Episode 97: Sean Peche, Founder and Fund Manager, Ranmore Funds – Benefits of Challenging the Status Quo in Fund Marketing and Distribution
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Most fund managers are happiest behind their screens, crunching data and studying markets. That’s their zone of genius, so it makes sense.
But when you step into the founder seat, everything changes. Investing is no longer your only job. Suddenly, marketing and distribution aren’t just important, they’re non-negotiables.
Today’s guest, Sean Peche, knows this firsthand. He’s the Founder and Fund Manager at Ranmore Funds, a $650 million investment boutique that doesn’t just invest differently, it builds differently too.
In this Episode, Sean sits down with Stacy to share his growth playbook.
They discuss:
Why he dedicates just one day a week to distribution – and how taking calls only one day each week keeps him laser focused
The founder-led sales tips he used to scale Ranmore (and how you can borrow them)
His tried-and-true process for prospecting on LinkedIn
His unconventional approach to team building
What “charitable marketing” is and how it’s helping him grow the business and do good
The mindset shift from fund manager to business founder (and why more boutiques need it)
Why honesty and humility are a competitive edge in this industry
About Sean Peche:
Sean is the Founder of Ranmore Fund Management and portfolio manager of the Ranmore Global Equity Fund. Sean studied Business Science at the University of Cape Town, qualified as a Chartered Accountant and is a CFA Charterholder with 28 years of investment experience. He’s a committed Value investor who looks for the opportunity in every crisis. He lives in Surrey, England with his wife, Marilyn, their two children and two dogs. His guiding principles are “Do more than expected” and “Be kind”. He loves country music, wine, forests, and snowboarding.
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TRANSCRIPT
Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.
[00:00:00] Sean Peche: Keep it simple, stupid. We know that's the formulas, and so that's what we do and we're trying to manage our growth. I mean, I typically speak to clients once a week so that the rest of the time I can focus the portfolio because it's very easy to get dragged in lots of different directions.
[00:00:17] Stacy Havener: Hey, my name is Stacy Haner.
[00:00:19] Stacy 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 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.
[00:00:47] Stacy Havener: 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 [00:01:00] 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.
[00:01:16] Stacy Havener: Most fund managers are happiest behind their screens crunching data. It's their unique ability, so it makes total sense. But once a fund manager becomes a founder, investing isn't your only job. Marketing and distribution are critical to the success of your business. Today's guest, Sean Pesh, is the founder and fund manager at Ran More funds, a $650 million investment boutique that doesn't just invest differently.
[00:01:47] Stacy Havener: They build their business differently as well. Sean is a return guest to the podcast and a dear friend. Today we dive deep on how Ran More has challenged pretty much everything we think to be [00:02:00] true about fund distribution and in so doing built a very successful business. If you are ready to embrace a new Playbook for Growth, you've come to the right podcast.
[00:02:12] Stacy Havener: Let's reunite with my friend Sean.
[00:02:20] Stacy Havener: Sean, welcome back to the billion dollar Backstory Studio. This is the Reunion tour.
[00:02:27] Sean Peche: Thank you, Stacy. It's lovely to be here. It's really is. So thank you for having me back.
[00:02:32] Stacy Havener: Happy to have you back. You were here. For people who aren't aware, you were here in season one, I believe one of our most favorite, most downloaded episodes and.
[00:02:46] Stacy Havener: We're sort of coming back to deep dive on a topic that we wanna pull forward from that episode and really unpack with you today. But before we do that, we need the chapter update. So in episode one, you gave us sort of the [00:03:00] backstory. It's been a couple years, the new chapter is underway. You gotta fill us in on how things are going.
[00:03:07] Sean Peche: Well, I'm pleased to say things are going very well and so we, I can't remember what the assets were, but it was probably about 150 or so thereabouts, and we now at $630 million. So we've grown nicely and Wow. Yeah, no, it's been great and, and that's been in quite a tricky time for markets, but our performance has been great, you know, I'm pleased to say of course you're always looking over your shoulder going, well that was, you know, it's only about, uh, this is a race without end, so you can't relax.
[00:03:38] Sean Peche: But our performance has been good in tricky times. And so even this year we are up.
[00:03:42] Yeah, we're up
[00:03:42] Sean Peche: in dollars. Wow. And. So, yeah, it's going well and we are having fun. That's the main thing. We are having fun.
[00:03:48] Stacy Havener: That's the big thing.
[00:03:49] Sean Peche: Yeah.
[00:03:49] Stacy Havener: So, and how about the team? I know we're gonna talk about team building, but has the team expanded?
[00:03:55] Stacy Havener: Or, so what's the team count now?
[00:03:56] Sean Peche: So the team, I think we have 10, but you know, it's, I wanna [00:04:00] manage money, not people.
[00:04:01] Stacy Havener: Yes.
[00:04:01] Sean Peche: Okay. So we do a couple of things differently. I mean, the one is we have no segregated accounts. And even if some big sovereign wealth fund came over the hill and said, yes, $500 million, can you run a SE account?
[00:04:12] Sean Peche: The answer is no. It's put the money in the fund with everybody else where my money is and my family's money, and all our clients in the same pot, and then we don't need a big back office. And then it reduces the fees for everybody else, you know, and I'm not spending time in fee negotiations with different segregated clients.
[00:04:30] Sean Peche: I'm not placing 15 trades for the 15, you know, in the clients. Associated with that and the performance reconciliations and all the rest. So keep it simple, stupid. We know that's the formula and uh, and so that's what we do. And, and we're trying to manage our growth. I mean, I typically speak to clients once a week, you know, so that the rest of the time I can focus the portfolio because it's very easy to get dragged in lots of different directions by people who, you know, the, the guys on [00:05:00] the distribution side.
[00:05:01] Sean Peche: So Patrick on the distribution side, you know, he can set up meetings no problem at 24 7, but I don't wanna speak to clients 24 7. So it's Tuesdays, that's it, you know, or one day a week.
[00:05:12] Stacy Havener: This right here, this part of the chapter update is actually something I want to put a pin in. I want people to hear this.
[00:05:19] Stacy Havener: Listen to what Sean just said. He has one day a week dedicated to distribution. I. Now some fund managers might say, I want as little days dedicated to distribution as possible. And that I think is a great segue into our topic because on the first episode we touched on this sort of the building of boutique, like the actual entrepreneurial parts of it.
[00:05:48] Stacy Havener: We also spent a lot of time on the investment side. Today, I wanna deep dive on that entrepreneurial piece and distribution is key. I think a lot of fund managers, when they start their [00:06:00] boutique, they think I'm talented, I'm gonna put up good numbers, and the rest of it's just gonna take care of itself.
[00:06:07] Sean Peche: You're absolutely right, and it doesn't happen like that. It really doesn't. So you do have to spend time and I mean, one of the challenges as an entrepreneur is you gotta, well when am I gonna do it? So. Before Patrick joined us and when in my early days of trying to expand my network here in the uk, I would, um, when I was sitting on the train I was going through on LinkedIn, I would, he has a little trick.
[00:06:31] Sean Peche: I would try and find a sales guy. Okay. A distribution guy who hadn't hidden his connections.
[00:06:37] Stacy Havener: So good.
[00:06:39] Sean Peche: And then I would go through there and I'd just send invites. Okay. And I wouldn't, and, and you what? You gotta be careful about, you, you'll know this from LinkedIn. There's nothing worse than somebody who sends you a connection request.
[00:06:49] Sean Peche: And then you say, okay, fine. You know, they're in a similar business. And then five seconds later, would you like to buy this product?
[00:06:54] Stacy Havener: Drives me match, pitch, slap. We don't do that.
[00:06:57] Sean Peche: Yeah. So, [00:07:00] so that's what I would do, but I would use that time on the trade and I was just basically sowing the seeds. So when you had a good period of performance, you had a, a bit of a, a bank of people who'd connected, I would go through posts, um, you know, if there was hashtag value investing or hashtag investing and see who liked somebody else's post and then connect your request to them.
[00:07:19] Sean Peche: People I thought were, was useful when I was trying to get into some of the institutions, you know, what do you, what do you do? You think, okay, well great, I'm gonna go to the research, the fund research director, go, go find a junior analyst. So go find a junior analyst at that same firm, because that's an opportunity for them to get their name out there.
[00:07:39] Sean Peche: So there were little things like that, trying to be a bit creative and thinking, well, how do I get drawn some of these obstacles? And then on Sunday nights, prepare an email, you know, short, punchy email that people. Understanding if they lose interest after the first paragraph and time that to get sent, you know, during the week.
[00:07:56] Sean Peche: But I was using Sunday nights when the markets were closed. [00:08:00] So, you know, you, you kind of work with what you've got this,
[00:08:03] Stacy Havener: we're gonna pause here 'cause you just basically gave everybody like three or four fantastic ideas in a stream of consciousness. I want to pause and really give each of those it's due.
[00:08:15] Stacy Havener: The first thing I really want people to hear, if you are building a business as a fund manager, you're a founder, fund manager, guess who does sales You?
[00:08:27] Sean Peche: Yeah.
[00:08:28] Stacy Havener: Especially in the early days. That's why founder-led sales is a thing. It's why it's a thing in tech. It's why it's a thing in Silicon Valley, founder-led sales is real For an entrepreneurial business, it doesn't matter what industry you're in.
[00:08:44] Stacy Havener: For some reason in our industry, the founder fund managers are like, that's not what I do.
[00:08:49] Sean Peche: Oh yeah. No, you're right. No, no. You gotta jist. You gotta jist. You gotta do
[00:08:52] Stacy Havener: it. And let's think about it. If you're on the other side of the connection request, you're sitting there, you get a [00:09:00] connection request from the guy, the founder of the firm.
[00:09:06] Stacy Havener: There's magic in that. Behaviorally, the same thing when you said reaching out to the junior analyst. Let's put ourself in that analyst's shoes, first of all, they're hearing from the guy, right? And you're very talented at what you do. So they have a chance, as you said, to go to their boss and say, I have something interesting, and it makes them look good.
[00:09:28] Sean Peche: Yeah, that's right. Well, that was my thinking. What? I mean, I actually, I wasn't sure that it would come across like that. I mean, I remember the one, the one time, the phone rang on a Friday, and it was shortly after Covid and we were working from home and Joe was working with me here in my study, but she was, I dunno, taking her children to a football match or something that day.
[00:09:46] Sean Peche: So the phone rang and I answered it. It was a Friday afternoon. No, but, but it came across as like, hang on, is there anybody behind the sky? Is there, do you see what I mean? Yes. And so that's always been at the back of my mind going, oh, well hang on. And [00:10:00] that's, you know, yes, there is, but it's just that on Friday, you know, we, I answer the call.
[00:10:05] Stacy Havener: So we have, we have a framework that we use in capitalizing, and we call it the PM Portfolio Manager Magic call. Okay. PM Magic Call. It's a thing here at ner and this is what it is. You ready? You can take this. Okay. Because now you're at six 50. It's even more magical. You literally pick up the phone, which everyone is like phone.
[00:10:28] Stacy Havener: Who uses the phone? Just stay with me. You pick up the phone and you just call someone. So we, our sales team would look at the funnel and then we would go to our fund managers and we'd say, Hey Sean, I have two magic calls. I want you to make this person and this person, and your job was to call them. No appointments scheduled, no assistance.
[00:10:49] Stacy Havener: You just call. And if they, if you don't get them, which you're not, you leave a voicemail and you say it's, Hey, it's Sean. You know, we met, loved our meeting, you know, was thinking of [00:11:00] you. Like, we would give you the, the little things to tie it back to them and you would leave the message again, put yourself in the shoes of the person receiving that.
[00:11:09] Stacy Havener: They're like, I just got a phone call from Sean Pesh, the founder, fund manager at, tell me who's getting that phone call from Larry Fink?
[00:11:20] Sean Peche: Yeah. Uh, okay. Yeah, I see. Yeah, yeah, I see what you mean.
[00:11:23] Stacy Havener: Right?
[00:11:23] Sean Peche: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:11:25] Stacy Havener: So there's magic in it.
[00:11:26] Sean Peche: Yeah.
[00:11:27] Stacy Havener: Now do you have to deal with the sort of who's behind you? Sure.
[00:11:29] Sean Peche: Yeah.
[00:11:30] Sean Peche: Yeah.
[00:11:30] Stacy Havener: But, but the magic, I hope you never lose that. I know you won't. 'cause I know you
[00:11:35] Sean Peche: Well sometimes, you know, if there's a query that comes through to client services and I see it and I just think, let me just, I'm going on a door. 'cause that goes to a whole lot of people in the firm. Okay. I'm about to head off on a dog walk and I think I'll just phone the guy.
[00:11:47] Sean Peche: Yeah. And sometimes they're quite surprised, but they do, you know, I'll just, I'll just phone him and say, look, I'm up my dog walk, if you don't mind. But, you know, I saw your question. You wanted to discuss this, and there we go.
[00:11:56] Stacy Havener: It's so perfect. It's so perfect. [00:12:00] Okay, so now LinkedIn, you also did a, an advanced level PhD degree linked inning on the connection piece.
[00:12:07] Stacy Havener: Brilliant. Go find the distribution. People look at their connections and send some connection requests, but not pitch. That's like,
[00:12:17] Sean Peche: oh no, that's right. But now what worries me is that every sales guy's gonna quickly go and hide all their connections. Okay.
[00:12:22] Stacy Havener: No, they're not.
[00:12:23] Sean Peche: I'm talking about the, you know, looking into the connections and go, oh yeah, that's a good person.
[00:12:28] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Yeah. That's a move. That's a move. That's totally a move. Also, and we're gonna talk about this when we're together on Thursday, but one of the things that came up in a podcast I did this week was around. How the quiet shadow fans who watch you, but they don't engage. Right. And one of the ways you can get into that is go look at your profile views.
[00:12:54] Sean Peche: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen that. And I used to that. It was quite interesting because I'd often [00:13:00] find that I'd get lots of likes and I'd look at the people and then I'd look at the profile views and I'd go, well, hang on. A whole lot of portfolio managers have have looked at my stuff and they keep looking at it.
[00:13:09] Sean Peche: So they must like it, but they never like it because they don't wanna be seen to like, course not competitors. I, it's the oddest thing. I dunno what it is. I think it's, I dunno if it's professional jealousy or what it is, but it's ridiculous. You know? It's, it's a way of saying thank you if you found it interesting to say thank you.
[00:13:26] Sean Peche: And it builds awareness and it's
[00:13:27] Stacy Havener: not a zero sum game. It's not a zero sum game.
[00:13:30] Sean Peche: Exactly. It really isn't. And. And I mean, I just, you know, I like to say it and I credit, um, a chap ta taste Toyo, who, who I met way back when, and, and TA used to say, it is enough sunshine for all of us. And that's what I wanna say with, with us boutiques.
[00:13:48] Sean Peche: We must help each other. That's why I'm getting you some of these tips. I mean, I can't manage all the value money and no one else can manage all the value money. So let's, let's share the love
[00:13:58] Sean Peche: and do something [00:14:00] that the others aren't. Exactly. 'cause there's enough sunshine for all of us. So
[00:14:02] Stacy Havener: also putting a pin in the newsletter, I think an email newsletter is a great low pressure way to invite somebody to follow along. Like sure they can follow you on LinkedIn. Yeah. That email newsletter's kind of a step closer to becoming a client, so that was brilliant too.
[00:14:20] Stacy Havener: Um, what else, what else do you see either typical managers do? Maybe, I don't wanna say wrong, but wrong and. And how have you approached that differently, successfully?
[00:14:37] Sean Peche: Well, I think, you know, it's just be who you are. So I, I think a lot of people try and say, well, you know, what do the guys want us to say?
[00:14:44] Sean Peche: Yeah. They want us to say we have high conviction. They want us to say we've got low turnover. They want us to say, well, you find the best businesses because it sounds great. I just say, look, we wanna buy decent businesses. They're actually be the best businesses. They're gonna make money, and, but I wanna buy [00:15:00] them at a great price.
[00:15:00] Sean Peche: One of our decent businesses at a fabulous price, rather than a fabulous business at an expensive price. And so, you know, we've got high turnover. Yeah. Tell people, we've got high turnover, we're gonna make mistakes. I mean, we had a good month. We've had a couple of good months. So, but, but you know, one I in Feb, why?
[00:15:16] Sean Peche: I think it was Feb or March, whatever, we had a, we had a, no, it was fair. We had a great month. And I wrote, not a mistake because, um, you know, you gotta be, just keep yourself grounded here. You're not gonna get everything right. Yeah. So tell people we don't get it all right. Because even if you grates. The top guys get 60% right, 40% wrong.
[00:15:36] Sean Peche: But how often do you, well, people don't spend 40% of the time talking about the stuff they got wrong. They spend no time talking about the stuff they got wrong. So you wanna set expectations, you know, for clients coming to you. 'cause they think you're gonna get everything right. They better gonna find somebody else 'cause it's gonna be us.
[00:15:50] Sean Peche: And if you just set expectations and it's honesty, then you know, they believe everything else you say. So
[00:15:57] Stacy Havener: it's a great point also because you [00:16:00] sort of own a period of under performance or a lag in performance before it happens so that when it happens, because it will, they're not surprised. Yeah.
[00:16:12] Sean Peche: Well I had an interesting one that recently where a guy said, um, well how do I know you're not gonna get, you know, we lost money in Russia.
[00:16:19] Sean Peche: Okay, we lost 10%, but we still ended 2022 up and outperformed the market by, I don't know, 20% or something. So we were up in, the market was down 18 and that was including. A loss in Russia. So people said, well, how do I know you're not gonna get another, you're not gonna have another situation where you lose 10% in a region.
[00:16:39] Sean Peche: I said, you don't. But what you can see is we can recover. Yeah. You see what I mean? So you're setting the expectations, not like, oh, well we made a mistake with Russia, we never gonna buy another emerging market ever again. And you go, well, you know, the s and p's down 10%, or whatever it is this year. So could have had a hundred percent in s and p and you'd be nowhere soft than having a position in [00:17:00] Russia.
[00:17:00] Stacy Havener: It's a reframing, and I think one of the things, whenever I talk with you and I love our conversations, you're so inspiring. One of the things that I really feel is it's like rebel. It's like you don't really give a shit. I think we suck. We reach a point in our careers, especially if we're founders, where it's like, I just don't give a shit.
[00:17:23] Stacy Havener: I'm not gonna play by the old rules and the status quo if it's not what I believe. And some people aren't gonna like it. And that's fine.
[00:17:32] Sean Peche: And that's fine. I don't need to be liked by everybody. And so, you know, I'd rather, but what you want to have is you want to have the right clients. That's the challenge when, the challenge earlier on is you'll take any client that comes, okay, you'll take a segregated account at low fees because you just need the, the money.
[00:17:50] Sean Peche: You'll try and tell people what you want to Yeah. But I mean, it's like a relationship. You know, if you just yourself and you are honest, then you'll attract the right person. If you [00:18:00] try and pretend that you're something that you're not, eventually it's gonna get found out.
[00:18:05] Right.
[00:18:06] Sean Peche: And then it's gonna be a problem.
[00:18:07] Yeah.
[00:18:07] Sean Peche: So, so rather just do that upfront. I think one of the things you have to do is, with all this LinkedIn is before you engage in all of that, you need to make sure the stuff you. That the, you know, when they go looking for you, they go, okay, here's this guy who's sent me a extra request. Then they need to, and they go to your website.
[00:18:23] Sean Peche: The website needs to be up to speed. Oh, if you've got your fund, you know it's gotta be slick. You've gotta have the latest fact sheet loaded on the website. I'm amazed at how many funds, websites they've got. Okay. And you go and you say, well, okay, what are these guys? Let me just have a look at the latest fact sheet.
[00:18:38] Sean Peche: I've heard about them. And you go, it's three months old. You go really on your website? Come on guys. Um, you know, make sure the information in Morningstar and on Trustnet and all these things is up to speed so that when people find you, they looking at a slick product. You know, I think it's very important.
[00:18:56] Stacy Havener: It's very important. And also, these are [00:19:00] easy wins.
[00:19:02] Yeah.
[00:19:02] Stacy Havener: These are easy wins on the journey. This is like, you know, table stakes kind of stuff. These are silly reasons and I think the reason this is becoming more important now than it was back in the day. Is this next gen of analysts, so G two analysts, whatever they are, like DIY, due diligence, they're gonna wanna talk to you, but in the shadows of LinkedIn or in the interwebs, you know, they're going around and they're collecting due diligence, research, they're doing their work.
[00:19:39] Stacy Havener: You don't know what's happening and if you don't set them up to be able to do that.
[00:19:44] Sean Peche: Yeah. And, and you know what, Stacey, it's, it's like, didn't Steve Jobs used to do that? He would rip the phone. He, you know, he pretend he's a user, pretend he's a fund analyst, and now trying to find you and searches for you on the web.
[00:19:57] Sean Peche: Is he gonna find your fact sheet? Are they gonna find your [00:20:00] fact sheet easily? Are they gonna find your website? You know, if they want to send you an email to client services or subscribe to your mailing list. Is that an easy one to do? Yeah. If they wanna invest, like is there a how to invest? You know, these are not tricky things.
[00:20:13] Sean Peche: Nah. It's just kinda walking the walk that you would walk if you were an analyst, a fund analyst. So you wanna have those things lined up first and then engage with it. Now that's an ongoing maintenance thing and you, you know, every month. But, but it's about, and then you get this list and I, there was an interesting podcast and I can't even remember the name, it was a while ago, but these guys were male shot marketing guys and they, their whole focus was on that list.
[00:20:39] Sean Peche: Yeah. Our list. That is our gold. That is the thing we look at every day. We wake up thinking about this list and so getting the LinkedIn people and connections and then saying, would you like to see our fact sheet or whatever, getting them on the list. You, you focus on that list. And I went from a, I mean we had a mailing list, but I didn't know who looked at the [00:21:00] mailing list.
[00:21:00] Sean Peche: I didn't know, I hadn't paid any attention to it. Well I listened to that podcast was like, right, this is gotta be a focus now. Yeah. And so spent a lot of time on this list and we, it was running on Excel and then we got a CRM system, but it's a good one. You know, I didn't need an all singing, all dancing Salesforce, and I found a fantastic system called FCRM and which was perfect for LinkedIn, actually.
[00:21:24] Stacy Havener: Oh, tell why, tell me more.
[00:21:25] Sean Peche: When it's got a LinkedIn ad in. So if I, I find you on LinkedIn and I go, well Stacy looks like a person I need to connect to. There's an adding button and it adds to your data that's available publicly on LinkedIn onto the CRM. And it said, oh, Stacy, rather, she's, you know, this is your title, it's your position, it's your company, it, et cetera.
[00:21:45] Sean Peche: So all the standard stuff, and then what you can do is, is it can, it can enrich it. What that means is it'll go apart from to the web. So not everybody puts their contacts info on [00:22:00] LinkedIn in terms of their. Company email address. Yeah, they'll put stacy@gmail.com or whatever. Okay. And you don't wanna be doing that, but it'll go, oh, okay.
[00:22:08] Sean Peche: Well it'll go up there in the web and it'll look and say, okay, the people at Haven at Capital, their email formula is Stacy dot Haven at Haven at Capital. Yeah. Or Stacey H or S Haven, or whatever the formula is. And so it'll kind of enrich, it'll look out there to see if it can find in the email address.
[00:22:25] Sean Peche: So I thought it was quite useful. And obviously you one's gotta be careful of GDPR and sending unsolicited emails and you know, especially in places like Europe, but in the uk, if you think there's a good business case for then you're a lot of contacts people, if there's a good business case, as long as there's an easily unsubscribe button and all of that.
[00:22:45] Sean Peche: And so CRM helps you take care of that because if you unsubscribe to our email, I can't, I can't send you any emails again. So that's quite your, whereas if you're managing it off an Excel spreadsheet, you know that doesn't work. So there's some ways to, [00:23:00] to do it. And, um, and it's been quite fun actually.
[00:23:03] Stacy Havener: It is fun.
[00:23:04] Stacy Havener: It's been quite fun. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you enjoy it because again, this is part of building, it's not just sit behind your Bloomberg and, you know, look at charts and refresh news and see what's happening in the macro environment. Like it's not just that you're, you're missing actually, you know, arguably the bigger part.
[00:23:23] Stacy Havener: You have to be good at what you do, but you also have to build a business.
[00:23:27] Sean Peche: Yeah. But in building the business and thinking about how you're building the business, that helps you analyze businesses,
[00:23:33] Stacy Havener: doesn't it? Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard that from other, from other founder fund managers. Definitely.
[00:23:38] Sean Peche: Am I buying shares?
[00:23:39] Sean Peche: I mean, you know, in Salesforce? No, because I've got, there's a great, there's, it's easy to start a CRM. There's lots of CRM packages. Yeah. And when, and you find that out when you look for CRM packages now. Don't tell any of that, but you know what I mean? 'cause
[00:23:53] Stacy Havener: you're a user, now You're a user. 'cause I'm a user.
[00:23:55] Stacy Havener: Yeah. So you can understand it. You also can understand, I would imagine [00:24:00] that you can understand a company from the founder perspective too, and sort of the cap, you know, CapEx and how, you know, comp and you have a different lens. Maybe the numbers are different, but the lens I would think is sharper now that you have your own business.
[00:24:17] Sean Peche: Well definitely because, and it makes me very wary of fast growing companies because, oh yeah. Because management teams will be, it'll, you'll be tripping over yourselves. Hiring people, firing people, all that sort of stuff. Do you know what it's, uh, so I think it's slow and steady wins the race and so we'll grow our business slowly.
[00:24:36] Sean Peche: And if it means that we, we can, by only speaking to people with a few exceptions, you know, if a very big, important client Yeah. Says, listen, I can't see you on cheese, they can't speak to you on Wednesday, that's fine. We'll make the odd exception. But it means that we grow slower. 'cause we restricting time.
[00:24:52] Sean Peche: Well, that's fine. We'll grow slower. You know, I'm going to Switzerland in a, in a few months time, and the guys [00:25:00] who are helping us there wanted me to go for three week, a three day road trip. I said, forget it. I'll go three, three individual days, one a week. I'll fly in at night, we'll spend the day and I'll be back.
[00:25:10] Sean Peche: So I only miss one day outta the office. But anyway, that,
[00:25:14] Stacy Havener: but, so, but this is it. I, and you know, this was a big learning for me actually on the CRM to go back to that for a second.
[00:25:21] Yeah.
[00:25:22] Stacy Havener: Because when we started adding in the advisory work, in the consulting work, we wrongly assumed that people had CRMs
[00:25:32] Sean Peche: interesting.
[00:25:32] Stacy Havener: And were not using Excel. And so what happened was very quickly when we'd say, okay, like, you know. It kind of went back, it was like, okay, well what stage of your process is that prospect? And it was like stage, and we're like, okay, stage. Okay, well like you have a CRM. What? What's the category? CRM? It's like, okay, keep going down.
[00:25:54] Stacy Havener: Right. Where do you keep your information about your prospects Excel?
[00:25:59] Sean Peche: Totally. I mean, [00:26:00] when I say like it's, we've been using the CRM for than a year. Yeah.
[00:26:04] Stacy Havener: So we said timeout, we have to now take all our frameworks that we just didn't think were relevant on how to structure your sales funnel, what the stages are, how to know what are the entrants and exit criteria of those stages.
[00:26:19] Stacy Havener: This is stuff that like to us, we just thought, of course, but then we realize, okay, no, not of course. It's just because we're in it. So it's great that you're doing this. I think this is a critical thing. We're now taking all our, our clients through an audit of their CRM, their stages. Because if you can have great meetings, but if you don't have a place to keep the information, you're not gonna remember it.
[00:26:45] Stacy Havener: I don't, I know you're all smart.
[00:26:47] Sean Peche: Totally. Absolutely right. And also then, let's say we planning for Tuesdays in a few weeks time, you can go and say, well, which companies have we not spoken you? You know, have they been looking, have they been reading our [00:27:00] fact sheets? Did they, when we sent a link to the podcast, did they pay attention to that?
[00:27:03] Sean Peche: No, they didn't. They haven't read the last five fact sheets and okay, well let's waste time with it. Let's go find somebody. Yeah. Who's read a few Yeah. Fact sheets, who seems to be engaging with the content we're sending them. 'cause they're obviously hotter. Yes. And, and we focus our attention there. So it actually means that the amount of time, you know, my one day a week is being efficiently spent.
[00:27:24] Stacy Havener: That's right.
[00:27:25] Sean Peche: You know, and that's, that's quite important
[00:27:27] Stacy Havener: I think. So you want your data. I like sassy data. Not, yeah, not capital. S little, a little a SI like sassy. S-A-S-S-Y. I want my data to talk back to me. If my data doesn't tell me anything, what is, what's the point? So the data, like your CRM and your email list gives you intel back and that's what you need.
[00:27:56] Sean Peche: Yeah. And so here's another little tip that I, and I, I mean, I tried [00:28:00] it out. I think it works. Okay. Okay. When I sent an email to a couple of people at a company, I would always send it to two people. And here's my logic, and as I said, I dunno if it works, but if I just send it to you and, and you, you feel no obligation to reply, but if I sent it to you and your business partner Oh, on the same
[00:28:18] Stacy Havener: email?
[00:28:19] Sean Peche: Yeah. It's like, who's gonna reply? Okay. Who's gonna reply? And, and if I've sent it to a junior and copied in the senior, it's like. Well, hang on. The junior feels more beholden to reply and engage.
[00:28:32] Stacy Havener: Fascinating behavioral, fascinating thought. Fascinating behavioral, behavioral twist. There, there. So that's what I would, I love that.
[00:28:38] Sean Peche: And I would get four people, you know, when I was building my list, I say, okay, well I want four people at each company and I'd try two. And if that didn't work then I'd try the other two. You
[00:28:47] Stacy Havener: the other two. Yeah. That's smart. Save the other two. That's smart.
[00:28:49] Sean Peche: Uh, keep 'em in the, so it was just, I mean, I just tried these things.
[00:28:53] Sean Peche: Yeah. You gotta try and be creative about some of these things and, um,
[00:28:56] Stacy Havener: but see listeners are benefiting from your experiments.
[00:28:59] Sean Peche: Yeah. [00:29:00] Well
[00:29:00] Stacy Havener: that's, you know. Brilliant. Okay. I wanna go to, you alluded to team a couple times.
[00:29:07] Yeah.
[00:29:08] Stacy Havener: So let's do a little bit of the, we can't say wrong, what are we gonna say old way, new way, the old way of team building and how to think about your team versus the new way or the ran more way, like talk about that because you've been very.
[00:29:24] Stacy Havener: Creative and different in how you found team members, not just in the number of them, but like the composition of the people.
[00:29:32] Sean Peche: Yeah, so I've, um, look, I'm very fortunate. My, my right hand guy is a guy called Andrew, Andrew Ing, and Andrew is a, an absolute superstar. I mean, he is the best investor I've ever worked with and I've worked with some amazing people and, um, so I'm extremely fortunate.
[00:29:50] Sean Peche: He has amazing judgment wise counsel. You know, I don't put out a LinkedIn post without passing it, you know, past him and if he doesn't like it, I'll burn it. There's no, [00:30:00] just leave our try and leave our ego at the door, even if I feel quite strongly about it. Okay. So I think it really helps for founders to have a sounding board of a person who you really respect.
[00:30:12] Sean Peche: And his advice, are you gonna take seriously? Because we both want the same thing. I mean, we all want the same thing. You want your business to grow. And so, so I'm very lucky to have Andrew. And then I have, you know, we have a small team, so we don't get, uh, I wanna say we're lucky. We're very disciplined about process, but we do our models and all our documents.
[00:30:33] Sean Peche: I mean, in some organizations you have your fancy Word document and the font's gotta be the size for the headings. And it's gotta be this, and it's like an NBA pitch book. Okay? And we don't do that. We have our model, our Excel model, and then on another sheet we'll have our notes. You can have as many sheets as you want.
[00:30:51] Sean Peche: So you can have a quantitative sheet, which is our model, uh, financial model, and, and then a qualitative sheet. And then there might be some notes [00:31:00] where you cut and paste from presentations and you cut and paste from transcripts and from various bits of research you found around. So for us, that works.
[00:31:09] Sean Peche: And when we discuss a company, we work through the model line item, and then we go, oh, hang on, that margin looks a bit higher, that looks a bit aggressive. Why did their sales fall then? Oh, they sold a business. Okay. Versus, so it's a live thing as we are working through and going, okay, where's the valuation or what's your TRR?
[00:31:24] Sean Peche: How are you getting that? Where's, I think it's some other organizations, the analysts spend a huge amount of time getting this document absolutely perfect so that it looks like you'd wanna frame it and hang it up at, at home, but actually people aren't gonna read it. It's like, what are the key things here?
[00:31:39] Sean Peche: So we just go with what's efficient. And I think as a small business, you need to be you efficient to do.
[00:31:45] Stacy Havener: Yes.
[00:31:46] Sean Peche: You know? Yes. You have to Bishop.
[00:31:48] Stacy Havener: And how, how have you found these people? I mean, I know you knew Andrew from, from prior Yeah. But like, as you're building, because that's a whole, I mean, managing people to your earlier comment
[00:31:57] Yeah.
[00:31:58] Stacy Havener: Is perhaps the most difficult [00:32:00] part about being an entrepreneur, maybe about just being in business.
[00:32:03] Sean Peche: I, well, especially in this industry, so we don't really hire people who have lots of experience elsewhere because you want to, you know, teach them our way. And so I've kind of not gone out and, and marketed people have sort of found us, uh, um, or I've come across them in life.
[00:32:22] Sean Peche: And so, you know, Tim Barney, I think I've shared that story on LinkedIn where he was engaging with me on LinkedIn. He wasn't asking me for a job, he was just liking my posts very early. One Sunday morning, I thought, this guy's keen. Yeah. He is a student and he is liking him a post at eight o'clock on a Sunday morning, where now the students are nursing a hangover.
[00:32:40] Sean Peche: Um, so, you know, that's, that's Tim Barney and I met in 2009. He was putting himself through university here, and I met him on the streets of London and Josphat was my Uber driver, you know, and, and so I've always had this view that no matter who I meet, I'm sure there's something I'm gonna learn from them.
[00:32:58] Sean Peche: Yeah. Even if it's a local Uber [00:33:00] driver and it's like, what's your favorite restaurant? Maybe you'll introduce me to an interesting restaurant, but Joss Fat was my Uber driver just before Covid. And we connected, I was born in Zimbabwe, he was born in Zimbabwe. We kind of connected and then the Covid happened and I thought, well, I was helping Josphat get a YouTube channel up and running, which wasn't working.
[00:33:20] Sean Peche: And I thought, well, I can't let this, you know, what am I supposed to do? Poor Josphat can't drivers Uber. And he's got rented accommodation and, and rented, uh, Uber. He's got three children. I can't just, what am I supposed to do? I can't just drop him. So I thought, what can I teach him? So I taught him technical analysis and I thought, well, I spend a lot of time looking through charts.
[00:33:39] Sean Peche: I can show Joss what kind of things I like to look for and he can help me. And so he joins our meeting and every day he gives us, if there are enough charts that are interesting, he gives us three charts he thinks are useful. So great and interesting. And he's actually in Ray, we've enrolled him in the CMT this year.
[00:33:57] Stacy Havener: Oh, how what? That's awesome. And does see you like [00:34:00] it?
[00:34:00] Sean Peche: Yeah, he likes it and he helps he, he also helps us with some AI stuff. So, yeah. So our team is a bit different and we kind of, but it's, they are, they have a couple of things in common. They're all smart and they all have amazing attitude and they're really nice people and then they don't require a lot of management.
[00:34:17] Stacy Havener: That's okay. Two really important things I want people to hear and I need to hear it. You hire for attitude and you train for the job.
[00:34:27] Yeah.
[00:34:28] Stacy Havener: Right? Yeah. Um, and this is something I really like. I struggle with this full, full being totally authentic and candid. I don't think people believe me when I say I'm an introvert because they see me, you know, out and they see me on LinkedIn.
[00:34:44] Stacy Havener: And I, I seem very nice and extroverted and I, I mean, I'm nice. I'm just quiet in my day-to-day life. I am by myself a lot and I like to think, I don't like to sit and swirl on ideas. And so [00:35:00] I think what happens for me on your point about they don't need a lot of management is people come here and they think we're gonna be sitting around sort of like talking and doing and, you know, vibing.
[00:35:10] Stacy Havener: And I'm like in my office with my door closed thinking most of the time.
[00:35:15] Yeah.
[00:35:16] Stacy Havener: And I've had to learn that about myself, that I, somebody who needs a lot of time from me, that's like not my vibe. I'm very quiet and I'm very solitary. And I've had to learn as an entrepreneur that I need people who are okay with that.
[00:35:34] Sean Peche: Yeah. So most of us, we've got an office here in Carbon, but some of us are spread all over the world and we speak regularly. We have our teams meeting every day at 10 o'clock. And that works for us because then that's great. We are efficient and we not all talking to each other and open plan office, we actually can spend time thinking and
[00:35:51] Stacy Havener: yeah,
[00:35:51] Sean Peche: looking for ideas and research from the ideas.
[00:35:54] Stacy Havener: It's, it's important for us to understand ourselves, I think. Yeah. [00:36:00] In the context of a, of a small team especially. Yeah, because you have a style of interacting, communicating, managing, and you have to make sure that the people around you are gonna thrive in that environment. I
[00:36:12] Sean Peche: think that's right. I think that's right.
[00:36:14] Stacy Havener: Yeah. I wanna come back to marketing. What else have you done? And maybe it's even more recently 'cause I know LinkedIn was a huge part of your distribution strategy and still is. Have you added anything? Are you doing anything else to build your audience and build your platform?
[00:36:30] Sean Peche: Yeah, so what we, um, and this, I think Patrick for this, so, so he's head of UK distribution and he introduced us to a PR agency and I was always a little bit skeptical thinking, well, I don't know about pr, we certainly haven't got money for that.
[00:36:44] Sean Peche: But anyway, you, you know, we found a small PRA agency and so we said, listen guys, we don't have a lot of money, but we can throw a little bit of the money at the problem and if it works well then we can crank it up. Yeah. And, and they've been amazing, you know, in [00:37:00] terms of expanding the, the brand and, uh, and what you can do is if you are on certain platforms, then they can focus their attention of trying to get you some exposure, uh, for clients on that platform.
[00:37:13] Sean Peche: I mean, the other thing, obviously City Wire has been amazing. And, uh, you know, me writing. And so that's a bit of a commitment because you commit to to writing, which is a slightly different style, but it gives a different audience and then it means, yeah. What are, and the advantage of some of those things, Stacy is, you'll know, is that when you meet the client, they feel they've, they've watched your videos, they've listened to your podcasts, they've read some of them, not all of them.
[00:37:39] Sean Peche: Yeah. And, but it fast tracks the process. So actually it fast. Yeah. That is the thing. It fast tracks the process and if you write an opinion piece and, and you prepare to spend a little bit of time doing that, you know, the PR agency will find somewhere to get it, you know, printed.
[00:37:54] Stacy Havener: So that, that was gonna be my question because PR is typically [00:38:00] a very expensive endeavor and something that a larger firm would, would step to where boutiques are gonna say, as you did, like, I don't have the budget for that.
[00:38:08] Stacy Havener: So is there a specific type of media that you're sort of. Tasking them with like, are you saying I wanna be on podcasts, or I'm gonna write things and I want you to get it published? Or like, how, how are you thinking about the, the tasks that they do for you?
[00:38:22] Sean Peche: Yeah, so that's on the financial side. I mean, if anything they ask us and they're like, I haven't got the time for this.
[00:38:28] Sean Peche: You know, can they, can you write a piece for these guys? Well, I'm actually haven't got the time at the moment 'cause it's one thing, et cetera, et cetera. So, um, but that's what we do. But they will listen to a podcast and then go, well hang on, or take our fact sheet and go, that's quite interesting. Can we pass that on to a few publications, see if anybody's interested in and just lift that out of there.
[00:38:48] Sean Peche: So what it means is that if I'm writing content for the fact sheet, or I'm writing content for City Wire, or I do a. Presentation and it's on Biz News and it's on YouTube, [00:39:00] they will use that content efficiently because they'll take that little piece and say, okay, well who's interested in this? And the newspapers and publications are always looking for some commentary on content and where they're also very good.
[00:39:12] Sean Peche: And this is Sam and Jonathan at Fortino. Where they're really good is what's, what's everybody worrying about today? Oh, it's terrorists. Sure. You've gotta comment on tariff or Andrew, have you gotta comment on tariff? Like, I know we don't have a comment on tariff, or you know, or what, whatever. Because that's made two macro, or on the Donna or the pound or, you know.
[00:39:30] Sean Peche: But every now and again it's, yeah, we've gotta comment on that. So, and then
[00:39:34] Stacy Havener: they make that comment and are they going to t, is it like tv? Is it print? Is it, I don't even know. I don't know what I know. Well we had,
[00:39:42] Sean Peche: I've been on Bloomberg a couple of times. Sorry, cm, sorry. It's kind of cnbc. Oh, I've been on C-N-B-C-A couple of times.
[00:39:48] Stacy Havener: It's like multimedia. Yeah, it's
[00:39:50] Sean Peche: multimedia it. Yeah, it's multimedia. That's
[00:39:53] Stacy Havener: great. What a great suggestion.
[00:39:55] Sean Peche: Yeah, so I think my key point is find a small PR agency. Yeah. Now you're helping a [00:40:00] small business. Okay. You're giving that and then as you grow, well then that grow with you. And so rather than just go to a big company who is that all they're interested in is their retainer and then you hear from the once a month, you know, just before they send you the invoice, you don't want that.
[00:40:17] Sean Peche: So you got a small business that's keen there and there are lots of them, you know, with these organizations, shed staff and all the rest. And so some people go and set up their own little things. That's great. So there, so there ways which you can do it and I've be, my eyes, have been open to the benefits of pr.
[00:40:32] Sean Peche: Definitely.
[00:40:33] Stacy Havener: I think, again, it kind of goes back to our, where we started about the distribution, having a distribution strategy, which a lot of founder fund managers discount or just ski. Especially now if you think that this is more of a reputation economy. This is real. Yeah. If you don't build an audience, you will not have a business.
[00:40:57] Sean Peche: Oh, that's absolutely right. I mean, it's over having good [00:41:00] numbers and nobody know about them. You have to know about them. And there's a lot of competition because if you've got great numbers and there are other companies like us trying to get in the face of people, you're gonna get crowded out even if you've got better numbers than us.
[00:41:12] Sean Peche: So, I mean,
[00:41:13] Stacy Havener: it's so true. If you look at the at the grow, it, it doesn't matter. Look at the biggest firms. Look at the fastest growing firms. Yep. It's not the ones with the best numbers.
[00:41:22] Sean Peche: No, that's right.
[00:41:24] Stacy Havener: And so, and that's the, I think that's the miss, especially in our business. So there's one other thing that you do that I wanna spend some time on.
[00:41:32] Yeah.
[00:41:32] Stacy Havener: I don't even know what we would, what category this is. I guess it's marketing, you call it charitable marketing. Do you wanna explain what that is? We talked about it a little on the first episode, but I wanna dive a little deeper on it.
[00:41:47] Sean Peche: Yeah. This is being quite, you know, I, um. Just before Covid, I took over as the treasurer and a field hockey club over here called Service and Hockey Club.
[00:41:58] Sean Peche: And it was just before covid. It was, I [00:42:00] mean, I felt like I got a bit of a hospital pass here because, you know, you trying to save a hockey club drives outta your business trying to, you know, tricky, et cetera. But, but I found it very fulfilling and again, it's taught me about lots of different aspects of business and retail and because we put in an EPOS system and it's taught me about, you know, merchant acquirers and yeah, all those kinds of things.
[00:42:25] Sean Peche: But more than that, you know, I, I've just enjoyed giving back a little bit to society and, um, and so then, you know, with these, these little clubs, a couple of thousand pounds can make a difference. Okay. One or 2000 pounds makes a difference. And so, because you could pay for coaches and whatever, so, so we sponsored the hockey club and, but I like, um, the multiplier effect.
[00:42:50] Sean Peche: For example, you, we paid to put up a banner, but we bought a pizza oven and then the hockey club could make pizzas and then some children could learn how to make pizzas. And then [00:43:00] the hockey club, it was like me sponsoring 'em all the time. Okay. The only loser was the pizza shop down the road. Um, so I've kind of tried to roll that out.
[00:43:07] Sean Peche: And now, now the, the interesting thing for me is value investing is about asymmetry. What's my downside? What's my upside? Okay, so if I'm gonna go buy a pizza oven and it costs me thousand pounds, let's say, you know, that's my downside. The very worst. We're gonna get some nice pizzas out of this, but if it actually works well and people get to hear about it, maybe there's a wealthy guy at the clubby says, you know what might, listen Mr.
[00:43:30] Sean Peche: Mrs. Advisor, can you please take a look at this fund? That was my kind of thinking. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought, well, my downside is limited map side could be amazing. Yeah. So it's the asymmetry. Okay. Now, um, I don't know whether that's worked out. Probably not, but uh, you know, I'm sure there are a couple of clients that we've picked up along the way.
[00:43:48] Sean Peche: But, but then I kind of expanded that and said, well, so now what you've got is a project where we are collecting, um, shoes, football shoes, and running shoes and all the rest, we call it [00:44:00] run ball with ran more. And so we are collecting these shoes from football clubs and hockey clubs and schools here in the uk and we gotta put them in a container, send them up and distribute them to disadvantaged communities in Africa.
[00:44:13] Sean Peche: So our first trial shipments, so we are working here with another charity that's done this before and we've got a few thousand pairs of shoes. So we're gonna, but we gotta send a, a pilot out there. And what's been quite interesting, which I've not really appreciated, is, is it's given me an opportunity to speak to some clients who, like, for example, in the logistics business, so there's a very wealthy client of mine who's in the logistics business in South Africa.
[00:44:37] Sean Peche: And I was trying to work out how are we gonna get these shoes around? And so I contacted him. And so he was like, oh, that, that's great. Sure, that sounds amazing. I would definitely help, but, uh, by the way, I'm gonna send, uh, I saw your performance loss, so I'm gonna send you some more money. So I hadn't even expected that, but it, but it gives me a reason to engage with people who are philanthropic, you know, et cetera, nice people.
[00:44:59] Sean Peche: And we wanna manage [00:45:00] money for nice people. Id. So we've kind of expanded that. And so now we've got, I mean, something that's quite close to my heart is homelessness, right? Because I remember somebody once saying that we're all, and this is quite sobering actually, we're all three bad decisions away from being homeless.
[00:45:18] Sean Peche: Wow. Three bad decisions from being homeless. Okay? You go and start a business, sink your life into it. Something goes wrong in your relationship, boom. You know, lost your, your homeless. Whoa. It's quite sobering. And so we, we sponsor, um, the Haven Night Shelter. I've done that personally, fall. You know, 30 years or something.
[00:45:37] Sean Peche: But, but we've now got 700 bed nights a month. We response in South Africa, we've got some homeless shelters that we, we help over here. Um, so I guess the two angles, the one, it helps keep me humble and you realize just how lucky you are. Okay. Yes. And, and humility in this industry is important because the worst investors are the ones who think they know everything and [00:46:00] will be arrogant and tell the world they know how it works.
[00:46:03] Sean Peche: The, the second thing is actually gives me an opportunity to rarely, if I'm speaking to people who at Rotary or round table or when I'm speaking to nice people, uh, I, people I'm speaking to, you know, I mean, I had this one where I was speaking to the guys at the cricket club and he was a retired partner from a law firm, a legal firm.
[00:46:19] Sean Peche: In fact, our club, we sp we sponsor a football club in Alexandria Township in South Africa. And that was, that was the funding was started by a guy called, um, Nick, who was a partner at KPMG in South Africa. He is a wonderful man. So you actually, by doing these things, you're actually interacting with lovely people.
[00:46:38] Sean Peche: So, you know, everyone's a winner and you go, what's my downside? There's no downside.
[00:46:43] Stacy Havener: I, I love this on many levels, but most of all on the human one, because it's very easy in this industry, especially to forget that there are people on the other end of [00:47:00] these transactions, real people Yeah. Who actually do things in life outside of financial things and investment things, and nine to five things.
[00:47:11] Stacy Havener: And so to me, what's, I mean, the fact that you're giving back is, is obviously amazing, but I think it gives you a roundedness to be able to interact with clients, prospects, just people as people that many fund managers can't do. Have lost the ability to do if they ever had it or not interested in doing.
[00:47:39] Stacy Havener: And it's really sad that, that we've lost that.
[00:47:43] Sean Peche: It, it is, and look, it's, it's challenging as an entrepreneur, you've got your hands full. Okay, yeah. You're trying to run the business and all the rest. Now you're doing this stuff on the side. Um, but what do they say? If you wanna get something done, give it to a busy person.
[00:47:55] That's right. Yeah. So,
[00:47:56] Sean Peche: so I think there's some elements of truth in that. Um, but also now [00:48:00] we've got to the size where we saying, well, hang on, I have, I've gotta focus on running the money, which I've always had to do, but I need some help. And so we've got Pete Palou running, you know, stews running with, uh, run More with Rand, more.
[00:48:12] Sean Peche: I've got Bianca helping on the homeless side and some other aspects as well. So we've kind of, you know, added to that. Bianca helps me with the CRM, but she also does the Cherishable side. So, so you kind of, so now you just come up with ideas and then you give the ball somebody else and then they run with it and Yeah.
[00:48:31] Sean Peche: So actually I'm finding I'm spending less time on that stuff. Is, you know, and it gives them
[00:48:35] Stacy Havener: something to work on. That's not just CRM.
[00:48:39] Sean Peche: Yeah, exactly. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You all wanna go home at, in the evening, and though you've made a bit of a difference. Yeah. And, um, and so we are having fun and you know, Stacey, and I think this is the thing, because if you're a boutique, I can go put my thousand pounds on on Google and go, well, how many hits am I gonna get?
[00:48:58] Sean Peche: I mean, three, I don't [00:49:00] know. And then they're probably gonna move on. But I can go and sponsor a local football club or a local cricket club or a local, and you know what, maybe I meet a wealth manager there who puts me on, who hears, just gives me the time of day for this, you know? And he, and then goes, well, hang on, let's introduce me to this person.
[00:49:16] Sean Peche: Or I can't help you, but so and so can. And it goes from there. And what's my downside? A thousand pounds and a thousand pounds can make a difference. You could buy a coffee machine for a thousand pounds or so. I'd encourage the others to Yeah. And we go think creatively.
[00:49:28] Stacy Havener: I think it's really great. And it also, you, you've made a friend.
[00:49:33] Stacy Havener: If nothing else, you've made a friend, you're, you're expanding your network and you have no idea. You can't map that forward. You can't map that forward.
[00:49:43] Sean Peche: Absolutely. And actually, I mean, the Darkie Club I've worked with, um, Fred, our chairman, and Wil the CEOI mean, they're unbelievably entrepreneurial and he learned from them.
[00:49:52] Stacy Havener: Yes.
[00:49:53] Sean Peche: You know, I've learned from them. Oh gosh. You know, in terms of negotiations and dealing with clients and other aspects of shareholders. So, [00:50:00] so I've learned some, a huge amount from working with these people. So you're working with other nice people. Um, and it's also nice to skate, you know, every now and again you staring at Loomberg screen.
[00:50:10] Stacy Havener: I love that. It keeps you grounded. It adds depth to who you are as a person.
[00:50:16] Yeah.
[00:50:16] Stacy Havener: Um, all of it. So this has been fantastic. I wanna end, so the first episode, yeah. We did like a version of Pro's questionnaire. I. Really, it was more like James Lipton actor Studio. I'm not that fancy that I know. PR questionnaire, let's be honest.
[00:50:31] Stacy Havener: But nevertheless inspired by. So I had to come up with some new questions Okay. For the reunion tour. But we're gonna start with a similar question as the last round, which is this. You can do book or podcast. What's a recent book or a podcast that has inspired you?
[00:50:51] Sean Peche: So I've, oh, I'm gonna do both. Can I do both?
[00:50:53] Stacy Havener: Oh yeah, you can. Yeah.
[00:50:54] Sean Peche: All. So I tell you why, 'cause there's a story here. So I did a presentation recently [00:51:00] for business News, Arkansas, Africa, and I was doing some work behind it. And I, I mean, Howard Marks is one of my gurus. Okay. Yeah.
[00:51:07] Stacy Havener: Okay.
[00:51:07] Sean Peche: I, I love his stuff and I can listen to him all day. And so anyway, I'm a big fan of Howard Marks and I thought, and I came across this book that I hadn't actually read of his called.
[00:51:17] Sean Peche: Mastering cycles, getting your odds on your side. Okay. I thought, oh my goodness. So anyway, I used, bought the book and I read the book. It's a fantastic book. And I used quite a few excerpts of that in my presentation, which I think I shared on LinkedIn. Well, what happened is the local, um, MD of Oak Tree in the uk.
[00:51:39] Sean Peche: No way. He said, look, Sean, I've seen you mention Howard Marks on many times, many occasions, and he's actually gonna be over here in London in May. Would you like to join us for lunch? I mean, so how amazing is that? So you are, I have to mention that because I get an opportunity to meet, meet my, one of my main gurus here in London.
[00:51:57] Sean Peche: So
[00:51:58] Stacy Havener: that's amazing. [00:52:00]
[00:52:00] Sean Peche: That's coming up. So
[00:52:01] Stacy Havener: I Lovell that I'll keep you. That's fantastic. And that's coming up in May. Okay. So you'll, you'll keep all of us on LinkedIn.
[00:52:11] Sean Peche: I'll keep you in the loop. And then in terms of the podcast. There's Stephen Clapper from behind the balance sheet, and he did one recently, a little while ago by Anthony Bolton.
[00:52:21] Sean Peche: He interviewed Anthony Bolton, whom I'm a big fan of, and he is like, the UK is Peter Lynch. Peter Lynch says he is, you know, one of the best investors in the world and I think he compounded it 19 point half percent for 28 years. Phenomenal. And I did rush up to him. I spotted him in the crowd at the Value Investing conference couple of years ago, and I rushed up to him and said, listen, I'm a big fan.
[00:52:43] Sean Peche: Thank you so much. I wish I have my book here. Um, I think he was a bit taken aback, but anyway.
[00:52:47] Stacy Havener: Okay, wonderful. Great. And, and also just again, some of this stuff, again, this idea that you can't map things forward like you don't know where Yeah. A LinkedIn post is gonna lead to. That's [00:53:00] right.
[00:53:00] Yep.
[00:53:00] Stacy Havener: Isn't it so amazing?
[00:53:02] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Okay, next up, this is about a word or phrase that you most overuse.
[00:53:10] Sean Peche: Well, that's interesting that Jo just said. Interesting. I was listening to myself. I was listening to myself on a recent podcast and I thought I said two things far too frequently. One is, this is in the interesting thing. So interesting is the word.
[00:53:27] Sean Peche: And the other word is stuff I say. I was, you know? So anyway, I need to try and work on those, on those. I'm not sure how many times I've said stuff, so,
[00:53:37] Stacy Havener: so actually I'm like, cry laughing. I think you have to work on 'em. I just think it's interesting to know what the words are that people overuse. Yes. Or use often.
[00:53:49] Stacy Havener: So what it says to me is you're intellectually curious, which is Right. You are listening to a conversation and you find many things interesting. It's just a [00:54:00] reflection of you.
[00:54:00] Sean Peche: Well, that's right. But I was listening to myself and I mean the family here thinking like, sorry, why are you listening to yourself?
[00:54:06] Sean Peche: 'cause I'm going, well, I want to try and listen to how I can improve. How I come across or what I say. And that was my key takeaway. You say the word interesting and stuff too frequently, so I'll try and stop saying this. That's great. I'll
[00:54:18] Stacy Havener: tell you mine 'cause it has a swear in it. Um, okay. All right. Now, next up.
[00:54:26] Stacy Havener: Your first job, not your first job, professional job, your first job and a life lesson learned.
[00:54:35] Sean Peche: So when I was at university, I, I found a local restaurant and it was called Farthings and it was a fancy restaurant and it was run by a, a lovely couple Bee and Jeanie. And, and there I was at this, this restaurant we used to serve, you know, it was like a special occasion restaurant.
[00:54:54] Sean Peche: People would have engagements, not well, anniversaries and birthdays and things like [00:55:00] that. And B and Genie were just amazingly charismatic people. And so you would book. Let's say, let's say you book her and then they would say, so Stacey, you Yeah. You wanna come on the 22nd? Great. Is it a special occasion?
[00:55:13] Sean Peche: Yes. It's my anniversary. Yeah. Okay. This is before obviously online. And so then you'd arrive and they would go, Stacey, it's so good to see you. Happy anniversary. Yeah. Da, you know, they joined the dots Oh. Way before. And, and then it was just, it was so warm and welcoming and engaging with whoever walked through the door.
[00:55:30] Sean Peche: Um, and then it was taken over. They, it was challenging running a restaurant as a family because you busy at night and you're waking up in the morning and finding produce through the market. And you got young children that a young daughter and so they sold it and the person who took over, oh no, had none of that.
[00:55:48] Sean Peche: Oh, none of that. And was always, in fact, I remember he was charging VAT on our, on our tips, and I was studying accounting at the time. I said, listen, you can't do this, this, you can't deduct that on our test. He [00:56:00] goes, well, what do you know you're a university? I said, okay, I'll go and get a lecturer. And I went, got our tax lecturer's opinion.
[00:56:05] Sean Peche: And, and I took it and I said, look, you can't deduct this from our, and, and here's my tax lecturer's opinion. If you've got a problem with it, you know, please, uh, please let us know. But the difference was incredible. Well, what happened? The restaurant died with the guy who took over, completely died, and it became a pub.
[00:56:23] Sean Peche: And so, yeah. So I think, I think just being, yeah, just service, warm, welcoming, things like that. Yeah. Heard that from being Jeanie.
[00:56:33] Stacy Havener: That's a great story. I love that story. Thank you for sharing that with us. And I think it's a thread that's run throughout the entire podcast, to be honest. Really. If you think back to what we've talked about.
[00:56:45] Sean Peche: Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's, um, you can learn something from everybody and, uh, and you never know what's in the other side of the story. You know, you never know what somebody else is going through. Yeah. And all the rest. So I think, I think Tony Robbins just had this saying, you know, you always ask, [00:57:00] what else could this mean?
[00:57:01] Sean Peche: If your partner comes in and they snap at you, you know, your inclination is to wanna snap back at them, but you go, well, hang on. What's behind there? What else could this mean? And so you gotta stop and ask, Ooh,
[00:57:14] Stacy Havener: this is good. You gotta stop and
[00:57:15] Sean Peche: ask, what else could this mean based on, you know, the client's shouting at you, you don't know what's in the other side of that.
[00:57:20] Sean Peche: Maybe it's not just your performance, there's something else going on, so don't take it too personally.
[00:57:24] Stacy Havener: Ah, that is fantastic advice. And in fact, my next question is about it, it's about advice, which is, okay, so we did your first job. Given your experience now, what's something you'd tell your younger self?
[00:57:37] Sean Peche: Um, I should probably get my children into answer this question. Uh, I think, I think the couple of things. I mean, if, if we related to work, my one is make sure Yeah. That before you take, I guess there's, there's two things. The first is a decision making framework. Okay. So if you can, if something is difficult to reverse, take a long time to think of.[00:58:00]
[00:58:00] Sean Peche: Before you act. Okay, ah, if, if you can reverse something quickly, well then you can take less time. So, you know, if you, if you're going to, um, take a job, what, it's gonna be hard for you to get out of that. 'cause you could commit it, it's not gonna look good in your cv, et cetera. Just be cautious and think about it before you do that.
[00:58:18] Sean Peche: Um, whereas if the decision is easy, reversible, you can spend less time. So that's, so that's the one that's great. Um, but, but also regarding, if you apply that to our industry, I mean, there are lots of people who would like to leave and set up their own shop. That is a difficult decision to reverse. So the first thing I would say is make sure you've capitalized on all your goodwill at the organization before you leave.
[00:58:41] Okay?
[00:58:41] Sean Peche: So is, is there anything they can do to keep you, to make you happy? Um, is the absolutely thing. And if you go to them and, and they say there's nothing, well then that's fine because then you have no regrets and you wanna live life without regrets, which is, is that's a great point. So, so make sure you capitalize on all the goodwill.
[00:58:58] Sean Peche: Wherever you [00:59:00] are. Okay. Do, uh, do more than is expected. I mean, that's my golden rule. If you do more than is expected, your friendships, your clients, your relationships, I mean, you know, with children, then that's, that's the winner. So I just say to people, look, make sure you do more than is expected in all aspects of your life.
[00:59:17] Sean Peche: So for me, I need those. And you just take, you, take you longer to learn those than you wish you'd learned them earlier.
[00:59:23] Stacy Havener: Well, that's the thing you don't learn because it's an easy win. Yeah. You learn because it's a hard fall and then you go, oh, you know what? I probably should have done that. Sean, you are such a gift.
[00:59:39] Stacy Havener: Thank you for coming back to the show. Thank you for all this fantastic advice about building a business. You are doing it. It is so awesome to see you and I celebrate you and our friendship. I'm just very grateful. I.
[00:59:53] Sean Peche: Stacey, it's very kind. Thank you for inviting me back and you know, I'm not doing it alone.
[00:59:57] Sean Peche: I've got an amazing team who's doing it with me, but we're having fun [01:00:00] and, uh, look forward to seeing you in year in London.
[01:00:02] Stacy Havener: Yes, we'll see you next week.
[01:00:03] Sean Peche: Alright, thanks Stacey. Bye. Now,
[01:00:06] Stacy Havener: 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.
[01:00:20] 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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