Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Luke Sonnen: Hi, I’m Luke Sonnen. Welcome to The COO Roundtable, powered by PFI Advisors. Here’s your host, Matt Sonnen.
[00:00:25] Matt Sonnen: Hi everybody, you are about to hear a really great interview I did with Lynne Born of Wealth Architects and Aiki Altmets of Regimen Wealth. Due to some work from home technical difficulties, the audio sounds a little bit Frankenstein-ish, I apologize for that. We had to cobble together some computer audio along with some phone audio, and we were all three some problems. I apologize for that, but the content was so good and the conversation was so great, we didn’t want to rerecord the entire thing. We’ve spliced this together the best we could. Hopefully it’s not too distracting. Please enjoy this discussion.
[00:00:57] Matt Sonnen: Welcome back everyone to episode 23 of The COO Roundtable. Before we begin, I wanted to thank many of you, many people have reached out to me in the past few weeks to ask how I’m handling Eddie Van Halen’s death. I wrote a tribute to him on our blog and many have sent me articles and memories they’ve had growing up, listening to Van Halen and even still many others have shared who their version of Eddie Van Halen is. It’s been a fun bonding experience. I want to thank everyone for sharing with me. The last couple of weeks I’ve been going on YouTube, they have isolated guitar track, it’s actually the studio recordings, but they take out all the other instruments, they take out the vocals and you can just hear his guitar playing and just how amazing he was. I was laying on the couch the other day, listening to one of those, and Luke walked in and he rolled his eyes. He says, ”Dad is that Eddie Van Halen?” I said, ”Of course it is” He says, ”You’re only allowed to listen for one hour because it just makes you too sad.” For those of you that have been worried about me, have no fear, Luke is on the case and he’s making sure that I’m going to make it through. Thank you all for reaching out.Enough of that, I wanted to get right into today’s episode because we have two great guests. From Regimen Wealth in Atlanta, Georgia, we have the co-founder, COO, and CCO, Aiki Altmets. Aiki, thank you for being here today.
[00:02:19] Aiki Altmets: Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here.
[00:02:21] Matt Sonnen: Then joining Aiki is Lynne Born, President at Wealth Architects in Mountain View, California. I actually visited their offices just before, I think it must’ve been late February. It was just before everything got shut down, I was in their offices. Lynne, thank you for being here today.
[00:02:38] Lynne Born: You’re welcome. We had the privilege of meeting face-to-face. That’s an exciting thing this year.
[00:02:45] Matt Sonnen: Yes, it’s rare for 2020. Aiki, I’m going to go to you first, Regimen Wealth has an interesting story. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the firm and its recent founding with you and your business partner?
[00:02:58] Aiki Altmets: Regimen Wealth was actually founded on July 31st of this year, but our beginnings go back to 2000 whenIan Weinstein, the original founder and our CEO started at the Ameriprise employee channel, which I think at the time was actually American Express, as an advisor straight out of college on a draw, working elite cards and dialing for dollars. Like many success stories, just as he was about to throw in his towel, his efforts started to bear fruit. Few years later, he transitioned into the franchisee channel, and tomorrow we’re going to be celebrating our 90th day of being in an independent space. We currently have $200 million assets under management. We have six employees. As a firm, we offer wealth management services to high net worth clients, which isn’t all that different from what most RIAs out there do. How we differentiate ourselves is we have very heavy focus on in-depth financial planning, and we have an extensive menu of services of what that experience looks like. We also differentiate ourselves on the approaches that we take with our clients- our ideal client is an individual or a family with a net worth in the range of $3 to $20 million, who wants to understand their financial situation from beyond how their portfolio is doing, is open to recommendations, and wants to build a long-term partnership. Because of the business model that we’ve chosen, we ask a lot of our clients and they expect a lot of us. It has to be a good fit. Historically, we’ve grown organically and while we’re still only 90 days into being an Independent space, our focus is very much on developing the infrastructure to be able to do more for our clients and continue to grow organically. Once we’re able to resume our normal operations, we’ll certainly look to grow still organically, but also developing our team, promoting from within, and getting our house in order. From the bidding, should we eventually evaluate an acquisition, we are in a good position to do so.
[00:04:57] Matt Sonnen: You made one interesting comment there, that your ideal client is “open to recommendations”. I’ve spent a lot of time recently talking to advisors and RIAs about who their ideal client is and setting up the firm, “Who are you building this infrastructure for?” To steal Michael Kitces terminology, there’s “delegators”, and there’s “do-it-yourselfers”. A lot of people wind up building their entire business to serve as do-it-yourselfers, but they’re not really interested in hiring an RIA to begin with because they want to do it themselves. That was a very interesting that my ears perked up when you said that your ideal client is open to recommendations. That’s very true.
[00:05:40] Aiki Altmets: That’s important to us too.
[00:05:43] Matt Sonnen: That’s awesome. And Lynne, can you tell us a little bit about Wealth Architects?
[00:05:47] Lynne Born: Absolutely, I just want to congratulate Aiki on 90 days in business, that’s a milestone and I’m sure there’ll be many, many more 90 days, so that’s excellent, well done.
[00:05:51] Aiki Altmets: Thank you.
[00:05:54] Lynne Born: I am with Wealth Architects. We’ve been a firm for 15 years. We’ve got about $1.1 billion under management. We have grown all organically, thus far. We’ve got about 20 employees, and we’re growing. We grow every year, pretty methodically and pretty well. It’s been a rather impressive growth trajectory. Similar to Aiki, we define our ideal client a little bit differently than other firms. Our main focus for our clients, and actually for our team as well, is wellbeing. We like to say we’re redefining the meaning of the word ‘wealth’, because the original meaning in the old English language is health and wellbeing, it didn’t mean money. Of course, managing money is a big part of that story because our clients want to experience long-term stability. Stability is the foundation of well-being, but most firms focus on tactics and tools. We like to focus on what’s below the line, so to speak, vision, goals, and values. Values drive client decisions, so, “What is most important to them? What do they want to achieve out of life? What do they want their legacy to be?” We want to help them achieve those goals. Taking a values-based approach to life that falls into a wide range of assets, but we also take our time with potential clients because we want to make sure it’s the right fit on both sides.
[00:07:19] Matt Sonnen: Aiki talked about Ian back in the day dialing for dollars. 20 years ago this industry was all about, “I’m going to get you investment returns.” I really do think that the way you described it is perfect. I think that’s where advisors are really adding the value now is, not just making money for clients, but actually helping them figure out how they want to spend it, what they want to use the money for, and get the most out of not only their wealth, but out of their life. I love that.
[00:07:48] Lynne Born: Yes. We have a lot of executives with comp issues, pre IPO, women in transition, a lot of women executives, families in transition, so families that have young children and they want to build for their future, or clients who are beginning to think about transitioning into retirement. It’s a wide range of needs.
[00:08:08] Matt Sonnen: That’s great. You talked about the 15 year history, but you joined Wealth Architects in February of this year from outside the wealth management space. Can you give us a little bit of your background?
[00:08:20] Lynne Born: I am from outside the wealth management space. I’ve been a CEO and a COO of high net worth accounting firms, and there’s really a handful that I would consider to be true high net worth and ultra-high net worth. I was also the partner in charge of, what ended up being the largest multi-family office inside of an accounting firm. I’ve been in the financial services space and in the high net worth space for quite some time, but wealth management was an adjacency to me because of my background with our clients and helping them make decisions about what firms they wanted to work with, that kind of thing. Mark Johnson, who started the firm, Mark and I had been friends for a good 10 years and we were on each other’s board of advisors, and I was always really impressed with his approach to business. I had the pleasure of flying in from New York to facilitate a couple of strategic plans for Wealth Architects in strategic planning sessions retreats. I was frankly blown away at the alignment that I saw on the team, the alignment between the brand and the clients and what Wealth Architects is trying to do. I’ve done a lot of strategic planning and facilitated a lot of offsites and I’d never seen such a deep level of alignment, so that really, really impressed me. When Mark decided to add a president level role, I gave him a call. I said, ”Hey, why don’t we have a conversation?” Because I’ve always been the person that was pulling firms up into culture and into the modern era and trying to be more progressive with the way they approach business. Here Mark and the team had already set this up. That was just a real, real pleasure. I joined the firm in January and it’s been a crazy year to join of course, because of COVID and 2020, but a great year to join also. It’s always a good time to join a great firm and to help build a client base and help build the future of the firm.
[00:10:22] Matt Sonnen: That’s great. Then, Aiki talked about Wealth Architects has a 15-year history, you’ve got a 90-day history at the firm, but give us your backstory, please.
[00:10:31] Aiki Altmets: I have a 90-day history with Regimen Wealth, but it actually does go back much further than that. Just to backtrack, I was actually born and raised in Estonia, which is a tiny little town in North Eastern Europe. At the age of 17, I got an opportunity to come to the United States and while I’d always planned to go to university outside of Estonia, my timeline wasn’t quite in alignment with how the transition from high school to university works in the US. After some fumbling around, figuring it out, trying to figure out what to do, how to go about it, I ended up moving from Chicago back to Atlanta to finish college and needed a job and by sheer luck, I was hired on by an advisor who at the time shared office space with our CEO, Ian Weinstein. The only bad part about getting that job was that I needed to work full-time and he was only able to offer me hours part-time. And since I needed to support myself, I kept my job in Chicago, kept working for that advisor and that advisor actually offered to Ian if he needed additional help with his practice. I went to college full-time, worked three different jobs. I kept on working for Ian, kept on working through the tasks that he had assigned to me really quickly and not wanting to sit there idle, saw opportunities to streamline how he was running the practice, how he was running his client operations. I kept on proposing to him different solutions and he kept on letting me run with it. Over time that transitioned into being a full-time job and as the firm grew, we hired on more employees. Our client needs became more complex, our client-based became larger, and my role evolved through various zigs and zags and stints in financial planning, operations, client service and being an advisor, to the role that I am in today. Now, I did leave for a few years and worked at other firms, in the broker dealer, as well as in the RIA-space, got to experience really up close how large, RIA-space successful firms are run and bring that experience back to Regimen Wealth.
[00:12:35] Lynne Born: I don’t know when you’ve slept Aiki.
[laughter]
[00:12:41] Aiki Altmets: Occasionally. I could use some tips.
[00:12:44] Matt Sonnen: What a story! Let’s talk about entrepreneurship. I talk about this a lot, not every advisor in our industry is entrepreneurial. They simply want to show up every day and focus on their clients and not think about running a business and that’s totally fine. Both of you, we’ve heard from your stories, both of you have a very strong entrepreneurial spirit. Aiki just launched a business in the middle of a global pandemic. Lynne, I’ll go to you first. You and I have discussed how you’ve always focused your efforts on encouraging and developing entrepreneurs in the firms that you’ve led. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
[00:13:15] Lynne Born: I think in this day and age, if you’re going to lead a business, you have to have an entrepreneurial heart. There’s so much happening in the business landscape that is challenging and problematic and so much work has to go into differentiating yourself. You really have to take approach no matter what business you’re in to be, to stay competitive and to be very entrepreneurial in your design of the business. A couple of core concepts there have to do with being courageous. We’ve been talking a lot with the team about trust, courage, and competence. I think all of those work together, because you can’t just go flying off with a bunch of ideas, you’ve got to ground yourself and put some structure in place and create an iterative, circular, reinforcing structure that helps push the business forward and serves the client’s needs. When I think about being entrepreneurial, I think about it from the point of view of the firm being entrepreneurial, and from the point of view of team members, individuals being entrepreneurial. If the firm is going to be an entrepreneurial, you’ve got to focus on your next gen and you have to support all the ways in which they need to grow and evolve themselves as professionals, and as client facing professionals. The skill-set needed in this business is so fascinating because it is very human, it’s very centered, as I said earlier on people’s values and what they want to get out of life, but then there’s this underpinning of this technical expertise and competence that is needed and that’s seemingly contradictory, but the two have to work hand in hand. I think also from the point of view of the firm itself, you have to have a very, very clear strategic plan and I mean, classic, just like I mentioned earlier, how I met the whole team, classic, offsite, real strategic planning, I think done yearly. You’ve got to pay attention. I think that plan has to roll down to various teams, bringing those goals to life. I think every individual’s person’s goals needs to roll back up to the overarching goal of the company as well. There’s, again, this, I like to think of it, like three-dimensional chess out of Star Trek, where all the pieces have to come together in this interesting, synergistic way. I think we’ve talked about this a little bit already, your differentiation. Super, super clear differentiation because a lot of firms are saying, oh, they took a holistic approach or back in the accounting space, every mission statement of every accounting firm and probably law firm is pretty much exactly same, “To serve our clients really well with integrity,” type of thing. That’s not differentiated well. I do love this strategy called Blue Ocean Strategy. That is all about how do you get out of the red ocean of competition and come up with a way that you are truly differentiated. Going back to Mark’s origination of the firm and all the teams work all these years, the science of wellbeing, that is a science and an art, it’s not some airy fairy thing. There’s all sorts of science, and some of the most popular classes from Yale and Harvard have to do with the science of well-being. Mark’s original vision is being proven by what has happened in the market around authenticity and being genuine. That’s interesting to see that happen. I do think that’s very, very much tied to the next gen. I think the way the next gen looks at life and looks at business is much more organically situated around, again, well-being and values and what they want to get out of life, and they want to give something back. We’re seeing that in the current day and age here with social upheaval and really needing to re-look at our social structures and see how the world was designed. I think we’ve revealed there’s some certain problems there. Then my final point is about the individual. Back to supporting the individual, you have to have business generators. You can’t just have the originators of the firm be the only people bringing in clients, and so what do you need to do for that? You need to help your advisors learn the skills that are necessary. You need to deconstruct it because a lot of folks make it bigger than it is, they make it more terrifying than it is. Again, all it is, “Do you have some genuine contacts that you really like? That you enjoy spending time with? That understand what you’re providing to the firm and would be happy to refer clients over?” You only need two to three of those in any given year. Again, it should be fun because they should be genuine, authentic relationships. That’s something you can help your 20, 30-year-old advisors do because they should be networking. Their college roommates are going to become controllers and then CFOs. Their networking exists even at that level of 20, 30-year-olds. Then I think back to the entrepreneurial heart, the senior advisors, they have to have the courage to say, “I’m going to commit to trying to bring in a certain number of net new assets.” That takes some courage to do, back to being an entrepreneur, but when you make the commitment, then it’s something you are striving for. That of course contributes again to that overarching strategic plan. I’ve seen that in my years with my previous firms really come together, all these things can come together and it starts to fuel a momentum. That is a very beautiful thing to experience.
[00:18:54] Matt Sonnen: I love that entrepreneurial heart at both the firm level and the individual level. I think that’s fantastic. Aiki, let’s talk about what drove you to become a business owner. You could have very easily stayed at Ameriprise and continue doing what you were doing, but what drove you to make this leap?
[00:19:07] Aiki Altmets: For us, the biggest thing I think was control. We wanted full and complete control over our firm and what we offer to our clients and how we go about doing that, as well as what we’re able to offer to our team. If you work in this space, that if you break away from a captive audience and you go somewhere else, they’re big checks to be had and we did evaluate all the opportunities that were out there, going independent versus going into the captive audience, and we just realized that what is going to be in the best interest of our clients and the best interests of our firm is just going to be– There’s no better place for it than being in the independent space.
[00:19:47] Matt Sonnen: That’s great. Then as you’ve launched the firm, you’ve taken on the COO and CCO role at Regimen Wealth and the joke I’ve made on this podcast, many times, you probably didn’t grow up dreaming to be the chief operating officer of an RIA. Where do you turn to get education as you’ve launched the firm and you’re drinking through this firehose of trying to figure out the operations of the firm?
[00:20:07] Aiki Altmets: No joke there. I actually wanted to be a pilot.
[00:20:09] Matt Sonnen: Awesome.
[00:20:10] Aiki Altmets: I was so serious about it. I got into Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University but that’s a story for another time. To your question, what I found is that there’s a lot of information out there for advisors and there isn’t nearly as much information for operations professionals who support those advisors. However, I do think it’s changing, and it’s drastically changed in the last couple of years. Where I’ve always turned to is, I turn to my peers and I talk to other operations professionals to learn from their experience, get their feedback, brainstorm, use them as a sounding board, I could try to seek out books, whether it be for industry-specific or my role specifically or otherwise. Lastly, most recently, actually, The COO Roundtable Podcast. I found your podcast far before we even considered going in to or entering the independent space. I was exactly on a mission to tap into the brainpower of other professionals in our space.
[00:21:12] Matt Sonnen: Awesome. Lynne, we talked about, you’re clearly not new to entrepreneurship or business, but being that this is your first foray into wealth management, what have you done in terms of self-study to get yourself up to speed on the ins and outs of our industry? You mentioned Blue Ocean, that’s a fantastic book. I’ve read that, but what else have you done to get yourself up to speed?
[00:21:30] Lynne Born: I’ve always taken an organizational development approach to running business. That’s been my discipline. I do think if you are a businessperson in the main, you should be able to plant your skills in different areas. That said, every business absolutely has its own unique parameters and is its own unique animals. Similar to Aiki, one of the first things I did was reach out to other firms and we’re a member of DFA. They were lovely and they put together a study group of other CEOs and presidents. That’s been really, really helpful and just reaching out to other leaders. I’ve reached out to a lot of women leaders and everybody is so open and kind and willing to help. That’s been very, very helpful. I think the other thing that matters, though, is it’s not only learning about investment strategies or learning about the business, I think it’s, again, back to this idea of, “What is it we are actually offering our clients?” For example, we have a Wealth Architects University right now for our clients and our topic is compassion, well-being, the Science of Happiness. We have a professor from Stanford, Dr. Emma Seppälä. Again, I was saying earlier, this is a science as well. I’ve just always been a lifelong learner anyway. I’m a very curious person and I’m always reading. There’s such a wide range of things that need to be absorbed in addition, again, to the specifics of the business. Also, again, especially I think, given this year, the underpinnings of diversity and inclusion are extremely important. What kind of culture, what kind of values on your company bring those people to your team? It may seem far afield from your question, but I actually don’t think that it is, because again, just through our own values, we’ve built this very, very diverse team. I think that’s just extremely important and part of the knowledge base that is brought to the company and brought to our clients.
[00:23:30] Matt Sonnen: Yes, I love what you said, “What are we offering our clients?” We said it earlier, it’s this industry, we’ve really evolved. It’s so much more than just investments now. I love bringing in so many different areas into that. It’s fantastic.
[00:23:43] Lynne Born: Yes, that’s what’s really been such a great joy for me. Again, as I said earlier, just the well-rounded nature of all of the advisors and the affection, and the dedication, and the commitment the clients have back is just a beautiful thing.
[00:24:01] Matt Sonnen: That’s great. Aiki, I had mentioned you took on the CEO and CCO roles and then Ian, your business partner, he’s taken on the CEO role. Why don’t you talk to us a little bit about how the two of you are dividing your responsibilities?
[00:24:13] Aiki Altmets: At this phase of our transition, we’re still very much dividing and conquering on a daily basis, but Ian’s focus is very much on strategy, investments, reporting and financials. He’s also the advisor for our clients. I get the fun jobs like compliance, but I manage our day-to-day operations, ensure that our team has everything that they need in order to be successful in their roles and feel supported. I manage our technology desk. For Ian and I, I think it’s always been fairly simple to run the business together because we’re very much in alignment as far as our core values and our thought process goes. There’s also some overlap in our skill sets, but it’s different enough that it’s specialized in different aspects of the business.
[00:24:58] Matt Sonnen: Yes, they always say partner with somebody that does things that you’re not good at and vice versa. I think the two of you make a great team. It’s great. Then, Lynne, you mentioned that you work very closely with Mark, Wealth Architects’ CEO. How are the two of you running the firm together?
[00:25:11] Lynne Born: Yes. Mark, I don’t know where we got the energy, he seemed to be doing one and a half to two jobs anyway. There was more than enough to do. I hope there’s been some feeling of relief there. It isn’t only Mark and I though. We do have an executive team. The four of us are very close and talk frequently. We have our head of investments and our CAO, are also part of the executive team. We also like to, I guess, they call it the inverse pyramid, we like to turn everything upside down wherever we can and try to be innovative. We do expect all of our team members to be a leader in their seat. Everybody on the team is leading something, they’re making some contribution to the firm, and I mean everybody, not just our senior advisors as well. Although our senior advisors are also part of an advisory council. Then we meet once a month as well. We’ve got a governance structure that is also fueled, though by– Steve Jobs said this great quote that I like, “Don’t run by hierarchy. Run by ideas.” What we’ve tried to do is set up different groupings to have those ideas. Then, if you’re unfortunate enough to be the one to bring the idea to the table, you’ve probably just volunteered yourself to lead it and make it happen. Then as far as the rest, between Mark and I, we do share strategy. I will be the one though to go off and create a continuous structure to make it happen, to make sure it’s integrated, to make sure that it flows up to our overarching strategy. Mark will be more client-facing and really is out there in our community of clients. Although I will, I don’t at the moment yet, but I have always had clients and I consider it about 20 or 30% of my time. I think it’s important for a couple of reasons. I’m in touch with client service, I’m in touch with what they need. I love having clients, I love the dynamic of it. I love helping people, and then also it helps me internally. If I have to bill my own clients, I get my hands in the billing process as an example and I can see where we might need to make tweaks or changes or improvements type of thing.
[00:27:26] Matt Sonnen: That’s great. Technology, especially this year in this crazy work from home environment, technology is so crucial to our businesses. On an earlier call, Aiki had a great quote, she said, “Technology is both a blessing and a curse for all of us.” Lynne, I’m going to go to you first, how have you approached the technology systems at the firm?
[00:27:45] Lynne Born: I hear already, in my various calls and benchmarking, people saying, “There isn’t a single unified solution.” Matt, you would know more about that than anyone.
[00:27:54] Matt Sonnen: Yes.
[00:27:54] Lynne Born: I’m sure that’s true, but I have to say I’m really impressed with the technology landscape in the RIA world. Most firms were cloud-based, we went remote over a weekend. It was amazing. Coming from very high-end accounting firms but in those environments, you switch from one software to another to another and there are several companies that have been trying for decades to unify and they have not succeeded. I see a much more unified landscape in the RIA world. As far as technology overall, though, just as I am a believer in strategic HR, I’m a believer in strategic IT and I do try to look at technology both from the team’s point of view, to make it as seamless and efficient as possible, but from the client’s point of view. You want things to be painless for the clients. We all know– Even I, I’ve got one login for my portal for my bank and one login from my portal for– We all go on and on and on. How do we keep track of our passwords? We really try to work closely, so that all those client touchpoints, as much as possible, are facilitated with ease through technology.
[00:29:04] Matt Sonnen: I love it. Aiki, you’ve had to set up all-new technology systems as you’ve launched the firm. What have you learned during your attempts to integrate all of these various back-office systems?
[00:29:13] Aiki Altmets: This question reminds me of a time when I took a computer science class and the very first thing that the professor told us was that if you’re ever in charge of technology, just know that very rarely are technology projects on time and on budget. Our experience has not been too far from that. I think that what we’ve learned is that integration means very different things to different people. I think that rarely do the solutions work the way they’re presented to you and even if you’ve chosen an open architecture structure like we have, you still probably will end up having to do some custom work to get things work the way you want them to and in order to be able to service your clients and run your operations more effectively. Many providers have a tendency to over-promise and under deliver, and for us in the spaces that we play, the support can vary drastically. You just have to go into it, ready to handle a lot of those issues.
[00:30:17] Matt Sonnen: Yes. I want to wrap things up today, I want to go back to the entrepreneurial theme because that was so great what both of you were saying earlier. Let me ask you both, in your opinion, what is the number one quality needed in an entrepreneur and what entrepreneurial characteristics help each of you in your respective roles? Aiki, I’m going to go to you first on this one.
[00:30:35] Aiki Altmets: I think adaptability, there is no day where I come in and I get to execute according to my plan on that day. You have to have the aptitude to manage always having things thrown at you, being able to manage the stress that comes with it and still do your role effectively. Adaptability is also for us, actually, one of the core competencies that we look for when we hire for a team. I think the COO role or a hybrid of one isn’t an easy job, but it can be incredibly rewarding, especially if you’re in a firm where non-revenue generating roles are valued, which I know can be difficult finding in our industry.
[00:31:17] Matt Sonnen: The two of you did not compare answers before this. Lynne, this is a tough one to beat, adaptability, because I liked that one a lot. Lynne, what do you think?
[00:31:27] Lynne Born: Alright, well, I’m not going to beat anybody. We’re going to compare notes here, little more benchmarking. I’m leading up to the word courage, but I’m leading up to it by what is interesting about entrepreneurs is there’s this odd contradictory approach. You have to be very passionate, but you have to be very self-disciplined and those may seem like they don’t go together, but they have to. Or you have to be extremely competent, but you have to be very creative in your thinking as well, because that’s where you get your differentiated space and how you service your clients in ways that are unique and innovative. You have to be extremely persistent, there’s this odd combination of these highly driven emotional approaches, along with an underpinning of competence and discipline. I do think the overriding, for me anyway, way to look at it is courage, and sometimes you just have to have courage tattooed on your forehead. I do a lot of data analysis and I take a deep dive and I’ll focus and concentrate, but in the end, you’re jumping off the cliff saying, “This is my best guess and it takes courage to do that.” There you go.
[00:32:46] Matt Sonnen: I like it, I’m going to say you cheated because you use more than one word, passionate, self-discipline, courage, I love them all.
[00:32:55] Lynne Born: Well, I’m going number one was courage, but like I said, underpinning it is this odd contradiction, that’s the funny thing.
[00:33:04] Matt Sonnen: I love it. Well, this has been fantastic, I can’t thank you both enough for joining us today. Aiki, thank you so much.
[00:33:10] Aiki Altmets: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
[00:33:11] Matt Sonnen: Yes. Lynne, thank you for everything, all of your insights today, this has been great.
[00:33:18] Lynne Born: My pleasure and thank you. It’s been really great to know you Matt and thank you for all your generosity in this past year, you’ve been very helpful to me, I really appreciate it.
[00:33:27] Matt Sonnen: Absolutely. Thank you, and all of our listeners thank you for joining us for another episode and we will talk to you all soon.
