Episode 26: From Start-up to $6B Specialist CEO Robin John of Eventide on Building a Boutique | The Power of Founder-Led Sales | Why Every Fund Manager Needs a Mission Bigger Than Themselves
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Meet Robin John, the CEO of Eventide, a $6B asset management firm.
Robin and his co-founder defied the odds, launching Eventide in 2008 with no track record, no assets, but unwavering belief. 15 years and $6B dollars later, we know they were onto something.
Listen in as he and Stacy discuss:
● His backstory – How watching his mother do meaningful work in the world as a nurse taught him the value of purpose and impact early on
● How he stayed rooted in his mission and defeated the odds in the early days of launching his boutique
● Common misconceptions about activism and how he does it differently
…and so much more.
This is a real-life David vs. Goliath story that's both gritty and uplifting – every investment boutique and investor will learn something valuable from Robin’s story.
About Robin John:
Robin John serves as a Founding Member and Chief Executive Officer of Eventide. He is responsible for the overall leadership of the organization, and under his leadership, the firm has grown into a leader within values-based investing.
Prior to Eventide, Mr. John held leadership roles for Bank of New York Mellon. He has also served as a business consultant for Grant Thornton. He has a degree in Economics from Tufts University.
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Eventide Asset Management, LLC (“Eventide”) is a Boston based investment adviser. All statistics as of 9/30/23 unless otherwise noted. Nothing in this podcast should be construed as a recommendation or offer to purchase or sell or a solicitation to deal in any security or financial product. Eventide does not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. Eventide's values-based approach to investing may not produce desired results and could result in underperformance compared with other investments. There is no guarantee that any investment strategy will achieve its objectives, generate profits, or avoid losses.
TRANSCRIPT
Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.
Robin John: [00:00:00] It's very easy to get discouraged. And when it's so like self centered in that way, but if your mission and your purpose is greater than yourself, and you're trying to do something that's really meaningful to the world, then it's easy to kind of overcome those daily challenges because you're working for something that matters.
Robin John: So for me, just having a mission and a purpose early really helped me. I mean, there were lots of people telling me that we're going to fail. They would say things like, Finny doesn't have a track record. Just, you know, hire somebody else to do that. But I knew that Finney and I shared the same vision and passion for this purpose.
Robin John: And we just continued and trusted in what we believed. And eventually people came alongside us.
Stacy Havener: Hey, my name is Stacey Havener. I'm obsessed with startups, stories, and sales. Storytelling has fueled my success as a female founder in the toughest boys club, Wall Street. I've raised over 8 billion that has led to 30 billion in [00:01:00] follow on assets for investment boutiques.
Stacy Havener: You could say against the odds. Yeah, understatement. I share stories of the people behind the portfolios, while teaching you how to use story to shape outcomes. It's real talk here. Money. Authenticity. Growth. Setbacks. Sales and marketing are all topics we discuss. Think of this 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.
Stacy Havener: This is the billion dollar backstory podcast.
Stacy Havener: Building an investment boutique is challenging. The bigs continue to take market share. Passive continues to trump active management. Boutiques have headwinds at every turn, and yet some boutiques face an uphill battle that is even steeper, [00:02:00] and they can still win. That's the story of today's guest, Robin John, CEO of Eventide, a 6 billion asset management firm built around the idea that investing can make the world rejoice.
Stacy Havener: Robin and his co founders launched Eventide in 2008, with no track record in the investment world, no assets under management, but a huge belief in what they were building. They had faith. Fifteen years and six billion dollars later. We know they're on to something. This is the story of what it's like to build a boutique against the odds.
Stacy Havener: This is a real life David versus Goliath story. It's gritty, it's real, and it's also incredibly uplifting. Every investment boutique, every investor will learn something from Robin today. Grab your notebook, a cup of tea, and get [00:03:00] ready to be inspired. Meet Robin John. Robin, thank you so much for being here today.
Stacy Havener: You and I have become friends and I am honored to be able to invite our podcast listeners in on this conversation today. So thank you so much for being
Robin John: here. Thank you for having me. Stacey. It's been such a wonderful experience getting to know you, having lunch with you and just learning about your heart for the work that we both do.
Stacy Havener: Yes, so well said so well said in a perfect segue actually because you know and this was like our lunch was all about this My favorite thing is backstory Because it's one thing to be a fund manager and it's a totally different thing to be a founder And I think that's important for people understand like you gotta have a little bit of, you know, some crazy going on to want to start your own business in the asset management world.
Stacy Havener: You're fighting against the odds. So [00:04:00] tell us how that came
Robin John: to be. Yeah, we have an interesting story. I think I personally have a little bit of an interesting story. And so for me, you know, from my faith mattered a lot to me growing up as well. And I always wanted to do something that really mattered in the world.
Robin John: And for me, uh, you know, just growing up in India as a kid in a small village, I saw how my grandparents lived. I slept in the same bed with my grandfather. My grandmother was in the same, like a small little bed next, right next to us. It's just a lot of prayer and a lot of just service and, you know, a lot of generosity, even though they were poor.
Robin John: Our backyard was a cemetery and, uh, because the church needed a place to bury the dead. And so they donated the little bit of backyard they had. So that's what I saw growing up. And so all my life as a kid, growing up, [00:05:00] going to Tufts University, I really struggled with like, who do I want to be as a person?
Robin John: And what does that mean in terms of my work? And I wasn't sure. I thought maybe I needed to go into the nonprofit world, into the church kind of ministry world, and I would pray about this. Ultimately, I did a degree in economics from Tufts and took a job at a large custody bank. And after a few years of working there, they asked me whether I would go to India to help them with outsourcing.
Robin John: And it's that experience that started really my journey into founding Eventide. So I am at this custody bank and I'm staying at the guest house. And there is a cook and a housekeeper, Amal and Kamal, the name's Rhyme. And, uh, they would take care of me. You know, they, in the morning, iron my clothes for me.
Robin John: They would cook my breakfast. They would ask me, Sir, what can I get for [00:06:00] dinner? Whatever I said. I could say Italian food, and they would come up with something. And one day after work, I'm in the kitchen, just talking to them, and just watching them as they cook and prepare food. And I noticed a, kind of what looks like a prayer mat behind the kitchen, in the pantry.
Robin John: And I'm thinking, okay, these guys probably sleep back there. And I asked them, do you guys sleep back there? They said, yes, sir, we do. It's a little pantry behind the kitchen, no pillow, no blanket. They both have to curl up together to sleep in that little room. And meanwhile, I have a brand new bed, air conditioner.
Robin John: I'm very comfortable in my bed. I said to them, I want you guys to take a bed, take a room. And they said, no, sir, we're not allowed. And I immediately emailed management in America and I said, I want you guys to get them a bed, please. And the response I got was, well, we outsource the [00:07:00] guest house to a local vendor.
Robin John: We're not responsible for what they do. And I said. You know, guys, like you guys hold the power here. If you just told a local supplier to give a bed to their two employees, they would do it. And the response from my employer was no, we're not responsible for that. So I really struggled with that. Then a couple of days later, I saw something else that really bothered me as just being an Indian person.
Robin John: One of my American coworkers saw the. Cook, Kummel, walking through the front door of the house, he said to Kummel, Servants should not use the front door. And Kummel stood there, stared at me, and said, Sir, I am a human being, too. And I sat there, Felt like a failure. I didn't have a response. I just sat there.
Robin John: I still feel like I failed in that moment, [00:08:00] but I was just overwhelmed because I look just like Kamal and I'm also from India, there isn't really any difference between us. So I was processing how I was feeling in that moment that I didn't speak up for him. So I just thought to myself, like business is business.
Robin John: Or does it have to be, do you have to just treat people this way? Do you have to exploit other people in order to pursue profit? And I had these experiences like this, and I'm just giving one example, but I had a couple more experiences. Ultimately, I found myself. Without any work back here in Boston living in my parents basement and the other side of the basement Was the washing machine and dryer I would just kneel by the washing machine and dryer at nighttime and just pray I say God just tell me what to do.
Robin John: I don't care for to be successful. [00:09:00] I want to know I have a strong faith. I know some of our audience here might not, but I decided that I want to be faithful and not necessarily successful. And if I'm being faithful, yeah, if I'm being faithful and I know I'm doing the right thing, even if it means I fail at it, I could still know that I'm successful in terms of my own worldview and framework.
Robin John: And so I started praying in that way. I knew somebody else. Named Finney. Finney and I went to church together. I asked Finney whether he would pray with me, and we spent time praying together for six months, once a week, and that whole day, one whole day, we would fast, and we were praying the evenings together, and I could keep talking, but ultimately, the event had idea and wanting to work together came through that prayer.
Stacy Havener: I mean that, thank you so much for sharing something that I'm sure is difficult to talk about, especially in an [00:10:00] industry, as you said, that is, you know, about dollars first and people second. That was very moving. And very powerful and I want to talk about how even tied came together because you know, I'm like leaned in.
Stacy Havener: If I had popcorn, I'd be eating it as you're talking and I'm thinking, okay, here are these two gentlemen praying together. How on earth? Does an asset management business come out of that? Yeah.
Robin John: So, Finney, Finney was investing his own money, like, through, like, a Scottrade account. Okay. And one of the things that Finney would say is, Robin, I try to invest in things that are good for the world.
Robin John: And I avoid things that cause harm and things like tobacco, where children in places like Indonesia, Papua New Guinea are being exploited for profit. Finney would avoid investing in those things. And I said to [00:11:00] Finney, Finney, do you think that if we started kind of a firm, an investment firm, we could bring these values to that investment firm?
Robin John: And do you think other Christians, faith driven people, values driven people? Conscientious people would want to partner with us in doing, in investing with us. So that's how the conversation started. I had a background in In custody banking, right? The work I was doing with that custody bank was more back office.
Robin John: So I said to Finney, I could manage the operations here if you could kind of create the investment framework, and maybe we could start there. And so we continue to pray through this and. We were set to launch our first mutual fund on July 1, 2008 on June 13, 2008. So two weeks before a random person shows up at the church.
Robin John: I didn't say this before, [00:12:00] but it's a small church that met in Finney's house. There's like 15 people in the church, Phinney went to Harvard, MIT, MD, PhD, and therefore a lot of students from Harvard and MIT and a few students from Tufts would show up at this house church to hear Phinney teaching from the Bible.
Robin John: One day this older man named Tim called me and said, Robin, I got your number from the house church website. And he said, I googled house churches in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I want to come to your house church. He had never been to a house church in his life. He just Googled it, showed up at the house church.
Robin John: Where was he from? At the time, I believe living in Rhode Island, and I think he's still back in Rhode Island now. And so he shows up at the house church and hears about this mutual fund that's based on Christian principles that Finney and Robin are about to start. And he said to us, like, tell me more about it.
Robin John: What does it mean to [00:13:00] be a Christian investor? Like, what does that mean? We don't use that language anymore. But back then, that's what he heard. Yeah. And we talked about avoiding exploitation and there's a chapter in the Bible and Proverbs that talk about avoiding ill gotten gain and not sharing plunder with people that pursue plunder.
Robin John: He said, Robin, all that sounds good. But if investing is about allocation of capital. Where should we be allocating capital? You're only asking the question, where are you not allocating capital to, where should you be allocating capital? Was the question Tim asked. I still think that's the most important question.
Robin John: Anybody's asked me in the history of eventide. Yeah,
Stacy Havener: I agree. And did you have an answer or did that become like, I mean, that's a huge question, a short question, but a huge question. So did you have a response or what? I
Robin John: didn't immediately, [00:14:00] but what that did is that led to more prayer and discovery, and Tim was a part of helping us through that.
Robin John: And ultimately, we said, you know what, the Bible, the greatest two principles in the Bible, love God and love your neighbor. So how can we do that when it comes to the investment world? So we said, who are first of all the neighbors to a business? So we created a list of neighbors. Customers, employees, supply chains, host communities, environment, and society, CES, CES, so CES internal, CES external, so these are the six stakeholders, six neighbors that a business should serve in pursuing a profit, and my compliance officer recently said something to me that actually may make it easier for our audience to remember.
Robin John: Uh, S E C S E C. Okay, that's an easy way to remember. Remember the phrase. [00:15:00]
Stacy Havener: Flip it?
Robin John: Flip it. So basically, uh, since the S E C is like, you know, the big thing in our industry. Yeah. So, we ultimately said, You know, these are the six neighbors that businesses should serve and serve is love and action. So what does that look like practically?
Robin John: So we created a framework for thinking about business. And then if you're investing in a business, what are the types of businesses that we want to invest into? And what are the types of businesses we don't want to invest into?
Stacy Havener: And I, I've been on your website before we had lunch. I actually sort of geeked out on all the content you have.
Stacy Havener: And I love. The concept of neighbor here is so incredibly powerful. And so if people want to learn more about that, right, you do have something on your website that unpacks the whole framework and how you think about it. Yeah. Good. We have a lot of blogs. So go [00:16:00] there. Yes. It's brilliant. So, I mean, usually what I talk about next is sort of what makes you different.
Stacy Havener: But I think in this case, what makes you different is so obvious. In 08, I mean, what a tough time to launch anything in this business, A, and B, you're going into like this ESG impact thing before that's even really a thing. And so what was that road like for you? I imagine, I mean, boutiques are fighting against the odds when you have tailwinds.
Stacy Havener: So talk about what that journey was like to launch.
Robin John: It was not easy. Yeah, we had a conviction. We had this purpose that guided us that made it easy for me. But practically from a business perspective, it was very difficult. So neither Finney or I had a track record when it came to investing. So imagine just somebody with a track [00:17:00] record trying to start a new investment firm.
Robin John: Sure. And we were also younger. I was 27 at the time. And, uh, Finney and I, I think in a way we're naive. And, uh, we just thought that values driven people, that Christians and faith driven investors would like what we're doing and would want to partner with us. I remember Finney and me coming up with a business plan where.
Robin John: Big part of our marketing strategy was to go to churches on a Saturday morning, pass out donuts and share why this matters to the world. I love
Stacy Havener: that so
Robin John: much. How did it work? But pastors wouldn't let us through their door. So we had to pivot and re kind of strategize and It was definitely difficult. I remember, you know, we didn't have a budget.
Robin John: I was taking a 10, 000 salary. My wife was still in school and we would stay at these cheap motels and travel across the country and I would put my t shirt over the pillow so that she could put her face on the [00:18:00] pillow. So those years were pretty difficult, but again, like I'm speaking from a Christian perspective for me, like, I think my faith guided me and I spend a lot of time just praying, praying through this process.
Robin John: I'll give you 1 story. Yeah. So I got this opportunity. So I'm living in Dallas. My wife is from Dallas. So I'm living in Dallas at the time. I met this financial advisor from Philadelphia at a conference time and. He starts asking me about what we do and I leaned into the story the values. He said I want you to come and talk to my clients So I'm assuming it's the values and the mission that he wants me to talk about.
Robin John: And it was very expensive. The flight from Dallas to Philadelphia. I found out that I saw that it was cheaper to fly into JFK, rent a car and drive back. So I planned out this trip and I'm thinking, okay, maybe I'll get some meetings in New York, [00:19:00] New Jersey. Nobody wanted to meet with me. This was the first.
Robin John: Kind of, I think the second year, like 2009 and ultimately one other person. An advisor named Ward Keever, and he would be okay with me sharing this from LPL. We're not on the LPL platform at the time, but he said, Robin, I'll meet with you. Anyway, I fly into JFK. I email the presentation to the first advisor that I'm supposed to meet with and do the kind of the lunge and learn type event with clients.
Robin John: And I email the presentation. He calls me while I'm driving to Philadelphia. You know, I don't want you to come. I don't mean to
Stacy Havener: laugh. You can't make it up.
Robin John: I know. I know. I'm like deflated, right? I'm thinking, Oh my God, I flew all the way. Like, like the budgets are really tight. And like, for me, like every penny matters at this point.
Robin John: Yeah. And I'm like, you know, like how [00:20:00] come you don't want me to come? He's like, well, you know, like my audience, my clients aren't ready to talk about values based investing. And I said, well, I could talk about something else. He's like, no, no, like, God, you know, let's just cancel. So then I go to Ward Keever's office and Ward Keever's sitting there talking to me.
Robin John: He said, Robin, you seem a little deflated. Like, what happened? And I told him the story. He comes up to me. He starts praying for me. And he says, he prays in a way that most people don't pray. He said, God, before Robin gets back to JFK airport. Like, I'm praying that you give him another meeting that he could take before he gets back to the airport.
Robin John: So, I had placed a call to a private banking group at Merrill Lynch that manages six billion dollars in New York City. Okay. Weeks
Stacy Havener: before. And how much do you manage at this point? Like three million dollars. Okay, okay, just for [00:21:00] context so everybody knows.
Robin John: Yeah. Okay. So I'm driving back to JFK and I got a call from this office and this, the person's name is Jim Ryan.
Robin John: He's now retired. And his assistant said, if you could be in the office in 30 minutes, Jim will meet with you. Okay. And I'm like, I'll be there. So I speed, yeah, I get to his office. He gives me 30 minutes. And it turns out he's a very serious Catholic investor that manages a lot of foundation assets and everything.
Robin John: He wants to know about our values, our screens and things like that. And later I met him at a conference. He said, Robin, I only gave you 30 minutes that day. I apologize. I said to him, Jim, like, you don't know what you did for me that day. And I told him the whole story. I told him that after he met with me, I went down to the New York Harbor.
Robin John: I just sat there and cried and I prayed and thank God for that meeting. Because like, even [00:22:00] through those difficult times, like, I felt like. Again, I'm speaking from a place of faith, like, you know, for me, you know, for my faith, I felt like God was leading me and just answering my prayers along the way. And so for me, like that was a source of encouragement in the early, early years when things were very difficult.
Robin John: We'll
Stacy Havener: be back in a moment after a word from our premier brand partner, Ultimis Fund Solutions.
Robin John: Since our founding in 1989, we believe that alternative investments are integral part of client portfolios. Unfortunately. Delivering high quality hedge funds and private market exposures has always been a challenge for the wealth management industry. These type of alternative investments introduce unique challenges related to taxes, qualifications, paperwork, and reporting.
Robin John: As a result, high net worth investors tend to be significantly under allocated to both hedge funds and private markets relative to institutional [00:23:00] investors.
Stacy Havener: That's Stephanie Lang, Chief Investment Officer from Homer Berg, an 11 billion RIA headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, that serves over 2, 700 clients in 46 states.
Stacy Havener: You can tell they believe in helping high net worth clients access hedge funds and other alternative investments. They are equally as passionate about broadening that access. For all their clients, not just qualified purchasers or a select group of accredited investors. Meet Nick Darsh from Ultimis with some backstory.
Stacy Havener: Paul McBurgh
Robin John: created a 3C1 fund in January, 1999 to provide their high net worth. And institutional investors with ready access to a diversified portfolio of hedge funds. As interest in the fund grew and the constraint of the a hundred investor rule loomed, HB began exploring ways to continue expanding the investor pool without negatively affecting existing [00:24:00] shareholders.
Stacy Havener: We'll hear more about the creative fund conversion work that made it possible later in the show. Now, back to the program.
Stacy Havener: So thank you again. I mean, this is it. Like, this is what I love about this business because here you sit, I mean, what is Eventide's AUM today? It's about 6 billion. Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, we are going back in time to the beginning and we're talking about. Very personal things like as a founder of a business.
Stacy Havener: This isn't just like you're reporting for the day job. I mean, this is it. As you said, you've staked everything on this and If you're a boutique founder or you work for a boutique this resonates. Now I'm gonna take a leap on this one, but I think it's true. So Merrill Lynch became a big part of the [00:25:00] growth of Eventide.
Stacy Havener: Is that correct? That is right. And by the way, I should say to everybody who's thinking that they should call Merrill Lynch right now when they have three million dollars, this is atypical. Okay, this does not typically happen, which doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. I'm just saying this is atypical results.
Stacy Havener: So how do you go from three million? You meet with these two gentlemen who sound absolutely wonderful. What sparked, what was the catalyst for the growth? One
Robin John: of the things I think I did well is I spent a lot of time in the early years talking to people that have done this before, learning from them. And one of these people who used to be the former president of another asset management firm, he said to me, Robin, don't waste your money on sales and marketing.
Robin John: He said, build a track record for the first five years. Once you have a track record, then pivot and focus on sales and distribution and marketing. So [00:26:00] what I did over the first five years is really focused on trying to get onto the platform somehow. And then I pivoted my energy more to actually sales and marketing, really focused on the advisory channel after the five year period.
Robin John: Yeah. So that really, I think for me, just talking to the right people, getting good advice. So an example of this is a person. Another person that I spoke to had started a mutual fund at the time he had 3 million under management and he had been around for a while and I asked him, like, well, what are you struggling with in terms of racing assets?
Robin John: And I learned that 1 of the mistakes he made was that he created his own trust and you can't get a, you can't get a ticker symbol if you don't have so many assets under management. Yeah. Okay. So I said, okay, how do I bypass that problem from happening? Yes. I plugged our funds into a series trust that already had assets.
Robin John: So I was able to now get a QSIP and [00:27:00] an ISIN and ticker symbol immediately. And then I was also able to then leverage some of the selling agreements for the platforms that they already had. So just talking and learning about what's working well for others and what's not working really helped me in framing my own strategy.
Robin John: Yeah.
Stacy Havener: You know what's so interesting? about your story that I didn't think about when we had lunch, but it's hitting me now. So the advice that you should just build a track record and, you know, wait the three or five years and then go out, it's good advice on some levels. But here's to me when I hear that the serendipity that that resulted in is very interesting because what that meant was who did the sales and marketing with me and that's the brilliant
Robin John: thing.
Robin John: Yeah. I really leaned into the audience that I thought would want to spend time with me.
Stacy Havener: And so wait, we have to pause on this because this is super important for people to hear that advice. [00:28:00] It was like a backdoor way into you leaning into founder led sales. And that is exactly how you combat no track record.
Stacy Havener: In other words, it wasn't intentional on your part to say, Hey, you know what? Makes sense. I'm the founder. I'm the. You know, I'm the co founder. I'm the face of the firm. I can go out. I can talk to people and maybe early adopters will resonate with me. Like that wasn't the conscious thinking. But what you did, that's what you actually did.
Stacy Havener: You just didn't realize you were doing it. So it was brilliant because early adopters. You know, people do business with people. They're not necessarily, you know, buying a fund. They're meeting with you. They're hearing the story. They're meeting with Finney. They're getting your philosophy, but they're with you.
Stacy Havener: And that is a huge differentiator for a boutique. It's
Robin John: enormous. [00:29:00] I didn't realize this at the time, but in hindsight, you're absolutely right. Partly because I didn't come from the industry. Right. I wasn't even comfortable. Going and spending time with very seasoned financial advisors. I wasn't sure if I, if I would know how to even respond to some of their questions.
Robin John: So a good analogy of this would be like the David and Goliath story. In the Bible, you read how Saul, the king, gave David Saul's armor to wear to go fight Goliath. And David said, this doesn't fit me. I'm not used to warfare in this way. I'm not used to, like, this armor is too heavy on my body. But what David knew was that he's killed a lion and a bear when they attacked a sheep with just using a stone.
Robin John: And a slingshot, right? So David said, you know what? Let me lean into what I understand what I know. And David overcame that giant, [00:30:00] not fighting the battle the way that his King Saul might have fought that battle, but the way that he knew how to fight the battle. So in the early years, I really had to lean into what I knew, which was my values.
Robin John: And I really try to find people that would resonate with those values. Yes,
Stacy Havener: that is yeah. So perfect for boutiques to really hear and let that sink in. That's my favorite, I mean, that's my favorite part of the David and Goliath story, because so many people say, oh, well, he just, you know, it's the underdog, and it's the, you know, the little guy beating the big guy kind of thing.
Stacy Havener: But the nuance of the story was, had he accepted what King Saul was telling him and taken the armor, he never would have won. He never would have won. The only way he could have... Accomplish what he did was to go to his unique ability, the thing that, you know, Goliath probably laughed at [00:31:00] and said, Oh, yeah, good luck with and it worked.
Stacy Havener: So it's such an empowering message to me that, like, to lean into the things that maybe you don't even view as. Advantages they actually are and that's what you did, you know, I want to ask you about I talk about attract and repel a lot and to me that's how you find your true fans is you have to be brave enough.
Stacy Havener: To be willing to repel and I've been a fan of even tight for a long time. I love your marketing. I love your team. I love what you stand for. And part of it, I think, is to me every day you get up just by getting up and doing what you do, you are repelling like there is no more polarizing strategy, I think.
Stacy Havener: Then somebody who says like we are values based or we're, you know, we're faith based or we're because it instantly creates all kinds of divides and we've talked about this a little bit. [00:32:00] How have you managed that? Because on the one hand, you're attracting people who are like minded and that's the whole point, but you've evolved and I want you to talk about how that evolution has
Robin John: gone.
Robin John: Yeah, ultimately, I do believe that. What we're doing is something that's beautiful, and I want to welcome everybody into this, because ultimately, you know, when you look at our portfolio, one of the things I always say is, Stacy, if you and I start matching kind of Our values, we're going to find huge overlap between our values.
Robin John: We may find areas where there's not perfect overlap, but ultimately when we're building portfolios at Eventide, I truly believe that if you look at the portfolios we're building. That these are portfolios that you would want to partner with. These are companies that you would say are admirable, that are really loving their neighbors and doing good in the world.[00:33:00]
Robin John: And ultimately what I say to people is that we're in the business of investing. We're not in the business of not investing. So sometimes people get so caught up on like one issue that they are not aligned on, but ultimately, like if you looked at the portfolio that constructed, both people would say, this is a beautiful portfolio.
Robin John: I want to partner with that. Mm
Stacy Havener: hmm. Yeah, I think that's it. Right? Because, you know, there are so many different nuances to faith or values based. And I think your evolution has been much more around. Well, let's not talk about the margin. Let's talk about what's actually in here. Do you like what's in here?
Stacy Havener: Does this align? And. That is a much broader target market in some ways than maybe how Eventide originally started. Have you
Robin John: found that? Yes, I agree. So, when we started, our tagline was something like, invest without compromise. Okay. And that's not welcoming. But our tagline today is... [00:34:00] Investing that makes the world rejoice and again, it is still very, yeah, it's still very biblical.
Robin John: The Bible says when the righteous prosper, the city rejoices, but when the wicked prosper, the people groan. Because why? Because the wicked are people that often prosper through exploitation. As they prosper, the poor are groaning under the weight of the exploitation, but the poor and the whole city rejoices when the righteous prosper because the righteous are people that take care of their neighbors.
Robin John: So, investing that makes the world rejoice is something that even if every single one of our values are not perfectly aligned, I think you could look at that and say, that's beautiful. Like, I want to partner with that.
Stacy Havener: Yeah. That is beautiful. And that was so well said. Can we talk a little bit? It made me think about some of the other things you're doing at Eventide.
Stacy Havener: I don't know if philanthropic is the right way, but can you talk about the 1%? [00:35:00] I don't know if it's called the 1 percent initiative, but some of the stuff you're doing. Yeah, there's a bunch of things I would love to talk about.
Robin John: So, in terms of philanthropy, one of the reasons Phinney and I got excited in the early years of Eventide is, we said, you know what, a large amount of Eventide's profit should go to charity.
Robin John: So, well, about half of our profits go to charity every year. So our CFO just kind of puts it into our donor advised funds. In terms of the 1 percent initiative, that's something we started many years ago. Thank you. And we just said, you know what? We all of our mutual funds have so much money sitting in cash in money market funds.
Robin John: Can we think about having a greater impact with this money? That's not being invested somewhere, but just sitting in cash. We said, okay, what about if we just took 1 percent of that money and leaned into things like micro loans, micro finance, economic empowerment of women in Africa that are starting small [00:36:00] businesses.
Robin John: So 1%, which is about 70. You know, million dollars now is invested in this way. And, um, the goal is not to make huge amount of returns on those dollars. It's simply to protect the wealth and help people in these countries, in these places. Tends to be women, uh, tends to be women, business people that are starting small businesses.
Robin John: And generally the microfinance world has a model that is not ideal. In terms of risk management. So generally what we have discovered is that most people are not entrepreneurs. A lot of people just work nine to five jobs, right? So one of the things that we've done is built partnerships with groups that really identify the women and the entrepreneurs that are actually have a track record, and then we bring in capital to help them scale their businesses to provide more jobs in their communities.[00:37:00]
Stacy Havener: That's so inspiring. You know, it's so interesting to me because when you say 1%, it's like, Oh, well, that's like a drop in the bucket, except when it's 6 billion or, you know, when you're breaking it down. I mean, it's not on the 6 billion, but when you're in the mutual funds, I mean, that's real, that can have a real impact.
Robin John: Yes, that's right. And this is a client money and it's, you know, well disclosed in the prospectus of the mutual fund. And I'll tell you that our framework is one of a void. Embrace engage the engage component is something that also really excites me and I have passion for so two areas of engagement that we have done recently.
Robin John: 1 is around drug pricing about a 3rd of all of our investments tend to be in health care. So just really thinking about pricing of these drugs that we're investing in. We want to make sure that these drugs are accessible to the marketplace to the patient whose lives depend on it. Another area of engagement [00:38:00] that we did is we leaned heavily into the solar energy a couple of years ago.
Robin John: And as we were investing in solar panels, we saw that there were slave labor within the supply chain. In Western China, a group called the Uyghur people in Western China were being enslaved, put into these internment camps in order to, so basically from the mining of the, it's called the metallurgical polysilicon to the creation of the cells, the wafers, the ingots, all the way to the panels, we saw slave labor, and we saw that.
Robin John: Yeah, these soldiers were then living at the home with the wives and the kids and there was rape and it was just very bad what we were learning. So we engaged the solar supply chains. We ultimately reached out to our investment, our companies and gave them time to change their supply chain practices.
Robin John: And if they didn't, we were divest. And that's what we did ultimately have to do with some of these companies is [00:39:00] divest from the companies.
Stacy Havener: So that's interesting. I love that nuance. When you say engage, though. It sounds like it's more than just like voting a proxy. I mean, you're talking to them. Yeah. Yeah.
Stacy Havener: So it has more, a little bit more of like an activist feel to it than just like I vote the proxy.
Robin John: Yeah. Right. Right. So when you say activist, sometimes when people think about it, it's like, yeah, you show up at a like annual shareholder meeting and you're causing trouble. We don't want to do that. We want to partner with, yeah, we want to partner with the management and really help them see the problems that we see and engage them to try to win them over.
Robin John: An example of that a couple of years ago was one of the companies we were investing in. We noticed that their credit card rates were just very high, very, what we thought was predatory. We engaged the company. Company agreed that the credit card vendor was charging too high of a [00:40:00] rate. They changed their credit card vendor, right?
Robin John: So we want to engage with companies in a friendly. Yeah,
Stacy Havener: yeah. Friendly activist. Yes. Yes, exactly. I love that. We'll be back in a moment after a word from our premier brand partner, Ultimis Fund Solutions.
Robin John: When we first launched our internal fund to funds as a limited partnership, It was a great option for us to be able to provide a hundred of our accredited and qualified purchaser clients with access to a diversified portfolio of hedge fund strategies. However, fast forward to 2016, our firm had grown to manage over 4 billion and serve over a thousand clients of various sizes, accreditations, and tax situations.
Robin John: We still firmly believe that high quality hedge fund exposure is important to client portfolios. It provides stability to client portfolios and generates a return stream that was not available in public and equity and fixed [00:41:00] income markets. Unfortunately, the 3C1 structure with its slot limitations, high minimums, and K1 reporting was no longer ideal solution for our growing and complex client base.
Robin John: We looked at various alternative options with third party hedge fund managers, liquid hedge mutual funds, but also discovered that we had an opportunity to register our fund with the SEC, preserve its extensive track record, and solve all of the issues that the 3C1 structure was creating for our business and clients.
Robin John: That's when we teamed up with Ultimis to begin the process of registering our legacy fund with the SEC and converting it to a tender offer fund.
Stacy Havener: We'll hear more later in the show. Now back to the program.
Stacy Havener: So, you know, gosh, you've shared so many wonderful things. I could talk to you for hours and I hope that people are taking notes just [00:42:00] on, on what you're saying, but also thinking about, you know, sort of putting ourselves in your shoes and your team's shoes of how to build. A boutique against the odds, but also in a space that was nascent when he launched and has had a lot of eyes on it of late, but not all great.
Stacy Havener: Like, I mean, people are, there's greenwashing, everyone's jumping on the bandwagon and they're jumping up. And all of those things kind of inspire us to lean into our edges, if you will. Right? Lean into what makes us different. You know, if you were to give a boutique advice, I won't say, like, what advice would you give yourself, knowing what you know now, because, I mean, my gosh, you really were against the odds in so many ways, but if that gives you some inspo, you could do it.
Stacy Havener: But what advice would you give boutiques? We're starting, and it's so hard.
Robin John: It is hard. First, my biggest advice would be identify your mission, [00:43:00] and if it's something that is bigger than yourself, then it's worth fighting for. And I think sometimes people start with just kind of profit as a kind of a motive.
Robin John: And it's very easy to get discouraged and when it's so like self centered in that way, but if your mission and your purpose is greater than yourself and you're trying to do something that's really meaningful to the world, then it's easy to kind of overcome those daily challenges because you're working for something that matters.
Robin John: So for me, just having a mission and a purpose early really helped me. I mean, there were lots of people telling me that we're going to fail. They would say things like. Phinney doesn't have a track record. Just, you know, hire somebody else to do that. But I knew that Phinney and I shared the same vision and passion for this purpose.
Robin John: And we just continued and trusted in what we believed. And eventually, people came alongside us.
Stacy Havener: You know, I love that advice. I imagine, [00:44:00] though, if I'm a boutique listening to this, I'm like, oh, sure, Robin, that's great advice. But your mission is so clear. It's so clear because it's kind of your investment philosophy is built around that.
Stacy Havener: What if I'm, you know, how do you translate that? If it's not so concrete, like, you know, and I'm even thinking about this, I don't know the answer to this question, but I think, you know, finding something that's bigger than you, if you're not an ESG or impact investor, how can you do that? So, like, for me, 1 of the things that comes to mind is if you believe in something different than what everybody else is doing, and you believe that this different way of investing.
Stacy Havener: Is your way is the right way or, you know, I don't want to say better. I don't mean better. Just. It's different that that is kind of bigger than you. So even if it's, I guess what I'm trying to say is like, it's hard. Like no one can compete with what you're describing. Like your [00:45:00] story is, is mission centered on all the levels.
Stacy Havener: What if you're a small cap value investor? Like, how do you do
Robin John: that? Yeah. So let me give you an example from my mom. Okay. Okay. When we came to America, neither of them have an education. My dad worked two jobs. One was to be a bagger at Purity Supreme in Somerville here in Massachusetts. My mom was a nurse's aide for about 25 years.
Robin John: So she's working on a nursing home, cleaning diapers of very elderly people. So yeah. But at the same time, like her work mattered, right? She did something maybe at the time she was thinking she needs to take care of her children. Maybe that's what, like, maybe that's what motivated her. But when I look back, look at all the people she helped along the way, her work, even if she didn't make an income, even if she was doing this as a nonprofit, helping bathe and change those people, those [00:46:00] elderly people that needed her help mattered.
Robin John: It was bigger than herself. It was actually. Work that was honoring to God, work that was loving her neighbor. So for all of us, our work could seem smaller than somebody else's, but ultimately, if it's work that's loving our neighbor, it's work that matters. That's great
Stacy Havener: advice. And I think that will help people who maybe don't feel that their work does matter, or it doesn't feel so mission centered, to think about what is the why that's bigger than you.
Stacy Havener: So I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, can we transition to some questions to get to, I mean, you've been so great. I feel like I know you better every time we talk, but I have some questions inspired by Proust's questionnaire, which are designed to sort of quickly let people see some parts of the real you.
Stacy Havener: Are you cool with
Robin John: that? Yeah, let's try
Stacy Havener: it. Okay, let's try it. I mean, I kind of feel like I know what the answer to the first question is going to be, but let's see. Okay. Okay, we're going to baby step. [00:47:00] First question, what book inspires you?
Robin John: You got the answer.
Robin John: Yeah, I can't play anything about the Bible for me. Every evening, I read the Bible with my kids. Yeah, it's like, it's hard for me not to get emotional reading the Bible. It's just, yeah, easy
Stacy Havener: answer. That was a layup question. I should have changed that one for you. Yeah. Okay. How about this one? What place inspires you?
Robin John: Probably two places. Okay. And I know you're a fan of walking on beaches, because I see a lot of videos where you do that. For me, being on a beach, I don't care for. But for me, like, being in the ocean, Like, I got to jump in. I got to be in the ocean. Love it. All my stress. All my cares go away when I'm in there.
Robin John: Like, it's just me and the water. I just love that feeling. I don't want anybody with me. It's just me. And like, I imagine there are even sharks [00:48:00] nearby, even if there aren't like, I like, I want that. I just like the other place where I would say for me personally is When I'm on a hardwood basketball court, just lying on the floor, holding a basketball, smelling the leather, smelling the wood floor.
Robin John: Oh my goodness, I just, yeah, those are my two places for me. Oh my
Stacy Havener: gosh, I love that. First of all, don't you think like when you go to a gym at a place like the YMCA or like somewhere like that. Like it has a smell to it. That is so nostalgic. Like if you grew up going to those places, like, it's like, Oh, I know exactly where I am.
Stacy Havener: Yeah. So that is phenomenal. Okay. I have a book for you. Okay. Okay. Have you ever read the book blue mind? No. Okay. I think you need to read it. Blue mind. Blue mind. Okay. Now, I will say that this book is all about the power of water, and basically why, when you go in the ocean, like, what is happening to you, [00:49:00] and it's amazing.
Stacy Havener: Now, I got very emotional when I read that book. People in my family read it, and they're like, this is so boring. Like, how on earth were you emotional in saying this is a phenomenal book? So I give you, it's a little scientific, but to me, being someone who loves to be near the water, it was like mind blowing.
Stacy Havener: The stories are amazing. So blue mind. Okay. Oh, this is going to be interesting. All right. This is, let's pretend that you are giving a talk, maybe on your book tour. We didn't get a chance to talk about your book, but we'll just leave that there for people to think about. So it's your book tour. You're going out on a stage.
Stacy Havener: What song do they play as you walk out?
Robin John: There are so many songs. Some of them, I can't even, I can't even say the name of. I love Lose Yourself by Eminem.[00:50:00]
Robin John: Some of the WWE theme songs I love. Batman, um, the Dark Knight theme song would be pretty cool to walk out to. I got a bunch of them.
Stacy Havener: I'm crying. I am going to say that nobody listening to this podcast was expecting you to say that Lose Yourself would be an option for a walkout anthem. Like, that is unbelievable.
Stacy Havener: Okay, that is so good. What profession, other than your own, would you like to
Robin John: attempt? Yeah, so my wife tells me I stress her out constantly because I have a lot of ideas. So for me, it's like really anything that's helping people. And I remember when I lived in Dallas, I lived in like North Dallas, which is very like white American.
Robin John: South Dallas is very African American. And when you look at the disparity, even in terms of like supermarkets, South Dallas, most people are shopping in like liquor stores or [00:51:00] maybe a convenience store, there's no healthy food options down there. There's a lot of like food deserts. And so I would love to start like healthy organic supermarkets that.
Robin John: Reasonable costs in places like that. I often think about all the needs needs in places like India starting with like sanitation or just Education for women my wife and I started a school for girls a high school in India for girls I have lots of passions But if I feel like the work is something that's meaningful to my neighbor, I think I easily get passionate about it
Stacy Havener: I love that also very common for sort of a founder visionary to have like One million ideas a week.
Stacy Havener: So I feel bad for your wife, but I also feel bad for my husband because I think he's like, can you stop with all the ideas? Yes, over there with those.
Robin John: I get it. So I made a promise to my wife recently. Yeah. I said, okay, I want like she said, if you have an idea, like 10 30 PM, at least hold it till the next day.[00:52:00]
Robin John: Yeah, just hold it. She doesn't want to stress at night. Oh
Stacy Havener: my gosh. Okay, so where am I? Alright, so what profession would you not like
Robin John: to do? Yeah, I mean, like, that's the flip side of the other question, and I would just say anything, like, I can't imagine running a tobacco company, working on a business strategy to get more people to smoke.
Robin John: Like, I just, so anything that's exploitative and hurting people, I would not want to be a part of. Very
Stacy Havener: well said. Okay, now, what do you want people to say about you? After you've retired or left the industry.
Robin John: Yeah, so I could answer that in multiple ways, but probably I want people to say that they saw God's character through my work.
Robin John: So, like. That God is merciful, that God is loving, God is generous, like, through my work, they saw a glimpse of God's character.
Stacy Havener: I mean, I'm [00:53:00] almost speechless, which doesn't happen to me very often. That's the best answer I've ever heard, really. I mean, that's a Mic Drop moment for me, you saved it for the end, how perfect.
Stacy Havener: I mean... People are probably saying that now, I would say. I think you're already doing it. You are such an inspiration, Robin. Thank you so much for being here. And I know that whether listeners, as you said at the beginning, whether they share your faith, Or don't, whether they buy into the idea of ESG investing or not, what you're building and what you're doing for the investment world is beautiful.
Stacy Havener: It's work that matters. And there's so many lessons for all of us in the boutique. Industry to learn from your journey. So thank you so much for your advice and your insights and your time.
Robin John: Thank you for having me here.
Stacy Havener: Stacy, if you know a fund manager or a founder in the investment world with a great story, drop a [00:54:00] note to Stacy at Stacy Havener dot com and tell me about it till next time.
Stacy Havener: I'm Stacy Havener. Thanks for listening. And now a final word from our premier brand partner. Ultimis Fund Solutions. The conversion of Homer Berg's
Robin John: LP into an integral fund empowered them to grow the fund from 90 million to over 200 million and expand the reach from 100 investors to nearly 700 new investors and continues to grow today.
Robin John: By pursuing the conversion, it, Homer Berg was able to lower minimums to 25, 000 welcome accredited investors. In addition to qualified purchasers, the entire conversion process was highly efficient. Because Hallmark Berg chose to partner with Ultimis and other partners with a proven track record in this type of structure to structure product transition.
Robin John: The headlines are often too focused on new interval funds from pedigreed providers, this new fund from this cool big firm, et cetera. [00:55:00] Maximizing a fund's potential through a conversion can be a powerful too. As we see in the story of Homer Berg traditional investment management and alternative investment management are converging more retail investors are demanding access to non correlated strategies in a liquid asset classes to compliment or supplement public markets exposure interval and tender offer funds offer managers a flexible wrapper.
Robin John: That combines many of the benefits of both 1948 and private fund structures. Interest in these products has increased significantly in the past decade, and we anticipate the volume of both new launches and structure conversions to continue well into the future.
Stacy Havener: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a [00:56:00] basis for investment decisions. The information is not an offer, solicitation, or
Robin John: recommendation
Stacy Havener: of any of the funds, services, or products or to adopt any investment strategy. Investment values may fluctuate and past performance is not a guide to future performance.
Stacy Havener: All opinions expressed
Robin John: by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm. Manager's
Stacy Havener: appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Havener or
Robin John: Havener Capital Partners.
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