Episode 108: When Business Is Personal | What Happens When Siblings Join the Family Firm | Meet Spencer Ogden and Liz Curtin of Dock Street
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What do a chimney sweep empire, a top hat obsession, and a $500M home services company have in common?
Dock Street.
This Newport-based multifamily office is redefining wealth management for Main Street entrepreneurs, and it’s run by a sibling duo, Spencer Ogden and Liz Curtin. who swore they’d never work together.
In this episode, Spencer and Liz join Stacy to talk about:
Growing up in a business... then choosing to join it at 40
What second-gen operators really need to carry on the family legacy successfully
How they help families turn work ethic into generational wealth
Why bonds don’t cut it for entrepreneurs (and what does)
Their hacks to making their family biz actually work without sabotaging their relationships (because that would make holiday dinners quite awkward)
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About Spencer & Liz:
Spencer Ogden
Spencer brings over two decades of experience in the investment industry, with a career that began at Citigroup and Legg Mason, followed by 13 years at K2 Advisors, a hedge fund affiliate of Franklin Templeton. At K2, he managed quantitative strategies overseeing more than $700 million in assets.
With a long-standing interest in microeconomics, Spencer is particularly focused on how individuals and families make financial decisions. His background in portfolio construction and asset allocation informs his current work in retirement income, tax strategy, and inheritance planning.
He holds both the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) designations, and earned his degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin. Spencer is also an experienced offshore sailor and navigator, having competed in numerous regattas and sailed more than 15,000 nautical miles—including an Atlantic crossing.
Liz Curtin
Liz leads Dock Street’s marketing efforts and also supports clients directly. Before joining the team, she worked as an independent consultant, partnering with a range of organizations on everything from marketing and hiring to organizational strategy and special projects. Along the way, she helped launch several new ventures, always with a focus on creative problem-solving and building strong relationships.
She holds a master’s degree in Education Policy from King’s College London and a bachelor’s in Secondary Education–Social Studies from Indiana University. Earlier in her career, Liz served in the Peace Corps in Romania, where she taught high school English and supported a local orphanage. She now lives in Seattle with her husband and two sons.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Books:
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TRANSCRIPT
Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.
[00:00:00] Stacy Havener: The work I do is incredibly rewarding. We have great clients, many of whom become friends, some who are even neighbors. What? Yeah. Meet Spencer Ogden and Liz Curtin, a brother and sister duo from Multi-Family Office Dock Street Asset Management, a firm with a presence here in Newport, Rhode Island. Dock Street was founded by Dan Ogden, a serial entrepreneur who built an extremely successful business in.
[00:00:31] Stacy Havener: The Chimney Sweep Industry. Now, Spencer and Liz and the amazing team at Dock Street serve other successful entrepreneurial families, many of whom have had success in home services or main street industries. At Dock Streete, they've always done things differently than typical asset managers, different than typical wealth managers for people different than the typical ultra high net worth [00:01:00] client.
[00:01:01] Stacy Havener: When they leaned into those differences, a new level of success unlocked. This episode is one where you'll need your notebook and your popcorn. Let's go meet my friends and clients and neighbors, Spencer and Liz. Hey, my name is Stacey Er. I'm obsessed with startups, stories, 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.
[00:01:39] Stacy Havener: You could say against the odds. 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 [00:02:00] as the capital raising class you wish you had in college mixed with happy hour.
[00:02:06] 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.
[00:02:20] Stacy Havener: Okay. This is really fun for me. I mean, every podcast is really fun for me, but this one's extra special because not only do I have friends and clients in the studio with me today, but I also have a brother and sister team. 'cause this is a family biz. So, I mean, I have hearts in my eyes right now for this conversation.
[00:02:38] Stacy Havener: Spencer and Liz, thank you so much for being here.
[00:02:40] Spencer Ogden: Thanks for having us. Yeah,
[00:02:42] Stacy Havener: excited. Okay. So also a little bit of a challenge for me as the podcast host 'cause there's three of us, and normally this is a one-to-one conversation. So I'm ready. I'm game.
[00:02:53] Spencer Ogden: You're outnumbered. I'm
[00:02:54] Stacy Havener: outnumbered also. So there could be a mutiny.
[00:02:57] Stacy Havener: It's fine. I'm, I'm here for it. I love a good [00:03:00] rebellion. So I teed up the idea that this is a family business. Mm-hmm. So let's start with that. Let's talk about how Dock Street came to be. But I wanna go back to Dan's backstory, if we can.
[00:03:16] Spencer Ogden: Now we'll give some highlights 'cause there's a lot of pre-dock street story, but the highlights are Dan has been a, a serial entrepreneur, um, throughout his early life.
[00:03:25] Spencer Ogden: He's stuck with one thing in the second half, but in his early life, uh, he is done everything from working on an assembly line to starting a business that was selling chimney sweep franchises around the country, commercial real estate, commodities trading. Uh, there was a mailbox franchise business. So there were a lot of iterations of things prior to Dock Street.
[00:03:45] Spencer Ogden: And then Dock Street was founded in 1989 when I was nine years old, and he was about 40. And I remember growing up with the business and one of the things he would always say is that it took me until I was 40 to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. [00:04:00] And he has done that for the rest of his life.
[00:04:02] Spencer Ogden: He's still involved in the business. And you know, the other part of that is that we certainly never thought that we would work together. That wasn't. Part of the plan. It was never like, I've started this in one day. Mm-hmm. It'll be yours. And definitely didn't expect to work with Liz. That was even, uh, less likely.
[00:04:18] Spencer Ogden: Um, but we did end up, you know, I ended up in the investment business Okay. Sort of couldn't help having grown up with the business. And then finally in 2020, after being a portfolio manager for 15 years, joined Dock Streete. And it just happened to be when I was 40 as well. And so,
[00:04:35] Stacy Havener: wow. Oh, that's cool. I didn't good at bit,
[00:04:37] Spencer Ogden: it took me until I was 40 to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
[00:04:40] Spencer Ogden: And here I'm so,
[00:04:41] Stacy Havener: that's so great. Okay, so we're gonna pause. I, I have some questions about dance backstory, but Liz, I mean, did you envision that you'd be working with Spencer and in the family biz, or was this like Yeah. Oh, hard. No, that was,
[00:04:55] Liz Curtin: I was in education for my entire career. I wanted to be a history major and Dan, our father, [00:05:00] was like, no.
[00:05:01] Liz Curtin: So I went and was a social studies major, which is even worse I think, to a degree in what you can do with it. But I was in education policy for 15 years of my career working with school districts and ultimately ended up doing a lot of COVID response work with school districts and helping a number of social impact, education focused consulting programs grow.
[00:05:22] Liz Curtin: And then three years ago, my dad approached me and said, you know, you've grown your own business for a period of time. What if you come over and help Dock Street do that as well? It was a hard left turn going from education policy to finance, but I found so much actually that really aligns with mm-hmm.
[00:05:39] Liz Curtin: What I previously had done, especially when it comes to the types of clients that we work with. And just like being very people and client focused in our work has really brought a lot of joy for me in this and kind of found like that alignment and space that feels good. But no, I definitely didn't. And when I approached Spencer about it, he was like, okay, like have you created [00:06:00] your pro con list?
[00:06:00] Liz Curtin: And I'm like a pro con list. Like, no, it just feels like I should do this. It's like it was the first example for me of like what it would be like for Spencer and I to come together. We're both very different in how we get to a place, but it's a lot of the time because of our shared experience, we end up in the same place thinking, you know, very aligned, but how we get there is very different.
[00:06:20] Stacy Havener: So it's interesting, and I wanna come back to Dan in a second, but I get asked this question a lot, so I'm gonna ask you. So my husband is in the business, and people always say, how do you work? You know, with Eric in this situation, it's like you're working with your sibling and you're working with your dad.
[00:06:38] Stacy Havener: So what's that like? Like how do you make that work?
[00:06:42] Spencer Ogden: I mean, I would say that it almost wouldn't work without it. Wow. Um, you know, having the trio I think is important.
[00:06:48] Mm. You know,
[00:06:49] Spencer Ogden: my dad and I have our relationship, I have a relationship with Liz. Liz has a different relationship with Dan. And so having all of those different communication [00:07:00] styles, different decision making styles, it all fits together.
[00:07:03] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm. It's just a different dynamic. So if it was just my dad and I, that would be different. Yeah. And I think it also evolves over time. You know, at first it was very much like, well, we need to keep business and personal separate. You know, one of the things my dad said coming into the businesses, like, we need to make sure that whatever happens here, we do this in a way that it doesn't mess up our family relationship.
[00:07:26] Spencer Ogden: Like that's priority number one. And so, you know, that just evolves in terms of, you know, when we're hanging out as a family, do we talk about work stuff? It comes up occasionally. Mm-hmm. So it's not a hard line, but it, it's become more fluid over the years.
[00:07:42] Liz Curtin: Yeah, that, I mean, part of it too is Spencer and I haven't lived in the same place since he was 18, and so, you know, we've lived across the country from each other.
[00:07:50] Liz Curtin: We've lived in different countries. I think we're closer now than we've ever been. Oh. Mainly because he can't escape me. He has to talk to me every day. But it's been such a benefit. It's been so much fun. I think [00:08:00] the other part to Dock Street that's wildly unique is that we are a really small team. Yeah.
[00:08:04] Liz Curtin: Yes. Three of us are family members, and then we're only a team of six. Mm-hmm. So that's 50%. Yeah. But the other three are people that have been deeply ingrained in Dockk Street and our family since the nineties. And so the relationships are really, really strong. Yeah. And. It's not just a family business within like our little family.
[00:08:23] Liz Curtin: It's definitely been a family business that has expanded out. I love that comment.
[00:08:28] Stacy Havener: So great. And I think it does help when you have unique abilities. Like if everybody's trying to do the same role or the same job, you can have friction. I've found when you have really unique and complimentary abilities, you start relying on each other and you already have this like incredible embedded trust because you're family, it's like, yeah, of course I'm gonna go to Liz for that.
[00:08:51] Stacy Havener: Of course I'm gonna go to Spencer for that. And that trust is already built, so that's amazing. So I wanna talk because there are some threads here that are from Dan's backstory that [00:09:00] I wanna pull forward. And also even the future story of the clients you serve. So you mentioned the Chimney sweep business, and I will tell people when I first met with Spencer and Dan in our office here in Newport.
[00:09:12] Stacy Havener: Dan started telling the story about the chimney sweet business. I was like, someone get the popcorn because like, how much time do we have because I'm camped out on this and like, I'm gonna need lots of popcorn for this story. So this was a business. Can we tell the fun fact about the top hats?
[00:09:31] Sure. Okay.
[00:09:32] Liz Curtin: Te Go
[00:09:32] ahead Liz. Yeah.
[00:09:33] Liz Curtin: Aside from Disney, Dan was the number one seller, buyer of top hats in all of America in the. Period of time that he ran this company, which has come up in multiple calls now
[00:09:44] Stacy Havener: because chimney sweeps wore top hats while they cleaned chimneys.
[00:09:49] Spencer Ogden: Yeah. This was in the seventies. And so part of the kit that the chimney sweeps would get when they bought this sort of business kit was a vacuum and a top hat and brushes and all the [00:10:00] materials they needed.
[00:10:01] Spencer Ogden: And the top hat became part of the branding and Disney was selling them because of Mary Poppins. And this was part of the branding. The company was called August West, and the logo became a guy up on a chimney doffing his, uh, top hat. And that that stuck. And you know, people have an old timey feel. Yeah.
[00:10:18] Spencer Ogden: But yeah, the, the history there was that one of my dad's first jobs and actually one of his last jobs working for someone else because, like many entrepreneurs, he identified early on that he wasn't very good at working for other people. But his job was doing copywriting. So ad copy for, uh, radio station out in Detroit where he grew up.
[00:10:37] Spencer Ogden: So that was sort of cutting his teeth on writing. And he had written sort of advertorials, you know, articles for other entrepreneurs and other businesses. And, uh, this guy in Connecticut who had this chimney sweep business that he was looking to expand, he had been running it locally in like one location, um, approached him about writing an article for him to mm-hmm.
[00:10:58] Spencer Ogden: Help with advertising and creating [00:11:00] nationwide recognition. And, um, Dan said, well, I don't wanna write a letter for you, I wanna partner with you. Oh my gosh. And he had seen enough of the business Uhhuh that he said, this is great, like we should run with this. But he wanted to partner and his future partner said F you, and hung up.
[00:11:15] Spencer Ogden: So it wasn't off to a good start.
[00:11:18] Stacy Havener: Oh, also real life here on the billion dollar Backstory podcast. Exactly. This is what happens. Yeah.
[00:11:23] Spencer Ogden: So somehow they got past that and said, okay, let's do this together. And my dad actually moved out from Michigan to Connecticut to partner up on this. And they became business partners in the late seventies.
[00:11:33] Spencer Ogden: And that led to advertising in a magazine called Mother Earth News. Mm-hmm. And what they saw, mother Earth, the news was picking up at the time, there was a little bit of a back to land, uh, trend in the seventies. It was also the oil crisis. So people were burning more wood for heat rather than using oil and things like that.
[00:11:51] Spencer Ogden: So there was a bit of trend of that. And of course to do that, you gotta make sure you have a safe chimney. And so they were advertising there and they were increasing their advertising and going from [00:12:00] a quarter page to a half page to a full page. And Mother Earth News said, who are these guys? Um, you know, they're obviously spending a lot more in advertising.
[00:12:07] Spencer Ogden: Things must be going well. And so they did an article on them. Do you remember what year that was, Liz?
[00:12:13] Liz Curtin: 1978.
[00:12:14] Spencer Ogden: 78, something like that. They were on the cover and, you know, a four or five page article, uh, with photos of the guys working on the chimneys and the whole story of the business and everything. And that really exploded the business.
[00:12:26] Spencer Ogden: So, uh, yeah, like I said, they were selling these kits of, you know, here's your vacuum, here's your top hat. But also it was, you know, sort of a franchise in a sense of here's how you run a business. Yes. You know, get started running your own business. So it was enabling these other entrepreneurs was, you know, really what was being sold.
[00:12:44] Spencer Ogden: Um, so that was an interesting aspect.
[00:12:46] Stacy Havener: It's so great. And in doing story work. So then you became clients. We all the story work together and, and in doing the story work, what we realized is that actually the family office kind of roots of Dockk Street. The clients that [00:13:00] you serve were naturally, and sometimes like, it's not a conscious thing.
[00:13:04] Stacy Havener: It just happens naturally that the entrepreneurs and other families you were working with had similar roots. So like give us a feel for the types of clients that you serve and the industries they're in.
[00:13:18] Spencer Ogden: So the clients we're working with are largely in the home services businesses. So these are things like basement waterproofing, pest control, attic insulation, and they're largely people that either started their business or they're second generation like us.
[00:13:32] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm. And they're, you know, taking over a business. But often what's interesting about that second generation, certainly where we aspire to grow, is they take the base that's been built and then they expand greatly upon that. It's not just, you know, taking and continuing what their parents built. And part of what's interesting, I think about that, and this is part of what Dan, I think learned in this entrepreneurial journey was when you're an entrepreneur, you've kind of got one shot.
[00:13:58] Spencer Ogden: To pick a business that you're gonna start. [00:14:00] Mm-hmm. You're not saying, well, I'm gonna start 10 businesses and see which one works out. So you do, you spend some time thinking, what am I good at? What do I wanna be in? What's gonna be a successful business? Sure, I might wanna do this, but I don't see the business model there.
[00:14:12] Spencer Ogden: It doesn't fit. So you, you go through this process of figuring out what is a good business. Maybe you have some failures, maybe you do pick one that doesn't work out. Mm-hmm. But your next one you're like, okay, I learned something there. Let me pick a better business. And it's a heck of a lot easier to be successful in a business that's both a good business model and also one that you're good at than trying to pick something you're good at.
[00:14:33] Spencer Ogden: But is a, it's just a bad industry a be in. So that's part of what we call an operator's mentality, which is like if you've operated a successful business, you've spent some time thinking about what's a good business and what's a bad business?
[00:14:46] Yeah.
[00:14:46] Spencer Ogden: Um, and that's led into this investment approach. And so with those clients that we're working with and those home services, they've done that thinking and they know what a good business and a bad business looks like.
[00:14:57] Spencer Ogden: They just don't realize that a small [00:15:00] business or a medium sized business that they own, you can approach public stock investing in the same way.
[00:15:07] Yes.
[00:15:07] Spencer Ogden: And that's a, a bit of a mindset shift. You know, I, I know for Dan, before he was introduced to these ideas, it was, he thought stock investing is just, it's something totally different.
[00:15:18] Spencer Ogden: That's not what I'm doing. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm operating a business, I'm making payroll. And that investing stuff is totally different. And then there was a shift where he realized that there was a way to combine those things.
[00:15:31] Stacy Havener: It's so good. And I wanna get to the investment approach because actually this thread, it not only goes into the client side, it does go into sort of like the services that you offer and how you approach Yeah.
[00:15:40] Stacy Havener: What you do. But there was one other bit I wanted to talk about on this idea of sort of these blue collar business entrepreneurs who, by the way, are crushing it. Like anybody who has a house right now knows that it is incredibly difficult to find skilled workers in any sort of trade, in any sort of anything that has to do with your house, which is a whole [00:16:00] nother podcast.
[00:16:01] Stacy Havener: But the point being, there was another element here, which is that second generation piece, and I have heard this from other family offices as well, which is, you know, the first generation entrepreneur does this great work to build a business and it's successful and generates. Wealth from that business.
[00:16:21] Stacy Havener: And then when the second generation comes in, there are a lot of emotions and feelings and just deep things that each generation is now confronting. And I think you've shared with me like some of the first generation clients that you have are like, I've made all this. I wanna make sure like my legacy, my next generation, my kids don't grow up with a silver spoon.
[00:16:45] Stacy Havener: They still learn how to do hard work. They sort of don't f it up, like all of the things. Yeah. Yeah. So talk a little bit about, 'cause you've lived it, you're living it. And I think that makes you such, like as a guide, you are so well suited for this.
[00:16:57] Mm. Mm-hmm.
[00:16:58] Spencer Ogden: Yeah, I think, [00:17:00] you know, there's the, obviously the first, second generation thing, which is interesting.
[00:17:04] Spencer Ogden: But just to touch on, there's also an interesting aspect that you see people evolving where you see someone who gets into a business because they're good at it. Mm-hmm. You know, they're good at doing work, they're good at doing the work. And then there's a, a fork in the road. Do I figure out how to operate this as a business and figure out what my profit margins are?
[00:17:21] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm. And get serious about operating this as a business. And so sometimes you almost see a second generation, even though it's one person. Ah, but you see someone who's maybe been doing it the way they've been doing it for 10 or 15 years, and then they realize like, you know, I have a job working for my business, but I'm not a business owner.
[00:17:37] Spencer Ogden: Ooh. And they take that next step.
[00:17:39] Stacy Havener: Yep. So
[00:17:39] Spencer Ogden: that's a really interesting evolution. Sometimes it's the actual second generation Yes. That says, you know, Hey dad, I've seen you, you've been busting your ass on this for 30 years. Yeah. Running it this way. I wanna operate it like a business. Oh, I love that. That can be some of the tension is, you know, of course it's like, well, we've been doing it this way for years, so why should we change?
[00:17:59] Spencer Ogden: And the next [00:18:00] generation's like, no, we need a CRM. We need some systems. We need, you know, we need, we need to know our profit margin. These are things that are important and that can be that supercharge. Yeah. And for a lot of these, like what we see very often is that next generation coming in and they might start working in the business when they're 19, 20, 21.
[00:18:18] Mm-hmm.
[00:18:18] Spencer Ogden: And it's kind of an obvious approach, but what we've seen work is that they work in all parts of the business. Maybe they come in at the bottom of the sales organization and they learn how to sell. Maybe they're coming in and they're doing the basement waterproofing, you know? Mm-hmm. They're not coming in as a management consultant fresh outta business school.
[00:18:35] Spencer Ogden: They're learning how the business operates and maybe sometime in their twenties they say, yeah, this is something I wanna take to the next level. And that's certainly the successful ones. That's what we've seen. They've worked in the business for maybe 10 years, and then it's, I've got some ideas for how we can.
[00:18:51] Spencer Ogden: To the next level.
[00:18:53] Stacy Havener: Is that one of the differentiators? I mean, Liz, when you're talking with clients and they're coming in and you're sort of onboarding them and you're having conversations [00:19:00] with them, I mean, when someone describes something to you, like when you hire someone and you're talking about a problem you have, and then the person, the guide, the dock street in this example is like, I totally understand.
[00:19:10] Stacy Havener: We've been there. Like, do you find that? Those words come out a lot when you're working with clients.
[00:19:17] Liz Curtin: Yeah. I think in particular, one meeting pops into mind that recently it's Spencer and I sitting around a table with siblings. They're the second generation of the business is two brothers and Spencer and I, and we're sitting there talking about what they've done to grow this business over time, and they're asking us the same about Docks group.
[00:19:34] Liz Curtin: Oh. And having that deep understanding of not just the service that we can provide, that really aligns with the mentality that they have, but also this understanding of like sibling dynamics and family dynamics. Mm-hmm. Oftentimes, many of our clients, it's the husband and wife who have started this business together and now could be onto the kids, or it's still the husband and wife and the mentality that they bring.
[00:19:56] Liz Curtin: I think that's part of, you know, for me, the hard left turn from [00:20:00] education to finance, that's the place that I find the most joy, like our clients are just. So kind and just so like down to earth and really about family and really focused in on what they're doing. So the mentality that they bring to this is very, very different than I kind of had anticipated.
[00:20:17] Liz Curtin: That's great. And it's been really
[00:20:18] Spencer Ogden: wonderful. And I'll pick up on a word there which is focused because these operators are just impressive. And that's one of the best parts about working with them is the, the level of. Focus and operation excellence that they have. It's inspiring to watch, you know, the, the two brothers, Liz was just talking about, this is a group father and mom started it back in the seventies, had been working on it for, uh, you know, 20, 25 years.
[00:20:46] Spencer Ogden: Both sons come into the business in different ways, focusing on different areas, and they, over the last 15 years, they've grown from a few million to now doing over 500 million in revenue. Amazing. Across five states. It's amazing. Wow. [00:21:00] There's a pest control guy I was talking to last week who's talking about implementing AI in their call center business.
[00:21:05] Spencer Ogden: They've got 13 employees and they're using AI and AI's answering 10% of their inbound calls. You know, the innovation, it's like, yeah. Pest controls, but it's, it's amazing to watch, so.
[00:21:17] Stacy Havener: Wow. That is just so fun. I can imagine how much fun you have in those conversations. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay, so let's take that other thread that you teed up, Spencer, which is you have a certain mindset and a certain operator's sort of mentality, and how that gets pulled over into the investment process.
[00:21:37] Stacy Havener: Because I would think too, and maybe you can weave this in, like I think there's a perception that entrepreneurs are like, they've got all this sort of private equity kind of type of exposure in their business and really they just want bonds. Like, just give me laddered bonds. Yeah.
[00:21:51] Spencer Ogden: Yeah.
[00:21:52] Stacy Havener: And you've shared with us that that's so not how they think.
[00:21:56] Spencer Ogden: Yeah. Really, really good point. And it's something that we've come [00:22:00] to understand better internally over the last couple of years because part of the background here is that the whole team, were all kind of outsiders to the investment business in different ways. My dad was a history major. I'm a computer science major.
[00:22:12] Spencer Ogden: Liz is in education. None of us did the finance. Mm-hmm. Economics, MBA track. I come at things, as Liz alluded to earlier, from a more, much more analytical perspective, right. Computer science and programming, after all. Like I do spreadsheets, I do code
[00:22:29] Stacy Havener: zeros and ones
[00:22:31] Spencer Ogden: and zeros and ones. And so I did do the CFA track.
[00:22:34] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm. That's how I became a PM was doing the CFA, studying alternative investments, sort of absorbing the textbooks. Right. And to your point, the textbooks say, okay, you're a business owner, 95, 90 9% of your net worth is tied up in this business. Mm-hmm. That is equity. It's a private equity that you own directly.
[00:22:53] Spencer Ogden: So the last thing you need in your life is more equity risk. That's right. So yeah, there is this perspective that, yeah, business owners [00:23:00] may not make sense. Like you wait for them to sell the business, then they're, then they become good clients. We actually prefer working with clients that have reached a level of success where they're not looking to sell the business.
[00:23:10] Spencer Ogden: They're like, I've built this thing. It's my baby. Yeah, I wanna keep running it for the rest of my life, and hopefully longer, but I need a investment compliment to it. So they're not looking to sell. That's again, you know, that's what we intend to do with our business, and it's the mentality that we like.
[00:23:27] Spencer Ogden: Um, all these things cross over to the investment. So like, on the investment side, we wanna get married to stocks that we buy, not date, not look for a trade. We want business owners with the same mentality. So going back to the, the private equity thing, what we've come to understand is that most of these guys operate their business with low levels of debt.
[00:23:46] Spencer Ogden: And so when they look at the risk of their business, uh, we were at dinner with them, a few of them last year, and, you know, you wanna ask some questions. Uh, you know, not, not everyone's a super extrovert. So, so what, what does risk mean to you guys? Like, [00:24:00] how do you see like, risk, great business and investing and it was kind of silent around the table.
[00:24:06] Spencer Ogden: Because I don't think they even understood the question or the word, like y you know, I mean, you're an entrepreneur, Stacy, like, you know, risk maybe doesn't come into it because you wouldn't do what you're doing if you were risk averse. Right? It's like, so that's, it's so good. Good. They're
[00:24:19] Stacy Havener: like, what is this word?
[00:24:20] Stacy Havener: Risk? This letter. Yeah. Yeah. It was least slightly awkward to that. Oh, I love that. So they were just like, doesn't compute, that's just not how I think.
[00:24:30] Spencer Ogden: So there's a little bit of a, doesn't compute, you know, one of them said, look, we don't wanna lose everything, but we know if we did, we could earn it back.
[00:24:36] Spencer Ogden: 'cause we started from zero. You know, the, the guy who said that started his business when he was 17 years old, building houses in his neighborhood because no one else was available. And he said, sure, I can build a house, figured out how to do it. So, you know, he's not thinking about the risks of what if I screw up this house?
[00:24:51] Spencer Ogden: Right. And he's 17. So there's that aspect of like, they're just a little bit less risk averse in general. Mm-hmm. Because they know they can do it again. [00:25:00] But the other part is that their businesses are generally low debt. They've been operating them for a bunch of years, whether they've seen their parents running it or they've been running it.
[00:25:07] Spencer Ogden: And what another guy said is, look, I've run my business through several recessions. I know what levers to pull to keep it cashflow positive. Mm. So. That's another part of that operator's mentality is it's all about cashflow. Making payroll is your biggest risk. Yes. And that's something we grew up with my dad saying like, you don't know fear until you've had to make payroll.
[00:25:27] Spencer Ogden: Yes. I'm like, that's a fear that operators live with. And so he was like, I know what levers to pull to keep this cashflow positive. If we go through a recession now, what he's not thinking about is the value of his business. Maybe his business went from, you know, someone who would've paid him 20 million for it, and in the recession they would pay 10.
[00:25:45] Mm-hmm.
[00:25:45] Spencer Ogden: Has he lost 10 million? Those, those aren't even numbers that he sees.
[00:25:48] Mm-hmm.
[00:25:49] Spencer Ogden: He's just like, I'm cashflow positive. Sure. Maybe I can take less. I have net less net profit at the end of the day this year than a good year. Oh, well I'll survive. Mm-hmm. But [00:26:00] it's gonna stay afloat. It's gonna stay cashflow positive.
[00:26:02] Spencer Ogden: So what's the risk there? It's more like a bond. So they actually view their business like a bond. It spits off a certain amount of cash each year, sometimes years better, sometimes years worse. So in that respect, they're not. Risk averse and saying, in fact, they'll be like, bonds seem like a waste of time.
[00:26:20] Spencer Ogden: I can invest in my business. Yeah. And get a 10, 15, 20, 30% return. Totally. So why would I take money out of the business and put it in 5% bonds? So they want their money to keep working for 'em when it comes out of the business. So what we've seen is the bigger compliment there is they need liquidity. So it's, they want it to keep growing.
[00:26:42] Spencer Ogden: Equity is the way that you keep growing, whether that's equity, we think obviously public stock market is the best place for equity returns. Mm-hmm. But equity in real estate is good too. Whatever it is, equity is the way that the wealth really grows. And stocks offer a liquid way to get [00:27:00] equity returns.
[00:27:00] Spencer Ogden: And so that liquidity gives them the flexibility they need to sort of have control of their financial destiny.
[00:27:07] Stacy Havener: That was so good. Like, I am so proud of you. I mean, I am sitting here listening to you and I'm like, gosh, you are so dialed in. It is no wonder to me that you are growing at the rate. You are growing right now.
[00:27:20] Stacy Havener: Because let's just pause and high five for a second that you hit your one year goal in February of this year, and what you've done so far on this podcast is exactly why. What I loved, I mean, I loved so much about that riff, Spencer, but one of the things I loved is that you are understanding your client on a, I mean, it's also in your DNA, but this is why you're the right guide for them.
[00:27:45] Stacy Havener: You understand how they think in a way that very few advisors are able to do with their clients. Mm-hmm.
[00:27:55] How
[00:27:55] Stacy Havener: they define risk. I mean, the fact that. Everything you did right there was so [00:28:00] amazing. The liquidity thing, that's really a huge risk for them. So being in the public markets and having that liquidity is such a nice compliment to what they're already building.
[00:28:12] Stacy Havener: Or just the mindset shift. Yep. Like viewing it like a bond. It was just so great. So high five. Just pausing High five on that one. Thank you. I wanna talk about how this shows up then when you're building portfolios, because I think what you've said is we're gravitating to companies, public companies that have a similar ethos and mindset and sort of structure.
[00:28:34] Stacy Havener: So talk a little bit about that.
[00:28:37] Spencer Ogden: Yeah. Yeah. It's on the one hand, really obvious to say that companies are different from each other, and that's going back to the operator's mentality. When you're choosing what business to start. Like, it's obvious that an ice cream stand is different from a marketing consultancy, right?
[00:28:50] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm. Like these are very different businesses, very different profit margins, very different complexity, everything but. In the sort of academic perspective to investing, [00:29:00] it's very easy to slip into a mindset or you're almost encouraged to slip into a mindset of all these companies are different, they're equity, they have betas to the overall market.
[00:29:10] Spencer Ogden: Just to like wonk out a little bit. Like, you know, you hear all these terms betas to the market, correlations, everything's correlated. US is correlated to Europe. So it doesn't really matter whether you're investing in Europe or US Equity, you know, uh, well are you in the tech sector? Sure. Do you wanna be in the tech sector?
[00:29:26] Spencer Ogden: Well, okay, go buy tech companies, whether you buy Google, apple or whatever, doesn't matter. They're tech. They do tech things. They move with the tech, the tech index, you know, there's no difference. So again, coming from that operator's perspective, you say, no, businesses are different. They're good businesses and there are bad businesses.
[00:29:43] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm. And so that's sort of like one of the first assumptions in the investment process we start from, which is that. You can make this distinction between good and bad businesses, and in fact, the majority of businesses are, if not bad, then pretty boring, uninteresting businesses.
[00:29:59] Yeah. [00:30:00] Yeah.
[00:30:00] Spencer Ogden: They have low profit margins.
[00:30:02] Spencer Ogden: They don't grow over time and all these things. And then you have good businesses, businesses that you would start if you have the ideas and ability businesses that you would buy into and partner with for the rest of your life if you have the opportunity. Mm-hmm. And you do, you can buy a share. So that's sort of the first distinction that comes from that.
[00:30:22] Spencer Ogden: So often you see these headlines around, oh, only this handful of stocks are driving all the market returns.
[00:30:28] Yep.
[00:30:28] Spencer Ogden: And what we've looked at over market history is that that's pretty normal. Sometimes it's five stocks, sometimes it's 15, sometimes it's a little bit more 2030. But if you look at any decade, there's usually a very small group out of the thousands of stocks that really drive returns.
[00:30:46] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm. So if you start from that mentality, it's like, okay, how do we find those good stocks? And it's those stocks, those companies find those companies not finding good investments. Mm-hmm. Finding the good companies Yes. That are gonna grow. And [00:31:00] that's the second assumption, which is that growth is what drives.
[00:31:03] Spencer Ogden: Future investment performance. So the company needs to be growing. Yes. Valuation matters. And you know, at least half the team has come from a really value oriented perspective and maybe shifted a little bit to maybe valuation, doesn't matter as much as we thought. Because PEs and valuations will vary over a 10, 15 year timescale.
[00:31:25] Spencer Ogden: They'll start high, they'll come low, they'll go up and down. But the underlying growth is what powers most of that long-term return when you look out on a 10 or 15 year timescale. So we coming from this mentality of, it's a small group of companies that tend to grow fantastically well, and it's that growth that we're trying to identify.
[00:31:46] Spencer Ogden: And then a lot of that gets into framing it. You know, we're always thinking of it as the way our clients do. That's right. Think that's a really mm-hmm. Helpful way to simplify our thinking. And so. There are certain metrics. As a business owner, you focus on [00:32:00] cash flow and things like that. And that's what we try to carry over into the public markets and say, whether it's apple or an ice cream stand, it's the same, same kind of math you wanna be doing on is this a good business or a bad business?
[00:32:12] Stacy Havener: So I love this. And I'm curious, do these clients, these families with this operator's mindset, do they want to talk? So there's like, you know, sometimes we think, and we've talked about this, Spencer and Liz a little bit. Like we think everybody wants to geek out with us on the beta Yeah. And the stats. And then we sort of have to like check ourselves and say, well, that's what we love.
[00:32:34] Stacy Havener: But the, the client actually care. Like what do they love? Yeah. So like what parts of this resonate for them? Or are they just kind of like, you, do you, I'm gonna be over here running the biz, just like mm-hmm. Tell me how things go once a quarter and or do they actually care about the stories and the companies and does that light them up?
[00:32:53] Spencer Ogden: Yeah. Yeah, good question. So prior to Dock Street, as I mentioned, yeah, was a portfolio manager. And [00:33:00] what I was doing were quantitative macro models, trading options, future swaps, all the derivatives doing modeling, linear regression, machine learning and all that kind of stuff. So I was in the Greek world and then I Dock Street, and it was like, all right, you need to forget that you speak Greek.
[00:33:18] Spencer Ogden: And so the number of times I've said beta in the last five years is probably at least 75% of 'em have just been in the last five minutes.
[00:33:30] Stacy Havener: But this is, I want everybody to hear this. This is real.
[00:33:35] Spencer Ogden: Yeah. And the other times that I've mentioned beta are because my dad will say something like, I don't understand beta.
[00:33:41] Spencer Ogden: I'll try to explain it again, but you also don't need to understand it. That's it. Because it's a flawed perspective. Yeah. It's something that treats all companies the same, except for the fact that they've got these little statistical differences. Mm-hmm.
[00:33:55] Um,
[00:33:55] Spencer Ogden: the other one of course is standard deviation and risk.
[00:33:57] Yeah.
[00:33:58] Spencer Ogden: That's not risk. That's not [00:34:00] what we're focused on. Yeah. It's not what a business owner's focused on. Again, that operator mentality, a business owner doesn't see the price of their business going up and down. That's right. Even year to year, most business owners don't get an annual valuation of their business and they have no reason to.
[00:34:15] Spencer Ogden: They're not looking to sell. So unless they've got some employee stock plan or things like that. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Or partners where they need to do a valuation, then maybe they do it once a year and that's not a real valuation. That's an auditor coming in and saying, ah, you know, this is sort of like what we're expecting.
[00:34:30] Spencer Ogden: Then you move into a public market and you say, yeah, you approach this just like an owner, and they're like, yeah, but I see the price every day. Every day.
[00:34:37] Yep.
[00:34:37] Spencer Ogden: You know, I've used the anecdote that it's like owning your house. Pre Zillow, this made more sense because now you can see Zillow every day. Yeah, you can.
[00:34:45] Spencer Ogden: Yeah, that's right. But it's like if you're living in your house and everything's good and the house is good and your family's happy there and everything's working, but there's this guy out on your lawn yelling out different prices every day. And one day it's like, you know, 20% more than you bought it for and the next day it's down 10%.
[00:34:58] Spencer Ogden: And it's like this noise, [00:35:00] this stress of like, well, should we, he just yelled out a big price. Should we sell? It's like, well, no, you're happy in the house. Like, and so that's the big adaptation from owning a business to investing in the public markets is you've got this noise of the daily prices and it tricks you into thinking.
[00:35:16] Spencer Ogden: And that textbooks tell you that that's the right way to think that that daily stock movement, that standard deviation is what risk is. Mm-hmm.
[00:35:24] But
[00:35:25] Spencer Ogden: what risk is, is, uh, investment you, uh, have going bankrupt. Yeah. Or going down like the banks in 2008. And I don't mean the fact that they went down, the fact that they basically went bankrupt.
[00:35:36] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm. And just. Stayed flat. So that's the risk you're trying to avoid in investing, not the Oh, the price is going up and down a lot each day. You know, you always see, well, if you haven't seen them, you should see the charts of what is the revenue or free cash flow growth look like for Apple or Amazon over the last 15 years, and it's this almost perfectly straight line [00:36:00] with a little blip in 2008 and a little blip in 2020.
[00:36:04] Spencer Ogden: Then you look at the stock price and the stock price is all over the map on that line, but it's that smooth line. Yeah. That is driving your investment success over the long term. And so yeah, ignoring all of the Greeks, ignoring the standard deviation, all of that doesn't connect. What does connect is focusing on what we use in our investment process, which are things that business owners look at as well.
[00:36:26] Spencer Ogden: Yeah. Profit margins, free cash flow, return on invested capital. Mm-hmm. Those are tangible things that you can say, look. You know what this is because you use it in your business. That's right. Right. If you're operating your business well, you know, your profit margin, you have that decision of, I've got this free cash flow.
[00:36:43] Spencer Ogden: Do I reinvest it in the business? Do I take it as a distribution? Do I go buy a competitor? Those are all decisions that business owners are making, and it's the same thing that we apply to public companies.
[00:36:54] Stacy Havener: That's so great. So, you know, one of the things we think about a lot [00:37:00] with our clients, whether it's on the wealth side or on the asset management side, is how crowded our industry is.
[00:37:07] Stacy Havener: I mean, and another thing Dan said one time, I can't remember the, what's the phrase he dislikes with a passion?
[00:37:13] Spencer Ogden: Oh, I dunno. That's a long list. It's a beta. The financial, oh yeah.
[00:37:17] Stacy Havener: All that stuff. But no, on the financial advisor. Wealth advisor. Wealth management. Wealth management, that's it. Yeah. Okay. So there's like, you can't throw a rock without hitting someone who's in wealth management.
[00:37:25] Stacy Havener: Okay. And to a certain degree, same on the asset management side, like everybody's doing something, right? Mm-hmm.
[00:37:32] Mm-hmm.
[00:37:33] Stacy Havener: And I think this ties to why Dan reacts this way to this word. Like when you think about that, what's the typical wealth manager? And then you think about Dock Street, like what is typical wealth management?
[00:37:46] Stacy Havener: What do they do? Yeah. That you don't, right? Mm-hmm. That whole exercise of like typical does this and we don't, we do that or we believe this other thing over here.
[00:37:56] Spencer Ogden: Two things come to mind right away. One is that there's this really interesting thing [00:38:00] of where the way people think, like we want things to fit into a category, right?
[00:38:04] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm. What's the label? Right? And, you know, what does wealth management mean? Like how do you divide this field into neat categories so I can put you in a category? And it's tempting to think that's the way the world works. It, it doesn't. Right. You know, is a tomato, a vegetable or a fruit? Like the real world is messy.
[00:38:21] Spencer Ogden: Yeah. And things cross over categories. And I was just rereading, um, Bezos's annual letters from Amazon.
[00:38:28] Mm-hmm. Cool. And
[00:38:28] Spencer Ogden: he makes a big deal. And it's interesting 'cause it's one letter a year. They're only a couple pages each. And you see this thinking both evolve, but also the consistency over two decades of.
[00:38:40] Spencer Ogden: Business thinking. And one of the things he says over and over again is a customer obsessed company. That's what they're looking for.
[00:38:46] Mm-hmm.
[00:38:47] Spencer Ogden: And as opposed to a competitor obsessed company. Mm-hmm.
[00:38:51] Right?
[00:38:51] Spencer Ogden: And so a competitor obsessed company is gonna look at, well, what are our competitors doing? And do we fit into that category or this category?
[00:38:57] Spencer Ogden: Yeah. Um, customer [00:39:00] obsession or client obsession in our case means what do our clients most need? Yeah.
[00:39:04] And how do
[00:39:04] Spencer Ogden: we do that? I don't care whether you call us an investment manager or wealth manager, or whatever. Right.
[00:39:08] That's
[00:39:09] Spencer Ogden: not the important part. So I think the aspects that we've combined are that one, we're investment focused.
[00:39:16] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm.
[00:39:17] Uh,
[00:39:17] Spencer Ogden: investment obsessed, you might say. Yeah. Uh, that investment return trumps just about everything. Mm-hmm. It's the most important thing in the long term, just like growth is for companies. If you can increase your return over several decades, by a percent or two, almost no amount of planning will make up for that.
[00:39:34] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm. You know, no amount of holistic questions or planning or, you know, it's just like, just get the return. Yeah. The other stuff is nice, that's another, but just get the return. But yet we work with individual clients, individual families. We work directly with people. We're not building a product or a strategy that then we're going out and selling on platforms and trying to get big distribution through an ETF.
[00:39:55] Spencer Ogden: So we have the investment focus of an investment manager, but we have the direct [00:40:00] relationship with our clients of a wealth manager. Mm-hmm. And we think that really. Provides, uh, situations kind of our, our superpower, I think, where these things mesh together. Mm-hmm. Because for our clients, they have confidence to stick with us because they know the process intimately.
[00:40:16] Spencer Ogden: We've explained exactly how we do what we do. They've seen how we react. We have that direct conversation. They know they can call us and talk about companies. We found that the conversation of talking through a tough market like 2022 or 2020 is much more tangible when you're talking about an individual company.
[00:40:34] Spencer Ogden: You know, what's Amazon gonna do through the pandemic? Yeah. What's booking do com gonna do through the pandemic than talking about the market or interest rates or Powell or any of these things that are much harder to wrap your head around and we think. It's a distraction. Yeah. So on the client side, there's, they know us and that gives them the confidence to stick with their investments.
[00:40:53] Spencer Ogden: They see 'em in their portfolio and they talk to us. And as we know, sticking with an investment strategy for the long term [00:41:00] is, is one of the keys to getting those long-term compound returns. And then for us, we know that our clients are on board with our approach. Mm-hmm. And so we can make courageous investment decisions, we can stick with, you know, Nvidia that's gone down 50% twice in the time we've owned it since 2017.
[00:41:18] Spencer Ogden: And know that our clients are on board. They understand that that volatility is not the long-term risk. And so we can hold things at 15, 20, 20 5% of a client's portfolio going through volatility like that and know that they're on board with the process so we can make the right. Sometimes difficult investment decisions.
[00:41:39] Spencer Ogden: So it's those two pieces working together. Yeah. To really get the results.
[00:41:43] Stacy Havener: I love that. So I'm gonna ask this one to Liz. So when clients call, so right, Spencer just did this great analysis of like, it's investment first, and the clients understand that we already know that risk isn't even in their vocab.
[00:41:55] Stacy Havener: So this is like, it's a perfect fit for what you do and who they are. Right. [00:42:00] And maybe in the reverse order, right? Like and why we're doing it altogether. Yeah. But are there things that Look, I mean really it's a, it's a multifamily office. I mean that in my mind is what it is. And so from that perspective, the Dan backstory and kind of all of his components and who you serve are so aligned.
[00:42:21] Stacy Havener: But there are other things I would imagine that clients need help with. Trusts and I don't know, like all kinds of stuff. Mm-hmm. Right. I mean we're talking about really significant wealth and generational issues. So like what are the other things when they're not talking about the investments, what else are they talking about wealth, do they need help with?
[00:42:42] Stacy Havener: Yeah,
[00:42:42] Liz Curtin: it's a great question and it, I'll start and I'll get back over to Spencer 'cause he is still the primary and having so many of these conversations with these clients. But I think there's a couple things that also make our typical client unique. Mm-hmm. And one is where their focus is, yes, they have us as a support, but we're the second engine to [00:43:00] their primary engine.
[00:43:00] Liz Curtin: Their primary engine is their business. They think of us as, you know, we always say like. Putting your money to work, what does that actually mean? What it means is that we are helping them grow what they've already accomplished and keep it going. Mm-hmm. So I think oftentimes our business owners are either not looking at these accounts for extended periods of time.
[00:43:21] Liz Curtin: Yeah. Which is very common. We've called people in 2022. It's that, you know, it's a little rough, like, how you doing? And they're like, oh, we, we don't look, it's rough. They're like, where's it rough? Yeah. What's the whatcha talking about? More common is somebody who's like, I haven't logged in one. I don't know how to, because they haven't looked brilliant.
[00:43:40] Liz Curtin: Yes, yes. Once I finally got logged in, I'm blown away with what's happened over the last couple years. Mm-hmm. So I think the mindset that they bring is their primary focus is the day to day, the business they own, the work that they do, not just the enjoyment that they get, but they're such family oriented.
[00:43:59] Liz Curtin: It goes beyond, [00:44:00] you know, their. Nuclear family. It's the people that they're taking care of within their business, making payroll, all of those things. And then this is this secondary piece that should just be chugging along. And the level of trust they have with us is significant. But I think the other piece of that is, as Spencer's talked about a lot here, a big thread for us is simplicity.
[00:44:20] Liz Curtin: You know, we only have about 25 companies in our portfolio. When people ask, how do you diversify? We don't, how do you protect them? We don't like this. The basic simple. Yeah. The question, the answers are very simple to a lot of these things. And that comes back to trusts. So we have, you know, some very significantly large.
[00:44:39] Liz Curtin: They do not dorus. We also have others that do trust and add in that. But a lot of times when we have new clients coming in, if they have trust in place in multiple accounts, the primary thing that they're hoping from us is to help. Simplify. Simplify. Let's bring this back down to reality and ground.
[00:44:55] Liz Curtin: Let's make it so that I can see everything on a page, maybe two, as Spencer said [00:45:00] the other day during a conversation, he's never seen a 70 page financial plan actually help with anything. Like what are you gonna do? Yeah. The plan is done as soon as the last word is written and printed. There has to be a new plan tomorrow.
[00:45:11] Liz Curtin: The way that we think is much more long term, and we focus on the investments, not the plan.
[00:45:16] Stacy Havener: Fantastic. What? Gosh, I love the attract. Repel of like, no, this. Yeah. No, we don't do that. But see, but like honestly, more businesses need to embrace that because then if somebody wants a 70 page financial plan and they want holistic first, it's like we're not the right advisor for you.
[00:45:35] Stacy Havener: There are tons of those advisors out there. Yeah. Happy to make a referral, but that's not us. Mm-hmm. And that's scary. But I think it's powerful.
[00:45:45] Spencer Ogden: These operators are so good and one of the things we picked up from them is, uh, the phrase that's a hotdog.
[00:45:50] Wow. What is, and it's.
[00:45:52] Spencer Ogden: Isn't it obvious? No. So this is a phrase that they use, you know, and, and I'm sure you have these in your business.
[00:45:58] Spencer Ogden: Yeah. These shorthands where you remind each other [00:46:00] of, like, that one phrase encapsulates a whole way of thinking. So the, the anecdote there is these guys are in home services and they're doing attic insulation, they're doing basements, you know, things like that. And there's a temptation to add that next thing, oh, well we're doing this.
[00:46:14] Spencer Ogden: We could do the comprehensive financial planning with this. Mm-hmm. Like, it's close to what we do. Mm-hmm. Like, let's, let's go for it. And the anecdote comes back to a hamburger restaurant. McDonald's. Maybe McDonald's doesn't sell hot dogs. That's interesting. Like it's a grill. It's meat on a bun. Like.
[00:46:31] Spencer Ogden: Surely they've thought to add hot dogs. People like to buy hot dogs sometimes, but then you get into the details of what that actually means. Okay. It's a whole different set of buns. So that's more inventory to manage. It's different cooking times. It's a different supplier for the hot dogs than it is for the hamburgers.
[00:46:46] Spencer Ogden: It takes up more space on the grill. You've gotta stock relish and mustard where, you know, people don't have that stuff on hamburgers, so it's easy to look at something and say, that's meat on a grill. It's an easy add. Yeah. But then you get [00:47:00] into the details and you realize it's different enough that it's probably gonna mess up your, your business if you do it.
[00:47:04] Spencer Ogden: If.
[00:47:05] Right.
[00:47:06] Spencer Ogden: And then you come back to the simplicity that Liz was mentioning, and it's like, what is the actual value for the client in these cases? And are you doing something 'cause it looks valuable because that plan is nice and heavy and leather bound, and look at this evidence of what we've done for you.
[00:47:21] Spencer Ogden: Fancy? Mm-hmm. Or is it really in their best interest over time? So we're always looking to get very specific about if you're doing a trust, why are you doing it? Are you doing it because of taxes? Are you doing it for control of the next generation? Those are both valid reasons, but be very specific. Don't do it because, oh, I've got 20 million.
[00:47:40] Spencer Ogden: And so rich people do trust, right? Yeah. That's what you do.
[00:47:43] Stacy Havener: That's right. I,
[00:47:44] Spencer Ogden: I had a client, his business is worth 29 30 million and he's. Getting up to about 10 million in investible assets. So it significant net worth. And he says, you know, people do trust, right? Like should I be looking at that? I said, maybe, but [00:48:00] you don't have any kids.
[00:48:00] Spencer Ogden: So it's not about control of the next generation. Right? And your business has already sort of grown enough that you're not gonna put that in a trust now and try and dodge estate taxes. 'cause again, there's no next generation. So what are you worried about? And so we talked it through and you know, there's, there's obviously reasons to talk to an estate lawyer in those situations, but it's, what's the reason you're doing this?
[00:48:22] Spencer Ogden: Just because you're at a certain level. It doesn't mean that you know that's what you obviously should do and just because something's close to what your business offering is, you think clients might like it or a client says, oh, I need this to work with you. Mm-hmm. Well, maybe they're a hot dog and they don't fit into your business.
[00:48:40] Spencer Ogden: Oh
[00:48:40] Stacy Havener: my gosh. The hot dog thing will, like this is going down in history as like a moment. This is a thing. It's so good. I love the idea and I relate to it very much that I think as operators, as entrepreneurs, we have a lot, there's just a lot of moving parts and complexity and so I can imagine [00:49:00] as a client of yours when you're like, simple answer, no, not that.
[00:49:04] Stacy Havener: I don't know if you need that. I don't think so. Talk to me about why, and it's just quick answers.
[00:49:09] Yeah. Yeah. It's like
[00:49:11] Stacy Havener: my mom has a phrase and sometimes I'm like, is this bitchy? I don't know, but it's like just nutshell it for me. Can you just nutshell it? Mm-hmm. Like I don't need all the details. Yeah. If I have questions, I'll ask you, but like, I've got enough stuff swirling around in my brain.
[00:49:25] Stacy Havener: Can you please just knock it down to like, what do I need to know?
[00:49:28] Liz Curtin: Yeah. A thousand percent. And I feel like we really pushed, not just for our client's sake, but for ourselves. Yeah. Really pushing this concept of like, okay, can you just tell me what it is? So for example, we were just, I was on somebody else's website the other day.
[00:49:42] Liz Curtin: They're like, our fees are are transparent. And I'm like, but where are they? What mean mean by that? Once you find them,
[00:49:49] Stacy Havener: they're very transparent. Yeah.
[00:49:51] Liz Curtin: Yeah. We put our straight up on the website, there's a fee. There is nothing else. There's not even tears anymore. Like there's one fee [00:50:00] and it's on the website.
[00:50:00] Liz Curtin: It's a very boring line 'cause it's one line. There's not a lot to do on that. But being really upfront about that, our performance is on our website and we put it up in a very straightforward, very easy way for people to digest. The type of clients that we love to work for are busy. We're not here to add anything to their plate.
[00:50:19] Liz Curtin: Yeah. It's, we're here to make their lives easier and hopefully a little bit better in whatever way works best for them. And so we're very responsive to their needs and keeping things as simple as possible from communication to business structure to the conversations that we're having with them. Yeah.
[00:50:35] Liz Curtin: We're not gonna just call them every quarter because we're supposed to call them every quarter because we're not selling them up on anything else unless there's a big life change. We kind of let them be and we'll check in organically as feels right. Yeah. But we're here to support them not to. So good.
[00:50:51] Stacy Havener: Okay. So I want to, I feel like I have 1000 questions and, and we've like touched on them in different places and we're just rolling with it. 'cause these are [00:51:00] the best types of podcast where it's just happening natural and the conversation has been fantastic. I do wanna talk. This one because I think I've seen you evolve as a team and as individuals, but this idea that we're in an industry and certainly Spencer, with your background, we're in a numbers industry and it's an industry that seems to really put people at the bottom of a list, right?
[00:51:27] Stacy Havener: Like we're about numbers and performance in Greeks and stats and that's what matters and that's what people buy and there's a certain amount of unlearning
[00:51:37] mm-hmm.
[00:51:38] Stacy Havener: That has to happen. If you've spent any time in this industry, and I think probably Liz, you've been a breath of fresh air. 'cause you're like, what do you mean?
[00:51:45] Stacy Havener: Like this is how it's done. Right? Like, you come with fresh perspective and I relate to that. So how has that been for you, Spencer? Like just, yeah. The evolution of being a person and not so much like walking statistics and a mm-hmm. You know, [00:52:00] a chart with legs like, like how have you evolved and how has that been?
[00:52:05] Spencer Ogden: Yeah, there's some line about like, there's, there's nothing like the zeal of a convert. Uh, you know, it's when someone's changed to an idea. Yeah. There's, there's something extra. And you know, as you can tell, um, I love talking about this stuff now, and the real sort of irony of it is, again, going back to where I was computer science into quantitative investing, my dad and I never talked about working together.
[00:52:28] Spencer Ogden: It was never a thing even though we were in the investment business because it was like, we're doing such different things, right? Mm-hmm. Like, I'm not interested in looking at a financial statement. Mm-hmm. I'm really glad the team loves that. I was all about the stats and the quant. And he would say, look at, at some point you wanna look at going out on your own because you know, one of the things that he's seen over his life, and this kind of reinforces the entrepreneurial journey and what risk is, is losing control of your career in the corporate world in your fifties [00:53:00] and sixties.
[00:53:00] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm. And so he is always had this framing of like, entrepreneurship is risky when you're younger 'cause you are taking that chance. It's much easier to go down the W2 track and figure out a way to work for someone. But there comes a point in a lot of people's careers where it's this upper out thing in the corporate world, right?
[00:53:18] Spencer Ogden: There's only room for so many expensive 60 year olds in a corporation. And if, and you're either gonna step up to that level mm-hmm. Or it's gonna get dicey. Um, and you know, growing up he saw several peers in their fifties lose control in that sense. And so that's always been part of the mentality is like.
[00:53:36] Spencer Ogden: What's risky. And so he would say that, you know, operating a business is less risky later on. So it was this thing of like, you know, you wanna figure out how to be in business for yourself, eventually don't need to do it right away. It's not the right thing for everyone right away. And when you do that, you're gonna want to partner, you're gonna want an inside person, in an outside person.
[00:53:53] Spencer Ogden: That's usually what makes a business work. Someone who's focused on being in the office, making things work and getting the job done, [00:54:00] and then someone who's outside you gotta. Be in sales, you gotta raise business, you gotta talk to the outside world, or no one's gonna discover you. So, um, of course talking to me as I was sitting in my office working on spreadsheets and Python code, like obviously I'm the inside person, so where am I gonna find an outside person?
[00:54:18] Spencer Ogden: And now I find myself in the place where I am the outside person. Yes. And wow, it works better than I would've thought. So that's been a big surprise. And I think that you mentioned also the unlearning process. Yeah. So some of that is unlearning all of that that I absorbed early in my career as a CFA, like, you know, whether it's.
[00:54:38] Spencer Ogden: Discounted cash flow models are the way you value a stock to none of that actually matters, and you're just trying to find good companies. And DCF doesn't really have a place in that or what people care about in terms of numbers or, you know, all of that stuff. So a lot of unlearning, but that perspective of an outsider just keeps coming back up again, right?
[00:54:58] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm. Like there's not many people who have [00:55:00] founded an investment management company that were a history major and worked on an assembly line and sold chimney sweeps.
[00:55:06] Yeah.
[00:55:06] Spencer Ogden: Um, now that's a unique perspective. My father never worked for a bank or a broker or any institutional firm. Our CIO uh, Evan McGough, he's never worked for a big institutional, and in fact, when we've seen them, it only reinforces like, oh, they're doing it the wrong way.
[00:55:24] Spencer Ogden: You know, we need to protect what we've figured out here.
[00:55:27] Yeah.
[00:55:27] Spencer Ogden: Um, and so it, it is those encounters with whether it's. You know, the academic background that I've been exposed to, or it's other investment managers or investment committees or a way of way of doing things where you really dial in what's unique here, especially reading things that people write that are like 80% close.
[00:55:46] Spencer Ogden: Mm-hmm. Dials you in on the 20% where you're different. That's it. Um, and so
[00:55:51] Stacy Havener: it's just a whole nother twist on the 80 20 rule, isn't it? It's like you don't have to be different on every single thing because the 20% of things you're gonna be different on [00:56:00] are gonna be so different. It's gonna be an 80% difference.
[00:56:02] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm. I mean, really. And so one last question then I wanna have, so like some fun questions, but on this topic, because I want, like, it's not easy, you know, I can remember early conversations of like, here's what, like, I want you to tell stories in the amazing and like the first couple times you do it, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but the first couple times you kind of switched to this mentality, was it awkward?
[00:56:25] Stacy Havener: Like, did it feel like fish outta the water a little bit? Like, you know. Because I feel like people think that it shouldn't be, and I'm here to tell you no, it will be. It's not that it should or shouldn't, it's going to be awkward mm-hmm. To make that shift.
[00:56:41] Spencer Ogden: Yeah. Liz, you, you were a good observer to this process.
[00:56:44] Spencer Ogden: Yeah. Did, was it awkward for him? Yeah.
[00:56:45] Liz Curtin: What was
[00:56:46] Spencer Ogden: your perspective washing us struggle through this?
[00:56:48] Liz Curtin: Well, I think it's been interesting, right? I started three years ago and the joke has been that my job has been to try to get us to answer three questions, which is what is our actual service model? Who do we serve and do we have a minimum?
[00:56:59] Liz Curtin: [00:57:00] And we're finally, we're finally there. Yes. They were very hard questions to get to. Yes. But I get the answer to, but I think so much of that has become so much easier as we've gotten clearer on the impact of our story.
[00:57:13] Mm-hmm.
[00:57:14] Liz Curtin: And I think partly is this, well, a bit of imposter syndrome of, you know, these business owners are doing such amazing things.
[00:57:23] Liz Curtin: Like we actually have not. You know, done waterproofing in a basement before. Right? I, I know how to do that. Seeing kind of the, the trajectory of our father and how he kind of navigated his world and how much that did impact us growing up. Yeah. And we talk about a lot, like what are the things that we've learned unintentionally from our father.
[00:57:45] Liz Curtin: I think a big one is we always call him the optimistic investor. He really believes that it's gonna keep getting better and you know, the investment strategy is a very critical part to that. Yeah. Just being optimistic, but it's part of that. The other one is having no regrets And I think that again ties [00:58:00] into that operator mindset of we both, as we've talked about a couple times here, Spencer and I can, we get to decisions in very different ways.
[00:58:07] Liz Curtin: Yeah. But we both are really confident in making decisions and not having regrets and not looking back. And that's something that our father has really instilled in us. And I think going through this process of working through his story and learning more, you know, I asked him, I was like, so how did Dock Street start?
[00:58:23] Liz Curtin: And he was like, well, in 1968 I got fired from a Detroit radio station. And I was like, this is going to be a long conversation. Yeah. It was three hour video recording of his story and then you guys were like, can you get it down to a couple bullet points? And I was like, ah, good job. Uh, how much time do I have?
[00:58:39] Liz Curtin: Yeah. But it's been really impactful and I think really. Him seeing himself and getting that time to step back and say, wow, I really have done a lot. Oh, I love that. And everything from the Detroit radio station to the chimney sweep to the commodity side of things. Mm-hmm. How that has really led him there and gotten all [00:59:00] of us to where we are now is been, is we've talked about.
[00:59:03] Liz Curtin: You see it in our investment strategy, you see it in the way that we serve people and you see it in kind of what those relationships are with our clients. Mm-hmm. And so the impact of being able to sit back and, and I also would say a side part to this is how much it's really brought the team together.
[00:59:18] Liz Curtin: That's been like a really beautiful piece to this is getting to sit back and talk about what has the last 40 years looked like for Dan, but what does the last 30 years look like for Dock Street? And we have one colleague who's been here since. Basically the last 30 years. Evan, our CIO, has been here for 16 years.
[00:59:37] Liz Curtin: Adam, our director of research, has known Dan and Evan since the nineties. I mean, it is a very ingrained team and getting to take the time together has been really special.
[00:59:49] Stacy Havener: I love that. That's mic drop. I mean, honestly, to me, that's why I love what I do, like all of it, the growth and all of that is fun, but watching what story can [01:00:00] do, not just for your business but for your team, like that is so special to me and I love having a seat, you know, to be able to see that in you.
[01:00:09] Stacy Havener: It's been an amazing, amazing journey so far, and you're just getting started. You got 30 years and it still feels like a new chapter is being written right now, so thank you for sharing that with us. Alright, so let's do some fun questions. There's one question in particular. I really can't wait to hear what Spencer's answer's gonna be, so just we'll have some sort of drum roll happen when that comes.
[01:00:32] Stacy Havener: All right, so these are like a little bit of fast fire. My order's gonna be Spencer Liz. Okay. In this order. And the first question is what book inspires you? And it does not have to be a business book. It can be though. Definitely
[01:00:52] Spencer Ogden: not a business book. Yeah. The one that sticks out most in sort of. I read a lot in my teenage [01:01:00] years, a lot of topics, but the one that sticks out the most in terms of tying into where I've ended up is actually the Playboy book of games.
[01:01:08] Spencer Ogden: Um, and yes, it was that Playboy.
[01:01:12] Stacy Havener: I mean, I don't, I'm speechless. This doesn't happen to me often, but Okay. Can you, I wanted it to be fast fire, but now I feel like I need an asterisk and an explanation. Yeah, yeah. No,
[01:01:21] Spencer Ogden: we'll, we'll do a quick recap. Uh, so my dad always had tons of books around and of course, as a like 14-year-old Yeah, right.
[01:01:27] Spencer Ogden: This is the one that sticks out like, okay, this, yeah. What's going on here? So dig into that has many important lessons in it. One is that if you're playing strip poker, you wanna make sure to define that hairpins and pieces of jewelry are not pieces of clothing and are not embedable objects. So that was one chapter, but the other chapter was blackjack.
[01:01:49] Spencer Ogden: And it goes into this whole story of this guy. Um, yes, he may have come across in the investing world. His first claim to fame was writing a book called [01:02:00] Beat the Dealer, and he was a mathematician researcher at MIT and worked with Claude Shannon, who's this fascinating guy, a founder of Information Theory back in the fifties now, theoretical guys.
[01:02:12] Spencer Ogden: But what they like to do in their spare time was have a roulette wheel down in the basement to build a computer to predict roulette. And then he used the MIT computers to essentially solve blackjack and say, if you know that all the cards that are on the table, yeah, here's the next thing that you should do.
[01:02:29] Spencer Ogden: And you know, the card counting and you went to Vegas and it was successful, realized it wasn't a very safe profession to go into. So he took that and he went into quant investing. And so he wrote another book called Beat the Markets. And so he was early in the seventies with a group called Princeton Newport Partners doing warrant and convertible arbitrage, um, and writing these computer models that basically had a successful 20 year career.
[01:02:52] Spencer Ogden: So tying all of this, like computer science, math markets, so cool. Some other fun stuff together. Yeah. Gambling together [01:03:00] was, uh, I think a pretty formative, uh, thing.
[01:03:03] Stacy Havener: It might be my favorite answer to the book question in three years of doing a podcast. Just saying, um, Liz, I don't know. I, I hope you have a, I'm glad I get to book up your sleeve here.
[01:03:15] Stacy Havener: Yeah.
[01:03:16] Liz Curtin: Um, well, I know this is gonna sound like I'm just sucking up now, but the Go-Giver has been a book that I really wish I had gotten earlier in my career. Yeah.
[01:03:25] Stacy Havener: Go giver. It's a simple story, but powerful. I'm looking up at my shelf 'cause I see you right there. Go giver. Okay. Great ones. All right. Back to you, Spencer.
[01:03:34] Stacy Havener: I like, I'm a game show host right now. Um, okay. What place inspires you? What's your happy place?
[01:03:43] Spencer Ogden: Yeah, it's not super specific, but it's always been mm-hmm. Being near some water, uh, with a book. Uh, books are mm-hmm. A huge thing for me. And being able to look up over the book to put your eyes out in the distance and then come back to the book is, uh, yeah,
[01:03:58] Liz Curtin: that's a, that's a, I'm plus one on that [01:04:00] for sure.
[01:04:00] Liz Curtin: Liz.
[01:04:01] Stacy Havener: Well,
[01:04:01] Liz Curtin: this was the one that was the hardest because
[01:04:03] Stacy Havener: it Ditto. I mean, yeah.
[01:04:05] Well, and we should
[01:04:06] Stacy Havener: say that your family has ties to Newport, which is also how we came to know each other. And so, I mean, you can't, like, you can't turn around in Newport without seeing water. So, I mean, I think it's sort of, it's part of us.
[01:04:18] Stacy Havener: Okay, here we go. Insert the drum roll. Mm-hmm. Back to Spencer. You're walking out in a stadium. I know you don't want to do this. We tried CFA Society, but it didn't quite hit the same. Okay. Yeah, it didn't, didn't
[01:04:32] Spencer Ogden: quite click.
[01:04:33] Stacy Havener: What is your walkout anthem? What's your hype up song? If
[01:04:36] Spencer Ogden: I had to be pressed and there was a song I would put on to get psyched up, uh, it'd be Bulls on Parade.
[01:04:42] Stacy Havener: Oh my gosh. Unexpected. Look at. Brilliant. That was hard.
[01:04:50] Stacy Havener: Okay, I love it. So first they're gonna play that and then Liz, what are they playing?
[01:04:54] Liz Curtin: Uh, this has been my song. Oh. Like since I was middle schooler is hit Me with your Beth shot, [01:05:00] like whenever I played softball and I'd be out there like singing that song to me. Yeah. And anytime I'm like going into a situation that I'm nervous, it's like the song that I'm like.
[01:05:08] Liz Curtin: Bring it on.
[01:05:08] Stacy Havener: That is so good. Okay. Sides to Dock Street we haven't seen. This is fantastic. All right, here we go. All right. Back to Spencer. What profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt?
[01:05:21] Spencer Ogden: Uh, yeah. Professor, teacher, something like that. Not
[01:05:26] Stacy Havener: basement waterproofing. Yeah. Maybe the next, definitely not next round.
[01:05:29] Stacy Havener: Not okay. Too
[01:05:29] Spencer Ogden: much work. These guys. Those guys are amazing too. They need too much work too.
[01:05:35] Stacy Havener: I've seen it. I've seen inside that. No, no pass. Okay. Liz, how about you? What profession would you like to attempt?
[01:05:41] Liz Curtin: I mean, I studied to be a teacher and never got to be one, so Yeah. Unfortunately it's the same answer as Spencer, but I want little kids.
[01:05:49] Liz Curtin: He can have the college students. There you go. Talk you
[01:05:51] Stacy Havener: that. Alright,
[01:05:52] perfect.
[01:05:53] Stacy Havener: Alright, flip side, Spencer, what profession would you not like to do?
[01:05:58] Spencer Ogden: Uh, yeah, same thing. Teacher, [01:06:00] professor. There's a reason I'm not doing that. Uh, you know, my wife has actually been a university professor. She is, uh, graduate degrees in art history and she does amazing at putting together a lecture and performing.
[01:06:14] Spencer Ogden: And that's, you know, it's like the risk with the entrepreneur. Um, you know, you have to like, not have a fear or a fear of creativity or a fear of performing if you're gonna do that. That's just sort of like a fundamental thing. And yeah, I would think it's a really good idea until it was time to like start class and actually now give my lecture and
[01:06:34] Stacy Havener: you'd be like, wait, I'd actually, I remember something.
[01:06:36] Stacy Havener: I don't wanna do this job. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:06:39] Spencer Ogden: Right.
[01:06:40] Stacy Havener: Okay. Liz, how about you? What profession would you not like to do?
[01:06:43] Liz Curtin: Um, I hadn't thought about this till last night when I saw the materialist, the new movie. Yeah. I do not wanna be a matchmaker. It sounds like a fun activity. And then seeing that was like, wow, no, money makes people weird, but love makes people weirder.
[01:06:57] Liz Curtin: Oh. So I'm good to stay out of that. [01:07:00]
[01:07:00] Stacy Havener: So
[01:07:00] Liz Curtin: well
[01:07:01] Stacy Havener: said. Okay. And last but not least, and certainly a long time away, because we know entrepreneurs, they don't understand risk. They also don't understand this word, retired. It's not in their vocab. So let's just say, what do you want people to say about you after you've quote retired or left the industry?
[01:07:23] Stacy Havener: Spencer, you first.
[01:07:24] Spencer Ogden: Yeah. I mean, it comes back to that, you know, figuring out what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life. And so yeah, there is no retirement and uh, this is a great business to do that. And I think the challenge to me that I'm really inspired by is the growth while staying true to what's made you successful and like that core idea, you know, growing but not mutating.
[01:07:45] Spencer Ogden: I think there's always these pressures to change, whether that's to look like other firms, like okay, you're this size. Mm-hmm. And if you're gonna be that size, you're gonna look like that firm that's that size. And, uh, you know, going back to [01:08:00] Bezos in my head with the letters, you know, he always attached his very first letter that he wrote in 1997 to every letter.
[01:08:07] Spencer Ogden: And he said, if you're a new shareholder, please make sure to go reread this first letter and make sure this is the right company for you to be an owner of. And it was all about mm-hmm. Being day one. And how it's always day one at Amazon. The building that he works in is called day one. That's so good.
[01:08:21] Spencer Ogden: It's like day two is death and day one is, you know, this is what we're focused on. And even as we grow, we need to always have that mentality. And so that's what my challenge is. How do we grow as a firm, continue the track we've been on, but keep what has made us special.
[01:08:39] Stacy Havener: That is so great. Liz, how about you?
[01:08:42] Stacy Havener: Do I have to go now? Yeah, I know he, I'm sorry. I didn't know it was gonna be like this. Yeah.
[01:08:49] Spencer Ogden: Hey, you know you got the song, you nailed that.
[01:08:54] Liz Curtin: I think part, I think of it as kind of the firm together like that we're really good. We're really focused [01:09:00] on our clients, that we put them at the center. We're kind, but we do a damn good job at what we do.
[01:09:04] Stacy Havener: Ooh, Liz, you brought the fire on that. Well done. Well done. Listen, this has been a joy. If people wanna follow along on the journey.
[01:09:15] Stacy Havener: What's the best way for them to do that?
[01:09:17] Liz Curtin: We are active on LinkedIn and Instagram, so you can find us there, but our website has lots of ways to contact us too, dock streete com, but happy to talk to anyone and everyone. Oh,
[01:09:29] Stacy Havener: that's so great. Clearly
[01:09:29] Liz Curtin: we like to,
[01:09:30] Spencer Ogden: we tend to write a letter every week or two, and there's a way to subscribe to those on the website.
[01:09:35] Stacy Havener: And obviously we're all LinkedIn friends, so join the party. Um, connect with Spencer and Liz there. Thank you both for being here virtually, and I think we're gonna see each other in person in July. Fingers crossed. Um, yeah, so this has been amazing. Congrats on all the success, and thank you so much for being here today.
[01:09:53] Stacy Havener: Thank you,
[01:09:54] Liz Curtin: Stacy.
[01:09:54] Spencer Ogden: Thank you, Stacy, you've been a huge help and this has been a ton of fun.
[01:09:57] Stacy Havener: Oh, thank you both. I appreciate you. [01:10:00] 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, or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products, or to adopt any investment strategy.
[01:10:14] 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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