. So that ongoing surveillance and due diligence is critical to the process and the investment process,

[00:20:22] Stacy Havener: and so. Give us an example. One of my favorite things, having worked with you and having, and we can talk about sort of this journey of authenticity and owning your story and letting people in.

[00:20:34] Stacy Havener: But one of my favorite things that you and Anthony do on LinkedIn is you actually will give us glimpses of the stories, the companies that these bonds are, you know, sort of backing. And I love when Anthony will be like, and here I am, I'll take a picture of himself at, you know, so, and it's just. To me anyway.

[00:20:52] Stacy Havener: It's cool, right? It's different. It kind of brings credit investing to life in a way that some other [00:21:00] bonds just you can't do. So like, tell us a story about, you know, a name, like a company that we can relate to those glimpses like you give on LinkedIn.

[00:21:14] Bob Lind: I think most of our posting on LinkedIn tends to be the ones that don't work.

[00:21:18] Stacy Havener: Oh, it's a counter. It's like, it's like being on the cover of a magazine.

[00:21:22] Bob Lind: Uh, so those examples I would use is the American Dream Wall in New Jersey, which is okay off of 95. There was a regional sports complex legacy sports complex in Arizona for $325 million with soccer fields pickleball and a little bit of fraud embedded in that too.

[00:21:40] Bob Lind: A supposed contract with Manchester United, which didn't exist. But the credits were, we. Invest. Invest. And what we like to do is find, kind of take a charter school, for example, we are a private school. We own a private school in Evanston, Illinois. That I would tell you it's the Royce Moore School. And, and you would look at me and say, I've never heard of it.

[00:21:59] Bob Lind: Mm-hmm. And [00:22:00] then I would say to somebody who lives in Evanston, they'd say, oh, that's the alternative school for the big public, high school for kids who want a different educational environment.

[00:22:07] Stacy Havener: Okay.

[00:22:09] Bob Lind: And it's not a big school. It doesn't have a lot of debt, but it has a strong support from their students and parents.

[00:22:16] Bob Lind: And it has been around for a long time. So I say to somebody, you've, you've driven down Ridge Road, Roys Moore's at Davis and Ridge. And they say, oh, I drive by that all the time. Mm.

[00:22:25] Stacy Havener: So

[00:22:25] Bob Lind: there's a familiarity with that. We owe a charter school in. Philadelphia and it was doing great. And the biggest complaint we got from the community was the owner of the charter school was giving free turkeys to families for Thanksgiving.

[00:22:40] Stacy Havener: Well, is this a complaint?

[00:22:43] Bob Lind: Well, we asked. Yeah.

[00:22:44] Stacy Havener: We

[00:22:44] Bob Lind: looked at that and said, well, that doesn't make any sense. That's engendering goodwill. Yeah. With your students and your families. And the charter school was not serving an upper middle income clientele. Okay. It was serving lower income and poor, and so we view that as positive.[00:23:00]

[00:23:00] Bob Lind: One of our favorite credit stories was we owned early on in our business, we owned bonds for the Southampton Hospital in Long Island. Dave coming from a real estate background mm-hmm. Uh, was always looking at the underlying asset. Mm. What is the value of the asset we own in the event of trouble? Which gets back to your risk issue.

[00:23:16] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:17] Bob Lind: The value of the land far exceeded, in our opinion, the value of the debt, the amount of debt outstanding. So we were avid investors. This was a bond that was actually rated. The rated agency said their days, cash on hand has gone down and were concerned, so they downgraded it. Mm-hmm. More bonds became available.

[00:23:34] Bob Lind: Uh, John Paulson gave I think, $5 million to build a new emergency room. So from our perspective as investors, we looked at that and said, we have an asset that's worth significantly more than the debt.

[00:23:46] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:47] Bob Lind: We have a community that won't let their hospital go out of business. Mm-hmm. And they're well healed and can support it to the tune of a $5 million investment for a, we also had read and learned that they were doing a JV with, uh, Sonny [00:24:00] Binghamton, and we're gonna build a new facility and that would take.

[00:24:03] Bob Lind: Three or four years through the process of approvals, land acquisition, construction, et cetera. So you know, that's an example of a bond where the work that Dave and his team had done gave us insight into a credit, and we were able to then populate double tax exempt for New York residents and federally tax exempt at seven and five to 8% tax free.

[00:24:25] Stacy Havener: I mean, and there's just endless stories like this. I'd like to take this to, as I alluded to, the sort of the journey on owning your story and for regular listeners of the podcast, um, hunter Hayes, uh, Intrepid sort of had to go through this journey too, which is, I think there's pressure. Especially with unrated bonds, there's pressure on us to sort of, not hide it, but like we don't wanna lean into it because we know that investors, they have feelings around it, [00:25:00] right?

[00:25:00] Stacy Havener: And so that's a journey of sort of owning, like, no, this is what you do, this is what you specialize in, and this is. As I said before, part of what makes you different, that you are a specialist in this niche and in working with you. I know this is something that you and Anthony really wanted to embrace, right?

[00:25:21] Stacy Havener: This differentiator, this story, how to talk about this in meetings, et cetera. So I want you to share like what has that been like? What's it been like to ditch the pitch, Bob?

[00:25:32] Bob Lind: Well, ditching the pitch. It started with Dave and I when we launched the business. We're not natural salespeople, right? Were not. My personal feeling was if I go in and talk to somebody about investing with us, I feel like I'm asking them for their money.

[00:25:44] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:45] Bob Lind: Not for me to invest with, but I'm just asking them for their money.

[00:25:47] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Like, just write me a check. I'll put it in my pocket. Yeah. That, that's an awkward feeling. And that's

[00:25:51] Bob Lind: not what I was doing. Yeah. But it was just, it was my natural instinct. Yeah.

[00:25:55] Stacy Havener: Uh,

[00:25:55] Bob Lind: so Dave and I both took a sales class with a good friend of ours.

[00:25:59] Bob Lind: Is [00:26:00] into consultative selling. Mm-hmm. We got done and he said, you know, Bob, I think you really should think about yourself as marketing an alternative asset class. Yeah. You should really think about that. And I admittedly, I kind of looked at him and said, Phil, you stick to widgets and I'll stick to investing.

[00:26:15] Bob Lind: Mm-hmm. And the more I thought about it, the more we talked to him, I was like, Hmm. We need to lean into what we do. That's right. Because it's different.

[00:26:23] Stacy Havener: Yes.

[00:26:24] Bob Lind: And don't be afraid of it. And we spent, admittedly, the first seven or eight years of our business, we're just like BlackRock. We're just like Naveen, but we're better.

[00:26:32] Stacy Havener: Oh, you know how I feel about this Bob?

[00:26:35] Bob Lind: And looking back on it, if I'm sitting as an allocator at an RIA or making an investment decision at a family office, there's a risk with investing with us.

[00:26:44] Stacy Havener: Of course,

[00:26:44] Bob Lind: because we're smaller. Yeah. I mean, nobody's gonna say, Hey, you invested with DVE and they did a bad job.

[00:26:49] Stacy Havener: That's right. It's the IBM thing. Right? Like, you don't get fired for hiring IBM. You don't get fired for hiring BlackRock.

[00:26:56] Bob Lind: So what we've had to do is there's a huge [00:27:00] education piece to the puzzle. Mm-hmm. So when somebody hears non-rated, they assume it's junk.

[00:27:05] Stacy Havener: Yeah, we The junk as a pejorative. Well that's, that's the colloquial term, isn't it?

[00:27:09] Bob Lind: Correct. Junk bonds. It's a pejorative. It's not. Yeah. And what we do is not junk. It's they're performing assets for entities with a level of essentiality within their community. Senior living communities, student housing, multifamily housing, charter schools, private colleges and universities, some private schools.

[00:27:27] Bob Lind: These are fabric parts of the fabric of a community.

[00:27:29] Stacy Havener: Oh, I like this. Yep.

[00:27:31] Bob Lind: There's not a lot of tech risk. I've made my mistakes. When we were at Deutsche Bank, we financed $160 million waste energy plant in Southern California that was turning, pardon the expression, but flushy flushy into, uh, carbon that was burned at a Mitsubishi cement plant.

[00:27:49] Bob Lind: And our off-take payers were all double A or better. Los Angeles City. Los Angeles County, orange County, San Bernardino, Riverside. Technology didn't work. [00:28:00]

[00:28:00] Stacy Havener: Aye. Okay, wait. I love these stories. I wanna go back to ditch the pitch. So now you start working with us and we're like, Bob, listen Anthony, listen. When you guys go into a meeting, we don't want you to take the presentation out of the bag.

[00:28:13] Bob Lind: Yeah. How

[00:28:14] Stacy Havener: terrifying.

[00:28:16] Bob Lind: A little. Yeah. I mean, we're, we're used to just showing up and throwing up and walking out and looking at each other and saying, how'd that go? And like, I think we got every point across, and we may have said everything we wanted to say, but I'm not sure anyone heard it.

[00:28:27] Stacy Havener: Right.

[00:28:28] Bob Lind: And that was, I think the transition that we went from with Ditch to pitch was moving from selling to solving.

[00:28:34] Stacy Havener: Ooh. Mm-hmm. Because why? Because you were asking questions and you were listening.

[00:28:40] Bob Lind: Yes. And to his credit, Phil, that I referenced before, he said the first 25, 30, 40% of your meeting should be asking questions. That's right. Learn what their challenges are. Then try to quantify them in terms of implications so that at the end of the day, when you present your solution, they can't [00:29:00] afford not to work with you.

[00:29:01] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:01] Bob Lind: The issue isn't, should I work with Lynn Capital or should I go to BlackRock? The issue is I can't afford not to work with Lynn Capital because they're doing something different. That solves the challenge that I have with my clients. My clients have with their portfolios. Mm-hmm. And I have with my business.

[00:29:15] Stacy Havener: Yes. And the difference is. When you walk into the office, you are a founder and BlackRock founder is not walking into any RIA or family office. Not happening. Don't think so. And so part of don't, the journey for you right. Is to really, and that I think what's very interesting to me, because I think one of the challenges that boutiques have is that we think about.

[00:29:45] Stacy Havener: What would be a knock on a boutique, right? We're smaller. We're smaller than BlackRock. We don't have the resources of that BlackRock has. We don't have the sales team, you know, go on and on of all the things we don't have, you know, it's me, the co-founder in the [00:30:00] meetings and we kind of put all these things in the negative column, but the reality is it's flipped, isn't it?

[00:30:07] Stacy Havener: Because for those alligators, they have access to you.

[00:30:11] Bob Lind: And, and I think one of the things that happened, it's always been the case, but in that process for us, we have truly viewed our clients as our partners. Mm-hmm. And in that process, we've gone from, here's a great strategy, we offer 350 basis points of excess taxes and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:30:30] Bob Lind: Mm-hmm. To here's how other RIAs or family offices are using us. Here's how they use us to help build their own businesses. We say it with an alright with a prospect. If you say, I'm gonna pick Nuveen, or I've gone through Morningstar and I found five, five star firms or whatever, that's not a differentiator for them.

[00:30:50] Stacy Havener: It's not such a good point. But identifying

[00:30:52] Bob Lind: a boutique investor like us can be

[00:30:56] Stacy Havener: such a good point, Bob. And I think that's it, [00:31:00] what you did right there, just so everybody can kind of track with this story selling framework. What you did right there is you shared an impact story with a prospect, and what that does is it invites them into the story.

[00:31:15] Stacy Havener: It allows them to see themselves as a client of yours. It also taps into all this behavioral magic of like, oh. People like us do things like this, oh, that firm sounds a lot like me. Yeah. Right. And that is so powerful to share those stories. Again, you don't have to do it. You don't have to say, you don't have to dime out the client and say their name, but just to describe them.

[00:31:41] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Like, this firm reminds us of you. Super powerful,

[00:31:46] Bob Lind: and it's really helpful in our conversations because it, it, as you said, it puts them in a position where they start thinking themselves in that seat.

[00:31:53] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:54] Bob Lind: Like, okay, now would this benefit me? How would my clients benefit? Yeah. And you know, we [00:32:00] know we're making progress and we're on the right path.

[00:32:01] Bob Lind: When the gatekeeper, the R-I-A-C-I-O, or the family office manager says, so how should I think about this within my portfolio?

[00:32:10] Stacy Havener: Yes. Which requires a lot of trust on their part, right? To be able to say like, help me think about this. This is different. Help me understand how am I gonna explain this to my client?

[00:32:24] Stacy Havener: And that's also something I think we underestimate is. Let's just take like the high end institutional investors and put them to the side. If you're in that intermediary market, and sometimes even the family office space, there are different levels of sophistication. And so helping somebody explain the role in the portfolio to somebody, a client who's not an investor, you know, that requires.

[00:32:52] Stacy Havener: A different type of education. As you said, it's not like, let me educate you at, at a high level investment speak. It's how can I make this [00:33:00] accessible for your clients? How can I help you tell that story to them?

[00:33:04] Bob Lind: Yeah. I think when we started our marketing material, our quarterly or monthly note was geared towards a municipal bond professional.

[00:33:12] Bob Lind: Yes. And we got, I got all sorts of, I mean, the compliments we got, and I felt great about it. I all, my former colleagues and peers would say, that was fantastic. And then I would show it to I, I, I'd show it to my wife. She's like. What does this mean?

[00:33:25] Stacy Havener: Yeah.

[00:33:26] Bob Lind: And I, I realized we were really deep in product knowledge.

[00:33:30] Bob Lind: Mm-hmm. And really thin and cha and channel knowledge.

[00:33:34] Stacy Havener: Let's pause on this because this is something I see actually quite often. And you know, I say everything with peace and love. I love fund managers. I love how you think. I love what lights you up. It's so clear. Like that passion is so, it's like you can feel it.

[00:33:52] Stacy Havener: But sometimes what happens when we're in that sort of unique ability and we're in our zone is we write things that light [00:34:00] us up. Right, and we're, we're experts. So like the stuff that lights you up, Bob is gonna be like over the head of a lot of your target market. This happens on LinkedIn. It sort of becomes an echo chamber, right?

[00:34:13] Stacy Havener: Because people start, you know, writing. Like if you're a financial advisor, for instance, this is where I see it the most. And you start writing about all the technical ins and outs of a Roth IRA. It's like your client actually doesn't give a shit about that. No. That's why they hire you. So you're talking about something that they're like, don't care.

[00:34:32] Stacy Havener: I don't care about this. I don't even understand what you're talking about. That's why I'm gonna hire you. And so this is a massive unlock. You just touched on here, Bob, that you actually had to shift who you were writing it for.

[00:34:45] Bob Lind: Yeah, as somebody told me early on, I said, everything you do is to prove you're an expert.

[00:34:51] Bob Lind: If they didn't think you were an expert, they wouldn't have you in the office. So cut that part out. What a good point. [00:35:00]

[00:35:00] Stacy Havener: And that's a journey for us because I also think as founders, like we have a little bit of a chip on our shoulder. We wanna prove that we belong, that we deserve to be here, right? Because we know we're not Nuveen and we're not BlackRock.

[00:35:14] Stacy Havener: And so we kind of come into things with this like, I gotta prove that I deserve to be here. And I think what you heard from your friends and, and the advice you were given of like, you don't have to prove it.

[00:35:27] Bob Lind: That's also what we're comfortable talking about. Of course. That's what you love. 25, 30 now, almost 40 years talking about that.

[00:35:34] Bob Lind: And so, you know, after work you'd go out with colleagues and you talk about the business and you talk about, right. Talk about more the business.

[00:35:41] Stacy Havener: Yeah.

[00:35:42] Bob Lind: And you know, back to the, the product versus the channel. Once we started to really think about the channel and who the client was, it allowed us to repurpose our material and refocus on.

[00:35:55] Bob Lind: What are we really trying to convey? And I think I remember having a conversation with you and we were talking about our [00:36:00] monthly note.

[00:36:00] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:01] Bob Lind: And your comment was, I think something to the effect of, there's a lot of really good information in here, but tell me why it means something to me. Why should I care?

[00:36:09] Bob Lind: Yes.

[00:36:10] Stacy Havener: Yes. That's it. And you know, I think this happens too to a lot of fund managers. So I really want them to hear this, what we're talking about right now. Because when you see a chart or you see a stat or you read something, you instantly go to like, oh yes. And that's what it means to me. Got it. And they're sort of an assumption that if you then share that the other people are gonna follow that same train of thought.

[00:36:36] Stacy Havener: Right. And they're not. And so like actually charts are so powerful in our industry and everyone kind of loves charts in general. It tells a visual story. But the real trick is what you said, Bob. It's like show them the chart, like Right. Tell 'em, frame it. What are we looking at? Okay, now I know what I'm looking at.

[00:36:55] Stacy Havener: Why should I care? Don't make me do the work because I might not [00:37:00] even get there.

[00:37:01] Bob Lind: Well, I could tell you that beauty ratios are a hundred percent, and you'd say, that's interesting.

[00:37:05] Stacy Havener: I don't know what that means.

[00:37:07] Bob Lind: And I would tell you that they're normally at 75% or 80% or 90%. And so we're cheap relative to every other benchmark as a market.

[00:37:16] Bob Lind: And so if you think big picture, this would be a good time to invest or conversely perfect or 75% and it's really rich, so you might wanna sit on the sidelines and let's watch this for a while.

[00:37:25] Stacy Havener: See, it's the tell it frame it show it. Right, like, here's the thing, let me tell you what it actually means, and then let me show you either with an example or bring it to life with the why should you care.

[00:37:40] Stacy Havener: Yeah, that's really great, Bob. I mean, it has been. So much fun to watch you and Anthony. I will, I will just share this. I hope this is okay to share. When we first started working together, even just like your, your personal brand was Suits and just kind of very, and you've changed, right? [00:38:00] You've kind of stepped into the founder role and realized like, I don't have to, you know, walk the.

[00:38:06] Stacy Havener: The new Veen, BlackRock walk. I don't have to talk that talk. I can be myself. And I think of all the things I've loved how you've grown. I've loved how you've built the company, but really seeing you kind of own your story and own who you are has been a joy for me.

[00:38:24] Bob Lind: Well, it's been great for us. I mean, first of all, the Patagonia vest was getting a little, little tired.

[00:38:29] Stacy Havener: Yeah. And it's a process. It doesn't happen overnight. To be comfortable Right. In our own skin. Really.

[00:38:37] Bob Lind: Well, it's not, for some people it's very natural to talk about themselves. Mm-hmm. Constantly. It's not for me. I think it's not for Anthony, it's not for anybody on our team.

[00:38:45] Stacy Havener: Yeah.

[00:38:45] Bob Lind: So, and the other thing that's a challenge is listening.

[00:38:48] Bob Lind: 'cause the natural instinct in the meeting is to fill the void with a conversation. Mm-hmm. And I learned this early on with one of my managers. He would bring me into the office and we'd be doing a review and he would just sit there. And I just [00:39:00] started talking and, and he would, he'd get comments out of me that I was like, why did I say that?

[00:39:04] Bob Lind: What, what am I talking about? We'll go into a meeting now and we'll ask, we'll ask the discovery questions. Mm-hmm. And we'll wait, and if we need to, we'll add a, a leading question. That's right. Like, you know, we've worked with firms like yours that their challenges are, you know, their clients are con, super concerned about volatility or taxes or something else.

[00:39:25] Bob Lind: And try to evoke a response and get them talking.

[00:39:28] Stacy Havener: That's it. I do think there's a part of us that wants to, like silence can be uncomfortable. Mm-hmm. It really can. And I, I love what you said. We were meeting with another client yesterday actually, and we have a campaign we're running for the quarter and I had to say a few times like this is a research project.

[00:39:51] Stacy Havener: I want you to tell yourself it's a research project because our instinct. Can be that it's a pitch and a pitch [00:40:00] means we talk and the prospect listens. A research project means it switches it in your brain. Like I have to ask a lot of questions because I'm researching.

[00:40:10] Bob Lind: Yeah, that's a good way to think about it, right?

[00:40:12] Stacy Havener: It's almost like you have to switch your brain to say, yeah, you know, this is not a pitch. I need to get information. I need to understand first.

[00:40:23] Bob Lind: One of the things that was hard to accept is there are firms we'll talk to and we love talking to 'em that aren't a fit.

[00:40:29] Stacy Havener: Ooh, tell me more.

[00:40:32] Bob Lind: For whatever reason.

[00:40:33] Bob Lind: Yeah. Their clients, you know, they're totally risk averse. They own nothing but US treasuries. Yeah. I don't care how much money, you know, client, average client size is a hundred million, and I'd say I'd look at the A DV and I'd say they're perfect. That we sit down with 'em and they say, yeah, our clients own nothing but US treasuries.

[00:40:48] Stacy Havener: Not perfect.

[00:40:48] Bob Lind: Say, okay, well you're not gonna be a fit. No, but if you ever have a question about the missile market, we'll be here to help you

[00:40:54] Stacy Havener: see. And

[00:40:55] Bob Lind: in prior days, we would've walked into that meeting and given our entire spiel. Mm-hmm. [00:41:00] Through a 47 page PitchBook and then walked down think, I think they're a prospect.

[00:41:05] Bob Lind: Well,

[00:41:06] Stacy Havener: yourself. Yourself. We never really talked to them. Well, that's it. And here's what's great about that. It's the idea that you don't wanna have more than one sale. So in that example, you would've tried to sell them on why they should do unrated, Munis. That's a whole nother sale that you're into now, which may or may not work out.

[00:41:29] Stacy Havener: Probably won't. If we're honest with ourselves. Yeah. Right. And I think this is so true. We're uncomfortable with the like, that's not a fit. We don't like nos. We wanna win. And so it's hard for us as people to just go in and go, you know what? That's just not a fit. That's not a loss. We didn't lose the deal.

[00:41:49] Stacy Havener: Yeah. It just was never a deal we should have been working on in the first place.

[00:41:53] Bob Lind: When we send out our, we send out a monthly newsletter market update, and one of the first statistics I always look at is who [00:42:00] unsubscribed And I, for years, I took it personally. Oh. And now I look at it and think, well, thank goodness we're not spending any time on that prospect.

[00:42:07] Stacy Havener: That's right. '

[00:42:07] Bob Lind: cause if they don't wanna get a a one piece of paper or one email a month, they're never gonna invest with us. No. Or at least not now. So yes, throw 'em outta my pipeline than think that they're. They're thinking about it long and hard, and it's just the next phone call, we'll bring 'em into the fold.

[00:42:25] Stacy Havener: Gosh, attract, repel all the day long, Bob. And for a strategy like yours, that's so niche, that's so specialized, that is even more true. It's true for everyone, but like niche as they say in London. Now I'm trying to, okay. Can't say niche over there. You gotta say niche. Um, niche strategies. Attraction rappel is super real.

[00:42:46] Stacy Havener: This has been an amazing conversation. Before we wrap, I wanna ask a couple questions Okay. That go back on the authenticity bit so we get to know a little bit more about you. Okay. Okay. You ready? [00:43:00]

[00:43:00] Bob Lind: Shoot.

[00:43:01] Stacy Havener: What book inspires you?

[00:43:03] Bob Lind: What book inspires me? The reading I do is mostly hobby related. Oh. As opposed to.

[00:43:12] Bob Lind: Business books or fiction nonfiction. And there's a book I read every spring, it's called, golf Is Not A Game of Perfect by Bob Rotella. It's a psychology book on golf, and I apply it to my golf game, but I also apply it just to everyday life.

[00:43:27] Stacy Havener: Yes.

[00:43:29] Bob Lind: So think of a target. What's happened has happened. Your bad shot's a bad shot.

[00:43:33] Bob Lind: It's in the past. Your bad beating, your bad call. It's over. Move on. And it's helped. It helps my golf game and it certainly helps my frame of mind.

[00:43:42] Stacy Havener: Well, there you go. I mean, you know, in sports, in life, there it is. Mm-hmm. Okay. We're gonna switch from books to places. What place inspires you?

[00:43:53] Bob Lind: Well, that'd be related to my book.

[00:43:55] Bob Lind: Having just gotten back from a trip to England, um, the first tee [00:44:00] on a Lynx golf course in the UK or Ireland.

[00:44:03] Stacy Havener: Oh,

[00:44:04] Bob Lind: I know. I'm in for four. I'd like to say three, but probably more close to four hours of an experience I've never had, even if I played it the day before. The wind is different, the conditions are different, and it's a game that's been played there for hundreds and hundreds of years, and the courses are just laid across the land.

[00:44:21] Bob Lind: Something, oh. You don't see a lot of over here.

[00:44:25] Stacy Havener: Wow. That sounds magical. I'm not a golfer, but that description, like of the actual landscape, that to me sounds awesome. The hitting the white ball around, not so much, but the, the vistas and the experience and being outside that and walking, Ugh, that sounds magical.

[00:44:44] Bob Lind: It was fun. Uh, one of the golf courses we played and we were behind a guy who was playing with his 7-year-old black lab.

[00:44:49] Stacy Havener: Oh cool. Oh my gosh. Just, just

[00:44:51] Bob Lind: walking his dog on the golf course.

[00:44:53] Stacy Havener: Wow. Love that. Okay, we are gonna just totally switch gears now. Mm-hmm. [00:45:00]Okay. Let's just say you're gonna do a talk at a conference on your specialty, on building a business, on, you know, building a niche.

[00:45:09] Stacy Havener: Boutique. You're taking the stage of a thousand enduring true fans in the audience who are just like Bobs, unrated, munies, you know, all this stuff. What's the song that they're gonna play as you take the stage? What's your walkout anthem?

[00:45:26] Bob Lind: You can probably see a picture next to my, uh, mailbox over my mm-hmm.

[00:45:31] Bob Lind: My left shoulder. It's gonna be a live version of Born To Run.

[00:45:35] Stacy Havener: Ooh. So classic. Yes. Uh, and the live version, and that's also

[00:45:42] Bob Lind: a little bit of a backstory. I was very sick with a life-threatening illness in high school. I covered obviously, and my mother, uh, went to. The Ticket Master had bought me tickets to see Bruce Springsteen at Northwestern University.

[00:45:58] Bob Lind: Hmm. And after [00:46:00] the show, I had been, I'd been pretty sick for quite a while. I walked out of there and said, I am alive.

[00:46:07] Stacy Havener: Oh my gosh. Bob,

[00:46:08] Bob Lind: 75 plus shows later. I have that same feeling.

[00:46:12] Stacy Havener: That's my favorite part of this podcast right there. I have chills. That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Glad you're here, my friend.

[00:46:20] Bob Lind: Me too.

[00:46:21] Stacy Havener: Yes. All right. This is gonna be interesting. What profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt?

[00:46:28] Bob Lind: Uh, I've always, I've thought about in retirement and we'll never do it 'cause it's, it's what we thought about was opening a breakfast restaurant.

[00:46:35] Stacy Havener: Uh, are you skilled breakfast chef?

[00:46:39] Bob Lind: I'm a pretty skilled bread baker

[00:46:42] Stacy Havener: Uhhuh.

[00:46:43] Bob Lind: Sourdough bread baker and uh, I like making breakfast, so whenever I travel uhhuh, the first thing I do when I get to a new city is go to Google or Yelp or something and look for the best breakfast restaurant.

[00:46:56] Stacy Havener: I love this. Do you ever invite prospects or clients, like, do you [00:47:00] include them in this little.

[00:47:02] Bob Lind: My journey. Yeah, it tends to be more, uh, most people don't wanna get up for breakfast, but that's a good idea.

[00:47:07] Stacy Havener: Why not try it? I'll tell you in my trips, we've been talking about the UK a lot to London. They love a good breakfast meeting over there and it's quite fun. Like I think we should bring the breakfast meeting back.

[00:47:20] Bob Lind: I would be all for it,

[00:47:21] Stacy Havener: right?

[00:47:22] Bob Lind: Mm-hmm. This

[00:47:22] Stacy Havener: is great. Okay. I hope you do it. Or maybe a bakery. So we can all have some salad. Yeah.

[00:47:28] Bob Lind: One of my closest friends owns a bakery in San Francisco, and I know his hours.

[00:47:32] Stacy Havener: Oh yeah. They're horrible.

[00:47:33] Bob Lind: The breakfast thing is much more manageable.

[00:47:35] Stacy Havener: Okay. Yeah, decision made. Okay.

[00:47:37] Stacy Havener: Flip side, what profession would you not like to do?

[00:47:41] Bob Lind: I would not like to be a representative in the US House.

[00:47:45] Stacy Havener: Mm.

[00:47:47] Bob Lind: Our business is political. It has political implications in terms of, I mean, we're, we just survive? Well, I'm gonna knock on wood. We're in the process of surviving threats to tax exemption. Mm.

[00:47:57] Bob Lind: But I wouldn't wanna be in the US house 'cause I wouldn't wanna work [00:48:00] with 435, 434 people, largely of whom I didn't respect.

[00:48:05] Stacy Havener: That's also why we're founders, isn't it? We can work with people we wanna work with, we get that's our world, our choice. Great one, Bob. Okay, and last, but certainly not least, and this is hopefully still a ways away, what do you want people to say about you after you've retired or left the industry?

[00:48:26] Bob Lind: After I've retired, I think that one of my, uh, innate skills is I'm a really good connector of people. Mm. And maybe it's just because I'm nosy. Uh, in conversations with people, just find out that we went to the same college or we mm-hmm. This and that. And I'd like people to say that, that he was a good connector of people and he used it to the benefit of a lot of people in our business that he connected and put people together.

[00:48:56] Stacy Havener: I like that so much because [00:49:00] again, you know, I say this all the time, it's like ad nauseum, but people do business with people and I think connecting people is a unique ability in and of itself, making people feel comfortable. As new friends,

[00:49:16] Bob Lind: I've really engaged in LinkedIn 'cause of you guys. Mm-hmm. And your firm.

[00:49:20] Bob Lind: Uh, but in that process I'll often see. People that are between opportunities open for hiring, looking for a new job. Mm-hmm. And I'll reach out to 'em and just say, I, I don't know if I can help you.

[00:49:31] Stacy Havener: Hmm. But I'm happy

[00:49:32] Bob Lind: to try.

[00:49:33] Stacy Havener: That means a lot. Well also I think it ties back to the beginning and your backstory.

[00:49:37] Stacy Havener: You know how hard it is to find a job. Right. And you know that more often than not, it's not necessarily 'cause you saw a job post and you applied and like, you know, even in your story, it was again, it was a people connection. That led you to Nuveen.

[00:49:54] Bob Lind: Yeah. There aren't a lot of job postings for fund managers or no business development people.

[00:49:59] Bob Lind: And, and [00:50:00] even if there were there, that's not how people are gonna find their job. It's gonna be, it's gonna be through a connection. It's gonna be, have you talked to so and so? That's

[00:50:07] Stacy Havener: right. I'd

[00:50:07] Bob Lind: like to introduce you to somebody else. Yeah.

[00:50:09] Stacy Havener: Well, here's to it. I'm proud to know you, Bob. If people want to follow along on the journey, what's the best way for them to do that?

[00:50:17] Bob Lind: Uh, we're on LinkedIn. Mm-hmm. Naturally, of course. Uh. And our website is lend capital partners.com. That's perfect. Pretty easy. And we have a monthly newsletter. We welcome anybody to subscribe to and uh, ask us any questions. I think the biggest part of our challenge is the education process. Mm-hmm. And once people get comfortable with the education side of it and they can tell that story to their clients, it becomes a journey for both of us.

[00:50:44] Stacy Havener: Well, that's great. Bob. Thank you so much for being here. This has been awesome.

[00:50:48] Bob Lind: Well, thank you for including us and thank you for your partnership.

[00:50:50] Stacy Havener: Same. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. The information is not an offer, solicitation, [00:51:00] or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products or to adopt any investment strategy.

[00:51:05] Stacy Havener: Investment values may fluctuate and past performance is not a guide to future performance. All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm. Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Haven or Haven or Capital Partners.

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