Episode 119: Toussaint Bailey, Exited Founder of a $2B RIA + Managing Partner of Uplifting Capital, on Differentiation, Values-Aligned Investing, and What Comes After a Big Exit

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A lot of people build firms.
Very few sell them.
Even fewer?
Walk away from it all to start again.

But that’s exactly what Toussaint Bailey did.

After building and selling a $2B RIA, he’s back on the founder path, this time leading Uplifting Capital, a values-first platform rethinking what private market investing could look like.

In this episode, he sits down with Stacy to discuss: 

• His backstory – How growing up in SoCal shaped his belief in “actionable faith in possibility”

• Why he left a law partnership to help build an RIA

• The cultural ethos that scaled Enso Wealth to $2B AUM and an eventual exit

• Why he launched Uplifting Capital and how it’s redefining access to values-aligned private markets

• A storytelling framework any fund manager can use to stand out (hint: it starts with “we’re not that.”)
  
  

About Toussaint Bailey:

Toussaint’s career has been built on a belief in the promise of possibility. As Founder and Managing Partner at Uplifting Capital, this belief manifests itself as investment in “Impact Alpha,” funds, and companies that produce compelling financial performance through gap-closing solutions in critical areas like education, healthcare, affordable housing, and renewable energy. 

Prior to founding Uplifting Capital, he was CEO and Chairman of Enso Wealth Management, a private wealth firm with a mission to translate wealth into fulfillment for clients and advisors. Toussaint joined Enso shortly after its formation in 2017, overseeing the firm’s rapid growth to nearly $2 billion of assets under management and its eventual acquisition. Before financial services, Toussaint spent over a decade as a practicing attorney.

Toussaint has served in several advisory and board capacities, including Impact Investment Subcommittee of the Alternative & Direct Investment Securities Association; Investor Advisory Board of HBCU Founder Initiative; Advisory Board of Catalyst Housing Group; Advisory Board of SIY Global; and Board of Regents of Saint Mary’s College of California.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode: 

Book: Finding Meaning by David Kessler (the “sixth stage” of grief: finding meaning).

Want More Help With Storytelling?

 +  Subscribe to my newsletter to get a weekly email that helps you use your words to power your growth:https://www.stacyhavener.com/subscribe   

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TRANSCRIPT

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

[00:00:00] Stacy Havener: It's not often a founder of an RIA finds themselves later in their career as the founder of a specialist asset management firm. Buy side to sell side, right side to dark side. Just kidding. Come on in. The water's fine, but maybe. There is an embedded differentiation in that journey, which only a select few can harness.

[00:00:26] Stacy Havener: Enter today's guest, Toussant Bailey, who mastered the art of differentiation in wealth and successfully sold a $2 billion RIA. Now he's tackling another entrepreneurial endeavor, differentiation and success on the other side of the desk as a specialist asset manager in Niche private investments. The podcast today is a mix of storytelling and case study with live action workshopping.

[00:00:57] Stacy Havener: To boot grab your notebook [00:01:00] and prepare for brutal honesty. Love some real talk from my fellow judge at the Wellies and my friend Tucson. 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.

[00:01:22] Stacy Havener: 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. 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.

[00:01:48] Stacy Havener: Think of this as the capital raising class you wish you had in college mixed with happy hour. Pull up a seat, grab your notebook, and get ready to be inspired and [00:02:00] challenged while you learn. This is the Billion dollar Backstory podcast.

[00:02:09] Stacy Havener: Toussant, thank you so much for being here. This is a gift to me because here's the deal. We know each other, we do things together, like we judge the wealthiest together, but we never have time to hang out. I'm starting to believe that that's the whole reason I started this podcast is to just hang out with my friends that I don't get to hang out with properly.

[00:02:32] Stacy Havener: So this is a gift to me and

[00:02:34] Toussaint Bailey: our listeners. Yeah, no, this, this will be our best shot at like a proper, uh, conversation without thousands of people screaming at us. Yeah.

[00:02:41] Stacy Havener: It's so great to have you. Now we get to start with my favorite thing, which is story backstory specifically. So I want you to tell us your story.

[00:02:50] Stacy Havener: I want you to do way back machine. Way back machine because I know what you studied, I know what you practiced for a while, but like, did you always have a [00:03:00] vision even before the finance industry? Like, did you grow up in a family of attorneys and you just knew like, this is my calling. Like how did this, how did it all begin?

[00:03:09] Toussaint Bailey: No, like the way back machine for me actually goes back to my parents. So, so for me, like I say, the through line in my journey is always like having. Actionable faith in possibility. Just kind of like, like actually taking action on, like demonstrating faith in possibility. And I think that comes from my parents, like both of them migrated from the south with their families to Southern California without knowing anything or anyone just kind of in search of something better.

[00:03:40] Toussaint Bailey: And I feel like that's in, that's in my DNA. So no, I, no, I did not, like I went to, I went to undergrad with the. Clear purpose of getting a job. I'm like, oh, I've seen my parents kind of go up and down and, and do all this stuff with finances. If I come outta here with a job, that'll be great. And so I did end up studying finance 'cause I thought that was my best.

[00:03:59] Toussaint Bailey: I started studying [00:04:00] accounting because I was like, oh, all the people with accounting degrees are getting hired. I'm like, this is, this is painful for me. I just, I'm not an accountant as it turns out. So like that, that morphed into finance. But, um, somewhere along the way, uh, and this will come back to what I'm doing now.

[00:04:14] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah. Uh, during my, we did this senior honors thesis where we went out and worked somewhere and I got put at this community development bank, uh, called Community Bank of the Bay, and their whole purpose was to kind of infuse this under-resourced community in Oakland with capital so that people could start small businesses.

[00:04:33] Toussaint Bailey: And these were people who were kind of overlooked by the larger institutions. I thought this was incredible. Like it was.

[00:04:38] Stacy Havener: That is incredible. Oh, it

[00:04:40] Toussaint Bailey: was mind blowing to me that an institution like a for-profit. Institution. Institution existed to do this, but as we did our consulting project on this bank, like the biggest thing that they struggled with was kind of figuring out red tape.

[00:04:53] Toussaint Bailey: So there was all these regulations, all this compliance stuff on the bank. And so that actually drove me to start thinking [00:05:00] about law school. And so I went to law school. To study community development. I was like, this, wow, this little fire, I didn't even really know what it was. And I actually, mm-hmm. I have no lawyers in my family.

[00:05:09] Toussaint Bailey: And it's funny that you say that, 'cause I had a business ethics professor after a debate, she was like, do, have you ever thought about law school? And I've always been a math person. So like, I laughed in her office. First of all, like the idea of being a lawyer sounded so farfetched that like, I didn't like, it just never entered a possibility.

[00:05:26] Toussaint Bailey: My wife was studying for the lsat, she ended up not going, and I looked at the test and I was like, oh. This has some word problems on it. This has some stuff I think of Uhhuh I could do well on this test. And so that's how like I started thinking about law school. I ended up gonna do community development.

[00:05:40] Toussaint Bailey: And again, I found out I'm not a transactional lawyer, so I like, I was doing community development, like sitting in an office, like reviewing documents, like talking about comma placement and like was falling asleep at my desk. And so somehow I got to do something different for the city of la. I originally was working at the LA Community Redevelopment Agency.

[00:05:59] Toussaint Bailey: I ended up [00:06:00] going to work for the LA City Attorney's office in an internship doing just litigation. So eventually the Environmental litigation unit. But I was, and I loved it. I was like, oh, like I'm solving actual problems and their people. Yeah, this is like, it's different every day. So I ended up doing that after law school again for the city of la and then I got hired into private practice for a firm that was doing litigation for government agencies and did that for the better part of a decade.

[00:06:25] Toussaint Bailey: So, so like, wow. 11 or 12 years. And it was great. Like got to partnership there and, and like I think at some point I looked up and was like. I'm like at odds with people all the time. I talk to some of my partners at the firm. By that time I kind of moved from LA to the San Francisco office. Um, and just like, I wanna grow something.

[00:06:45] Toussaint Bailey: Like I just, what if like, you guys like me with clients, I think I'm doing well. Like I came to San Francisco to grow the footprint here. Um, I'm doing well at that. What if I just did that? What if I in there in, oh, that's not what law firms do. That's essentially the, what the answer was. [00:07:00]

[00:07:00] Stacy Havener: It's like, ah,

[00:07:00] Toussaint Bailey: we kind of steal outta the,

[00:07:01] Stacy Havener: we don't really know what you're saying.

[00:07:03] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah. Yes. And so at this time. My brother-in-law was mm-hmm. Leaving Edward Jones and starting his own firm and he called me for advice on how not get sued doing that first. Um, and this was like 2014. He's like, I was like, just don't be an idiot. Like, you know, don't, don't take information. And then a couple years later he.

[00:07:22] Toussaint Bailey: He had a few people, a couple people from Ed Jones who were going mm-hmm. Who were thinking about going out on their own, call him a couple like RIAs who had hung a shingle around town where he was, and they were like, what would it look like to get together? And by this time I was like, Ooh, yeah, yeah.

[00:07:39] Toussaint Bailey: Like, this is late 20, mid 2016. I was a few years into my partnership at the law firm and had all sorts of ideas about how I thought that should work different. Like I was a young, no nothing partner, but I knew like at law firms. All the sort of benefits of growth are trapped at the top. Like they, they come in like it happens early, they [00:08:00] stay stuck within the founders.

[00:08:01] Toussaint Bailey: And then there's kind of this lockstep access to that. I thought, uh, what abundance looked like, uh, for a partnership was like you, you pull in what you earn, so sort of eat what you kill. But you also, as a founder, sort of sacrifice some of that founder credit in order to attract people who you think could otherwise do it on their own.

[00:08:20] Toussaint Bailey: And it has to be, ah, it has to be really this whole idea of abundance. You have to get rid of your name on the door. And so I started studying this industry. Um, so I started studying wealth management. So like, what's the market for talent in the wealth management industry, and what would it look like to build something more compelling?

[00:08:36] Toussaint Bailey: And I ended up writing something, we called it the Manifesto, but it was basically this business plan to attract advisors who were at the growth or established phases of their careers, you know. 50 to a hundred million in assets and growing by accident. Like had just been doing business well enough to grow.

[00:08:54] Toussaint Bailey: Mm-hmm. How would you pull those advisors in with a compelling proposition, value proposition that was better than [00:09:00] kind of standalone ownership and so built a business model around that? Enzo was founded the, uh, wealth management firm where I ultimately became, the CEO was founded in 2017. I started out as a consultant, so I gave up my law partnership mid 2017, uh, and like stated.

[00:09:16] Toussaint Bailey: Employed, but gave up 25% of my time and was a, was strategy consultant. Like with no background to do that. I'm like, I have some ideas. I'll be a strategy consultant. Yeah. And I loved it so much and loved working with the men and women there so much. And building culture. I ended up as full-time CEO by the end of 17 we grew, grew that firm to.

[00:09:37] Toussaint Bailey: Couple billion under management by the time we sold it in 2022 and just built the whole thing around this whole idea of abundance. And for clients. We were talking like our whole ethos was around translating wealth into fulfillment. And so for wealth managers, my ethos as the person who was kind of building culture was well, to do that for clients, the firm has to translate wealth management.

[00:09:59] Toussaint Bailey: Into fulfillment for [00:10:00] the people inside of the firm. And so how do we do that? And we had a whole kind of ethos on that. And so it was fun. It was super, super fun to build and took me to where I am now. And I still maintain several relationships within the industry for people who know me from that more than they know me.

[00:10:14] Toussaint Bailey: From when.

[00:10:15] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Yeah. So before we come to Uplifting Capital. Your current thing. I wanna go back to that ethos and that manifesto because it's very interesting and not something that gets talked about a lot. The financial advisory world talks about clients and what they do for clients and all these things.

[00:10:36] Stacy Havener: Very rarely do you hear what you just said, which is if we're going to actually take clients on that journey, then we have to as the house. As the company, take our advisors on that journey as well. Unpack that a little bit. Like what did that look like? Or what does that mean exactly? Yeah.

[00:10:55] Toussaint Bailey: To me it was a, it was a natural corollary.

[00:10:56] Toussaint Bailey: Like you, you can't fill those client buckets from an empty Well, yeah. [00:11:00] Right. And so like, advisors had to actually embody these things that we were talking about and we truly were talking to clients about, we had a, we had a belief on fulfillment and so we were talking about, we, um. We ultimately articulated it as what we call the waterfall, where that starts with loving and trusting relationships.

[00:11:16] Toussaint Bailey: And once you have established those loving and trusting relationships, you start to think about self-actualization. And then once you work on that, like that self-mastery and self-awareness, you can start to talk about things like co-creation and collective impact. Like, what am I doing? Wow, bigger than myself.

[00:11:30] Toussaint Bailey: And if you do all of those, if you do those three things in that order and you do those well, personal gain comes natural. So that, that was like, that was the belief and that, and, and it's a more fulfilling form of personal gain that you hold with more gratitude. That's what we, what we subscribed for clients and what we subscribed to.

[00:11:47] Toussaint Bailey: And so within the firm it was, we have to live that. And so we had these huge partner dinners that we did every month and, and we had deep. Question. We did questions of the night and we'd kind of go through and we'd work on ourselves [00:12:00] together and we'd have tough conversations. Wow. And so it was, it was a belief that we actually embodied and it was a belief system.

[00:12:05] Toussaint Bailey: And it's ultimately what took me up to uplifting capital because I gotta a place where what I was doing inside the firm, it was the best job I could possibly have. But I thought my opportunity for, for impact that my number three really is bigger than what I'm doing here for myself. So like I had a thought about.

[00:12:24] Toussaint Bailey: We were doing a lot of work with a firm that does values aligned investing on the public side. Mm-hmm. And at this time we saw a lot of movement into the private markets. Mm-hmm. From advisors and there was interest from clients and they were asking, but those two things hadn't come together in a way that I thought they should.

[00:12:41] Toussaint Bailey: Both because like the opportunity to. Directly in your values is a little bit more nuanced and, and actually a little bit more potent in the private markets, in my opinion. And also the, just the financial opportunity in some of these investment themes in values aligned private markets was compelling. I was seeing [00:13:00] that and we were building those portfolios for a handful of clients, but I thought this should exist at scale.

[00:13:05] Toussaint Bailey: Um, and so I set out to like working backwards from an advisor experience and a client experience to like build. Something scalable that would help clients invest in values, align private equity, venture capital, real assets that align with their values, and ultimately that became uplifting capital.

[00:13:25] Stacy Havener: Fascinating. And so essentially now you're almost on the other side of the desk, so to speak.

[00:13:30] Toussaint Bailey: I am, I, I, I Not essentially, and I feel it. There is a Do you? Yeah. It feels different on, on this side of the desk. And I was kind of naive. I was like, oh, you know, everybody loves me. Yeah. I didn't know, like my attention was the product, right?

[00:13:44] Toussaint Bailey: Like, oh yeah, you know, these, these asset managers like me so much. Oh my God. It's like, oh no, you're the

[00:13:53] Stacy Havener: product. Oh my gosh. That's hilarious. Yeah,

[00:13:56] Toussaint Bailey: yeah,

[00:13:57] Stacy Havener: that is, and it's true. And unfortunately [00:14:00] sad. Um, but here's the thing, I believe that when you've been on the buy side, basically

[00:14:11] Yep.

[00:14:12] Stacy Havener: And you move to the sell side, you have an incredible advantage.

[00:14:15] Stacy Havener: Incredible. Advantage.

[00:14:17] Toussaint Bailey: 100% agree. I I could not agree more. Like a number of advantages. Uh, one was yeah, we knew that it wasn't just about investments and like, even within investments, you know, it's not just about return, it's about like what a client experiences. Yeah. From like what that cash profile, like all those things within investments.

[00:14:36] Toussaint Bailey: But we also knew like whatever we did. Had to uncompromisingly scalable for advisors and advisory teams and investment teams. Um, and so it's not just enough to have a great investment result. Like how does this work with. Within an advisor's life was something that we thought about early on. What is the story that that advisor is sitting across from client and telling, and what is the opportunity to tell that story to a prospect?

[00:14:59] Toussaint Bailey: Mm-hmm. [00:15:00] Like all of those things you just know, like that that is what, what keeps an advisory firm moving and that's what the motivation is for the ultimate kind of, not decision maker, but sort of salesperson for your product. Like you're, you're not gonna sit in front of Mott, you're not there. Yeah.

[00:15:15] Stacy Havener: Yeah.

[00:15:15] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah, and so

[00:15:16] Stacy Havener: it's a great point. That is a really important point actually.

[00:15:20] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah.

[00:15:21] Stacy Havener: Because it's something asset managers really struggle with. Yeah.

[00:15:26] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah.

[00:15:27] Stacy Havener: And there's this, so in the Rogers adoption curve, which is certainly like born out of the tech industry, but to me, applies to all people. So in the Rogers adoption, you have early adopters, you have innovators, early adopters, and then you have.

[00:15:45] Stacy Havener: A chasm. Okay. Yeah. And the chasm is real because then it's like early majority, late majority laggards. And I may be wrong on exactly where that chasm is, but it's somewhere in that early stage point [00:16:00] being to leap that chasm. One of the things that asset managers sometimes miss is that now you are not going to be having conversations with the end client.

[00:16:12] Stacy Havener: Right, and so your materials and your messaging and all of the things that you're creating to quote, sell or market, have to be different. Because if so, let's say for example, if it's a really complicated investment strategy and you got an an advisor who's facing an end client, they're not gonna be able to talk about all the Greeks and all that crap that you've put together to give to like a direct investor.

[00:16:37] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah, no, I

[00:16:39] Stacy Havener: You have to. Now you It's so true. They don't know that. I don't think about it. This

[00:16:43] Toussaint Bailey: was early learning for me at Enzo, at the wealth management firm, like seeing. A very large asset manager with a very impressive conference room full of people come in. And this is when like DFA was early, but there were others who were talking about factor tilts and all [00:17:00] these things.

[00:17:00] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah. And they were. They had this complex, like they, they, they gave us a white paper during this lunch and they had this complex explanation about how their factor tilts were superior from some other factor tilt. And I, I think one of the advisors who was in the room is, what am I gonna do with this?

[00:17:17] Toussaint Bailey: Like, we had a board rights. Like, what do you want me to tell my client? Like, here you take the white paper. I believe that you know what you're talking about. I believe you. I 100% believe you. What do you want me to tell my client? I go, help me, help me help you. Uh,

[00:17:33] Stacy Havener: that's what they miss. Yeah. That right there.

[00:17:36] Stacy Havener: They're, so, I think typical asset managers, again, this is your advantage. Typical asset managers come in and feel like they have to prove something and convince you intellectually that what they have is quote, superior to what other people have. Yeah. And you, the blunt answer or question here was spot on.

[00:17:54] Stacy Havener: I believe you. You're freaking good at what you do. You don't have to convince me there's white paper back. [00:18:00] There's enough paper here,

[00:18:00] but I get it. I got

[00:18:01] Stacy Havener: it. I and I see all the people. Yep. And that everybody has letters after their name, so I'm good. But the real, where the rubber meets the road and what asset managers typically miss is they have to tell a client about the thing that you are selling.

[00:18:17] Stacy Havener: And the more complicated that thing is, the harder it is for that advisor to make it. Simple and accessible for the end client. It's so, could you please help me? That is the right thing. It's

[00:18:31] Toussaint Bailey: so vulnerable to simplify though. It's so like, oh yeah, there's so much you have to let go and so much you have to leave unsaid that I think like there's, you have to remove the safety blanket of standing behind the information and the studies and, and the returns and all these things.

[00:18:48] Toussaint Bailey: That's right. And like, and to tell a story. It feels vulnerable. I, I was definitely tempted to go in that direction. When we first started, everything that we saw, we we're unquestionably institutional because like we [00:19:00] had to build, we were an upstart asset management firm. Yeah. And we had to build something that people knew was gonna be a sound and, and of institutional quality.

[00:19:09] Toussaint Bailey: And then at some point we realized like, that's not our most compelling story. Like oh B. No it's not. That's, we're actually checking a, that's a pass fail test. Like great passed. What is one supposed to do with that, right? Yeah. Table stakes. Yeah.

[00:19:22] Stacy Havener: And you know, and it's interesting and sort of not, not the mission today, but I can't help myself because if you think about the space you're in.

[00:19:30] Stacy Havener: Okay. And you think about the players who are coming into this space. So basically back in like the early aughts, no one gave a shit about the adv registered investment advisor. Yeah. Literally no one cared. Okay. I was there. No one cared. I'll, I'll You were like, I'll you I

[00:19:44] Toussaint Bailey: One step further. I think they looked, they looked down on it.

[00:19:46] Toussaint Bailey: It was like I, we, you're right. No, we selling into institutions. No, we we're, we're calling an institution.

[00:19:51] Stacy Havener: That's right. They're retail. Yeah, they're retail. Their gum on the bottom of my shoe. I don't care about them at all. Okay, fine. We're all hanging out, doing our thing. [00:20:00] Right, and then all of a sudden somebody one day somewhere woke up and said, huh, wait a minute.

[00:20:05] Stacy Havener: There's a lot of money over there. Okay, we're over here in this institutional land where all kinds of pressures are happening and things are changing. Look at all that money over there. How do we get some that is like now that's the hot. That's the hot

[00:20:21] That absolutely

[00:20:23] Stacy Havener: right. So now you have every big asset management firm, every big private equity shop, everybody turned and pointed at the advisor market.

[00:20:34] Stacy Havener: Okay? But the exact thing that you, you as a team could think is a weakness that you're not KKR, Blackstone or whoever the hell. The exact thing that you're not is the exact reason you are a great fit for the advisors. It's kind of like four advisors by

[00:20:55] Toussaint Bailey: advisors. Absolutely. Absolutely. Don't

[00:20:57] Stacy Havener: you think,

[00:20:58] Toussaint Bailey: oh, ab, absolutely.

[00:20:58] Toussaint Bailey: What we don't like [00:21:00] and we, this has really started to dominate our, our conversations with. Advisors, advisor and investment teams. We don't have to be a product. Right. We actually have the flexibility to work with them, to move things around, to become many things to many people. And like, so, so for us, like everyone says, oh, we don't sell.

[00:21:19] Toussaint Bailey: We, we, we partner. Like, but we can actually do it. Right? Like we act, we're nimble enough and flexible enough. Yeah. That, that we are designing and redesigning investment solutions. All times, like, and, and we're sitting across from someone not with a blank sheet of paper. We have a very clear belief on how we add value, but really with enough flexibility and enough partnership ability to be able to design into the lives of advisors, design into the lives of investment teams.

[00:21:47] Toussaint Bailey: And so it's been. Fun to, to build and like to move trust from me as CEO of wealth management firm over to me as managing partner of [00:22:00] Impact investment firm. But yeah, it's,

[00:22:03] Stacy Havener: it's awesome. And, and the other thing, and hard not to just belabor this super challenging, let's talk about that. But the other thing, 'cause this, the differentiators is, is really tough because oftentimes.

[00:22:16] Stacy Havener: The exact things we kind of feel like we sort of hope nobody calls us on or we're like slightly. Embarrassed or nervous about like, we're not KKR, we don't have those resources. All those exact things, if you flip 'em, can become your strongest advantages. It's just in the story we're telling ourselves around those things.

[00:22:36] Stacy Havener: Right? Absolutely. So along these lines, the other thing that I'm like, advisors are missing it is, okay. So all those bigs just turned and faced advisors and were like, oh, we're gonna make product for you. And to your point, you're like, wow, those asset managers really like me. In the scheme of things, you don't mean anything.

[00:22:59] Toussaint Bailey: [00:23:00] That's correct,

[00:23:00] Stacy Havener: 2K KR or Blackstone. I'm sorry. You don't, and you're never gonna talk to the people who are making decisions there because they have institutional clients who have billions of dollars with them, and you're not gonna have that. And so you're not gonna get the access, the respect, the customization, all these things that a smaller or nimble boutique focused on advisors can do.

[00:23:26] Stacy Havener: And. To me, that is such an advantage.

[00:23:30] Toussaint Bailey: Absolutely. And the world is, is becoming collaborative, right? Like so, so yeah, we're moving toward collaboration. I think within firms the level of sophistication is increasing. Both as, as that kind of private equity comes to sell into the space. But also as private equity comes in and professionalizes the operations, ah, capabilities are point increasing within firms.

[00:23:53] Toussaint Bailey: And so to be sitting across and saying, you know. This is what we sell or this is who we are. And, and [00:24:00] no, you're not gonna talk to the people at the upper echelons of, of our organization because they don't have time for you. I just think it's not gonna fly. Like no people, advisors and and investment teams are increasingly wanting a hand in the solutions that they're bringing to their clients, and they're wanting a stamp on that.

[00:24:15] Toussaint Bailey: And a boutique has the ability to do that, take that information in, yes. Reflect that information back. And so that's, that, that's the only way we win is, is through this collaboration that

[00:24:24] Stacy Havener: is so great. So I, I was checking out your website, which is very well done, by the way. Thank you. Um, that, that means a lot coming

[00:24:31] Toussaint Bailey: from you.

[00:24:31] Toussaint Bailey: I've seen the globe. Yeah. It was very

[00:24:33] Stacy Havener: jazzy. It's very jazzy. And so there was a pie chart on there that kind of broke down, like the types of investments that you do. And it was so. This is like, this is just real talk. Me being honest, I try not to over prepare for my podcast because I want to like experience the stories and the conversation real.

[00:24:53] Stacy Havener: And so I was looking at that wheel and, and I can't remember the color scheme, but there was like a bright [00:25:00] color was on sort of the more traditional impact asset classes, themes, and then there was a dark color. And in the dark color section it said small business. And for a second, I, I was not reading the words to the right, I was just looking at the, at the visual and I thought, oh, that's so interesting.

[00:25:19] Stacy Havener: First of all, that small business is even on here. And second, oh, like, it looks like we're not getting, that's not part of it. 'cause the bright color is on these more traditional. And then I realized, no, wait a minute. No small business is part of the wheel. And I, as a small business owner, I was like, well, this is exciting.

[00:25:37] Stacy Havener: Like I love this angle. You don't hear people when they talk about values. I don't think of small business that way, but. Entrepreneurship is a value. Like as a founder, I want to support other founders. That means something to me. Oh, absolutely. Is that what you mean by that?

[00:25:53] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah. No, I, I actually wrote about this and, um, I do a, a founder's letter every quarter to our, to our LPs and to [00:26:00] our shareholders of the firm, and I wrote about.

[00:26:02] Toussaint Bailey: The meaning of values align investing this quarter. And part of what I talked about is the fact like any kind of investing that in introduces anything other than financial returns at this point has been politicized or there's been attempt to politic. Yeah. Values align Investing is about values and, and so I talked about things like freedom.

[00:26:20] Toussaint Bailey: Security, you know, love, ambition, and investing in small business. When you talk about values aligned investing is really about like an ambitious America, right? Like yeah. The freedom to, to actually pursue the American dream and, and to me there's like, there's no more American set of values than those, and there's really.

[00:26:43] Toussaint Bailey: No more actionable way to demonstrate those values than a thriving small business community. And so some of our biggest investments are there and kind of that, that private e lower to lower middle market private equity bucket. And some of our best performing investments are there. And those investments aren't just [00:27:00] like kind of dumping money into small businesses.

[00:27:02] Toussaint Bailey: And then. Taking that like chop in and sell private equity playbook, they're like actually going to those things with, we call underutilized value creation levers. And so there's, there's um, oh, like a, and we're a fund of funds, so, so we invest in funds and then we, um, those funds invest in, in companies and one of the funds we invest in TRI to, it's called TRI in American Dreams Fund.

[00:27:23] Toussaint Bailey: They invest in lower, I won't even call it lower middle market. It's like two to 20 million, uh, of EBITDA businesses, like long track records, and one of the companies that they're invested in is a company in southeast Alabama or in the southeast in Alabama, Xcel interior doors. They took a super smart private equity guys.

[00:27:43] Toussaint Bailey: With, with a lens to do better. Um, they, they invested in this company, but the biggest sort of issue to that company's growth was a labor constraint. So they put in, uh, uh, training for formerly incarcerated individuals for refugees. Went from doing [00:28:00] 18,000 doors a week to doing over 35,000 doors a week.

[00:28:02] Toussaint Bailey: That is far and away one of the best performers in our portfolio on a company basis. And it's just like this really compelling story about how you invest in small business, how you grow small business through doing thoughtful kind of value creation things other than firing a bunch of people. And that repeatedly plays itself out.

[00:28:22] Toussaint Bailey: So that is absolutely, to me, impact and that's values. Um, but it's, it's a small business story.

[00:28:28] Stacy Havener: So I love that. And I'm sitting here listening to you tell that story. What a fantastic story, first of all, and I'm thinking about. How we traditionally view impact and all this sort of ESG ways, and I'm sitting here going this, like for other founders to support.

[00:28:49] Stacy Havener: Entrepreneur who care, like industry agnostic really. I mean, do we care? Like I don't care if it's software or tech or doors or the automotive guy who's having like [00:29:00] our favorite guy that we go to is having these same problems. These is small potatoes, but like these are real issues that small businesses go through.

[00:29:07] Toussaint Bailey: Absolutely.

[00:29:07] Stacy Havener: And I love the idea of. My capital helping solve those problems for them.

[00:29:14] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah. No, we're ju we're, we're clo. So first of all, if you want to be a good investor, you're gonna have to close gaps, right? And at, yeah, first and foremost, we are investors and we work, we work backwards from there, right?

[00:29:26] Toussaint Bailey: So we invest with, but the themes where we invest are looking to close gaps that, that we believe and our LPs believe are good for the world. So you see all the kind of the, uh, feel good stuff there. As we go into this universe of investments, things like affordable housing or uh, climate resilience or small business education, as we go into that universe healthcare, we're thinking, okay, so what are the under-resourced problems that we're solving with innovative ways to get capital places where it hasn't been?

[00:29:54] Toussaint Bailey: What are the underserved markets that have the ability to pay for value but haven't [00:30:00] been presented that value? And what are the underutilized value creation levers like that Excel interior doors where like people actually haven't thought, or maybe there's a stigma around using this, pulling this kind of value creation lever and all of those.

[00:30:14] Toussaint Bailey: Stigmas or all of those overlooking sort of gaps are where our investment advantage lives. And so we're just kind of going into this universe at the end of the day looking for an investment advantage. And part of that advantage just has this, uh, synergistic relationship with things that are really good for the world, right?

[00:30:31] Toussaint Bailey: Like, just like, wow, that we can all agree are, most people can agree are world. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:35] Stacy Havener: I love those. The, the triple under, under-resourced

[00:30:40] Toussaint Bailey: problems, underserved markets, underutilized value creation levers,

[00:30:43] Stacy Havener: it's. Reminding me and I wanna come back to it. I think it's reminding me of your time at the community development.

[00:30:52] Toussaint Bailey: We'll circle,

[00:30:54] Stacy Havener: is it? Yeah.

[00:30:55] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah. AB absolutely. Like do you

[00:30:57] Stacy Havener: Yeah. It,

[00:30:57] Toussaint Bailey: it's the same, it's the same work. And actually I've, I've now kind [00:31:00] of been brought back into contact with some of those people, but I was, uh, I had a chance to, um, actually talk to some students from, from my undergraduate earlier this summer, and I said like, I've, I've never been so inspired by my own work.

[00:31:13] Toussaint Bailey: And it's because like, it's, it's what brought me here. It like seeing. Actual, because I'm a capitalist. I believe in capitalism. I believe in the power of capitalism. I believe good capitalism can yield great investment results. And so like seeing that lit me up as a, you know, 21-year-old and like, it, it just made sense to me.

[00:31:32] Toussaint Bailey: Like, why don't we bring, there's all sorts of. Of leverage you have to pull to, to solve hard problems. Philanthropy is important and some things only philanthropy will solve. Like government policy is important and some things only government policy will solve. For me, I'm drawn to the power of private capital and what it can do and what markets can do and like that.

[00:31:52] Toussaint Bailey: I, I had no awareness that that fire was in there and that would resonate as a 21-year-old. Mm-hmm. But being able to come back now with intention and [00:32:00] with some, some resources and, and some relationships and actually activate private capital in this direction is super inspiring. And it, and, and it has worked from an investment standpoint, we're seeing Yeah.

[00:32:11] Toussaint Bailey: We're seeing it work. And so yeah, it's fun to do.

[00:32:14] Stacy Havener: And so when you think about the funds that you're allocating to. Are they also specialists?

[00:32:24] Toussaint Bailey: They are typically specialists in those themes. Yeah. And they have to, that three part thesis that I talked about is called, we call it Impact Alpha, like those are three components of this, um, impact Alpha thesis.

[00:32:35] Toussaint Bailey: We have to have. Um, we have to be able to tell ourselves a story after diligence that there's an impact alpha opportunity there, but they're not all impact funds. So, so like we, we, they're, I love this. They'll not Okay, good. Tell about they do not define themselves as impact funds. So for us, we think they are committed to outcomes that we want to see, that we, that we can measure and manage, but they do not.

[00:32:59] Toussaint Bailey: [00:33:00] Call themselves impact funds in, in every case. And so we, we say we're an impact fund of funds. We're not a fund of impact funds.

[00:33:08] Stacy Havener: I love that. Is that on your website? It

[00:33:10] Toussaint Bailey: probably isn't. It probably should be, but it probably isn't. Yeah,

[00:33:12] Stacy Havener: it should be. I am a plus one on that. Okay. Because here's the thing, when you say impact, people have a definition on it.

[00:33:22] Stacy Havener: Yeah.

[00:33:23] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah.

[00:33:24] Stacy Havener: And it's not really what you're doing.

[00:33:26] Toussaint Bailey: No. My, my, my wife is actually giving that definition to take some of that. I think she's right. Take some of that language out. Yeah, because it's, they're so, it's charged them and it's charged for reasons. It's that have nothing to do with us. Yeah.

[00:33:39] Stacy Havener: I think she's right.

[00:33:40] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah. All right.

[00:33:41] Stacy Havener: I mean, and I don't know. Well, I, to me this is so cool, like this conversation of figuring this out because really impact investing is great. The definition that other people have that has become charged and all those things. But what you're saying, especially that last [00:34:00] line about, say it again on the impact fund, but we're not setting it.

[00:34:03] Stacy Havener: We're an impact

[00:34:03] Toussaint Bailey: fund. We're not an fund of funds. We're not a fund of impact funds.

[00:34:08] Stacy Havener: Yeah. That,

[00:34:09] Toussaint Bailey: yeah,

[00:34:10] Stacy Havener: that's a differentiator. Big differentiator. And

[00:34:13] Toussaint Bailey: it's, and it's, you talk about differentiators and having the courage, so we spent a lot of. Time early on feeling not impact enough because we have to be in the crowd.

[00:34:22] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah. Right. We have to go to the places we have to understand impact investing. And so we spend a lot of time going, like we keep saying that we're investors first and we keep, you know, we we're, we're talking about these themes and the thing that sort of drives and stirs the drink is investment results.

[00:34:37] Toussaint Bailey: And we have a belief that. Like paying attention to that actually yields impact because the impact is what drives the investment result. But we felt sort of out of place for a long time and, and have just now started to kind of sit tall and go like, no, we're, what we're producing and what we're doing is actually driving just as much value and it's gonna be just as accretive to the world.

[00:34:57] Toussaint Bailey: And also our LPs, if not [00:35:00] more than any. Kind of impact speaking impact investor, but we have to be true to ourselves as investors. My, my, my co-managing partner, my partner in crime, uh, Linda Asante, she's an investor, like through and through 30 years, has come to this space as an investor and like to try to turn her into something different would be inauthentic to like who we're both of us?

[00:35:23] Stacy Havener: Yeah. I mean I lo so it's funny, there's something along the that, that same. Phrasing that you just did on the fund to fund side. I think there's more that you can do with that. And one of my favorite hacks, it's not a hack, I hate the word hack, love's like a short, I love the way

[00:35:41] Toussaint Bailey: that like, first we're excited about this being a conversation and now I'm getting some, I'm getting like free.

[00:35:46] Toussaint Bailey: I'm soaking up coaching. I can't help myself. You gotta do podcast. This is fantastic.

[00:35:52] Stacy Havener: But I hope people can learn from this 'cause this is really good and I'm gonna give you this shortcut. Okay. When someone says, what makes you different? And you [00:36:00] sit down and you start writing in the affirmative, the positive things that make you different.

[00:36:06] Stacy Havener: It's very, very difficult to get sharp and have edges. However, you do the opposite exercise and you say, if I say to you, tell me something that your peers do or believe that you don't.

[00:36:23] Hmm.

[00:36:24] Stacy Havener: You instantly get sharp and you're ins that differentiator instantly has edge. So for example, you know, a typical impact fund is gonna be invested in ESG themes or what, however you word that.

[00:36:39] Stacy Havener: Yeah, right? Yeah. Typical stuff. And we're not that.

[00:36:45] Yeah,

[00:36:45] Stacy Havener: we're not that or whatever the, so the, we're not that. And sort of old way, new way, or everybody else and us, that thinking is gonna get you to your differentiators really, really quickly. Yeah. We, we

[00:36:58] Toussaint Bailey: like, it's so funny you say [00:37:00] this 'cause I feel like every piece of like crystal clarity about our DNA has come from has come from knock.

[00:37:06] Toussaint Bailey: We, uh, we talk a lot about Yeah. Like so, so all over the place. You'll see, um, impact funds talk about doing well and doing good. Doing, and we started out talking about that. Like, oh, these two things can coexist, but it's, it's. What drives investment results to have these two things coexist, right? Like you're trying to kind of force these two things.

[00:37:27] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah. And so doing well by doing good is what we, we ultimately arrived at, and it's only that buy that we invest in. And so like we talked about going from coexistence to Collinearity, like there has to be a symbiotic relationship between impact and investment and the impact has to drive the investment results or we don't invest there.

[00:37:47] Toussaint Bailey: And so there's plenty of places where. You have impact KPIs over here and you can measure those and like it's great for the world and you have investment KPIs over here and maybe it's doing well, but that Venn [00:38:00] diagram is not necessarily overlapping. And so for us, the investment KPIs actually have to be the impact KPIs and it narrows the universe substantially, but it really does.

[00:38:10] Toussaint Bailey: That's good. Yeah, it, it produces a different kind of investment portfolio.

[00:38:14] Stacy Havener: And it's for a different investor. It's, it's, I mean, I'm sorry. It's, yeah, like again, if you're hanging out the typical impact investment conferences, you're not for them.

[00:38:25] Yeah. 'cause

[00:38:25] Stacy Havener: when they start doing the due diligence and realize that there are non-impact air quotes, funds in your.

[00:38:32] Stacy Havener: Impact fund. They're gonna be like WTF. Yeah. I like this is not that impact. Investor doesn't want those things. So in some ways, and this isn't entirely true, but there's something here for me as I'm talking with you, which is, it's like the impact fund for. Like actual investors for non-impact investors?

[00:38:51] Stacy Havener: Oh yeah. It's the impact run for non-impact investors for the impact,

[00:38:55] Toussaint Bailey: we call it the impact curious, we call it. Uh, so we, we talk about, um, and we, we talked [00:39:00] about this a lot early on, the quietly bothered, right? Like so, so maybe like you're not the person who's out there like posting online or out there with a bullhorn.

[00:39:09] Toussaint Bailey: We don't walk around with a bullhorn on any of the issues that we invest in. We like when we write our quarterly letters, it's about the, we take you through. The investment case even on the issues that you care about. So we, and we, we do that investor by investor and, and we bring like relevant information, but it always comes back to an investment case.

[00:39:26] Toussaint Bailey: And I think for us, those quietly bothered people.

[00:39:31] Yeah, there's

[00:39:31] Toussaint Bailey: so many more of those out there then. Yes. We all realize, I think. Almost all of us right now, there's like stuff that we see no matter where, which side of the political spectrum you're on. Yeah. Like there's just stuff that, that a lot of us see that we don't even have the energy to speak up on.

[00:39:47] Toussaint Bailey: And so, so it's like, what is a way that you could meet those investors where they are, they could continue to be investors, but they can also sort of drive at some of the things that they wanna see in the world. And so that's the portfolio that we [00:40:00] endeavored to build. And we thought the first thing that you have to do in order to get an advisor to put that in front of their clients is it has to be a incredibly compelling financial investment experience.

[00:40:09] Toussaint Bailey: Like it starts there, that's what de-risks it from replacing something else in the portfolio, right? And then you work backwards.

[00:40:16] Stacy Havener: You know, it's very interesting 'cause this is really a big conversation on differentiation and we're using you as our case study. Love it. So thank you for being willing to do that.

[00:40:25] Stacy Havener: But what's interesting is this asset class is perhaps one of the most difficult asset classes to differentiate in right now. I really believe that.

[00:40:34] Toussaint Bailey: I agree.

[00:40:36] Stacy Havener: Because there's too many biases and preconceived ideas baked into a very, very narrow amount of. Language.

[00:40:49] Toussaint Bailey: Yes. Yes. And, and it feels like a burden to sort through all of that.

[00:40:55] Toussaint Bailey: And so, yeah, before you ever start the conversation, it's a big ask [00:41:00] to ask someone, why don't you work through this noise for me in order to get to this result for your clients? Right? And so there has to be something compelling enough on the other end. And to your point, you have to be clear enough about what you are.

[00:41:11] Toussaint Bailey: That there's relief rather than burden As you start to discuss what you do and it's hard, it's, it's hard to do in this space where people are like almost frozen.

[00:41:21] Stacy Havener: Yeah. And so like, okay, so now I have a question for you. So you're at a networking event, you're at the wealthiest, you're at future proof.

[00:41:29] Stacy Havener: We'll use future proof. Yeah. Okay. So you're future proof. It's gorgeous out as it was. You meet somebody new and they say, you know, oh, you're an asset man. What do you guys specialize in? What do you say?

[00:41:40] Toussaint Bailey: We do values align private market investing like so, so we do. So you

[00:41:44] Stacy Havener: don't say impact? You avoid impact because it's so,

[00:41:47] Toussaint Bailey: it's, it's patched.

[00:41:48] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah. Like, I, I don't, and this is part of what I recently wrote about, is like. So first, like ESG is almost a dirty word now, right? And so like Yeah. And, and this sustainable investing space goes through, its kind of [00:42:00] nomenclature stuff every so often, but impact is moving there. Like people have now ideas about what that means.

[00:42:07] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah. And so while values aligned is still available, and to me it's easy. To connect that to what we actually do. Like talking about values, taking people away from politics. 'cause I heard someone, uh, Cameron Rogers from Angeles Investments, I'm gonna quote her what she said, like, yeah, values came before politics at Futureproof.

[00:42:27] Toussaint Bailey: She said that on the stage, and so I'll credit her with that. But she's absolutely right. Like before there were politics that were values and so if I can get people. Connected to the values that they care about and then demonstrate that we can provide value from an investment standpoint. I kind of jump over that politics piece and so that's why to me, starting the conversation with that values aligned investing just makes sense.

[00:42:49] Stacy Havener: I agree. So this is interesting 'cause, so it's so interesting that you came from the advisor side and now you're on the other side and selling into the advisor community because since I could have like a million questions on that alone [00:43:00] and so. So you get meetings with friend, like how are you navigating that as a person?

[00:43:08] Stacy Havener: Yeah,

[00:43:08] because

[00:43:08] Stacy Havener: you have all these friends from the advisor side, now you're on the other side. Now you're like, am I trying to sell them something? Like what? It's

[00:43:16] Toussaint Bailey: been a, yeah, it's been, it's been a process. So. First, like I have, I have the gift of, I think having done the right things most of the time in that other role.

[00:43:26] Toussaint Bailey: And so, yeah, I had built trust. I had built personal trust. Your personal brand? Yeah. Uhhuh. And so the first thing was to convert that trust into trust. For our firm, like so for, for uplifting capital that we were established that will be around, that we're gonna do the right things, that we have a decent team.

[00:43:43] Toussaint Bailey: I think we've been able to do that. And so people will absolutely take meetings from a relationship standpoint with me and they want to do business, but there's, there's noise, right? Like so, so what we're talking about now and figuring out what the right form of partnership is and, and helping people sort [00:44:00] through and educating people on a lot of what.

[00:44:03] Toussaint Bailey: Values aligned investing is what it isn't. How that shows up in the private markets. The fact that it can show up without compromise is now the job I have in front of me. So I've kind of done those first two jobs and I have no problem having conversations with just about anyone that most asset managers would dream about having conversations with.

[00:44:22] Toussaint Bailey: And yeah, you can. And they been both helpful in terms of, yeah. Bringing us business, but also helpful in terms of, like, I, I'm not, um, I'm, I'm a big fan of being brutally honest with myself about my own energy, but also about what the market's telling me, and they've helped me understand what the market's telling me.

[00:44:38] Stacy Havener: So what are the assets now?

[00:44:40] Toussaint Bailey: Uh, so we're at 38 million committed. So we had 18 and a half million committed into that first fund. And then we had mm-hmm. A couple firms kind of pre-commit to our next two funds. That's great. And we're raising a hundred million fund now.

[00:44:53] Stacy Havener: That's, so that's the current thing.

[00:44:55] Stacy Havener: Yep. Okay. So I'm gonna share this. We, we didn't do a ton [00:45:00] of impact capital raise work, like the traditional definition of impact investing. Yes. But we did a couple, and here's what I found, and I wonder if it's changed or not, or how you're thinking about this. So we would go in very talented, multi-billion dollar asset manager on the credit side.

[00:45:23] Stacy Havener: That was doing impact. Really cool stuff. And have the conversation with the group, the advisory group with their investment team, so large multi-billion dollar advisors, and then, and it would be the same amount of work. Okay. Yep. So we're doing all the same amount of due diligence work, all the same amount of calls needed and all the things.

[00:45:44] Stacy Havener: And then they'd be like, yeah, this'll probably work for like one or two of our clients.

[00:45:48] Yep. Yep.

[00:45:49] Stacy Havener: And I would be like. Okay. Time out. Time out, time out because I just spent a shit ton of time helping this all [00:46:00] go down, and now you're gonna put a couple million bucks in this thing. The amount of work that I was doing to make that diligence process.

[00:46:14] Stacy Havener: Excellent and quality and close. And for that advisor to say there's one or two clients I can put into, I was like, well, this is broken. Yeah.

[00:46:21] Toussaint Bailey: And it's al it's almost more diligence. 'cause you, you also have to do the impact diligence. Yeah. You can't, you can't skip like, okay, so how do you like explain the impact side of this?

[00:46:29] Toussaint Bailey: Yes. I think the next step for these. Impact investments is to become investments and we, we talk about that within our firm all the time. I agree with you. We dream of the day when, when these are just thought of as investments. And in order to do that, like we actually have to win the investment case because you'll note that like every impact investment firm, if they're a market rate impact, investment firm has a theoretical story about how.

[00:46:55] Toussaint Bailey: Their impact is gonna drive returns or how? How their impact can coexist with returns. [00:47:00] Like we all say it in theory. There's very few who are actually delivering that story or, or who have looking back. Part of that's 'cause the space is so nascent, right? Like they haven't been around long enough to deliver on that story.

[00:47:12] Toussaint Bailey: But in order for that chasm to be crossed as an industry or like impact investment industry. So if you're gonna call yourself market rate, you actually have to compete on a market rate basis. Not that we're good enough and we have impact. It has to be that we are more compelling from an investment standpoint.

[00:47:31] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah, and, and those investments happen to be an impact, themes,

[00:47:35] Stacy Havener: intellectual curiosity here. What happens? If you take, okay, so what? Oh, I'm gonna ask the question. I'm gonna tell you. Oh my God. I'm

[00:47:45] Toussaint Bailey: gonna have to say my wife's right. 'cause I know where this is going.

[00:47:48] Stacy Havener: Yeah. If you just took impact out of it.

[00:47:52] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah.

[00:47:52] Stacy Havener: And you just said we're a private equity firm or whatever we do, we do VC and pe. So here's why I am [00:48:00] asking, um, because if you look at the way. Europe, European asset Managers approach this topic. Impact is always sort of, again, impact in quotes, ESG criteria and considerations. It's typically in their process.

[00:48:20] Stacy Havener: It's not on their cover, it's not in their name. It's, they just think is good business to evaluate these things as part of our process. So. In some ways, and again, like just food for thought and an idea to knock around. If you just played out the scenario in which you took the word out and then, you know, so now it's uplifting capital you are.

[00:48:48] Toussaint Bailey: B, CP uplifting capital fund one, an uplifting capital fund. Two, not uplifting, capital impact fund one. Or, or whatever. That's right. Yeah.

[00:48:55] Stacy Havener: And then you, so now you meet with someone, you tell them your story, you don't [00:49:00] lead with the impact piece. You just sort of say like, and we believe X, Y, and Z. Like in your philosophy, in your process, whatever.

[00:49:09] Stacy Havener: But it's like not the, it's not the lead. I don't know.

[00:49:14] Toussaint Bailey: Yeah, yeah. No. Who your thought I, I, I homework it. Homework for, it's also, it's the future state that we say we want to see, right? We say, so just, just it forward for the investment. Right.

[00:49:25] Stacy Havener: So what would happen if you just said, that's how we're gonna treat it?

[00:49:28] Toussaint Bailey: Oh Stacy, you're blowing my mind right now. You're blowing my mind right now. I

[00:49:31] Stacy Havener: know. It's so good. Okay, listen, I wanna end with a couple questions. We obviously need to talk more. This has been so fantastic and I appreciate you, you being, you being willing to sort of entertain these thoughts. 'cause these are the types of things I want all boutiques to be thinking

[00:49:46] Toussaint Bailey: about.

[00:49:46] Toussaint Bailey: No, this is so good. No, this is, this is great.

[00:49:47] Stacy Havener: Okay, here we go. Fast fire. All

[00:49:50] Toussaint Bailey: right, I'm ready.

[00:49:51] Stacy Havener: What book inspires you?

[00:49:53] Toussaint Bailey: Uh, it's a book called Finding Meaning, uh, by by David Kessler. And it's not quite a downer. It like, [00:50:00] it's one of the authors of the five stages of grief. He, he lost his son and found that there was a sixth stage that he.

[00:50:07] Toussaint Bailey: Realized people needed for their healing and it was finding meaning. Um, and so he goes off on this journey and, and talks a lot about people healing their grief by, he talks about mothers against drunk driving, like doing something about loss and all this stuff. And so it's been incredible and it's also part of kind of what's inspired me, uh, going in this direction is like.

[00:50:25] Toussaint Bailey: One of our access points to healing is finding meaning in everything we see.

[00:50:30] Stacy Havener: I love that. Thank you. That is a great one. Okay. Going from books to places, what place inspires you?

[00:50:37] Toussaint Bailey: Any? Um, what, what My three daughters call daddy any place where we go on a daddy adventure. Um, and so like where we just take off and have.

[00:50:47] Toussaint Bailey: Zero agenda and they kind of half guide the day. I kind of half guide the day and it's usually like an all day thing where we just float through some city. We did like, we called it daddy camp in San Francisco this summer. We're we're just [00:51:00] north of San Francisco, Marin County, where every day we went into the city and we chose a different part of the city and just kind of floated through and it was amazing.

[00:51:07] Toussaint Bailey: I

[00:51:07] Stacy Havener: love that. I didn't know you were a girl. Dad. That's amazing. Three time girl,

[00:51:12] Toussaint Bailey: dad. 10, seven and seven.

[00:51:13] Stacy Havener: That's awesome. Okay. You're gonna give a speech to a stadium full of raving fans. As you walk out onto the stage, they're gonna play a song. What is your walkout anthem? What's your hype song?

[00:51:29] Toussaint Bailey: Ah, so this, this one was actually what we listened to, and I owe this to one of my law school roommates because we listened to this gonna law school test.

[00:51:37] Toussaint Bailey: But Jay-Z, a moment of clarity. Thank God for moment,

[00:51:45] Stacy Havener: okay? I'm queuing that up for my ride home from work. Brilliant.

[00:51:49] Love it.

[00:51:49] Stacy Havener: And not one that you hear

[00:51:51] no often. Like it's, it's, it's

[00:51:54] Stacy Havener: somewhere between heights and it's kind of like a B side. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That's good. What profession, other [00:52:00] than your own, would you like to attempt? Ooh,

[00:52:02] Toussaint Bailey: uh, teaching? Uh, absolutely.

[00:52:04] Stacy Havener: Oh yeah. So

[00:52:05] Toussaint Bailey: same older kids, or, or, or college school.

[00:52:07] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Same. Same. Yeah. Okay. What profession would you not like to do

[00:52:13] Toussaint Bailey: medicine, doctor, nurse, anything? Ugh. Yeah.

[00:52:18] Stacy Havener: Surgery. So we're, we're cut from the same cloth. And last but not least, and obviously this is a long time away, what do you want people to say about you after you've retired or left the industry?

[00:52:30] Toussaint Bailey: He left it better than he found it. Just like

[00:52:33] Stacy Havener: sweep the shit. Yeah. I love that. That is fantastic. You are fantastic. Toss. I am so glad we finally got a chance to sit down together and that we were able to invite other people into the conversation, but we have to do this again. Oh, this is

[00:52:47] Toussaint Bailey: so good. We, we, 100% have to.

[00:52:49] Toussaint Bailey: It's been long overdue and it's been worth the wait.

[00:52:52] Stacy Havener: Okay. You're the best. Thank you so much for being here. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied [00:53:00] 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.

[00:53:10] 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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