Episode 121: Chat Reynders, Co-Founder of a $4B RIA Reynders McVeigh on True Impact Investing, Differentiation, and Owning Your Story
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Some RIAs slap ESG labels on products and call it impact investing. Chat Reynders has been doing it for real, since before it was cool.
In this episode, Chat sits down with Stacy Havener to unpack the story behind Reynders, McVeigh Capital Management, the $4B firm he co-founded after starting his career… raising money for a whale documentary.
Yes, really.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
The wild backstory of how raising $4.5M for an IMAX film on whales sparked Chat’s lifelong mission to fuse capital with purpose
Why Chat walked away from traditional finance (and how that shaped his view on sustainable investing)
The truth about ESG, what Wall Street got wrong, and how Reynders McVeigh is doing it differently
The power of curiosity, clarity, and staying true to your story (especially in a world full of productized sameness)
How declaring your firm’s identity can fuel growth both externally and within your team
Whether you're a founder, an investor, or someone trying to align your money with your mission, this conversation will get you thinking.
More About Chat:
Chat Reynders is the Chairman and CEO of Reynders, McVeigh Capital Management, a $4B RIA he co-founded in 2005. With over 25 years of experience in investment management and social venture investing, Chat is known for blending fundamentals with forward-thinking strategies—and for being a true pioneer in values-driven investing.
Beyond finance, he’s raised over $150 million through public/private partnerships to support cultural and environmental initiatives worldwide. A longtime producer of socially conscious IMAX films (including the Oscar-nominated Dolphins), Chat’s passion for impact extends to his work on the board of the MacGillivray Freeman Educational Foundation and other nonprofits.
His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Barron’s, and Business Week.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
“Compensation” — Ralph Waldo Emerson | https://emersoncentral.com/ebook/Compensation.pdf
Barbarians at the Gate: The Inside Story of America’s Most Notorious Corporate Takeover by Bryan Burrough | https://a.co/d/eszLLW0
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TRANSCRIPT
Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.
[00:00:05] Stacy Havener: [00:00:00] Some groups jumped on the impact investing bandwagon kinda recently, or maybe they threw some letters like ESG around and faked the funk. But my next guest has been an impact investor. Before it was cool. In fact, over 20 years ago, he raised capital for an IMAX film about whales. That's right, pitching Fortune 100 execs by day and by night, sleeping in a barn, housing the largest collection of recorded whale songs in the world.
[00:00:46] Stacy Havener: What happened in between the whale movie and a $4 billion RIA. Grab your popcorn to find out. Meet my friend and our client chat [00:01:00] grinders. 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.
[00:01:14] 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.
[00:01:40] 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 challenged while you learn. This is the Billion dollar Backstory podcast.
[00:01:59] Stacy Havener: [00:02:00] Let's be real. No one wakes up and says, I can't wait to build some operational infrastructure today you are here to manage money to build something that lights you up, not chase down reports across five systems and 15 service providers. That's where Ultimas Fund Solutions comes in there. Your ops dream team, consolidating all your middle and back office chaos into one clean, scalable setup, registered funds, private funds, SMAs, all integrated.
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[00:02:58] Stacy Havener: Ultimas was built [00:03:00] on people doing business with people. You get institutional strength combined with boutique level service without getting stuck in a phone tree of doom. If you're ready to simplify scale and start working with a team that feels like an extension of yours, check out billion dollar backstory.com/ultimas.
[00:03:21] Stacy Havener: That's U-L-T-I-M-U-S. You've got the investment strategy, the vision, the track record. Now it's time to upgrade the engine behind it all with Ultimas. Okay, this is so much fun, and literally we've been in the green room for I don't know how long and kind of forgot that we were supposed to hit record. So chat.
[00:03:44] Stacy Havener: Hi. Thank you so much for being here with us. It is a joy for me. You are a friend. You are a client. You have an incredible story, and we are gonna dive right into that. Yeah. Are you ready? I'm ready. So here's the thing, I'm ready, I'm [00:04:00] gonna start with this question. Did you always know, I'm smiling and sort of smirking already.
[00:04:06] Stacy Havener: Did you always know that you wanted to be in the wealth management and asset management business? Was this like your childhood dream?
[00:04:15] Chat Reynders: You know, it's really, it's a good question, Stacy, and first of all, thank you for having you. You're welcome. Having, I'm really excited to be here and I really enjoy our work together.
[00:04:23] Chat Reynders: And I want everyone to know before I get started on my story that, you know, I spent my whole life trying to figure out how to solve problems for everybody else and to work on, on issues for everybody else. But oftentimes it's difficult to explain what it is we do at, at Reiners McVay to people. So they get it.
[00:04:41] Chat Reynders: So they figure out where our core is. And you've been so helpful to us. Yay. And so good to, to help us focus on the really important things. 'cause the, these are the things that matter to us. Yes. To answer your question Yeah. But in the wrong way. My father was a broker Yeah. In [00:05:00] New York. And I was so excited about the energy in, in the financial markets.
[00:05:06] Chat Reynders: I was really interested. I grew up kind of in the shadow of Wall Street, so I was fascinated with the idea of Wall Street. Okay. But what was amazing is I went into work for my dad when I got into the college internships and you gotta figure out what you're gonna do and, and you gotta put down those. And I figured out that, you know, I was just not very good at transactional quick brokerage.
[00:05:30] Chat Reynders: Like, you know, the guy would call up on the floor and tell you a joke and hang up and then you, and then, and I'd be sort of stunned, you know, and I, and everything was very transactional and quick. And in my time back in the late eighties, it was really a weird time on Wall Street. That's when Barbarians of the Gate was written.
[00:05:49] Chat Reynders: So when I was looking at Wall Street. The reality of what I saw wasn't what I imagined could happen in finance. What I saw was a [00:06:00] transactional set of businesses with not a lot of great rules, where a lot of the big companies had all the advantages 'cause they held all the information. Mm-hmm. And it was like the wild west.
[00:06:10] Chat Reynders: And so I was disenchanted though my little child self thought it would be so cool to be in finance. But I still recognized there was power in finance. So I, I started with an idea of a dream, but then I became a little disillusioned when I first got out there in college. So as a young man, I was a little disillusioned.
[00:06:31] Chat Reynders: Yeah. So for me it was really about trying to figure out what I would want to do in life. Well, the world solved my problem for me because all of those issues I had, had those concerns, I had turned into. What was the first financial cri big financial crisis I'd really seen in my life, which was the blowing up of Drexel Burnham.
[00:06:51] Chat Reynders: Half of the shops in New York closed, there were no jobs to be had, and all of the nastiness that was happening on Wall [00:07:00] Street sort of came to the fore. So for me, of course, I did what any thoughtful person would do. At that point in time, I decided to create a film on whales, an IMAX film on whales. Very straightforward.
[00:07:13] Chat Reynders: Uh, you
[00:07:13] Stacy Havener: need to say it again because everybody just wait, wait. What? You decided to create a film? Straightforward?
[00:07:18] Chat Reynders: Of course. You know, wall Street blows up, and so what you do is you. Make a film on Wales in imax and that is the path to running a multi-billion dollar wealth management firm. You just start there.
[00:07:29] Chat Reynders: You heard it here
[00:07:29] Stacy Havener: first. You heard it it here first. That's what you do. Yeah, that's how you do it.
[00:07:33] Chat Reynders: So it's that simple.
[00:07:33] Stacy Havener: So I mean, it's so good. It's just so good and it's, so here's the thing, like when we listen to somebody share their story with us authentically as you are doing right now, it helps us to get in touch with our own story, right?
[00:07:49] Stacy Havener: Right. 'cause the fact that you just said that everybody has those like weird left field flyer moments, messy, middles, whatever you wanna call 'em, and that at the [00:08:00] time they don't seem to make an ounce of sense. But weirdly, this is gonna make all the sense in the world, isn't it? So what. Okay. Like, what do you mean you made a film about Wales?
[00:08:12] Stacy Havener: Like what do you even mean?
[00:08:13] Chat Reynders: Yeah, so think about it this way. You know, you have an imagination of what you think finance can be and it turns out to get blown up on you and you don't, you don't know where to turn and, and a lot of people don't understand that. That's the good start point, right? Yeah.
[00:08:28] Chat Reynders: Everyone's a learner, right? Yes. We're all learning as we start this thing and, and I was a young looking guy. I looked 12 years old. I had no business doing what I had had sought out to do. But basically all through life I had been impassioned by this idea that if you could direct capital effectively, meaning if you could find a really interesting project and then structure a way that people could participate in that project and that would end up doing good things.
[00:08:56] Chat Reynders: Yep. And creating a reasonable return. I thought that was sort of a. A, a [00:09:00] magical opportunity. So IMAX had just started back then. Okay. It was a new business. So if you think about it, this was a new industry that had grown. Nobody else was really in the industry or understood the models at that time. These theaters were, you know, all in major scientific centers.
[00:09:16] Chat Reynders: Yeah. There were only 50 theaters around the world at this time when I was doing this. But they were at the Boston Museum of Science. They were at the Smithsonian, and they were raising all this money to produce films with these enormous IMAX cameras that had rolling loop systems and negatives this size.
[00:09:30] Chat Reynders: And it was only three minute magazines. Very difficult work. Okay. But the museums didn't know how to produce these films. And the, and they were hiring people that, you know, were cousins of the museum, you know, and the museums had to raise money to do these films. Very difficult. So I walked in and said, no, no, no.
[00:09:47] Chat Reynders: What you need to do is have really good producers, and you have to have a really good subject like whales, and you produce a great film and it'll bring more money. To these cultural centers. And so it was [00:10:00] the kernel of an idea. And to my father's credit, he said, I love it. I think this is a really great exploration.
[00:10:07] Chat Reynders: You can be at home for six months and you know, and if you get it done, great. If not, you're, you're kind of on your own. And I think his thinking was, he'll get through this, you know, he'll he'll manage through this and then he'll get to his Yeah. You know, his job, his and I embarrassingly, I would walk around and tell people, and this is for the young Yeah.
[00:10:26] Chat Reynders: Listeners out there. Lean into your imagination and your curiosity when you're young and support yourself. Because I was walking around saying, well, I'm really a Morgan Stanley guy, but I'm just doing this for da da. Oh. So right. So there's that pressure that we all feel to like find the clear path to help people understand that we're moving forward in a clear and direct way, but.
[00:10:50] Chat Reynders: This adventure Uhhuh was really the thing that created the kernel because I did get the filmed I had to my, I did leave my parents' house after six months [00:11:00] found. Was the film done
[00:11:01] Stacy Havener: or was it still No. Oh, no, no.
[00:11:03] Chat Reynders: I'd raised not a 10th of what I needed to raise. I had partnered with a MacArthur fellow who discovered that humpback whale sing song, so there was a kernel of, ah, excitement.
[00:11:13] Chat Reynders: So I ended up going to teach second grade because I got free housing and then I would teach until two o'clock and from two o'clock in the afternoon till 10 o'clock at night. I would work on business models, calling people, trying to figure out how to get filmmakers involved, trying to get other scientists and specialists involved and research organizations and funders.
[00:11:32] Chat Reynders: And so I'd be doing this by day and night. I sometimes would be teaching second graders about dinosaurs and painting purple cardboard dinosaurs in a suit. And then I would, I, one time I went to IBM and I was pitching the film in our monk to IBM, to their marketing team. It took me six months to get to the marketing team, and I show up and I've got.
[00:11:53] Chat Reynders: Purple paint.
[00:11:54] Stacy Havener: Oh my God. All over my shoes and my, I love this. This is so real.
[00:11:57] Chat Reynders: So that was my experience. I did end up [00:12:00] getting the film done. We ended up reaching 20 million people Oh my. Across the world in IMAX theaters and major cultural centers. We ended up getting funding from the National Science Foundation to teach 2 million students in classrooms about conservation in Wales.
[00:12:15] Chat Reynders: The film was one of the most successful IMAX films in that year, and it created a model. That I then used, I was then hired by an investment firm that said, holy cow, can you do more of these models in other ways? Can we teach you how to be a trustee? You are exactly what we need in finance right now. And I ended up doing multiple other IMAX films that replicated that model and ended up having just a massive impact over many years.
[00:12:42] Chat Reynders: So for me, it was such a fabulous way to start a, a career. What a creative. And, and, and it hurt. It was hard as the, oh, I can't even imagine. I got the, yeah, I got punched in the face many, many times. But it was great.
[00:12:56] Stacy Havener: Okay, so we're gonna camp out on this for a little bit because there's a [00:13:00] lot of synergies actually.
[00:13:01] Stacy Havener: Anytime I hear raising money, I'm like, there are things to be learned. It doesn't matter what the raising money is for, right? Because it is super difficult to do, and you did it. So I have some clarifying questions. How much did you need to raise to get the film done?
[00:13:20] Chat Reynders: Four and a half million dollars. Okay.
[00:13:21] Chat Reynders: Which back then was real money.
[00:13:23] Stacy Havener: That's, I mean, and also because it was like
[00:13:25] Chat Reynders: 1989 or 1990, that's a lot of money.
[00:13:26] Stacy Havener: And also because the allocations, for lack of a better word, are not gonna be a million bucks here. And it's not like four people are gonna just write you a million dollar check. So the actual allocation sizes were like.
[00:13:39] Chat Reynders: All over the place. Over the place I had, I had a lot of smaller ones that I cobbled together from individual investors. The whole point was that I was able to tell people that there's purpose behind these dollars. Yes. And that I will design a structure that really respects the capital. Mm-hmm. And gets the capital back quickly, which it wasn't done very often in these kind of impact type investments.
[00:13:59] Chat Reynders: Or if you were [00:14:00] working for a museum, you raised a whole bunch of money and nobody respected the capital. Yeah. They were expecting everybody else just to give money. Right. So the idea that you could create a model that could have those individual investors involved, but then shoulder to shoulder with a foundation, uh, so amazing an endowment, um, other people.
[00:14:16] Chat Reynders: So it was really valuable. To set the design right and respect it. But it was the purpose behind that. Yes. To say, we're gonna respect your capital, but you are gonna teach children across the world in 16 language in classrooms. Yes. You're gonna have this conservation message that goes out to these major theaters and major cultural centers around the world.
[00:14:33] Chat Reynders: That was inspiring the people that they could do both. And they'd been told, really, you can't do both. Yes. And that was the thing that I was trying to show is you can, which is a message that continues today.
[00:14:46] Stacy Havener: Yes. And what I wanna get there, so what you did really well is you gave them a why, right? You gave them permission to feel something.
[00:14:58] Chat Reynders: Right.
[00:14:59] Stacy Havener: [00:15:00] First. Which then helped them do something which was write you a check. The other thing that is, oh yes, please comment on that.
[00:15:08] Chat Reynders: I was just gonna say that I have, I have some deep beliefs, you know, and some of them are that you have to have a relationship with your investments, right? Mm-hmm. You, you, you have to know what you own and why you own it.
[00:15:21] Chat Reynders: In order to be a good investor, I'm a big, long-term compounding return guy. And if you're gonna be a long-term investor and you're gonna compound returns that assets you're invested in, or any assets you're invested in, you really have to know well and have a relationship with. And you have to believe in what that company is doing and what it will be doing going forward and the, and how it's impacting our world because.
[00:15:47] Chat Reynders: You know, if you don't believe in what's happening, then there are probably liabilities that have to do with it, and it may not be as good an investment. So for me, this has all been, this is all the base of, isn't it, of real discipline.
[00:15:58] Stacy Havener: It really is. And [00:16:00] how old were you when you did this?
[00:16:02] Chat Reynders: Uh, 20 i 22 when the film got done, I was 28.
[00:16:08] Chat Reynders: That's it. Took me five years, five years of traveling around getting beaten up teaching school. I ended up running a, I ended up running that MacArthur Fellows Whale Conservation Institute. I showed up and there was no money in the bank and I had to build, you know, a business model for a whale watch and other ways for his institute to get funded.
[00:16:26] Chat Reynders: We did all these location, all this location work in Argentina and Alaska and Hawaii. So it was quite, it was quite an adventure. It was kind of, kind of crazy.
[00:16:35] Stacy Havener: It's, it's so great. So you do this work, I mean, you're kind of on a path now. It includes finance, but it's not in finance per se. Right. How did you come back to this world?
[00:16:48] Stacy Havener: So, one of
[00:16:48] Chat Reynders: the firms that I had gone in, that I had created this, this funding model with, you know, it was one of the very early PRI with, uh, program related investments with an endowment. The National Wildlife [00:17:00] Federation Endowment got involved
[00:17:01] Stacy Havener: okay.
[00:17:02] Chat Reynders: And made a type of investment that has become much more popular now, but really had not been heard of back then.
[00:17:07] Chat Reynders: So there was a lot of dynamic stuff going on and really interesting modeling and the fact that I could draw that capital from all of these different institutions by having a good model, really interested this financial firm who wanted me to do more of that work. But for me, it brought me right back into investing and, and central investing.
[00:17:26] Chat Reynders: And you know, in fact, the firm that hired me is where I met Patrick Mcbe. So a lot of good things happened out of it, but some of it was just, I fundamentally enjoyed this work and the financing work. It doesn't work for me without the attachment of purpose. And so Is
[00:17:42] Stacy Havener: that what you realized?
[00:17:43] Chat Reynders: Yeah. My lesson was, yeah.
[00:17:46] Chat Reynders: I thought I was so disillusioned with finance and I thought the only way, you know, I'm good at it. Mm-hmm. And it's great to be good at something. Yes. But if it doesn't mean anything to you, then it's not that great to be good at something. So I really got [00:18:00] excited by this. And it was an inspiration, it was a career inspiration and, and the fact that I could, even if I hadn't made it work, Stacy, even if it had been a, a, a, I couldn't launch the whole film.
[00:18:10] Chat Reynders: Yeah. I couldn't raise all the money, et cetera. It didn't matter. I'd seen the curtain open, I knew the design could work, and I knew this was applicable in so many places because it's really just about fundamentally good disciplines. That's right. It's not, it's not about, people always think you have to make a choice.
[00:18:28] Chat Reynders: Right. And it's not a choice. Right. It's not a choice of do I want to do something with purpose or do I want to make money? Which is how it's set up. It's, you can do both and it's really important. It's an and
[00:18:39] Stacy Havener: it's an, it's an and it's an and not an or.
[00:18:42] Chat Reynders: Correct.
[00:18:42] Stacy Havener: And that I think is very true in so many ways in our industry because our industry is very black and white as math is want to be, you know, you're either left brain or right brain.
[00:18:58] Stacy Havener: There's all these ORs. [00:19:00] And I think the challenge for us, and you're saying it so beautifully, is it's actually not an OR thing. It's an and thing. Right,
[00:19:09] Chat Reynders: right. But you have to do it. Right. That's right. The truth is, wall Street messes a lot of things up because they are so quick to productize stuff. They're so quick to, you know, their job is to sell product and to get that done and to, and, and to, if something seems like it could be popular, they often, the marketing teams are often way ahead of the investment discipline teams.
[00:19:31] Chat Reynders: Yeah. So you end up getting. All sorts of products, you know, that get sent out. And so that's what happened with ESG. It's what happened originally. Oh God. With socially responsible investing. It just, the, these weren't actual investments, it was just somebody, you know, trying to spark a little dust on something and, and shortcut and, uh, people paid a price.
[00:19:49] Chat Reynders: But what it does is it makes people not understand That's right. That you can do both.
[00:19:54] Stacy Havener: That's right. And so you meet Patrick. Yes. Who is your co-founder now? Yes.
[00:19:59] Chat Reynders: Yes.
[00:19:59] Stacy Havener: [00:20:00] Um, and so when did it, the idea, like kind of take us to the point at which you decide to do another sort of crazy, in the very best way thing, which has become entrepreneurs?
[00:20:13] Chat Reynders: Well, first of all, one thing I would say is that it's really important. When you find somebody that you work well with and that you really, um, Patrick's Patrick's an extremely good partner to me. He's, he's a thought partner. He and I compliment each, he's a marathon runner and he, he, we compliment each other so well, and he thinks differently than I do.
[00:20:33] Chat Reynders: Yes. But when we come to the same conclusion, it's a really, really good conclusion. So I trust him and he trusts me. And I think that we learned that we hired him at this other firm to be the director of research. I do more macro work. He has this. Incredible ability to find things where other people just aren't looking.
[00:20:53] Stacy Havener: Mm.
[00:20:53] Chat Reynders: Uh, and his, uh, wisdom about the world is so important. He, he we're talking now and you know, about a bunch of [00:21:00] different things, and one of the things that we've talked about is this Walt Whitman quote, you know, be curious, not judgmental. And, and we're talking about sustainable investing, and we're talking about the idea that everybody's trying to judge everybody else and everybody's trying to tell somebody what they're not doing right and what they're not doing.
[00:21:14] Chat Reynders: And everyone's trying to be exclusive about everything. I'm right. You're wrong. I have this, the gotcha aha, boom, boom. And the reality is there are so many companies that are solving really difficult problems piece by piece by piece, and doing a fabulous job. And if you're curious and you're looking in industries to see, like if it's the water industry, how are we dealing with changing water needs all around the world?
[00:21:40] Chat Reynders: And what's happening on the ground that's driving the change in growth? Because the demand is shifting. If you're curious. You can spend so much time finding amazing investments. And if you're curious, you can see that there are solutions that go beyond what people think about today. Nobody today talks about, you know, [00:22:00] enzymes, right?
[00:22:01] Chat Reynders: But you can bleach paper at a paper company and if you use chlorine, it goes potentially into the river and you gotta get rid of it. If you use an enzyme, there's no byproduct. So we look at it and say, well that's really interesting. Yeah, I'm curious about that. So think about it that way. I love that as if I'm starting a business.
[00:22:17] Chat Reynders: You know, when you, if you asked me like what was one of the great things that happened to me and gave me the courage to start this business? Yeah. Was to have a partner that I trusted and somebody that could do this. When I was doing all this crazy stuff with my, my film, I was dating my wife and she was at med school.
[00:22:36] Chat Reynders: And I was like, I'm so sorry I can stop doing this. You know, when, when you need me to be a normal person again. And she was like, no. Like, this is what we're doing. This is like, let's go. And oh, I love it. So you need a good partner. Yes. Do you need a good partner? Yes. You
[00:22:51] Stacy Havener: do. In life and in business. That is so incredibly true.
[00:22:54] Stacy Havener: And so when you decided to launch Ryers McVay, what was the [00:23:00] vision? I mean, you sat down, presumably you did some back of the napkin. Like what if we did this kind of thing, you know, analysis, very, very, uh, you know, technical napkin analysis. What was the vision?
[00:23:14] Chat Reynders: Yeah, it was, it was, um, we had worked together for six years.
[00:23:17] Chat Reynders: Yeah. So we knew each other well. We trusted each other. The firm where we were working, um, you know, wasn't really pushing as hard into this. Mm-hmm. You know, it was sort of like, you know, it was a generation above that. It was sort that was sort of, kind of slowing it down and trying to figure out how to.
[00:23:36] Chat Reynders: Pull what they could get outta the firm. And, and Patrick and I would've to sort of ride up through that over time. And we just, you know, we were a little restless, I guess. We, and we just saw this opportunity, you know, um, from the beginning we have recognized this and we were really driving a lot of the investment ideas.
[00:23:51] Chat Reynders: And, and so we just, and we really enjoyed working together. I think it was much more that we just had so much fun doing it together. Yeah. And we [00:24:00] felt that there was such an opportunity if we, if we really just decided to get deep on the research side and, and get really focused on finding investments that, that the two of us loved.
[00:24:11] Chat Reynders: We could build something, um, pretty extraordinary. And so that was the kernel and it was really just that, it was just like, yeah. And, and we would enjoy doing it. It, you know, it was hard. That's
[00:24:21] Stacy Havener: a big piece of it though. Yeah. Isn't it? Yeah,
[00:24:24] Chat Reynders: well you, if you're gonna commit to some, if you're gonna commit to being an entrepreneur, it's hard.
[00:24:28] Chat Reynders: It's so hard and, and you better, you better, um, figure out how to make it, uh, fun in times when it can be fun. Yeah. And, and to have somebody that you trust that has your back. So when, when things go wrong, the two of you know, you, you figure stuff out together and you can pivot. But, uh, but um, we've been pretty lucky.
[00:24:44] Chat Reynders: I think. I think we've had, um, you know, we had a really difficult task 'cause nobody believed what we were trying to do was possible. And we've been now at it for 20 years and, and, uh, you know, uh, we've done well and, uh, and so we're [00:25:00] comfortable and happy about it. But what we're really happy about, about it now is, is building on the legacy.
[00:25:04] Chat Reynders: Yes. And now pressing a little harder with your help Yeah. To show people that the false choice that they're being presented, um, isn't correct. Yeah. That there are options that you can take. And, and, and for me, a lot of what we do. Wealth management is helping people not make mistakes. If you know what you own and why you own it, you're less likely to just, you know, jump.
[00:25:30] Chat Reynders: And that's important.
[00:25:31] Stacy Havener: It's so, it's so interesting because, and thank you for sharing all of that. The, the, before we move on to my next question, which I don't wanna lose, I mean, jot it down. Um, I do think for people who are contemplating an entrepreneurial endeavor or early days in an entrepreneurial endeavor, the re-listen to that part of the podcast because it's not just co-founders, it's also your team.[00:26:00]
[00:26:01] Stacy Havener: In the early days, especially sort of in that startup mode, you need complimentary skillsets. And so I can imagine with you, you, your personality, knowing Patrick, his personality, there's a very natural sort of front stage backstage assignment of roles. Um. And all the ways that you compliment each other.
[00:26:23] Stacy Havener: That's really what you want. Right? You don't want two people who are, you know, same, same. You want different, what you really want, but complimentary.
[00:26:32] Chat Reynders: Yeah. You really want Patrick McVeigh because I come out and do my thing. Yeah. Right. And he is quiet and he does recent and all stuff, but then he quietly will come.
[00:26:42] Chat Reynders: He'll be on your podcast, Stacy and He'll and yeah, and, and he'll come on and he'll be very kind of quiet and set and his genius just shines through. It's amazing. He says, like he says, just a few small sentences about things. He goes, you know, I was just reflecting on that and what I thought was, and it's, and it's like, so, so it's [00:27:00] kind of nice because it's kinda like having an ace in the hole.
[00:27:02] Chat Reynders: You know? If you play chord, it's like. You know, you can just throw that one out too, you know. Yeah. So I, yeah. I play the, I play the role of Icebreaker in a lot of ways, but both of us are kind of deep. We, we really are deep in our philosophy of investing. Yeah. Because, you know, we invest all our money the way we invest for everybody else.
[00:27:22] Chat Reynders: Huge. And we know our company's so cold and we believe in what we're doing so well, and, and we get excited about it. So the two of us just, um, um, we just believe in what we're doing. And I think that sometimes on Wall Street, you just don't have that. You know? You just don't have Well, no. They believe
[00:27:38] Stacy Havener: in something else.
[00:27:39] Chat Reynders: Right, right, right.
[00:27:41] Stacy Havener: That was the eighties. What did they believe in? Right. Making money. That was it. That was it. Right. Mighty, mighty dollar. And,
[00:27:48] Chat Reynders: and, and by, you know, by any way, ends, ends justified means. That's right.
[00:27:52] Stacy Havener: That's right. So, so the question I have for you, and it's really interesting because you sit in a very unique [00:28:00] spot, which is.
[00:28:03] Stacy Havener: Wealth management and asset management in the same place. A lot of people think of wealth managers as they allocate capital to asset managers. You are doing everything in-house. And, and, and one of the things I wanted to ask you, even going back to the early days on the wealth side, you know, they, they talk about organic growth, which basically is sales.
[00:28:29] Stacy Havener: They don't like sales, so, so they don't say that. So they say organic growth, um, and it's very, very difficult to do in the wealth space. Well, and in asset management too. Right? So the way wealth has solved this problem today is we go and buy each other and that's how we grow. But you didn't do that. Right.
[00:28:51] Stacy Havener: You didn't do that. You grew this business from scratch and I'm picturing the 22-year-old you running around with the purple paint on your suit to [00:29:00] IBM. So how did you go about that? Like how did you find clients?
[00:29:06] Chat Reynders: Well, it's in, it's, you know, it's interesting. We've been in Boston for a while and we've done a lot of good work for a lot of different, a lot of different people.
[00:29:13] Chat Reynders: And we're kind of known because, you know, in Boston there's a strange, you know, there are these law firms that hold assets. In Boston, the whalers would go away and in, in New York, the, the bankers would, would, would, would get the trusts and estates. But in Boston it was the law firms. And so we had worked within those law firms for a long time.
[00:29:32] Chat Reynders: So Patrick and I were kind of an oddly known entity for being these really deep, thoughtful fiduciary thinkers. You know, strong balance sheet companies, very good assets, um, dividend growth, uh, in dynamic thematic industries that are growing faster than others. That sounds like a pretty heady investment.
[00:29:53] Chat Reynders: Well, that's sustainable investing.
[00:29:55] Stacy Havener: It's so, I love that.
[00:29:57] Chat Reynders: It's sustainable investing. That's what we're doing. Sustainable investing is [00:30:00] about sustained returns. It's about recognizing liabilities where others don't see them. It is about disciplined investing on strong balance sheets to weather the darkest storm.
[00:30:12] Chat Reynders: That's what sustainable investing is. So, if our fiduciary anchor really attracted a lot of people in Boston, which is kind of a conservative town, you know, it attracted a lot of people. So they knew who we were. Mm-hmm. So when we came out and we sort of said we're gonna be, we kind of looked dynamic in our discipline and we were, we were young, you know, reasonably young at the time, and a lot of senior trustees knew who we were.
[00:30:39] Chat Reynders: So we ended up getting a lot of referrals. 'cause at that time too, remember, you know, uh, we started this company, it was 2005. You know, it was kind of, oh yeah, it was a little crazy just in advance of, you know, at that time real estate was going crazy and commodities. Oh gosh. Going crazy. And people didn't know where to move, so, so it worked out really well for us because I, [00:31:00] I think people.
[00:31:01] Chat Reynders: Recognized, um, that we were very, very disciplined investors, um, who were clear-minded about where we wanted to go. Also, people liked the idea of a, of, you know, we don't sell products, right? I mean, we have a mutual fund now, and we're gonna start to, you know, we're in a different phase now where we're trying to create access to this discipline to more people.
[00:31:20] Chat Reynders: But at that time, we were like, look, we're gonna buy, we're not buying you funds and products to put together. No, we're not buying you a, you know, a, uh, you know, an automated kind of thing. And, uh, and we're not doing an index. We're literally buying assets for you. And in many cases, for clients, tailoring some of the advice to them.
[00:31:39] Chat Reynders: They might have had inherited money or whatever. So we were kind of an unusual place. And today, think about today, who buys individual securities today? Right? Who, who is doing the work to look down and say, I'm gonna build you a concentrated portfolio of really high quality companies that have these, you know, these low debt, strong dividend, all this.
[00:31:58] Chat Reynders: It's really difficult to [00:32:00] find that today. So a lot of people appreciate that.
[00:32:02] Stacy Havener: Yeah, and I think what what resonates for me as well, because, and it's something we talk to a lot of our clients about, is that, you know, your, without saying it, your personal brand, your reputation, your relationships, you, the two of you in the beginning, that's what people believe in.
[00:32:26] Stacy Havener: You don't have anything else to show 'em. I mean, you have a, you have an, you know, you have a business card, you have a, you have an office presumably, and the two of you and an idea, and they believe in you and what you're building and that reputation or personal brand as is the buzzword now that matters so much.
[00:32:49] Chat Reynders: I think people, I think people trust us and I think that we earned it. You know, I think we stand up for what we invest in. We can, we, we can defend every, everything we invest in. [00:33:00] And we, and we wrap it in discipline. Our focus is on our clients. And so, you know, you can't have a good firm if your clients don't trust you.
[00:33:08] Chat Reynders: And if, and if you don't have great trust in each other. So that fiduciary backing that idea, you know, the lawyers we work for, they had the, they had the courts looking over their shoulders. They couldn't have bad assets in there. No. They had to trust a discipline. So for me, I, I like being that kind of asset investor.
[00:33:26] Chat Reynders: I like an individual being able to say, well, how do I curate like the best assets that I could have for myself that are gonna deliver over time, that make me feel good? And if, and if I can be, if I can help curate that for somebody, well that's a, that's a pretty valuable thing.
[00:33:42] Stacy Havener: And I'm just curious on this whole like, target market thing, and we've done this work, so I know some of these answers, but you know, given your background, do you find that either like institutions, like who you worked with back in the film days, [00:34:00] or you know, people who were involved in organizations like that, like is there a natural connection for you with some of them as clients?
[00:34:09] Chat Reynders: Yeah, so, so I'll give you the sense of where we are in staging, right? So it's one thing to go from, you know, zero there to three or $4 billion. There's a, there's a, it's lot, there's a path that you can take, right? It takes a while. Yeah. But there's a path you can take, which is very, we we said no to maybe 30% of the people that would come to us because they were like, Hey, I like the cut of your jib and you have great performance and I'll give you a little bit of money and if you do well, I'll give you a little more.
[00:34:39] Chat Reynders: Oh God. And I was like. Nope. Thanks. No, thanks. You know. No, thank you. We're in the business of having long-term relationships with, with people who really are looking for us to help them, you know? So, so for us, it was, you know, it, it, it started out with, we, we were kind of, everything was referral. Mm. And everything grew off the referral base.
[00:34:58] Chat Reynders: And as we grew [00:35:00] and, and brought in other people, we had a wider referral base, et cetera. But at some point you have to stop being a collection of practices.
[00:35:08] Stacy Havener: Mm. And you have to
[00:35:09] Chat Reynders: become, you know, a, a a, a business with a, with a, a core, um, you know, message and a core, um, growth story.
[00:35:20] Stacy Havener: Yeah. And so
[00:35:21] Chat Reynders: we kind of moved into that a few years ago, where now, so we had a lot of these relationships that were very organic just like that.
[00:35:29] Chat Reynders: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:29] Stacy Havener: You know.
[00:35:30] Chat Reynders: You know, national Wildlife Federation Endowment loved me, you know? Yeah. Um, a lot of different foundations saw what we'd been doing there and wanted to work with us. Um, individuals saw what we had done in this case and said, I'd like to do more. They knew us from the law firm, so they came.
[00:35:46] Chat Reynders: So we had that kind of growth. Now. In the world we live in today, where as you point out, all, all of these wealth, I mean, I've been, I've been, my email inbox from private equity is insane. Oh, I can't,
[00:35:59] Stacy Havener: I can't [00:36:00] imagine.
[00:36:00] Chat Reynders: But all the time. 'cause they love the cash flow, of
[00:36:03] Stacy Havener: course. And they love
[00:36:03] Chat Reynders: the idea of taking these firms and they can collide 'em together and make bigger firms.
[00:36:07] Chat Reynders: Yep. You know, and, and, and you can get more and more and more efficient and you can create these giant firms that do everything for everybody. And what's happening now is it's becoming the same everywhere. Somebody comes to you and says, hi, how are you? I can give you, um, you know, you know, you're, you're uh, planning this, this year.
[00:36:28] Chat Reynders: I can do this, I can do that. I, we can pay your bills. I can do that. And they just add, we can do accounting now, I'll add this and that. And the idea is they're adding so many, so many pieces and everyone thinks, oh, that must be better. But what's happening is the client is getting. Is getting boiled into this efficient process where that everything's outsourced to some person they don't know.
[00:36:48] Chat Reynders: And it's like, and the products are being delivered as efficiently as possible because these firms need to make, get the margins up. You know? So I'm leaning the other way. Yeah. And the reason that I'm so excited [00:37:00] to work with you is because, look, we want people that care about sustainable investing, the way I describe it, right?
[00:37:07] Chat Reynders: Strong assets, uh, weathering through the darkest storms, avoiding liabilities better than the next guy that, you know, that means we're fossil free. But it's because I don't wanna face, but potential liabilities, I'd rather own. If I'm gonna own a cyclical stock, I don't wanna own fossil fuels, I wanna own robotics, you know, I wanna own, you know, automation.
[00:37:26] Chat Reynders: Like that is where the growth is. I, I think for us now we're stepping forward and saying we are differentiated. We are not the market. The market sits there and treats sustainability as a bubble, right? As a, oh, you want a taste of that? Here's a little spice of sustainability. Here's an ESG product that actually is an ESG, but it has the letters.
[00:37:51] Chat Reynders: And that to me is what's been going on. And so for us, we're saying forget that. Yeah, right. We'll come in and we will be the sustainability leaders [00:38:00] that people were hoping they would see. We are not gonna go bonkers and be on every platform at once. We're gonna organically spread our message and talk about what we're doing and organically grow.
[00:38:11] Chat Reynders: And for people that are inspired and interested, we'll we'll deliver for them. And so that's where we are right now. Proud of it's, we we're proud coming of business and I'm standing up against what's going on on Wall Street right now 'cause everyone's. Everyone's trying to productize everything and everyone's trying to get so efficient that the, that the client's gonna get lost.
[00:38:31] Chat Reynders: And the person that says, I just wanna know what I own and why I own it. And I, and I want to be able to feel good that I can weather through dark storms. They can. It's really hard to find now,
[00:38:45] Stacy Havener: you know, I'm so proud of you on so many levels, not just for the mission, which I, I love, but also for the passion in which you are embracing that you are for some people and not for others.
[00:38:59] Chat Reynders: Right?
[00:38:59] Stacy Havener: [00:39:00] And that is, it takes a ton of courage. It takes a ton of bravery, especially in a business that's like every dollar's green, right? What do you mean? You said no to that client. Every dollar's green we're for everyone. It's like the worst thing, right? And so typical of asset managers, like, oh, you know, how much of my portfolio should I put in this?
[00:39:20] Stacy Havener: All of it. Bye. But Stacy, when we first talking to you,
[00:39:23] Chat Reynders: I, yeah, I was doing the same. I was doing the same thing. I was like, you know, I used to go into a room, you know, and I have all this experience working for all these law firms and every family. You could imagine the range of family issues, you know, whether it's a charitable issue or whether it should be this kind of trust or that kind of trust, should it be.
[00:39:38] Chat Reynders: So I would go into a room and say, I can solve that problem and I'll do that and I'll solve that problem. I can do that, I can solve that. And everything was very reactive in a lot of ways. And we ended up not being as good a firm because we were trying to serve. So many different adjusting interests for people.
[00:39:53] Chat Reynders: And what we're focused on is the idea that, you know, we can be a wealth manager, um, for somebody and [00:40:00] add a dynamism in some areas that other people can't. You know, if you care about private impact investing, if you want to have solar investments that you're making and you want design right, and you care about what you're doing, we also do that type of work.
[00:40:12] Chat Reynders: Yeah. You know, we do a lot of charitable interface, so we help clients figure out how to do their charitable work, et cetera. So there's a, there's a flavor to what we do too in our wealth management that, that kind of, um. Extends into some of these areas of purpose that, that a lot of our clients find really valuable.
[00:40:31] Chat Reynders: Right. And so it's just a part of what we do, but they find that valuable and they can't find that in other places. Yeah. And so everything, you know, so some of it is also the, you know, when people read my, my LinkedIn, I'll say, Stacy, I'm getting all these great responses, saying good. Like I love, yeah. You know, I don't hear this all the time.
[00:40:50] Chat Reynders: This is different, you know, and I love it.
[00:40:54] Stacy Havener: I'm proud of you for all of that. Let's talk about LinkedIn, because this is still [00:41:00] one of those platforms that gets a lot of side eye. In our biz, a lot of shade thrown at LinkedIn. Like, oh, no one's on, no, that's so retail. No institutional investors, no one that matters is on LinkedIn.
[00:41:20] Stacy Havener: And I mean, I call BS on that, right? Yeah, yeah. And you, and, but it's one of those things until you do it, until you take the leap and all of a sudden people start recognizing you, reaching out to you. People you can't believe are reading your posts, are reading your posts, and then you go, oh, I get it, it,
[00:41:43] Chat Reynders: right.
[00:41:43] Chat Reynders: We have been, you know, we have not been, um, media savvy in the past. We've been very, like, old timing, right? Mm-hmm. Kind of like, I, this is how you do it. You know, you write the direct letter to the client and you don't, we don't jam the, you don't. But again, when you, when you get, we have a [00:42:00] certain responsibility to be the example for what.
[00:42:04] Chat Reynders: Can be done. And when nobody's standing up and, and ESG is apparently representing what sustainable investing's supposed to be, that's just not okay. Yeah. And so, you know, so Patrick and I sort of, and, and also if you're, if we're gonna grow our business and, and move to being this business and to provide accessibility, one of the big things we've cared about, when I did all those IMAX films, I created structures that allowed somebody to have as little as $10,000 be able to participate.
[00:42:32] Chat Reynders: Because it's, the whole idea is engagement and participation. So we created the mutual fund, right? So more people could participate in our discipline and they wouldn't have to have a high minimum to, to be a wealth management client arrange McVay. So I feel like Patrick and I want to be sure that people in the world understand that there are opportunities to do this kind of work if you want to.
[00:42:54] Chat Reynders: Because for us, if our, if our, if we're doing our work right, if more capital will [00:43:00] be directed with purpose over time, yeah. That will help our world a lot over time because people don't understand. I mean, you can have impact in pri, I mean, I do all these private impact deals and design them, and then I show all the impact from those private deals.
[00:43:14] Chat Reynders: But people don't understand the public market money. Going into the right companies is having extraordinary impact. You know, today companies are told, you know, oh well you no longer have to, uh, meet these, these, uh, environmental goals. Uh, you know, the, the government has said, you, you no longer have to do it.
[00:43:33] Chat Reynders: And so we talked to the companies and the companies are like, yeah, I know we don't have to do it, but we're actually gonna lean in a little harder. We're gonna do a little more on this 'cause we believe it's the right thing to do. Yeah. So, you know, that's really valuable capital gonna that company right now.
[00:43:46] Chat Reynders: And so I think clients, um. Appreciate that. That appreciate that. And I think it's sort, and it's our job in LinkedIn. I was just gonna say yes. Fo project show the idea that this, that, that, that this is real [00:44:00] and that this is, that this isn't, you know, it, wall Street tends to, to, um, you know, um, get negative Yeah.
[00:44:08] Chat Reynders: On, on sustainability as best they can because it's impossible for them to do. They can't do it. They were with ESG, they were using these backward looking numbers that, that weren't perfected at all. And they had no research process and they were saying, oh, it got an 87. So that's a good company. So we are focused on the idea that if you.
[00:44:29] Chat Reynders: You know, maybe that ESG stuff gave you a start point to ask questions, but you have to have a research process that understands what's material in what industry. You have to have the experience to know what's going on in these different companies and what does and doesn't have influence. You have to look into how they're spending their r and d to know where they are actually putting their capital and, and, and, and, you know, they're, they're money to work.
[00:44:51] Chat Reynders: So, so for us, I feel like, um, it's, we have kind of a duty to this. I remember, uh, there was a, there was a Bloomberg, a [00:45:00] reporter during the pandemic who came into our offices and said, uh, and, and she, and she said, I just wanted to hear about you. 'cause I'd heard about somebody, I heard from somebody else that you guys are, are what sustainability is all about.
[00:45:14] Chat Reynders: And I was like, oh, that's great. Great. And then I talked to her and she's like, you should be out all over the place talking about this. Yeah. Like, nobody knows that this is that. And I was like, no, that's not what we do. That's not. Do now. But as we, we've grown, do now. We do now. We do
[00:45:28] Stacy Havener: now. And, and so specifically to LinkedIn, because you do a really nice job.
[00:45:33] Stacy Havener: I mean, you pull out some pictures from the whale. The movies have have showed up on LinkedIn. I had some
[00:45:39] Chat Reynders: pretty good guidance.
[00:45:40] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Well, thanks and you're a fantastic implementer of that advice. What was that like? Because it's pretty vulnerable. I know. The founder's journeys. Yeah.
[00:45:50] Chat Reynders: Yeah. It's interesting.
[00:45:51] Chat Reynders: The founder's journey concept is a good one for us because Patrick and I both came from very different backgrounds. Yeah. To combine, right? So he was from California. I [00:46:00] was in the shadow of New York City, as I say, you know, and, but we were thinking the same way about a lot of stuff. And so it was kind of, it's kind of a cool story to get us together.
[00:46:08] Chat Reynders: But what's really cool, you know, if you think about when you're trying to start a company and what you're doing and what we're talking about before, you know, having a really good partner is extremely helpful. But now we're at this phase where we're really excited about drawing some of the people within our firm.
[00:46:24] Chat Reynders: Yeah. Into partnership with us. And we have people that have been here for a long time that are just as passionate as we are. And in many cases, you know, we, you know, when we're doing our investment, it used to be that all the investments came from me and from Patrick. And now Patrick and I are holding on for dear life to have like some of our good ideas get in there because these guys, everyone has such fantastic ideas.
[00:46:45] Chat Reynders: So, so for us, um, that's been really exciting. Yeah. Is this idea of this new generation of energy and as opposed to what's going on on Wall Street, we're leaning into our independence. Yeah. And that's [00:47:00] exciting to me.
[00:47:00] Stacy Havener: I love that. Wouldn't it be cool if you could diversify your investor base and add some non-US investors?
[00:47:07] Stacy Havener: Europe could be fun, or Latin America, maybe Antarctica. Hey, icebergs aren't really my jam, but you never know. You've only got one problem. How the heck do you do that? Fair question. Maybe this is a who not how thing. Meet my friends at Gem Cap. Not only do they handle all the back office stuff, the how.
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[00:48:32] Stacy Havener: I loved the feedback you shared that some of the initiatives that you're doing, which we're helping you do like for growth have had incredible impact internally.
[00:48:44] Chat Reynders: Yes, yes. Can you
[00:48:45] Stacy Havener: talk about that? Because that is something I think people underestimate about any sort of, like, whether it be social media on LinkedIn or webinars or just leaning into your message with passion and being brave enough to own your edges.
[00:48:59] Stacy Havener: Lemme give you, I'll [00:49:00] give you a
[00:49:00] Chat Reynders: couple Yeah. I'll give you a couple things it happen on, on a couple fronts.
[00:49:03] Stacy Havener: Yeah.
[00:49:04] Chat Reynders: So one on the client front. So it's difficult when you, when you step out and declare Yeah. Right? Yeah. So it's, it's really easy to be a full service wealth manager, right? Because it just means you're full service whatever you want.
[00:49:19] Chat Reynders: I got you full service. But when you step out and say, we're, we're, we're sustainability, you know, and, and you know, and, uh, and we really see ourselves as kind of a, a central core foundation stone in sustainable investing. And we've been here for a while. That's a different. For some clients, maybe they were way over on the sustainability spectrum and they are just over the moon.
[00:49:44] Chat Reynders: Well, you have some clients that are like, well, wait, does that mean you're changing?
[00:49:48] Stacy Havener: Oh, like if they came to us Oh, no. Like change. Yeah.
[00:49:50] Chat Reynders: Right. Because we were fiduciary advisors with dividend growth and good thematics. Does that mean you're changing and now becoming like some ESG shop? Oh [00:50:00] God. So, right. So the communication can be tricky.
[00:50:03] Chat Reynders: Mm-hmm. So first I was amazed at what happened because yes, the people that were more on the sustainability side were fired up. But I had one client, and I read you this letter. Yeah. I had one client who was an oil investor in Texas, one of my larger clients, family trust. It had been, I'd worked with them at, at a law firm and they moved to Texas and I was working with them then.
[00:50:29] Chat Reynders: And I thought, this is it. He is gonna look and say, you've jumped the shark. Yeah. You're, you've gone over the top. This is it. He wrote me and said, man, you guys have been doing this so well for so long you've been my best performer as a sub manager. I am so excited that you've really been able to do what you want to do.
[00:50:50] Chat Reynders: Go get 'em. Aw. I just now that. Is a really amazing validator.
[00:50:56] Stacy Havener: Yes.
[00:50:57] Chat Reynders: Right. Of being able to step out. 'cause you have to, everyone's gonna [00:51:00] fear when you declare. Everyone's gonna fear. Now, the second iteration that was amazing is the energy that's going on right now. You can't see it, but people are walking by over here.
[00:51:08] Chat Reynders: I'm in our library and the door is glass over here and I'm talking to you right now. And there's this energy going on in the firm where everyone else is saying, I should be engaged, I should be involved. The messaging Patrick and I are putting out is very clear about what it is that matters to us, et cetera, as a firm.
[00:51:25] Chat Reynders: They see it, they believe it, they engage in it. It gives them tools to share things with other people. And as we use the LinkedIn mm-hmm. Clips and the work and the founder's journeys that we're talking about now, it's just the beginning. Yeah. 'cause it's empowering people in my firm. To share.
[00:51:41] Stacy Havener: Yes. Share
[00:51:41] Chat Reynders: and then to build new conversations.
[00:51:43] Chat Reynders: And then they're gonna become their own. That's right. Nodes and this content that we're building carefully so that it's delivering the messaging we wanna deliver. We're gonna be expanding that. So we've just started, but I can already see that energy happening inside and as we [00:52:00] continue to invest and do the work and maintain our content engine and maintain good communications that keep people interested, I'm seeing that we're also starting to get to that.
[00:52:11] Chat Reynders: You know, we, we did this first through my LinkedIn, which had all these people that I worked with and all that stuff, and, and now I'm starting to see people in the next,
[00:52:19] Stacy Havener: isn't it wild? That's when it starts really exciting. It's like network effect. Yeah. Yeah. I'm So, thank you for sharing that because I think it's something.
[00:52:27] Stacy Havener: We underestimate because we undertake a lot of these efforts, as I was saying, because we want external grow. You know, we're trying to grow, we're trying to get clients, we want the right clients, we want, you know, it's sort of like an outward facing initiative. But what we underestimate is what it does internally for our teams, how they rally, how proud they are, how much more engaged they are, their energy level, and also when you have an opening.
[00:52:55] Stacy Havener: To join the firm. Holy cow. Watch out. Because [00:53:00] now people know what you stand for. And your applicant pool just got way better, way more aligned. Yeah. I mean that declaration that you've done, it doesn't just bring clients, it solidifies your team. It helps you get more talent. It's wild.
[00:53:16] Chat Reynders: Well, it's wild. And we've seen that.
[00:53:18] Chat Reynders: We've seen a lot of influx. And I'll say too on that client discussion, it wasn't just my client from Texas. Right. We did the webinar last, last week. Yeah. Last week. And I had a lot of clients that came onto the webinar because we hadn't done it normally. Yeah. And they were sort of wondering what, and I had one client of a large foundation who finished the webinar immediately wrote, um, an email saying.
[00:53:41] Chat Reynders: This is exactly why I am invested with you guys. I do not need to worry about what's in the investments. In fact, I get excited about hearing where the foundation is directing capital on investment side. This allows me to do my job, which is to direct capital out of the foundation to the community. And [00:54:00] so the reaffirmation Yeah.
[00:54:02] Chat Reynders: For clients is really valuable. And the idea also that we're in the world we live in today, I think you kind of have to have a presence that's, you almost have to have a media presence of some sort if you're gonna play in the world we play in today. Yeah. Where all of the big RIAs Yeah. Are doing it. And they have sales offices in your backyard and they're coming for your clients.
[00:54:27] Stacy Havener: That's right. You
[00:54:28] Chat Reynders: gotta, you gotta be differentiated and you better darn well have a presence.
[00:54:32] Stacy Havener: Yeah. I think that's great advice. This conversation has been so much fun. Just all of it. You're doing the things like, it's amazing for me as somebody who has been helping you to see you so proudly declare what you stand for and great job.
[00:54:49] Chat Reynders: Well, thanks. Yeah. And we couldn't have done it without your guidance and, and help and it, we really needed it. And we're learning. Yeah. We are learning so much and I'm still learning. Yeah. We have a lot more to learn, but it really is exciting for us and for [00:55:00] me, you know, it's, you know, we've just scratched the surface today.
[00:55:02] Chat Reynders: Stacy, I can talk about we, we have so many other, I mean, we might have have to have you back. I was thinking about lot of stuff. Yeah. Back. I still
[00:55:07] Stacy Havener: wanna understand the financing around the movie bit. I mean, it's so interesting to me and that whole structuring. But before we end today's session, I have a couple questions for you.
[00:55:17] Stacy Havener: You've been so authentic and so candid, but these are just sort of questions to get to know you a little more. Okay. I'm gonna start with books. What book inspires you?
[00:55:31] Chat Reynders: Interesting. So I'm a history guy, okay? So I, I read a lot of nonfiction history and I, I believe that when the financial crisis happened, uh, when the pandemic happened, my context in history is way more valuable than my economic understanding.
[00:55:45] Chat Reynders: Ooh. So I really like it. But that said, the book that's on me now is an essay on compensation by Emerson. I think it's a guidepost for young people today and others, and what he basically says in this essay is that [00:56:00] you will pay the price for however you're compensated. So in the world we live in today, we all get excited about how much we can make, what the compensation is gonna be, and our kids are all matriculated within an inch of their lives to find the highest salary, because that's the greatest thing that can happen.
[00:56:18] Chat Reynders: That's the best thing they can for you. But when Emerson points out is that compensation is really designed by the fates, right? And that if you are paid tens of millions of dollars. You will pay prices for those tens of millions of dollars that will equate. And so in the end, he says, you know, do what you plan to do with clear intention and be really clear about what it is you're trying to accomplish.
[00:56:45] Chat Reynders: And the compensation will come from that. Mm.
[00:56:49] Stacy Havener: But do the work
[00:56:50] Chat Reynders: that you wanna do and do it right. And then take the compensation if you chase compensation and try to maximize your compensation. Kinda like the lottery winner [00:57:00] that gets $10 million and loses the money anyway in the end. Yep. Right. Or the person that has this incredible job and is getting paid $10 million and travels all over the world.
[00:57:10] Chat Reynders: Can I tell a little anecdote? Can I tell a quick story, please?
[00:57:12] Stacy Havener: Of course you can.
[00:57:13] Chat Reynders: Investment banker goes down and there's a fisherman in Mexico and he is on the beach and the investment banker comes down and he is trying to figure out what the business is. And he says, what, what do you do with your life?
[00:57:24] Chat Reynders: He goes, well, I fish in the morning until about 10. I get enough for my family. I go back, we have lunch with my family. I then play guitar with my friends and play a little soccer. And then I go out to dinner and then I come back with my family and I get up and do it again. And the investment banker says, I can fix this.
[00:57:41] Chat Reynders: What you need to do is you need 10 boats. And once you get those 10 boats and 10 people, you get your own sourcing, you resource, you move, you get 50 boats, all right? Then you're gonna have to move to LA or New York, and then it'll create a great business. Uh, then you'll have a fantastic IPO and you'll sell it.
[00:57:57] Chat Reynders: And the the fisherman says, well, how long will this take? [00:58:00] And he said, 20 years. Something like that. 20 years you'll be fine, but you'll have fabulous wealth. And then he says to the investment banker, well then what will I do with my wealth? Wealth? You could go down, you could live on a coastal town. You could fish in the morning until 10.
[00:58:13] Chat Reynders: You could stay with your family. You could, you know, so this is what I see in the world today, is everybody's losing their lines.
[00:58:19] Stacy Havener: Wild. Yeah.
[00:58:20] Chat Reynders: Right. So, compensation. Sorry, a very long answer. Compensation. No, I
[00:58:23] Stacy Havener: love this. This is great. So how do we find It's an essay?
[00:58:26] Chat Reynders: It's an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Yeah.
[00:58:29] Chat Reynders: That's compensation's amazing.
[00:58:30] Stacy Havener: Also not what I was expecting. You gonna talk
[00:58:32] Chat Reynders: up because I I, you have to read each sentence like twice. 'cause it's an old timey language. Yeah. But it's really good.
[00:58:36] Stacy Havener: I love that. Okay. We're gonna go from books to places. What place inspires you?
[00:58:43] Chat Reynders: Well, nature.
[00:58:44] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm. Um,
[00:58:45] Chat Reynders: of course that's my, my fortress of solitude, but it's where the river meets the sea for me is the most amazing.
[00:58:53] Chat Reynders: 'cause so much happens. Wildlife Wow. Combines and confronts, you know, the tides come in and the salt water [00:59:00] comes in and when the tides come out it flushes everything that was out. And birds are everywhere. It's an ama. So I tend, when I'm going on trips, I tend to look to see where the river meets the sea.
[00:59:09] Chat Reynders: And then I try to figure out how to spend time there.
[00:59:12] Stacy Havener: Dude, that is good. That's good, right? That I like that. That's a little secret sauce that coming into the content. Also, save that for your book title. Oh, okay. Do you love that? Because I do.
[00:59:25] Chat Reynders: Where the river meets the sea.
[00:59:26] Stacy Havener: Yes,
[00:59:27] Chat Reynders: yes, yes. I like it. I think that's good.
[00:59:30] Stacy Havener: That's so good. You came up with it. Alright, now next. I can't wait to hear this one. Alright, so you're giving a talk Yeah. In a stadium filled with adoring fans and you're about to take the stage. They need to get the crowd, you know, vibing.
[00:59:46] Chat Reynders: Yeah.
[00:59:46] Stacy Havener: What's the walkout anthem.
[00:59:48] Chat Reynders: Ooh, that's good. Alright. What's happening right now
[00:59:50] Stacy Havener: Yeah.
[00:59:51] Chat Reynders: Is in my head because I, you know, I, I sang in college, I, I have all this, I have all this catalog, Patrick and I have all these songs that we, we do lyrics for [01:00:00] every one of our quarterly. So good. So like, my song catalog just went like, you know, just
[01:00:04] Stacy Havener: into shuffle mode. Yeah.
[01:00:05] Chat Reynders: But what happened was the song came into my head before I even thought.
[01:00:09] Stacy Havener: Yeah.
[01:00:10] Chat Reynders: And I don't know why, but yeah. If I were going to the Olympics, now we're gonna be up against Michael Phelps and I had the headphone thing going on. It would've to be, I, I dunno, eminence front the who? High, high volume, boom, boom. I'm playing that
[01:00:22] Stacy Havener: when we hang. Yeah. That is good. So this is one of my questions.
[01:00:26] Stacy Havener: Some people pick songs because of the beat, which is what you just did right there. Right. And some people pick songs because of the lyrics.
[01:00:33] Chat Reynders: Well, I was trying to be like, oh, come together or Revolution. I was trying to come up with like a, yeah, and then it just, the music, just listen, preempted,
[01:00:40] Stacy Havener: you gotta, sometimes it's the beat.
[01:00:42] Stacy Havener: That is so great. Okay. This is an interesting one. Given your career already, what profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt?
[01:00:52] Chat Reynders: Oh, architecture. I would kill to be a good architect. Oh, I would kill, I took a class in college architecture 2 0 [01:01:00] 6, and it was all about the sun and how different buildings manage the sun.
[01:01:05] Chat Reynders: And it was like, wow. Frank Lloyd Wright's falling water and how on this side of the house, it lit the whole house, but it only came in through this little, I was just like, and I just think also architecture, to me, it's art. You know, when something is created, whether it's supposed to have a feeling of permanence or whether it's supposed to be like heavy metal floating off the.
[01:01:25] Chat Reynders: I just am. I'm always amazed with the function and art, the combination fun. I like to think that the way we construct portfolios has some architecture to it. There's function and there's art as well. I love that
[01:01:35] Stacy Havener: you're on fire right now. Keep this up. I'm doing my best. We're gonna keep this podcast going because we're getting so many content ideas.
[01:01:41] Stacy Havener: Okay. Flip side, what profession would you not like to do?
[01:01:46] Chat Reynders: Ugh, that's easy. I grew up on a small farm and I was the bedroom at the top of the back stairs and my mom would call up the back stairs 'cause I was the, I was the kid that couldn't say no. And so I was the one that [01:02:00] mucked the stalls and the chicken coups God and unfroze the water for like eight years.
[01:02:06] Chat Reynders: And it wasn't, you know, it was, it was just a, it wasn't huge, but I will never clean out a chicken coop again. That's not happening.
[01:02:13] Stacy Havener: It's not,
[01:02:13] Chat Reynders: it's not happening. You know,
[01:02:14] Stacy Havener: it's really interesting. I've had a lot of farm people on the podcast this year.
[01:02:19] Chat Reynders: Well, all right. Well, it's like, alright, you know, it's a great way to grow up.
[01:02:22] Chat Reynders: You know,
[01:02:22] Stacy Havener: a lot of people grew up on farms. Not kidding.
[01:02:25] Chat Reynders: You know,
[01:02:26] Stacy Havener: it's hard work. It's a
[01:02:27] Chat Reynders: great way to grow up because you gotta get up early just, but I tell you now, I don't get up as early now because I had to get up so early all the time then, and it didn't become a habit for me. My mom gets the sunrises and she's just awake.
[01:02:38] Stacy Havener: Same.
[01:02:38] Chat Reynders: I'm not that way.
[01:02:39] Stacy Havener: No.
[01:02:40] Chat Reynders: I'd like to be.
[01:02:41] Stacy Havener: I know, but I think also it's sort of like you're either a morning person or you're not kind of, I don't know. I feel like it's, you get my best
[01:02:48] Chat Reynders: writing in the evening, which is really not good for the morning.
[01:02:51] Stacy Havener: Yeah. But I think you need to know when you do your best writing.
[01:02:53] Stacy Havener: It actually doesn't matter when it is. It's just, you need to be aware of that.
[01:02:57] Chat Reynders: I do it. I do a nice cup of tea at about. [01:03:00] Seven 15 to about 8 45. Oh my God.
[01:03:03] Stacy Havener: My brain is so mush by like three o'clock. I'm like, what? No, I get a, I get second.
[01:03:07] Chat Reynders: I have dinner, I, I get a little exercise, I have some dinner, and then all, everything has settled down.
[01:03:12] Chat Reynders: Oh yeah. That is good. All the business of the day has settled down and then suddenly then the thing I want rises
[01:03:17] Stacy Havener: now. All that's good stuff right there. Okay. Last but not least, and also not something that's hopefully happening anytime soon. What do you want people to say about you after you've left or retired from the industry?
[01:03:31] Chat Reynders: Oh, um, I don't know. I would say, I think Patrick and I are, I think I'm gonna go back to that idea of curiosity. Mm. I think it's so easy in this business we're in. To lose that, to have everything get like, um, you know, algorithmize into perfection or productized into perfection or, or
[01:03:53] Stacy Havener: AI into perfection or AI
[01:03:54] Chat Reynders: into oblivion.
[01:03:56] Chat Reynders: And so for me it's, I feel like I've had an infectious curiosity all [01:04:00] my life. And when I'm curious about something, I go deep. And if Patrick and I can be seen as, you know, those curious people that found incredible investments and were people that you could trust to the moon and back, I'd feel good. But people don't have to pay attention to me.
[01:04:16] Chat Reynders: I want them to pay attention to the, what I want is for the, the people that are gonna be driving this firm forward. I want people to be paying attention to them. 'cause they're seeing the world. They're gonna move all of our philosophy and our thinking and they're gonna apply it to the world ahead. And those are the people that I'm nurturing now.
[01:04:33] Chat Reynders: Yeah. But I can't, they're gonna blaze a trail in a, in a different world and evolving world ahead of us. That's gonna be exciting.
[01:04:40] Stacy Havener: Well and they do that off of an incredible legacy.
[01:04:43] Chat Reynders: We're doing our best.
[01:04:44] Stacy Havener: And that legacy of curiosity and that legacy of declaration and of standing for something, I think we all feel that.
[01:04:53] Stacy Havener: And I'm so excited for all the next chapters, my friend, because you are doing really great [01:05:00] things. Thank you so much for being here.
[01:05:02] Chat Reynders: Couldn't do it without you. Appreciate your help. Yeah, Stacy. And I'll see you soon. I know we're gonna be seeing you soon, so. Uh, yes.
[01:05:08] Stacy Havener: I can't wait. We get that done. Yeah. Here we go.
[01:05:10] Stacy Havener: In Newport, thank you so much. Chat. Really it's been, thanks Stacy. A joy. 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.
[01:05:29] 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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