Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2nd Investor Day. This is a very exciting day for all of us here at Focus. Thank you to both our virtual audience and in person for spending the morning with us. We have a great session planned based on the ongoing dialogue we've had with you over the last 2 years since our first Investor Day. We're gathered here today for three reasons. First, we've made tremendous progress in every dimension of our business since our first Investor Day. We're updating our 2025 strategy and financial targets to reflect that. To put this into context, a few highlights from the last 2 years. Mind you, with COVID in the background, we've grown from 63 partner firms to about 80 today. We've increased revenues nearly 64% from $1.1 billion in Q3 2019 on an LTM basis to an estimated $1.8 billion this year. We've introduced a new merger model and expanded it globally into four countries. We've enhanced and expanded our value-added programs, adding capabilities in areas such as trust, cash and credit, insurance and valuation, and talent management. We've seen growth in our stock price from about $26 two years ago to nearly $67 as of the close yesterday, enabling us to deliver a total return to you of over 155%. We at Focus are all very proud of these accomplishments. Jim Shanahan, our CFO, will give you more context on our financial path forward. The second reason that we're here today is because you, our investors, have asked us several important questions which influence the valuation of our stock. What really differentiates our business versus the competition? What's our growth profile, both organic and inorganic? How have our transaction returns trended over time? What's the sustainability of our current momentum over the long term? And how have our value-added services really helped our partners? We've listened, and today we'll answer those questions. Third, we're here to hear what our partner firms think. Our partners provide valuable perspective on what it's like to work with us. Why are they joining Focus? What is it about our model and value proposition that attracts them versus other choices that they may have had? How have we helped them achieve their visions for success? And how do they benefit from being part of the Focus family? We're represented here today by about 30 of our partner firms, about half of whom are here in person. Rudy, Rajini, and Lenny will each host a partner panel following their presentations. These are meant to be interactive sessions, so please feel free to ask them any questions that you might have. For our virtual audience, you can submit a question through the Q&A function on the page where you're viewing the live stream. In addition to our partners, we have the senior leadership of our M&A and value-added services teams here today. We encourage everyone here in person to talk with them and with our partners at the coffee break and over lunch. We're thrilled to share with you our progress and the future we envision for our business. We firmly believe that if there is one company to invest in in the wealth management space, it's Focus. With that, let me now turn things over to Rusty McGranahan, our General Counsel. Good morning, everyone. Before we begin, let me remind you that during the course of this Investor Day, we may make a number of forward-looking statements. We call your attention to the fact that Focus results may of course differ from these statements. These statements are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to Focus Financial Partners and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the results of Focus to materially differ from these statements. Focus has made filings with the SEC, which lists some of the factors that may cause its results to differ materially from these statements, including without limitation, uncertainties surrounding the current COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, Focus assumes no duty and does not undertake to update any such forward-looking statements. With that, we will now kick things off with a short video. More than 15 years ago, at the kitchen tables of our founders, our business began with one fundamental insight: Never turn a successful entrepreneur into an employee. Today, we're a partnership of more than 75 firms and a market leader in independent wealth management. We are delivering exceptional value for our partners, their clients, and our shareholders, but we're just getting started. We're the partner of choice in one of the most attractive segments of financial services that today is a $6 trillion industry in the U.S. and a multi-trillion dollar opportunity in the three other countries in which we operate. Our industry is rapidly consolidating, driven by three powerful tailwinds. The inevitability of succession, the need for scale, and the demand for highly personalized fiduciary advice will support sustained momentum for many years to come. We're a strategic permanent capital investor with a unique value proposition. The power of the entrepreneur is at the heart of everything we do. We acquire successful entrepreneur-led businesses. We help them build on their success, serve their clients better, and unlock growth by sharing our value-added services and best practices, and by providing a ready source of growth capital. We've built a diverse partnership of industry leaders. That diversity creates opportunity, fosters innovation, and provides perspective, which benefits all of our partners. We're putting our industry-leading scale to work for them. We turn that advantage into innovation, developing new tools and resources that continuously expand their potential. Our high-growth business is complemented by a tax-efficient financial model that drives strong, sustained performance. The COVID crisis demonstrated our resiliency and nimbleness. We emerged even stronger and are capitalizing on our strengths. We are excited about the future. We are turning possibility into growth into performance, and performance into long-term value. We are Focus Financial Partners. Good morning, and thank you all for coming today. It's good to see so many familiar faces here in the room, and we know many of you are remote. Today is really your day. It was a day that is very much in demand from the investor and the research community. As Tina said, we hope that we are going to answer some of the most important questions that many of you have asked us for quite a number of years. Now, we thought this is the right time to do this because when we had our last investor day two years ago, quite frankly, we all lived in a different world. The level of change, the level of challenges that the world and our industry and Focus had to go through, we could not have predicted. If there's one thing we are proud of is the resiliency and growth dynamic here that we demonstrated even in very difficult and challenging times. We are going to build on the vision that we laid out two years ago. Let me bring you back to the very start of Focus. In 2006, the three founders, Virginie, Lenny, and I ultimately had one conviction, and that is the best technology of wealth management is ultimately advice delivered through a fiduciary model by nimble entrepreneurs, ultimately to in a highly differentiated model, you know, to predominantly wealthy and very wealthy clients. You have heard the tagline, and certainly our partners in the room have heard this tagline many, many times, and that is, "Never turn a successful entrepreneur into an employee." We are very proud to have, you're going to meet some of them today, we have the Elon Musks and the Steve Jobs of the wealth management industry here among our partners. If there's one thing I can assure you, is ultimately that, they are entrepreneurs, they are not employees. In fact, some of these titans of industry try to be employees, and you may know, yeah, it didn't work out so well. We are really the only platform in this industry that fully embraces this decentralized entrepreneurial model, but then at the same time surrounds these leaders with resources, capabilities, permanent capital, that, quite frankly, nobody else in this industry has done and can do. When we last met only two years ago, although it feels almost like a century ago, Focus was about $1.1 billion in revenues, $240 million in adjusted EBITDA, and we operated at about a 21% margin. This was the starting point. We laid out for you our vision 2025, which was ultimately a very substantial growth based on the conviction that our model resonates in this industry, our model is going to grow for years and years to come. Today, based on the trajectory that we had here, based on the progress that we have made in just about every component of the business, and you'll be hearing more about this from Lenny and Virginie and from our panels. Today, we are here to update this vision for you. We believe that by 2025, we will be able to accomplish growth to $4 billion in revenues, $1.1 billion in EBITDA. Yes, the question that just about all of you have asked us and again and again, we believe that our 24% margin target can ultimately go to 28% margins. We'll probably have about 125 partner firms at this point. I hope that today you will leave this room, you will leave this presentation, recognizing that this is an achievable, yes and aggressive, but an achievable, objective that we are presenting here. Why is this achievable? It is achievable because when you look through just about every component of the business, only during the last two years, our progress has been, quite frankly, beyond what we ourselves expected. This is not just quantitative in terms of the numerics that you're very familiar with, but it is basically all of the components, probably most important and the area I'm most proud of, and Lenny is going to cover in his presentation, it's the value-added services. You know, Focus from its start was always about value-added services to our partners, and we have just made tremendous progress in this area. Focus on the right, today, Focus is well in excess of $350 billion in assets. We have 82 partner firms. I know some of you commented over breakfast, we just made another terrific announcement yesterday for a new transaction. We are operating in 4 countries, and we are over 4,800 employees and partners. Ultimately, a scale of an organization that quite frankly never existed in this industry before. In so many ways, we have only started on this journey. If there's one area we are very proud of, and we believe certainly acclaim. In financial services, you know, you rarely see this level of consistency in performance and growth. It was not just in the very early years, but the way we could sustain ultimately a 30% annual growth even in times of very complex times like last year is highly distinctive. In fact, since we last met, only two years, our revenues compounded by over 20% and our EBITDA compounded by over 30% and overall profitability at 40%. It is this and the margin expansion. You know, just think about this two-year challenging period, we continued to grow, we expanded our margin and the business managed to materially de-lever. This is what we believe a highly unusual and a very, very powerful business model. So what were the top questions that we heard you again and again asking? I'm going to answer the first four. First, why do partners join us? Second, what are the returns that we achieve when we deploy capital? Third, what is our organic growth rate? Fourth, how sustainable is this business model for the future? Let's start with why do people join us. Yeah, ultimately, we firmly believe that if you're an entrepreneurial, well-managed, well-established advisory firm in our industry, that ultimately only the Focus business model celebrates entrepreneurship, as I laid out before, but then at the same time combines it with value-added services and with permanent capital. Yes, there's a lot of activity, asset managers, banks, and others are investing in this space, but they ultimately look at the firm just as a distribution platform. They lose their independence. They certainly do not have access to the level of value-added services that we can uniquely provide in this industry. Banks. You know, banks have been very active in this space for years, but entrepreneurship and banking, unfortunately, does not fit together. Again, it is an inferior model. Yes, many firms ultimately choose to operate with us because they believe that this model that we developed by entrepreneur for entrepreneurs is the most differentiated model in this industry. What do we mean by never turning an entrepreneur into an employee? Our partners, and you're going to meet many of them today, our partners ultimately are accountable for running their day-to-day business fundamentally like they did before. Any change in their business models is ultimately at their decision. It is our task, when we provide value-added services to these partners, to make them so compelling that in their decision they ultimately adopt them. Quite frankly, there is tremendous demand for the value-added services that we are providing, but it is at the partner's choice. It is not because we tell them to use any of these services. Lenny is going to spend much more time on the value-added side. We firmly believe this track record that we have built since 2006. The scale, this unique scale that we have operating in this industry, you know, ultimately allows us, you know, to have relationships, purchasing power, insights, you know, that ultimately are very unique for an organization of our scale. Your second question. What are the returns that we create when we deploy capital? You've seen a similar chart two years ago, but I'm here to tell you that our returns have improved further from the numbers that we shared two years ago. In fact, 90% of all the transactions that we have done generate returns with very conservative math. You know, this is one of those charts where you really need to read the footnotes. In fact, one of the big assumptions that we're using is multiple in is multiple out, so we don't assume multiple expansion in these numbers. With 41 partner firms generating returns above 30%, we believe we really have a track record second to none in deploying capital in this space. Now, the reason for this very attractive returns is the core of our business model. We invest in excellent entrepreneurs with a long track record of success. When we cannot add value to them, quite frankly, rule number one is just leave them alone doing their job. When we can add value to them, yes, then we are here with resources that really can change the course of history. The number of firms that you are going to see today that triple, quintuple, 10x scaling after they joined us is absolutely tremendous, and quite frankly, one of the things that, yeah, Rajini, Lenny, and I are very, very proud of. You take this investment in high-quality firms, and you add to it, you know, the very low cost of capital. We probably have the lowest cost of capital in this industry. You're adding to it the very tax-efficient structure that we have. Yes, this is highly attractive, and this ultimately generates the type of returns. Our CFO, Jim Shanahan, is going to talk about this in a minute. Clearly for some of you, this is probably the most important, or the next slide is the most important slide of the whole day. That is here, what is the organic growth rate here that we have that our partners have generated? This is the slide that all of you have seen. Our portfolio compounds at about 15% on an annual basis, which then breaks into partner firms that have done M&A transactions here at 16%, and those who have not, which is 10.9%. These are the numbers that we update every quarter to give you a good sense about the trajectory of our underlying portfolio. Today, for the first time, I'm actually showing you what is the growth rate for partners excluding M&A. We're taking the 15%, and when we look at the growth rate of our partner firms excluding M&A, it's 9.6%. This includes also our high-end multi-family offices and business managers who had, of course, more impact of the COVID crisis in the last couple of years. If we then look just at the biggest part of our business, the biggest percentage of revenues and earnings, and this is the RIA, it's the U.S. RIAs, they grew at 11.2%. 11.2%, yeah, you can do the math here for what the market impact is with a 55-45% portfolio. We believe this is highly distinctive growth from an investor perspective. Yes, this model can continue to grow significantly. Reason number one, quite frankly, is we are in a vast market. Yes, we are very proud of this $350 billion. Just in the U.S., you know, it's a $22 billion industry projected to grow to $30 trillion. RIAs are the fastest-growing segment, and we are the best, the deepest established player in the RIA segment. This is just the U.S. You know, we have tremendous opportunity in a number of the international markets that you're going to hear later about. It is also an industry, very unique, that does not experience pricing pressure. What our partners, and I hope you'll get a good sense for this today, but what our partners provide as advice to their clients is so important, it's so critical, you know, that ultimately, you know, the price elasticity, and quite frankly, simply there is no pricing pressure, very different to the asset management industry. In fact, this is not a scientific survey, but you know, I send surveys to our partners on a quite regular basis. We asked them in our most recent survey, "So how many of you have changed pricing?" Again, very stable, only a quarter has. What has been the impact of the pricing? Almost 70% saw an increase in revenues based on the changes. It's a large industry, it's a growing industry. It has no pricing pressure, and it is a consolidating industry. In fact, you know, in so many ways, we have invented, you know, the systematic consolidation, systematic value-added consolidation in this industry. If you just look at the U.S., where probably $3 trillion is in motion, you know, over the next 5, probably not even 10 years, 5-7 years. It will require $60 billion-$100 billion in capital to support this consolidation activity. There is not enough capital in this industry to do that. Even more important, you know, money is cheap. Even more important, there's not enough M&A expertise and certainly not enough access to value-added capabilities that ultimately can make this an attractive opportunity. Nobody, we firmly believe, is better positioned to take advantage of this opportunity in the U.S. and beyond. Now, many of you have seen the Power Curve. We believe this is applying to this industry. Yes, you hear a lot about players that have entered this space recently, but when you look at other industry consolidation, other industries, it's easy to spend money. It is very hard to create value. Certainly very hard to create value at the levels that you have seen before. We ultimately believe that, yes, there are many players out there, but very few will be ultimately on the right-hand side, you know, of the graph. Most players will barely break even, and the rest, they will be big losers. The big losers are those, quite frankly, that are deploying capital at too high multiples too fast without the expertise and the underlying business model to generate value through their strategies. In fact, just to illustrate it, you know, a firm that doesn't have a robust value proposition, if they only see a 10% drop in revenue and earnings growth, ultimately, their returns will drop by 16%. It is ultimately, you know, the power of the business model that really defines, you know, success in this industry, and we believe, yeah, we are in a very strong position here. What is our strategy ultimately to get us, you know, to these high aspirations that we are laying out for you here today? The way we look at our business model is ultimately we are operating at a unique scale, unique expertise, and we have access to data and information that is second to none in this industry. The way we look at the future, we are looking at four dimensions of the business. Dimension number one is client value. No business model is sustainable unless it ultimately delivers clear, tangible value to the clients. Today, your clients benefit, and you will hear it from our partners at our various panels. Clients benefit through the affiliation of a partner firm with Focus because we help with succession planning, continuity of advice, access to resources and services. Going forward, we are going to deepen. You will hear about these programs today. You know, we are going to deepen access to investments, to credit, to trust, protection, and other capabilities. All of these programs we have underway, but all of these programs that we are going to scale. In the future, even more than today, partners will be able to look their clients in the eye and say, "By joining up with Focus, I did the fiduciary thing. I did not sell to a bank or an asset manager, but ultimately, I did the right thing because it is good for you as a client." Second, of course, it's about partner value added. While today most of the direct impact we are having is really in the business optimization practice management, going forward, we will be, and you will hear about some of these initiatives again, we will be helping our partners recruit, win the war for talent in this industry, and ultimately help them with access to client leads. Third, our business mix is already highly diverse. You know, we are very proud of this diversity among our partner firms, but at the core, you know, these are predominantly wealth management businesses and high-end multifamily offices and business managers. You will hear from us about OCIOs. You will hear more about expanding in some of the TPA areas. Quite frankly, there are a number of additional services and capabilities that we are currently taking deep interest in, and you will be hearing more of them. All of them ultimately are here to better surround these clients with capabilities that are unique and critical in this industry. From a geographic perspective, yes, today we are predominantly still a U.S. business, but we are operating in U.K., Canada, and Australia. You will hear more about markets like Switzerland, Singapore, probably other European markets. Particularly, my co-founder, Virginie, is very interested in cross-border capabilities, which are highly distinctive and very, very attractive. It is taking all the dimensions where we believe we are market leaders today and expanding based on the scale and expertise that we have built to ultimately capture Focus 2025. In closing, $4 billion in revenues, $1.1 billion in adjusted EBITDA, 28% margin, probably 125 partner firms. The way we will get there is first and foremost through the existing partner firms that we have today. And that's another very important takeaway of today. You know, roughly we are about $1.8 billion in revenues today, and $1.5 billion of this growth. Jim and I expect to ultimately come through the organic growth of our partner firms, both in terms of their base and the merger business. This is one of the most important messages here that we are sending. It's this existing portfolio and the track record of value added that ultimately contribute $1.5 billion of this growth. $0.7 billion, $700 million in incremental revenues will come through holding company transactions. I hope you agree that it is an aspirational vision. I hope you agree that ultimately we have the track record, the resources, and most important, the strategy to ultimately get us to Focus 2025. Thank you all, and I hope you're going to enjoy the rest of the day, getting deeper and deeper into concepts that I just shared. Thank you. The magic in Focus, I think, is that Focus, as a large-scale enterprise with a $5 billion market cap, has figured out that the product is the entrepreneur. From the first introduction to Lenny, hearing him say that they don't wanna turn successful entrepreneurs into employees, that really resonated with our team. We quickly learned that Focus was really the only partner that was gonna truly add value and allow us to remain independent. One of the great things about Focus is that they have enabled us to continue our entrepreneurial spirit, which was near and dear to us as we founded this firm, the culture and the values, while providing significant support and best practice backup when we need it. We also have access to the broad partnership, the collective knowledge that brings with it, and the strategic resources that Focus brings to the relationship. Focus and the broader partnership allows any RIA, regardless of where they are in their growth and their progression of their business, to punch above their weight class. Their help on the legal side, on the marketing side, the auditing they do of all your processes and those best practices you learn from the other firms, everything gets tightened up. I can pick up the phone and literally call any partner, and they pick up, and they're always happy to help. Knowing they're gonna call me back, be honest with me, be helpful to me, because this is a professional family that we all belong to. Focus creates this nice environment where you can have an open dialogue with no pressure, but where you can discover something that might be very valuable for how you steer your firm going forward. Something magic happens there where people really don't have their guards up, and these are partners, not potential competitors. The power of that, of changing from competitor to partner, now having access to some of the top firms in the world, frankly, in the RIA space, it's been huge. The power of the Focus network is exponentially getting greater and greater. I can say that absolutely everything that was told to me, that was asked of me, that was promised to be delivered, has been tenfold. It's a wide-open sharing peer-to-peer experience network. That's the magic of the model, is that as it grows even larger from here, it will never lose that innovation spirit. It will never lose that strategic sort of drive because it's relentless and organic. We get to run our business as we always have, but we now have the benefit of the much larger Focus organization to help us be better than we could be on our own. Smart people who have something really unique to offer, who wanna grow and wanna use the leverage that Focus provides. I don't think there is a better model. Good morning. Morning. I have to say, I'm so excited to see all of you on the panel here. I can assure you, there's no other organization in this industry globally that can put this type of a panel together. This is the first panel of the day. My assignment was to introduce you to some of the longest-tenured partners. I did not say one of the oldest, just the longest-tenured partners. Really, in many ways, you'll hear the Focus story from them. I think there's no better group than you guys here coming together. Quite frankly, many of these firms were leaders in this industry long before, you know, they joined Focus. Ultimately, we, in partnership, you know, could help them, you know, move their businesses simply to another level. With this, Mark, Adam, Roger, Mike and Mickey, can you just give us a very quick synopsis of your firm? We'll just go around starting with you, Mark. I'll start. I'm Mark Delfino. I run HoyleCohen. HoyleCohen's a wealth management firm based in San Diego. HoyleCohen became part of the Focus network in 2006, so it is the first year vintage firm. I think that's why I'm probably on the end here. I think we're sorted by vintage. I joined HoyleCohen in 2007. I actually joined HoyleCohen after they had already been part of Focus. At the time they joined Focus, serving about 300 households, managing a little over $300 million in assets. It was on the small side, from one office. Today, we work out of four offices, about 1,100-1,200 households. Crossed $3 billion in assets under management earlier this year. We've done about a 10x of assets under management, 7x-8x revenue, and about 6x on the employee side, which is what you want. You wanna be able to add more value to more clients in more ways, but be able to do it productively through staff productivity and leverage. Excellent. Adam? Love that story. Welcome. I'm Adam Birenbaum. I have the privilege of leading Buckingham Wealth Partners. That is a team of over 500 of my colleagues now spread across 40 offices, which is pretty crazy to think about. We have a fun headline number. It's $65 billion of collective assets. The thing that I always think is really neat and might be interesting for you all to hear is since our joining in 2007, our wealth management business has actually grown 25 times. The partnership side of our business has actually grown 10x. It's been an awesome partnership. It's been an awesome trajectory, and as I think you're gonna hear, I think we're in the first chapter of that. Great. Good morning. I'm Roger Wade, co-founder of GW & Wade, based out of Wellesley, Massachusetts. I know I'm supposed to be brief, but I do go back a little bit. In 1986, when we started the firm, I was only 10 when we started GW & Wade. The core beliefs that we had then apply today, and we'll go through that with our relationship with Focus. You know, in those days, much different investment community, high commission, mutual fund products, real estate limited partnerships. It just was no way to be in this industry. We said, "You know, we can do this on our own and make it more honorable." Law school classmate of mine started the business. We had an ex-Merrill Lynch broker who's gonna help us get clients, and we really had the belief that you get a client one at a time. We're a fully organic shop until this year. If you care about that client and you keep that client, do what's best for them, always, everything works. You don't have to worry about anything else. In fact, that's true. You know, we grew the business one advisor at a time, one client at a time, and 21 years really later after doing that same thing over and over again, always being client-centric, then we met Rudy and Regine and Lenny. We almost grew up with Rudy in this chapter. I think I'll get to that later, but that's the first part of GW & Wade, and we'll talk about the next part. Excellent. Michael? I'm Michael Nathanson. I'm the CEO of The Colony Group. I don't run The Colony Group, but rather The Colony Group runs itself. It's a sustainable enterprise now, and my job is to help guide The Colony Group. We joined in 2011, so much later vintage, but it was still an excellent year to join Focus, a very drinkable vintage. The way I describe The Colony Group is that we are not a practice. We are not a collaboration of practices working together. We're not even a business, but rather we are a sustainable business, which I would call an enterprise. What I mean by that is that we have hundreds of people now working across the country in multiple offices. We're truly a national organization now with Focus' help, and we'll talk more about that later. We also run multiple lines of business, and I really like when Rudy talked about you know the diverse nature of the components of Focus. I would suggest that we are maybe a microcosm of all that because within one organization, we are asset managers, we are wealth managers, we are business managers, we are an OCIO, we're an institutional consulting firm, we have a tax function. To me, this is an important part of being a sustainable enterprise that will be around for 100 years. I'm looking forward to making sure that our company is positioned to be a 100-year company. Michael, just, give us a sense, how big were you when you joined? How big are you today? I'm always reluctant to start with assets because I think assets only tell part of the story. We were a little over $1 billion of assets under management. Now, I'd say, Rudy, just to be clear, that was after 25 years. It took us 25 years to get to $1 billion. You should be laughing because you guys did way better than we did. And I really- Yeah, now we'll get to his story where he's kicking my ass. The truth is, I aspired to, you know, to be more like our Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. No, seriously. I know. I aspire to you. Okay. You guys still have time to grow. So we- No. We were at a little over $1 billion, and I wanna be mindful to you know, to note that we have our official ADV numbers there. That ADV, we update ours once a year. That has not been updated yet. I'll just say this, Rudy, that we've grown our asset, our billable asset base by over 15x in 10 years. We've grown our EBITDA by over 11x or about 11x in 10 years. We've grown our revenue by about 12x. We had, I think, 44 people back then. We have hundreds of people. We had 1 office. Maybe you could call it a satellite office in Florida. Today, this is 19 offices across the country, and we've announced another transaction. By the end of this year, I expect that number to be 20. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Mickey, over to you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Mickey Segal. I am the Managing Partner of NKSFB, one of the founders. I'm the new kid on the block. We joined Focus in 2018. A little bit about our firm, we started our practice in 1981, three of us. When we merged in 2018, we were 350 people. To give you an idea of growth, by the end of 2018, we were 550 people. Today we're about 610 people. We have five offices, three in California and two in New York. We continue to grow both internally and by acquisition. My practice is in the business management space, as it's referred to. For you in the room, it's far easier to understand that we are really personal CFOs to ultra high net worth and high net worth individuals, both in the sports and entertainment space, as well as in the high net worth space. That group could be any kind of client with a high net worth. We provide unlimited forms of service to them. I describe our service model pretty simply. Anything any one of you would ever pick up a phone to do, we do for our clients. The stories are unbelievable in some of the cases that we've been asked to do things for clients. Right. That actually is what we provide. However, our expertise is really in the tax management area, providing the best possible tax results and tax efficiencies for our clients. In that path, we provide all kinds of services, including bill paying and making sure proper insurance coverage is, filing medical claims, and then some idea of some concierge services. We hire nannies, we hire chefs, buy houses, we build houses. How can I sign up? buy cars. Really, can I be a client? Yeah. I'm signing up, Mickey. It's a pretty incredible service. Not all those clients use those services. We have probably about 950 clients that are using various components of those services. We are growing in the client space probably about 8%-10% a year of new clients every year. It is a pretty rapidly growing space, and as I said, active in the acquisition space. We'll be over 650 people in the next 90 days. Wow. Wow. Cool. Well, thank you. By the way, we have the opportunity for audience questions. I'll kick it off. We are digging a little bit deeper, but yeah, just raise your hands and... Oh, I'll ask one question, and then I'll hand it over. This is a very active audience. Yeah. I told you guys that this is going to happen. Actually, Mark, just let's start with you quickly. The 2006 vintage. Yeah, this was our first vintage. We are very proud of our 2006 vintage. You joined in 2007, and you came with tremendous background, high tech, Boston Consulting Group, almost as good as McKinsey. Yeah. What were your kind of dreams and aspirations? How important was it for you as a professional manager joining HoyleCohen, that HoyleCohen was already a partner firm with, those days, still an untested Focus platform? Yeah. No, that's a great question. To be clear, I wouldn't have joined had it not been for Focus, despite the fact that you spent time at McKinsey. You know, I'd been a partner at BCG, helped build a practice area there. Some of you may remember a search engine, AltaVista. I was a founding executive on the founding executive team of AltaVista. That brought me to California, and my wife liked the weather, so I moved down to San Diego to get her better weather. I actually was golfing with HoyleCohen clients and met Kevin Hoyle on a golf course. He introduced me to his partner, Joe Cohen, and they introduced me to Rudy and Lenny and Regine. I had used the time to get exposed to the industry, and I saw a lot of the tailwinds that I think Focus saw, but I realized it could happen kind of at the level of an advisory firm. You know, basically, the share was going to independents, and I liked the idea of being able to be a professional liberator. Again, I run companies for a living. That's kinda what I had done, both helping management learn how to grow, have strategic vision and execute that, and then having practiced it myself. I felt that, knowing that the industry had a succession issue, where there were gonna be a lot of people who wanted to find a great long-term place for their clients as they were either gonna be exiting, you know, exiting the business. Frankly, there were a lot of people that, as with any profession, they join the profession to be the professional. You know, a doctor wants to practice medicine. Lawyer wants to practice law. They become successful, and all of a sudden they become accidental businessmen and women. I liked the idea of being able to be a professional liberator, where I could basically take what was becoming an increasingly complex business to run and manage, I could take that off their plate so that they could go back to what attracted them to the business in the first place. I didn't want. I had done M&A, and I knew that M&A is difficult. It's difficult to source. It's difficult to due diligence on it. It's difficult to fund it, difficult to integrate it. I really didn't wanna do that on my own. I mean, we were a firm of $300 million, Ted, I think I was the eleventh employee there. I really liked the idea that I could take advantage of expertise and resources and Focus to be able to do that, but yet still be an entrepreneur in control of our own destiny. That was really the premise. That's what we did, then, you know, I kind of went through some of the results. Had it not been for that, I don't think I would've done it. I didn't have the resources, people or financial or the expertise. Actually, very interesting. Mark, yeah, was our guinea pig. Yeah, he really, we collaborated in figuring out mergers. Did the first- Let's just call it. I don't know how many sub-acquisitions or whatever you call them now, but did the first one on March 11, 2008. It was a very important juncture for us here when we demonstrated this. I will go to the audience more, but just building on this because with Adam Birenbaum, we got the grand master of mergers here. Adam Birenbaum, Buckingham joined us in 2007. Quite frankly, in many ways, they were almost bigger than Focus in 2007. I'm exaggerating a little bit. Yeah. It was a heroic step, and you were in the middle of structuring and then helping negotiate the transaction. You became a partner through the transaction, and now you're the CEO of a $65 billion enterprise. What was the magic? From your very unique vantage point, what is unique about our model? How differentiated is it in the marketplace? Yeah. So there's a handful of questions there, and maybe what I'll start off with, because this might be helpful, is I'm a next-generation leader, right? I'm not a founding generation. I didn't own equity at a transaction. That's gonna be really relevant to, I think, your question about, you know, your unique value proposition. We saw as Mark. Yeah. Also a next generation leader here. Yep. Yeah. So, you know, when you think. Actually, let's take a step back and think about why you all are in the room and on the video because you understand the demographics of what's happening in the wealth management space, right? This is incredibly high quality, recurring cash flow with deep value-add services and solutions and industry trends that are amazing. The flow of money, the number of advisors retiring, et cetera. This is the kind of, like, vision and opportunity folks want for, like, the next decade or two, right? It's there for the taking. However, you've got to understand why the independent RIA space actually started. It started because the captive models stifle entrepreneurship, right? They start growing slower. They chase people out. What do they chase them to? To environments where they can be entrepreneurs, where they can be nimble, to use the word you used earlier, where they can add more value to client lives. Let's make no mistake, where they can grow faster and develop aligned interest, right? What does that mean? Equity value, right? That's why the independent RIA space started. Now, why has it been so successful? Because of all of those trends we just talked about, and clients actually getting served better in this environment. Roger talked about that. I think that's it. It all starts with a client. What's unique about Focus, and then ultimately, to answer your question about why has Buckingham been successful, I'm a next-generation leader. What environment do I want to be in? Do I wanna be in a captive environment where I'm an employee and I don't have the upside? Do I wanna be in a partnership model, right, where I have unlimited upside, where I have folks that are trying to actually help me to grow faster, create value for next-generation folks, and ultimately do the same thing over and over again our founding generation had the opportunity to build. If you believe in wealth management, right, you're already at the table. Then you, as capital allocators, you gotta decide what's the right model to invest in. I am just sharing with you as someone who is going to be in this space for the next 25 years, you wanna be investing in the model where there is independence and where there is alignment of interest. It will grow faster, these folks will be motivated, and those CAGRs Rui throws out are sustainable and enduring. You ask what the Focus Magic is. It is that you created an environment that helps the first-generation folks stay true to why they actually went into the independent RIA space. Then for all of us next-generation folks, we wanna be in that environment. We wanna stay there, and we can have the same opportunity, or better, if you actually take advantage of the resources that a partner might give you, than our founding generation. What's the Buckingham Magic then? We just actually take advantage and execute on the resources that we have. Markets grow well, you grow organically on top of that, and then you add inorganic growth. That's how you get those CAGRs, and that's how you sustain those CAGRs. It's a very simple concept. Thank you, Adam. Let's go to the audience now, and actually one thing I do want to stress is, yeah, these are the Elon Musks and Steve Jobs of our industry, and I'm Elon? We couldn't be more proud to have them here as partners. Let's, Owen, you're the first, please. Yeah, Owen Lau from Oppenheimer. I have a quick question. I know it's hard to quantify, and you don't run your firm that way, but could you please talk about what drive the organic growth? How much of it is driven by acquisition? How much of it is driven by existing client asset growth, and how much of it is driven by value-added services? Yeah. Of course, I'm referring back to the chart that we showed. Yeah, it's the first time we did this disclosure ex-mergers. How do you guys think about growth in this industry? Adam, you just mentioned it. Actually, Roger, you know, you were actually a firm that... Really, Roger didn't want to do any deals with us for a while. Now he has seen the light, and he just did a very successful I'm a believer. Transaction. How do you think about growth from existing clients, new clients, markets and It is difficult to quantify and answer exactly your question, but being a totally organic shop, I know exactly how many clients we will bring in every year. It's remarkable. We have a business development team, and we have a lot of referrals. I can tell you, we'll bring in 135-150 clients in every single year. Those clients are important. They don't contribute a whole lot to the revenue, but in two years they will. It takes time to gain trust with clients and provide the services we do and make them sticky, and you know, they don't really need us when they hire us, but they'll find us indispensable in a year. You know, markets go up, right? The bigger you get, let's face it, 95% of your revenue, our revenue, is related to the stock market. You just can't help it. You know, the planning services are small dollars as we grow, but they are vital to the future of our growth because that translates into the market number, and that just goes up. You know, it's just important to have organic growth because it's a reflection of how you do your job, and just go back to what I said earlier, you get those 150 and never lose them, it's killer. It's killer. Owen, obviously you have seen, yeah, 11.2% average growth rate ex mergers. It's first time we provided this disclosure, but maybe Michael. Yeah. Yes, please. The way I look at this is that we've done multiple mergers. We've done 15 mergers, a couple of strategic hires, and there's no doubt that if you were to look at our assets and you were to collect the, you know, the regulatory assets under management, every time we did a transaction, you could count, and you could try to figure out how much of it is assets versus markets versus just net new asset production. I think those are relevant things to be thinking about. The most relevant thing to be thinking about, though, from the perspective of a sustainable business is to think about revenue growth and earnings growth. When we do mergers, we're looking at these mergers as every one of them is a synergy opportunity. It's a synergy opportunity in terms of maintaining a sustainable expense level, but it's also a growth synergy opportunity. We have driven really nice synergies for each of our transactions, which is another way of saying that, as Roger said, it is a complex answer. I think it's a very complex answer because I would have to look at every single merger and think about all the growth synergies that we're driving from them. We have one merger partner that joined us with, just to give you some perspective, not long ago with, I'm gonna try to be a little bit vague, $a few hundred million under management. That merger partner has now almost tripled in size in a very short period of time. Could they have done that without us? Absolutely not. We gave them the resources. They were too small. We gave them the resources that they needed, and we drove that growth that they could never have had without us. We benefited, they benefited, and that's the kind of growth that we seek to drive through a combination of organic and inorganic growth. Adam? Yeah. I'm gonna answer this a little differently because I think, again, it's interesting from a next gen perspective. The founding generation of folks that you will see throughout the day are forces of nature. They started from zero. They built up these billion-dollar businesses, right? Like, they hustled. They knew how to grow, right? The way of organically growing into the future and being sustainable and the next gen and stuff is very different. That was one of the things Rudy and I spent a lot of time talking about. The tools necessary to sustain organic growth have to be evolved. They have to be institutionalized. The forces of nature of the founding generation passed on to the second generation, they might get some of it. They might learn to take over client bases, aggregate more dollars. They might learn to maybe hustle a little bit, but they came in with comfort, guaranteed salaries. Didn't start from zero. Since we've joined Focus, we haven't just grown like our first generation grew. We now are in the custodial referral programs. We do digital marketing. We do coaching and training and development of next generation folks. On how to actually build practices, right? You have to institutionalize organic growth, and that's one of the things that we've all been able to tap into. We collectively get together to discuss this stuff. What are each of the strategies that we are doing in each of our firms? That is, I think, something that is so critically important. Make no mistake, there's a lot of cool M&A activity, cool headlines that are going on. The lifeblood of all of our organizations, the ability for us to create value for our next-gen equity value, more cash flow, it's organic growth. Yeah. It is a concentration, it is a focus, it is a priority at Focus, and it's not just an M&A story. I think that's so vital to hear, and this is coming from a guy who's done a lot of M&A. Well, that's the challenge of gen one, big time, to do what you just said. Yeah. Maybe Mickey, and then I'm going to you, Craig. I just wanted to add one kind of quick side note to all kind of all the growth you're seeing in our RIA space, et cetera. As we all know, markets have been more than generous in helping build what we built. One thing that Focus actually took a look at closely and realized about this side of the business that we're in, we're actually not market-driven at all. My largest years of revenue growth were 2000, 2001, and 2008 and 2009. Our sector of this company is going to be a nice little safety net when one day there's a little hiccup in the market. You will see added growth most likely in our space, and for sure, no effect to existing numbers in our space, which is very unique in a big business like this, where you have a sector that will actually perform as good, if not better, in a down market. Yeah. As you remember, a very important point, Mickey, you're making about $400 million of our revenue base roughly is non-correlated. Mickey, of course, is a very important part of that. It's this diversification in revenues into earnings here that makes quite frankly this partnership so unique. Craig, over to you. Good morning, everyone. I imagine a lot of your business right now is focused on the wealth of baby boomers. As you think about generational wealth transfer of your clients to their children, that right now probably don't have a lot of assets, what are you doing to address that? And are you servicing their children now, even though they may not have a lot of wealth? Sure. Let me just. Yeah, start, but I'm gonna jump in. Sure, sure. It's no question that is vital. Being my age, my clients are now beginning to pass. You have to get involved with their next gen, no question. How do you do that? We address it every day. It's just a natural progression of our business and my handling clients that, you know, you want to sustain our business, so you have to get the next gen. That's at my end, experiencing that right now. Do I handle all of the children of these clients? No. In some I do, but you know, they're actually my age. You can use our gen two and three, depending upon the age of the children, to service them, whatever works. It's a huge focus of ours because that's preserving that revenue, growing that revenue. Probably our biggest problem is paying estate tax. Such a drag. You know, $hundreds of millions, wrote a check eight months ago. I'm like, "Ugh." Yes, you retain the clients. No question, you retain them. You might take a little revenue hit here and there, but that's fine. That's what we've done. Another thing that's important is that you need to have multi-generational advisors to be able to do it well. You look at it holistically. Looking at it holistically, when you look at their estates and their wills and trusts, you know, you understand who the family is. They're not gonna connect, you know, the kids are not gonna connect with the same people that the parents are gonna connect with. When you do that, you know, it's important to have people who they feel like they can relate to a little bit more. Although we're in most of our clients' documents, so they're sort of stuck with us. Yeah. No, but you want them to feel comfortable like they have their own. Of course. Of course. You know, like they have their own advisors. What's not comfortable? Well, I don't know, Roger. I think that. Just saying. Just saying. I think you're asking a great question. Let's go to Michael here, please. Oh, yeah. I agree with what Mark said, that you do have to look at your own internal demographics, and that means having a good range of ages among your advisory and other staff. We also need to be mindful of diversity if we're going to continue to attract and retain that next generation. It's also evolving our service models. There are a lot of people who like to say there's no difference ultimately among the generations. It's not true. You know, the younger generations are much more tech-savvy. We need to be more tech-savvy as well, and we need to make continued investments in technology. We also need to continue to modify what we're doing, and not ever be comfortable with the service that we're providing right now. We need to innovate that. For example, with support from Focus, you know, we've built an entire platform for what we would call life enrichment services, which emphasize, for example, life experiences like going on the vacation of your lifetime and, You know, services around mindfulness and services around nutrition and health. As we move forward and transition from generation to generation, it's gotta not just be about enhancing people's wealth, but rather enhancing their lives. That's what younger generations are looking for. They're looking for experiences. All the surveys will tell you that. There, Fidelity Investments did this great thing they call the Advice Value Stack, and at the bottom of it's all based on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and at the bottom of it, they show asset management. That's foundational. We have to be excellent asset managers. Above that, it's wealth management. Now you're providing more value. If you really wanna provide differentiated value, especially for that younger generation, you have to be thinking about providing peace of mind and ultimately a fulfilling life. That's what we need to be focused on. Craig, actually, I just see right behind you, John Mittnacht. Yeah, these are exactly the type of questions, yeah, where we engage with our partners, where we learn from them, from each other. Actually, John just wrote a book here he titled Outperformers that really deals with so many of the techniques of growth, of marketing, really building, standing on the shoulders of our partners and cataloging them and then using them for training, yeah, in our partner meetings and for our marketing programs. With this, over to Alex Goldstein, please. Thanks. Good morning. So Focus has a number of value-added services they started over the years. It feels like it started with a little bit of like a vendor relationship back in the day and maybe access to now cash and trust and insurance, et cetera. Are you guys all thinking about utilizing some of the newer services? Some of the legacy stuff, since a lot of you have been with the firm for a while, what financial benefits do you think some of this kinda scale benefits and vendor benefits bring to your firm? You guys can respond in a second. We will have a whole panel on that. Virginie is going to moderate. That shouldn't stop you guys from answering Alex's question. I'll just share real quickly, 'cause you all probably like specifics. We completely reduced the operating infrastructure costs of our business post-transaction Focus transaction. They did a survey of all of the technology we were using, all of the pricing that we were paying for anything you can imagine. What happened? They used their scale to help us to leverage those relationships to increase efficiency. It's real dollars, real meaningful, you know, bottom-line impact. Even more, it made us better. We took those lessons learned back in 2007, 2008, 2009, and they've applied it since. Now that stuff is available. The beautiful thing is they don't force it on you. It's there if you take advantage of it, right? You don't have to do this. It has to be right for your business, for your culture, for your, you know, for what you're trying to build. Now, to also ask you a real specific question, this to me is the coolest part. You all have seen the first part of the Focus journey, right? Building 80+ partner firms, billions of dollars of revenue, lots of earnings, all this stuff, becoming the market leader. What happens when they actually take the power of the partnership and these value-add services and really deploy them across, and we get to take advantage of that? Cash Solutions is probably the one that you will hear most about from all of us because it's kind of really baked into the system. Most of us are using it for high net worth clients, particularly. We'll probably over the years have the opportunity to keep taking that down to more and more of our client base. Trust services, to answer your question about next gen, it's stickiness. It's being asked for by our clients. Of course, we will take advantage of that, and the list goes on. I mean, we are just scratching the surface of what we can kind of collectively, I guess, put together as part of the partnership. Any of you guys? Oh, yeah. Yeah, Mickey. Well, I have one example exactly going on exactly now what you asked. In our business, we often get asked to accept being trustees in life insurance trusts and other trusts of clients all the time. Probably to the tune in my firm of 400-500 examples. I met with a Focus partner in the trust space, and one objective we're setting in our firm for 2022 is to move all those 400-500 relationships as trustees that we're in today into the third party that is a Focus partner, to take over those relationships as trustees of these trusts. It will limit our risk, and it's beneficial to the client to have a more permanent trustee as opposed to an individual. It's a win-win, and we would've dragged our feet, but now we have an immediate access to solve a very big problem. You know, it's interesting 'cause, you know, having seen it evolve over 15 years, I, you know, as I was just hearing people talk, it's kinda like initially Focus was, you know, the first version of an iPhone that had a couple of apps on it, you know. So you could call, and you had a few things available to you. Now the way I think of it is it's really robust. I mean, it's something that's got, just like your iPhone, you don't. No, not everybody uses all the features, and some people love some other features and some don't. What they've been, in essence, created is kind of like the ultimate entrepreneurial operating system for the independent advisory space, one that's got increasing returns to scale, because as they find more businesses and learn about more opportunities, there are more of us that can take advantage of it, and it's just been growing exponentially. I could give you 10 or 15 examples of how we've used it, but the reality is every year there's more available and more cool things that any one of 80, now 85 firms have access to. Yeah. Yes, we use Focus Cash Solutions, and it's very valuable. We will undoubtedly be users of the trust solution as that's built out as well. To answer more specifically the question about expense synergies, and using Focus's scale, I don't have a specific number in terms of being able to quantify that. I was with Rudy yesterday morning. I was copied on an email that said, "Oh, great, you know, we had a $27,000..." This is small dollars, but a $27,000 technology expense and Focus's pricing was $9,000. I had the email, showed it to Rudy. That's just an example of the kind of things that happen, and that does happen quite frequently. We're aggressive about you know, utilizing the Focus name to derive better pricing. I would say ultimately, though, that- Yes, magnify that dollar amount. Oh. across 85 firms. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. On one item. I would say this, though, that when you think about the Focus solutions, the best solutions that Focus has offered and probably will continue to offer, it's their guidance, it's their consulting, it's their know-how, it's the way that they've helped us. After we joined Focus, we knew we had a big vision, and now it was time to accomplish it. Who do we turn to? We turn to Focus and my partner, Rajini Kodialam, led our strategic planning process. That ultimately, it's hard to believe that won't always be the biggest value that Focus adds. It's their know-how. What's important is None of these programs we develop in a vacuum. You know, we are not in the build it and they will come business, but rather, it's really from learning from our partners and what do they need, you know, what are the gaps, you know, where are areas they want to differentiate themselves. In fact, Michael and I were flying up together from Florida for this meeting yesterday, and we spent, like, two-thirds of the flight, Michael had a list of whatever, 10, 12 items of ideas for us, and we went through one by one, and I immediately send it, you know. Thank you, Michael. Mm-hmm. Great ideas, you know, to our team, and we'll have a whole, you know, off-site session where we basically go through these ideas and many of the other ideas that really come from our partners. You didn't use the term dumb once. No, it was. Rudy, I just have I mean, Roger. One part to this that, you know, I sort of grew up with Rudy back in 2007 in terms of value added, and that's evolved over time. Since we were there in the beginning, we have used Focus. They've helped us do things. Again, it's been a 14-year evolution since we joined. I mean, at first, getting Next Gen involved with ownership, that was useful. We probably had four material examples. Technology, we upgraded our investment advisor software, and that was Regine demanded that I do that, I think. As painful as it was, it- I'm sure she didn't demand it. Yeah. Well, no, it was fine. Yes, yes. As painful as it was, it made us better. It really does today. You know, we being the kind of shop we are, which is different than some, we got ourselves into somewhat of a bind that we had all our advisors, lawyers, advisors, whatever you wanna call them, we handle a lot of revenue. Our bandwidth to look at sub-acquisitions or different aspects of what Focus could offer, it was limited. I mean, I have partners who handle $9 million of revenue. I handle $6 million of revenue, and I feel like I'm, you know, slumming it with my partners. That's incredible. It's incredible. Fortunately, we went out and, you know, Focus was part of this. We hired a COO, Heather, who's right over there, who's wonderful. Because of her, we could actually have our first sub-acquisition that closed this year. I'm tired of having these guys take all the limelight, so maybe if we can begin to do a few of those, and it added 15% to our revenue. By the way, that- That's important. Sub-acquisitions and our ability to do that as independent firms is still probably, in my view, the biggest value add. Oh. It can't be diminished. No. This other stuff is gravy. Well, For growth and earnings. In fact, going through it was. You know, that's not easy doing this stuff. Yeah. Focus, Adam and Mark, they were literally in our offices, and but for them, there's no chance we could do that. That's directly to our bottom line. It's been remarkable and we're gonna have another migration at Fidelity that, you know, again, Focus is highly instrumental in doing that, which is wonderful for us. Well, maybe with this, as you can see, this is a very exceptional group of leaders and of entrepreneurs. Yeah. Thank you guys for your partnership. You know, thank you for joining us on this panel. We have two more panels where we will take questions and I think we are handing over now to Regine. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I'm Jim Shanahan. I'm happy to be here today. Today reminds me of 2006 when I first met Rudy, and we talked about building the largest independent fiduciary wealth manager in the U.S. The opportunity set that existed in 2006 still exists today. We operate in a $6 trillion growing consolidated industry. We have the winning model in the industry, which is built on entrepreneurship, permanent capital, and value-add services. This model will drive superior shareholder returns over the years. Two years ago, we had an initial bold vision for 2025. We're now significantly uptick in this vision. As you can see here on the left, we're growing revenue by $500 million. We're growing adjusted EBITDA by over $250 million. We're increasing our margin to 28%, as Rudy had mentioned, and we anticipate having about 125 partner firms by 2025. We're certainly executing on our business plan and have the confidence to drive the results over the long term. We've significantly increased our shareholder value over the past two years, and we're gonna continue to create incremental value in four different ways. First, from a revenue perspective, we anticipate 23% revenue CAGR to $4 billion in a consolidated wealth management industry. We plan to increase our adjusted EBITDA margin to 28%. We plan to be good stewards of your capital and deploying our capital to the highest returns. We'll continue to operate within our net leverage ratio guidance of 3.5-4.5 times. All of this will drive bottom-line results in excess of 20%. We're certainly well-positioned to deliver long-term results. Rudy just shared our 2025 vision. I'll now go through why we have a solid foundation and why our vision is achievable. We've made significant progress in the last 2 years since our investor day. At that time, we expected 20% revenue growth. We expected 0.4% average EBITDA margin expansion, and we anticipated staying in our 3.5-4.5 leverage range. Well, our actual results significantly exceeded this. We had 21.2% revenue growth, a significant expansion in our adjusted EBITDA margin by 1.8%, and we stayed within our 3.5-4.5 leverage guidance. These are certainly exceptional results as we migrated through COVID-19 over the past 2 years. Certainly, these results give us confidence in setting and achieving our long-term targets. From a revenue perspective, we anticipate growing our long-term revenue by about $500 million. How do we get there? Well, first, the management team here has been delivering 20+% growth for a long time. As you can see on the slide here on the bottom right, from 2017 to 2021, we had a 28% revenue CAGR. We certainly have the best team in the industry, and growth is built into our DNA. From an organic revenue perspective, we plan to grow about 16%. As a data point, over the last 16 quarters, our organic revenue growth was 15.4%. Of the 16%, we expect that our 80+ partner firms will deliver 10% growth, and then mergers will contribute about 6% of that growth. We'll supplement that growth with new partner additions, which is about 7% of the growth or $700 million, as Rudy had mentioned, delivering 23% attractive long-term growth. Regine will go through all of our initiatives regarding new partner firms and merger additions a little later in her presentation. We also plan to grow our adjusted EBITDA by over $250 million from our initial target. This, we plan our adjusted margin to be about 28% to $1.1 billion. This is about doubling our existing Q4 run rate adjusted EBITDA. That certainly would be terrific growth. How do we get there? We increase the margin through the operating leverage of the business, which was discussed during the panel that we just had, by adding new partners and merger opportunities and all the value add initiatives that we'll bring. Just as a data point, if you look at the bottom left of the slide here, from 2017 to 2021, we grew our adjusted EBITDA margin by 3%. Certainly based on the scale of the business today, we have the confidence to once again grow that adjusted EBITDA margin from about 25% by another 3% to 28%. We have a diverse portfolio of partner firms. Since our last investor day together, we had 63 partner firms, where today, as of December 1, we have 82 partner firms. We're certainly proud of all the partner firms in general, but also proud of the 10 firms that were just added to the Barron's list of top 100 RIAs in the U.S., of which we had 10 firms. These partner firms obviously provide a scale and operate in leverage. As an evidence of that, at this point, more than 50% of our partner firms have an annual run rate revenue in excess of $10 million. We certainly have the scale in our business and the foundation of firms to grow over the long term. Rudy presented this slide. It certainly bears repeating that we work in a giant growing market that's fragmented, that's ripe for consolidation. We're certainly not opportunity-constrained, whether that's in the domestic U.S. market or in international markets. We've completed over 240 acquisitions in our history. M&A is certainly a core competency, and we'll remain selective in the new partners that join with us. Credit is certainly an important aspect of our growth. We focus on many things, including refinance risk, having the lowest interest rates that we have, and dry powder for M&A. From a refinance risk perspective, we have long-term maturities on our term loans that mature in 2024 and in 2028. Our revolver, which is unfunded, has a maturity date of 2023, but obviously no borrowings. From a dry powder perspective, we have ample cash on hand. From a cash flow perspective, we grew our last twelve months cash flow available for capital allocation to $300 million. We have a $650 million unfunded revolver, and we have a $150 million delayed draw term loan that we'll draw down later this month. We also remain committed to our leverage range, which is 3.5-4.5, which is the right range for our business as we continue to grow through acquisition activities and organically. This credit profile will help us fuel and grow our initiatives into future periods. Our model certainly gives us comfort for our long-term targets. It's a model that's built on fee-based recurring revenue. It's not built or sensitive to interest rates or commission or transactional-type activity. Our expenses are highly variable with our management fees, which are tied to the profitability of our business and automatically reset. We have an alignment of interest with our partners where we generally buy between 40%-60% of the cash flows of the firms. We operate in a model that's CapEx-light. We operate in a model that has a tax-efficient structure. We have over $2 billion gross unamortized tax shield as of September 30. Our model certainly protects us during volatile markets and allows us to maintain our leverage range of 3.5-4.5. Another unique aspect of our model is our acquired base earnings. As you can see on this slide, since Q1 of 2019, we've added over 24 partner firms with in excess of $100 million in acquired base earnings. This acquired base earnings certainly protects our cash flows but allows our partner firms to run their businesses autonomously. With our strategic and financial support to all of our partner firms, they ultimately outgrow this preference pretty quickly, but it's certainly a nice feature to have on the onset of a relationship. Over the last 7 quarters, we've grown our cash flows to $300 million in terms of LTM cash flow available for capital allocation. At the same time, as a percentage of revenue, these cash flows have grown to 18.1% as of Q3. During the same time period, we operate in a CapEx-light industry, and our CapEx as a percentage of our revenue declined as well to less than 1%. These cash flows are supported by the CapEx-light model, but also supported by the tax shields that we create with the tax efficiency we do in all of our transactions. Our cash flows, as they continue to grow, they'll continue to reduce our dependency on debt financing for our M&A activities. We continue to structure our transactions in a tax-efficient manner. As of September thirtieth, we had a $2 billion gross unamortized tax shield, which certainly helps us to reduce the taxes that we pay. Rudy and I have often said this is an underappreciated aspect of our model. Assuming a 27% pro forma tax rate, this implies a $543 million economic value. On an NPV basis, this would be over $4 per share. This tax shield certainly has a significant economic value for Focus and all shareholders, and it certainly helps us redeploy our cash flows back into accretive M&A. Guidance is certainly an important aspect of our model. You know, during the onset of COVID last year, Rudy and I felt we should add incremental guidance, so we implemented quarterly guidance at that time with our Q2 earnings call, and we continue to provide quarterly guidance. Metrics such as revenue, adjusted EBITDA margin, net leverage ratio guidance has certainly been favorably received by investors in the analyst community. How did our revenue margin compare to actuals? As you can see on this slide, we give an extremely tight revenue range and a tight adjusted EBITDA range. Starting on the left at Q2, every period we give a $10 million band, and we have a similar tight band on the adjusted EBITDA. We have tremendous visibility into our model, so this allows us to set the leverage range, and we've been very fortunate to exceed all of our targets on a quarterly basis for the last 6 periods. These are obviously terrific results coming out of a COVID environment. Over time, we continue to build trust with the investment community by setting the targets and meeting the targets or exceeding the targets on a quarterly basis. With terrific growth, obviously, over the last 6 quarters, we always stayed within or below our target leverage range. Even though during this time period, we've completed over 35 acquisitions. We remain disciplined in the multiples we play, we remain disciplined in the execution, and remain disciplined by staying in our leverage ratio, even though the business has significantly grown during this time period. Our business was certainly tested during COVID last year, during the first 3 quarters of the year, and it certainly showed its strength. During the first 3 quarters of 2020, we certainly had some revenue volatility. As you can see, from Q1 to Q3, our adjusted EBITDA essentially remained flat at $78 million. On a leverage perspective, we were able to delever from 4x in Q1 down to 3.6x. Many investors have commented favorably on how the management team and the partners execute during volatile markets. In conclusion, our financial model obviously has a solid foundation that's resilient during all market cycles. We had tremendous exceptional results over the last 2 years since our investor day, and with the headwinds of COVID that we all experienced together. We have a gigantic market opportunity ahead of us and the scale in the business to execute on our plans. We're certainly confident in setting and achieving our improved financial targets and driving shareholder value over the next several years. Thank you for your time today, and we'll have a short break now, and then we'll resume with Regine's presentation. Thank you. Back. It was absolutely amazing to see that very engaging coffee break conversation you were all having. I know I had to pull you back there. Welcome back to all of you who are joining us virtually. Focus is an M&A machine, and my turn here for the next 15, 20 minutes is to talk to you about the staying power of our programmatic M&A. Let's start by talking about our very bold 2025 vision, our new bold 2025 vision. The $4 billion in revenue that are laid out here, $1.2 billion of that money is going to come from M&A: mergers, acquisitions, and direct firms. That's what I'm going to focus on. I'm gonna talk about... the accelerating deal velocity that we are seeing in our industry and at Focus, the very unique differentiated model that we bring to this market, why we believe in the sustainability of our M&A momentum, which gives us the confidence to enunciate this pretty significant, bold, but very achievable 2025 revenue goal, $1.2 billion of which is gonna come from M&A. Let's start by talking about our deal velocity. You have all seen the plethora of press releases coming your way, the deals that have been happening. The only years I'm gonna talk about here are 2019, 2021. 93 different transactions. This deal velocity has been happening across multiple dimensions of our model. If you could take a look at the bottom boxes, the three of them, and let's start with the one on the left. We're looking at a time period of about 8 years, between 2013 and 2020. On average, Focus did 6 direct partner deals a year. 2021 year to date, 11, which happens to be the highest we have done in any year in our history. Let's look at mergers for partner firms, and we're including Connectus deals here. 15 was the average. 23, not the highest, that was 28, but still pretty good at 1.5 times the average. When you look at non-US RIAs, which is our business managers, our international deals, our family offices, 8 versus an average of 3, absolutely firing on all cylinders, deal velocity accelerating in every dimension. What does that mean? That creates substantial acquired base earnings. The 24 direct partner firms that joined us through these 3 years have generated well over $100 million in acquired base earnings for us. It's not just that $100 million-plus number that's important. These are the platforms. These are the platforms that create organic growth. These are the platforms that add mergers. These are the platforms that inspire us to create new value-added services to build Focus overall. It's a diverse mix of transactions. Last quarterly meeting, Rudy told you we're not in the elephant hunting business. I wanna go on record to say I'm ready, and I know this Focus team is ready to go whale hunting with the best of them. If there is an opportunity, we will be there. Yes, as Jim assured you, we have the capital to do it. We are not in the elephant hunting business. For us, it is programmatic M&A. What does that mean? Systematic M&A, day in, day out in this industry. What does that mean? It means we have multiple avenues of growth, creating a truly diverse large TAM. Let's look at some of our transactions since Q1 2019. 77 in the U.S., 4 in Canada, 9 in Australia, 3 in the U.K. 24 direct partner firms, 57 mergers, and 12 for Connectus, a number that I'm extremely proud of because we just launched Connectus in December of last year. 71 of these came from the U.S. RIA base, but 22 are non-U.S. RIA. The diversity of these transactions truly gives us a large addressable TAM. The most important metric to remember is, while I'm throwing a whole bunch of numbers at you, the qualitative aspect of these 93 firms listed out here that joined us, each and every one of them is a star who has passed through the very stringent Focus filter. Please remember, we're not in the reengineering business. What does it mean? This is a repeat slide. You've seen it, but when the message is strong, we wanna show it to you again. We create compelling portfolio returns. McKinsey has a study on what they call programmatic M&A. What McKinsey calls programmatic M&A is firms, well, they do more than organic. They're not just doing big deals. They're not just saying opportunistic M&A, but M&A is in their DNA. Systematic day in, day out, it's a way of growth. Those firms and M&A, they looked at it through a 2009-2019, at almost a 10-year period, and said, "In the financial services industry, firms with programmatic M&A generate in excess of 20% return for their shareholders." Well, look at our numbers. More than 90% of Focus firms have levered IRRs in excess of 20%, with a weighted average levered IRR greater than 25% and a median levered IRR of 30%. Let's take a deeper dive into that, right? What we are trying to show here is the benefit of having programmatic M&A as a core competency at Focus. The chart at the top, we're showing you levered IRR versus multiple paid. Look at the linear trend line. What that tells you is we have figured out how to look at the historic growth and numbers of a firm, how to assess the quality of the talent pool and the growth opportunities in that firm to have a pretty good prediction of the future growth of that firm, giving us tremendous pricing efficiency. The chart on the bottom tracks the same levered IRR over time, and that increase is telling you that that talent that we have, that pricing efficiency has only been honed with time. Programmatic M&A is a core competency at Focus. Well, let's pause here and ask ourselves a question, which is, the whole RIA market, the U.S. RIA market is on a seismic M&A roll. Are you simply riding the wave? Is there something different about you? The U.S. market is doing great, and yes, we are absolutely benefiting from it, but that's not all. Focus has a truly differentiated model. Now, when I think of analyzing competitive dynamics in any industry, I kinda go back 30 years to my MBA days, and I can't help thinking of Michael Porter. Remember the name? Michael Porter, Five Forces. Just a reminder, you've got it up here. Competitive rivalry, threat of new entry, supplier power, buyer power. But Porter said something about the threat of substitution. What is substitution? Substitution was defined as a product or a service that a consumer or a client could buy instead of your product or service. You bought Coke instead of Pepsi, that's competition, but wine instead of beer, substitution. Butter instead of margarine, substitution. To me, Focus versus you take your choice, substitution. Let me try and expand on it to explain why we believe what we do is so truly differentiated. Now, let me start by saying we're not for everybody. There is a very unique value proposition that we bring to the market for this discerning target. You've seen us talk about entrepreneurship, value-added services, the beauty of our permanent capital. Who is our target? In fact, this is a question that we're being asked often, "Who is your target?" Client-centric, trusted, unconflicted advisors. You heard Roger Wade say that a little while back. It's about my client. Bring in a client, take care of them, it works out. An advisor, a firm who always puts their client first. They value the boutique business models. They want the legacy of those models to sustain. They care about their people. They want to ensure career pathing for their next-gen talent, and they place a premium on the value-added services that Focus can bring to bear to help them grow their firms and expand the value proposition for their clients. For those entrepreneurs, our service by entrepreneurs is truly unique. Nobody else does it. It's not just the who, it's the how. We have a relationship-based approach to M&A. How does M&A usually happen? A banker sends you a teaser, you sign an NDA, you get a SIM, you take a look at it, maybe you're lucky, you go through due diligence, you close the deal. We do that, too. We'll work with all bankers, but that's not the only way we do M&A. We have 45+ people dedicated to business development, surrounded by tech, ops, legal, regulatory, financial diligence people, well over 90, and we systematically reach out to this industry. We've been systematically reaching out to this industry since 2005. We know everybody. 48,000 outbound contacts per year, resulting in 1,000+ meetings, which have resulted in 34 year-to-date transactions. Nobody does this. What does this mean? This is the benefit of the number of miles that Eric Amar and I put together for Canada, the substantially incremental amount of miles that Molly Bennard and I put together to go to Australia. When we met with people who said, "I'm really not doing a deal." That's okay. I wanna meet with you to get to know you, to tell you about me, and see if there could be something we could do together in the future. The reason that everybody there knew that my favorite coffee of choice is a macchiato and Molly's favorite beverage of choice is a long black, that's Australian for coffee, and it's pretty good, was the reason we could close 6 transactions during the 2 COVID years when international travel was absolutely banned in Australia. Nobody does that. People do M&A, relationship-based approach to M&A, we do it. We take it one step further. We have a very simple rule in Focus. The team that initiates the conversation with you is the team that does the deal with you, and is the team that manages the relationship with you. Consistency. Nobody else does that. We have multiple models. We tell you again, our motto is vision for visionaries. Our partners are the visionaries, our prospects are the visionaries, and we have different models to cater to that vision. You're very familiar with our direct partnership model. Growth capital, consultative value-added services while they autonomously and entrepreneurially manage their firms. Mergers. For those who say, "I wanna become part of another partner firm, where I am interested in availing of their back office, their middle-office services while I focus on my clients." Sometimes a merger is for immediate succession planning. Then we introduce Connectus. Why Connectus? Because we heard. Dan Kraninger is here. You're gonna hear from him, a little later in the panel with Lenny. We heard firms, and we heard this in multiple countries. That's why Connectus is a multi-geography platform. They said, "We do want the benefits of a shared services platform. We wanna offload the back offices and the middle-office services. We wanna focus on our clients, on prospecting, on investment management." Well, then you should merge with the firm. Guess what? I like the autonomy of having my name. I like the boutique way of doing business. I want my own culture. Okay, it's a little bit of a Goldilocks story. The direct model is Papa Bear, a little too hard for you. The merger model was Mama Bear, a little too soft for you. What do you do? You've got to take care of Goldilocks. We built Connectus. The beauty of the fact that we built it to suit a need, vision for the visionaries, is why it has resonated so strongly with 12 deals within 12 months in four markets. It's just not about the relationship and the pitch, it is about true, consistent, rigorous due diligence, and we do that. A 40-point screening criteria, a 150-point due diligence checklist. Any firm that passes through the Focus due diligence list, and our partners can attest to that. It's regulatory due diligence, it's financial due diligence. We talk to their clients, we talk to the people, we know them. It is not just about making sure that they are passing the due diligence smell test. It is also about making sure that, remember, the team, the consistent team that solicits you, that does the deal, and then manages the relationship. The first quarter after they've done the deal with us, when they've had a little time to digest and a little time to take care of their clients, we go back. That's exactly what Lenny and team did with Steve at Badgley Phelps, and that is exactly what we are going to go in January to talk to our friends at Ancora with Fred, where we wanna tell them, based on what we learned about you, here is a strategic vision, a plan that we wanna discuss with you about how you and we could probably work together where you could use the broad array of resources and expertise. Lenny Chang is going to tell you a whole lot more about our value-added services, but this is a true differentiator. Nobody does value add like Focus. What does this give us? A long track record of success. 82 direct firms, 247 transactions across our timeline of 16 years. A Focus deal. A Focus deal, here is how I like to explain it, is a long dating process. Remember the relationship. A long dating process towards marriage without a prenup. This is permanent capital, and that is the beauty of this model. If this does not create true differentiation, I don't know what does. Let's talk about it. You want entrepreneurial freedom. You want value-added services. You want complete autonomy in how you run your business. You want true independence, no pressure to sell. You want liquidity, growth capital at permanent capital. You can get bits and pieces of this from banks, asset managers, private equity, large RIA roll-ups, integrated acquirers, internal sales, but nobody can give all of it. That is the true magic of Focus, and that is why I feel rather confident in saying Focus versus anyone, substitution. What does this translate into? Winning a disproportionate share of industry RIA. This comes straight from a Fidelity report. Three-year average, 2019, 2020, 2021 year to date, share of acquired U.S. RIA deals, 13.7%. If you just look at 2021 through Q3, 14.6%. I love the fact that it's an increasing share in a more increasingly competitive market. The question to be asked at this point is this sustainable? Can you actually sustain this? You've seen the slide again. Rudy and Jim both presented it. We operate in a large, high-growth addressable market. Let's look at the U.S. market that's growing 10.2% CAGR. We have our international markets. One of the questions that was asked by an analyst earlier today via email to Tina was, "Why international? What happens as you start moving away from U.S.? Guys, we're not moving away from the U.S. 50% of the world's wealth is in the U.S., and U.S. will always be home for Focus. If this was ever an or strategy, we would stay home in the U.S., but this is an and strategy. This is a capable team. This is a large team that has the resources for an and. When we see markets where there is scale, where there is consolidation trend, where there's a fragmentation trend, where advisors and clients are voting with their feet and walking away from conflicted environments into unconflicted environments, we see fertile ground for the Focus model. Australia, Canada, U.K., but soon Singapore, Switzerland, and potentially a whole lot more. The advisor demographics are absolutely driving industry consolidation. Definitely in the U.S. 45,000 advisors age 65+ controlling $3 trillion in assets. If you start looking at our international markets based on regulatory trends and based on demographic trends, this trend is absolutely higher. To put it together, conducive industry dynamics, an established track record, a very unique value proposition, a relationship-based driven approach, programmatic M&A, an industry-leading team, resources, expertise, nobody has that, and a diverse global partnership. This is a competitive moat in a high growth industry. If I were to make a bet on this industry, no question, I would bet on Focus. Does this give us the confidence that we will be able to achieve our 2025 goal? Yes. Let's do some math together, right? I'm only gonna talk about the merger and the direct, the $1.2 billion in revenue that we need to achieve, acquire within the next four years. Let's start with the U.S. RIA market. We're only talking U.S. RIA now. There's a very large TAM. Cerulli says it's $6 trillion-$9 trillion for ultra-high net worth, high net worth, mass affluent managed. Cerulli also says that based on an advisor survey, self-stated, and then based on the 65+ age, that about 50% of this is going to be in play for M&A within the next five years. You realize that this is a market that's gaining 5% share from the wirehouses and a market that is growing at 10% CAGR, very achievable. I'm gonna move away from assets into the world of revenue and say, let's apply 50 basis points pricing. You wanna do 60, 70, go ahead. At 50 basis points pricing, there's $15 billion-$22.5 billion in revenue that is going to be in motion. Let's move away from revenue and talk deals. Approximately average this year, Fidelity says there's about 15% of the deals that are coming our way. $1.2 billion, that's the revenue target for Focus to achieve our 2025 target. Put all of these together. Assets in play, revenue in play, share of deals, and triangulate. What percentage of future RIA M&A does Focus need to have to be able to achieve our goal? Let's go super conservative and only look at the lower trend of all of these numbers, 6, 3, 1.5, 15. We just need 8%. 8% of future M&A using an extremely conservative market, not the top line. Then remember, I'm making the assumption that every one of these dollars is coming from the U.S. RIA. We have international, we have non-U.S. RIA. That being said, the proof of the pudding is always in the eating. Is this sustainable? Is this truly differentiated? The people you need to hear from are our partners, and I'm delighted to welcome four of our newer partners to come and share their thoughts with you, their stories in their words, moderated in a panel by my co-founder, Lenny Chang. Thank you so much. Focus has been instrumental in not only helping us find merger candidates, but help us get through those roadblocks to structure deals, to restructure deals, to rethink how we might combine operations. None of us have time to build out our own M&A team. Having Focus drive that for you, and they're really good at it, and they know all the firms, and they've been doing it a long time, it's huge. It's such a differentiator. There are very few independent RIAs that they haven't developed a relationship with, and in most cases, a very deep and meaningful relationship. It is something that is very, very unique and gives us the runway to execute on our long-term strategic vision. Having those resources in our corner as we go out and look at possible acquisitions that could enhance our customer experience is gonna be a real value add. We're a fairly small firm without a lot of internal dedicated resources with respect to M&A, and that's a huge benefit of being part of the Focus partnership. Focus' operational compliance and financial due diligence was incredible. We never could have been able to do those things on our own. It allows us then to look at the whole entire market, whether it be acquiring another business or, you know, bringing in somebody who's paid far beyond what the normal people in the business are paid. There is a really complicated process to not only negotiate the transaction, structure it in a way that is mutually beneficial, and you get buy-in from both sides, but then also of critical importance, the integration. It's all part of the Focus package to help you know, from identifying to actually integrating and making sure that the firms come together in a successful way and are part of a partnership. Focus helps its partner firms prepare for that growth. It's people, it's process, it's culture. Truly gets us ready to experience growth through mergers and acquisitions. I think other firms that are considering this need to understand that they're in the driver's seat. Focus wants to make sure that the merger and the acquisition goes as smoothly for them, for their clients, and also for Focus. 125 clients. I'm Steve Phelps with Badgley Phelps Wealth Managers. We're a Seattle-based RIA. I think we're kind of unique in that we were founded in 1966, so I'm second generation. We provide investment management and financial planning services to high net worth individuals and some institutions. We work with about 900 households in the Northwest of the United States and have about $4.4 billion in AUM. I'm Fred DiSanto, Chairman and CEO of Ancora. We are based in Cleveland, Ohio, and really run three verticals. We're a proprietary shop. We have a high net worth practice, institutional practice, retirement plan services, and insurance. A unique aspect of our firm is we have an alternatives group that has a multi-strat fund, an activist fund, and a commodity fund. I'm Dan Kraninger, NorthCoast. We closed 30 days ago, so I'm still picking up lingo. I think that makes me gen one, vintage 15. I'm kinda old, but I don't taste that great yet, I think. NorthCoast is Greenwich, Connecticut-based. We have an institutional asset management business that works with Morgan Stanley, UBS, endowments like Pepperdine, and then we have a growing wealth practice because we've really done well in the referral networks. We're based in Greenwich, Connecticut. Great. Well, thanks again for being here. Just like in Rudy's panel, we'd love to make this interactive, but I'll start it off and kick it off with a question for each panelist. Let's see how this goes. Steve, you and I have known each other for quite a while, and in fact, even before Focus started, I was pitching you, and I couldn't even spell RIA at the time. You know, like every one of our partner firms, Badgley Phelps has been approached several times by several suitors over the years, and you've been an independent RIA for multiple decades. What made you finally decide to join us? Well, it's an interesting story because until recently, we had very much intended to stay independent. We had a long history of recycling equity within our firm. We had transitioned the first generation to the second generation, and we have for years been moving equity from the second to the third and the fourth generation. We have a culture of ownership. When we partnered with Focus fully, 16 of our 38 employees were owners of our firm, so almost half of our employees were owners. Beginning about 2 years ago and increasingly with COVID, we began to be approached by firms that were looking to either invest in our firm or merge with us. As we looked into a couple of them and realized what a time sink that really was, we kinda called a time out and said, "Look, we really need to do as comprehensive a review as possible of what all the options are for our firm so that we can go forward." We put together a six-person team to manage the process internally. We hired an investment banker that works specifically in the RIA industry, who knows our firm very well, who I've known for more than a decade and knows our culture, and began the search. I will say that for us, we approached it with very firm values. We decided right up front what success would look like if we were to partner with a firm. Primary among that was it had to be absolutely in the best interest of our clients, and I mean, demonstrably so. We did not wanna be in a position to sell something to our clients. Secondly, it had to be very much in the interest of our employees, not just my generation, but future generations, so that they could see progress in how they could succeed. We of course had the under no condition, which is that our firm would never disappear into another organization. That was extremely important value for us, that our legacy of 55 years would go on for generations to come. This process got going. Twenty firms indicated interest in us. We culled that down to 12. We spent a lot of time talking to those 12 and culled that down to four key firms. As we began speaking to them, and particularly speaking with Focus, something changed. I would say that the beginning of the process, we were very much like, "Okay, let's do this, and then get on with our staying independent." As we began to see what Focus could do for us, what they could do for our future, how we could be a much better firm as a Focus partner, it began to get more and more compelling. You know, at the end of the day, we're able to keep our brand, we're able to keep our culture. Focus offers an enormous plethora of services that we very much need, like trust and credit services. They offer on the business management side, training and all sorts of other kinds of services. It really became kind of an aha situation where we went into the process almost defensively and came out thinking that with, as a partner with Focus, we can be an even better Badgley Phelps with an even stronger foundation for our future. That's why I'm here today. Thank you, Steve, for that. Maybe Michael, I'll turn this over to you. You're technically the next generation of leadership at Prairie Capital. Can you please tell, first of all, the Prairie Capital story, why you were attracted to that story, and then ultimately, why you all decided to join us? Sure. We were founded in the mid-1990s and you know, 6 clients, $400 million. Since then, now have grown to be, about, as I said before, about 225 clients, about $6 billion. A lot has changed over the last 20-25 years. What hasn't changed, what's been kind of a core focus of our firm since the beginning, is an almost maniacal focus on putting the clients first and doing that in a very objective and a very customized manner, which admittedly can be inefficient at times. We have found that, if you take care of our clients, if we take care of our clients, everything else takes care of itself. I joined the firm about 10 years ago, and for me, the appeal of Prairie was, you know, not only the sophisticated investment platform, the sophistication of the client base and the complexities and challenges and opportunity set that brought along with it was really the people and the culture. The culture of our firm is we are not a sales organization at all. Our marketing budget is literally 0. Our website looks like it was designed in 1998. The average golf handicap of our partner group is probably north of 30. It's just not in our DNA or in our culture to be a sales-oriented group. That was a big appeal to me and something that I was very much looking for. In terms of the appeal to us with Focus, it was, you know, some similarities to what Steve referenced, but maybe a few differences. Really, I know we're gonna get into details later, but a couple of core things really. One, if we think about our business as a three-legged stool, investments, clients, and everything else, the investment side, we really, you know, weren't looking for any help there. We felt like we were in a good position and in good shape there. The client side of things, certainly, we felt like we had a very good client services delivery model and a high-touch focus that was efficient. But I think there's certainly some of the value-added services that Focus offers that we'll be looking to take advantage of. That third category, the everything else, the infrastructure, the technology, HR, all the different systems that are now out there for our industry, which candidly can become very overwhelming to stay on top of, that was a core part of the value add and the focus for us is, you know, being able to take advantage of the Focus resources in that category. I made the quip about the website, but it's. We're a $6 billion firm. We probably shouldn't have a website that looks like it was designed by a 15-year-old in his, you know, technology class his sophomore year of high school. Here we are, six months into the deal and Focus is already helping us, you know, clean up things such as that. The second thing is definitely the people and the culture. I mean, similar to, you know, what appealed to me about Prairie, the appeal to us about Focus was definitely the people. You know, we're gonna talk a lot about these services and, you know, get specific about things that can be value-added. But the reality is, if we didn't trust the Focus team, if we didn't have a good relationship and a good partnership, then nothing else really matters. That trust building and relationship building has definitely happened with the Focus team over the last several years. Travis Danysh, I would trust him to look after my kids. I'm not sure I'd necessarily wish that upon him, but that's the level of trust and relationship that we have with the Focus team. Terrific. Thanks for that. Fred. Ancora's been in business for over 20 years. You've grown to about $10 billion in client assets. You mentioned a little bit about the diversity of your business lines, but you know, it'd be great for you to spend a little bit more time with us in particular, right, on your differentiating approach on the hedge fund side. Sure. The future vision for Ancora, and again, the decision to partner with Focus. Sure. Well, I think you'll find you're gonna see four firms here that are all different on how they run their businesses. We are a sales-driven organization. I'm not saying your organization's different than ours, but we are very sales driven, but we have huge depth in investment management. When we looked at monetizing the business, I was against it, personally. I had sold a business to a bank back in 2000, I think it was. It didn't go well. You know, the cultures were totally different. The integration was very difficult. When we had 40 shareholders in our firm, 87 employees. There were some older employees or partners that wanted to monetize, and the business was hot. We went out and did an approach. Very quickly, I would just say, "No, no," to almost every single entity. I was never gonna sell to private equity because we'd have to flip the business again, and there was no way I was gonna let our clients go through that twice. 'Cause I think if you're explaining, you're losing, you know, on a deal. Focus came up, Regine, Eric, and Andrew. We had our initial conversation, we got off the Zoom, and I said, "I like these people." I said, "If they're telling us what's true on how they operate their model, it's gonna be a home run for us." Because our firm is very driven on winning and having skin in the game. Focus allows us to have that skin in the game, where we get a big percentage of the upside. At the same time, when we looked at Focus and their firms that they have acquired, we did view it as a possible opportunity for some of our alternative products that we think are very unique in the marketplace, especially our activist fund and our commodity fund, where we thought it might be an opportunity to go to the firms and say, "Hey, here's what we have." Now, Focus did say, "Do not bank on that," and which we didn't. We did not do that. It was really that relationship with Regine and Eric and Andrew that drove our decision on why we did this deal. We were talking in the back room, I think Owen and I from Oppenheimer, and he said, "You know, walk me through it." I said, "Listen, we're partners, and partners, it's a two-way street. It's not just one way. Focus is not just one way. When they say they're partners, they're partners, and partners have to give and take and work together," and that's what really drove the decision from us. That's terrific. Thanks, Fred. Dan, we're thrilled that NorthCoast recently joined Connectus. Like many in the Focus partnership, you know, our courtship was a pretty lengthy and I'm sure for you, a very thoughtful affair. You know, I wanted to ask you, of course, why Focus, but in particular, why Connectus? Thank you for that. Yeah, I joke. I mean, I feel like I dated Focus longer than I dated my wife before we got married. It was lengthy and thoughtful. Why Focus? I'll start there. Focus, to me, represents balance. I like the concept of balance, and it's something that you create. It's not something you find. You create balance. What you guys have done is create the most complete offer that a firm can consider. It's not gonna be a huge multiple up front like some other people might be doing. When you get wrapped up in this nice growth blanket of services that I've been here 30 days, I've taken advantage, I think, of 5 of them already. It's amazing. You know, the growth thing, the people thing is amazing. You know, Regine has done a great job. Eric, Molly, the team, very trusted. All that stuff, you know, there's a lot of great stuff with Focus. When you discount that all back, I think we have a path. I mean, if we're, that's our ADV number. We're a little bigger, but I think our path to try to get 2x that number by ourselves is less likely than getting 4x with Focus over the next several years. I'm, that's why Focus. I'd say inside Connectus, you know, I'm kind of attracted to shiny new things. This is a shiny new thing inside of Focus. But the idea. 'Cause I'm not a great wealth manager. There's so many great wealth managers around here. My business is not great. We're not great. We're good on the referral platform, but we manage, like, sleeves of clients. The concept that I can learn from these people in this room about how to work with clients, provide better services, I'm super excited about getting into Connectus and doing some business there. Then secondarily, the opportunity to be the investment platform and help firms grow inside Connectus, to me, was a no-brainer. They kinda Jerry Maguire had me at hello. I mean, I was very into it. Yeah. I wanna make sure that, I take this opportunity to see if there are any questions. Great. I think Mike Carrier. Hi, Craig Siegenthaler from Bloomberg. Oh, sorry. Craig. Yeah. This is probably a question for the three of you, maybe except Fred, 'cause Fred has a unique crossover opportunity. You know, your firms had zero net assets at some point. Now you're much bigger. That growth was through net new assets and market appreciation. How do you think your net new assets will change from before merging with or joining forces with Focus and then after, given the benefits? Yeah. I think in a way, again, go back to my three-legged stool. You know, again, investments, clients, and everything else. I think as we think about our partner group at Prairie Capital, you know, each of us are on average 35% of our time on investments, 35% of our time on clients, and the balance on that everything else bucket. What we have seen in a short 7- or 8-month period through our relationship with Focus is their ability to take things off of our plate and make things more efficient in that all else bucket is freeing up significant portions of our time to focus on investments and clients. Again, you know, Rudy, Lenny, Regine, maybe a lot of you, cover your ears. We don't start our year thinking of we need to grow the business by 20% or 30%. That's just going back to what I said before. That's not in our DNA. What is in our DNA is, again, just this focus on doing what's best for clients, and the business will naturally grow if we do that. Well, again, if we can reduce the amount of time and resources that we're having to spend on that everything else bucket from 30% down to 20% down to 15%, that's freeing up significant time amongst our partner group to go focus on the other side of the business, which we think naturally will lead to good things down the road. Actually, maybe I'll add a little bit to Craig's question because Prairie was a part of a bank. The question is, you know, what was the experience like there, right? In answering Craig's question, and again, why independence, and perhaps again, a little bit why, you know, Focus in that decision-making. It's. I'll try to tell the short version of the story. We were independent when we were founded back in the mid-1990s, and were independent for many years. We partnered with a bank in 2009, a regional commercial bank. The thinking there was to try to get some of these back office synergies that I just referenced, but also potentially have some cross-selling opportunities among our, you know, ultra-high-net-worth client base and the commercial banks or the commercial clients of the bank. You know, 10 years in, through no fault of their own, they're a very successful commercial bank. We felt like we were having success in what we were doing, but it was a classic square peg, round hole situation. as we came to the end of our agreement with them, basically it was a question of do we go independent or do we partner with Focus? There were a lot of things that went into that decision, but ultimately it came down to what do we think is best for our clients, you know, in near term, intermediate term, and long term. To give some tangible examples within each of those buckets, you know, intermediate or very near term, to go independent meant that we would have had to have completely set up a new shop from scratch. You know, all the infrastructure, all the technology, all these systems. Again, the world has changed a lot in the, you know, 10, 12 years since we had been independent. It's only become more complex. Take the technology platform that we ended up selecting. If we would have done that on our own, that would have been hundreds of man-hours at our firm. Through Focus, it was a 30- to 45-minute conversation with the Focus operations team. They said, "Here's the two infrastructure providers you should even be considering." They helped us interview those firms, helped us figure out the right questions to ask, helped us figure out a contract structure that leveraged the resources and capabilities of the larger Focus organization, and then ultimately were holding our hand through the implementation. It cut the time and resources by 80%-90%, what we would have been doing on our own in that regard. You know, the intermediate term, you know, again, we've only been a part of Focus for 8 months, and we're already seeing real benefits there. You know, think about, again, this whole concept of technology and infrastructure. We had the Focus team come in for a strategic working day at our firm 3 or 4 months after closing, and we spent about 2 hours going through all the different technology systems that are out there and available for us as an organization. Now granted, two-thirds of those are really, you know, things that we probably won't look to use in the near term, but there were 3 or 4 technology systems that they demoed to us that we absolutely should be using, we will be using, and we had no idea that they even existed. The Focus Client Solutions, you think about, again, we're only eight months into this, but two weeks in, I had a client call looking to purchase a $5 million home in Scottsdale asking about financing options. You know, us on our own, that's a 20-hour project for me and my team because we're calling around 5 or 6 different banks, mortgage brokers. We're trying to get the best rate. We're then going back to all those guys to reprice them off of each other. With Focus, it was a 20-minute conversation, and we had a very competitive rate, a rate that was more competitive than what we would have been able to get on our own. You go from 20 hours to 30 minutes. Again, Craig, that's freeing up time that can go towards other things. The last thing I'll mention on the long term, and Rudy touched upon this earlier, I think it's a very important point. Every time throughout this whole process that we sat down with Rudy or Lenny or Travis, and we asked them, "Well, what else are you working on? What else are you thinking about?" They never talked about something that we thought, "Well, that doesn't really apply to us," or, "That's not something that's relevant to us." Every single time that they were talking about, "This is what's in the works. This is what's in the hopper," we thought, "That's relevant to us, and that's solving an issue that we face day to day in our firm." Sorry. Go ahead please, Steve. In terms of growing our assets, I would look at new markets and existing markets. We're in a high net worth business, and we've never had a trust option. That's an enormous piece of the investment pie we've never been able to address. We've tried to do it over the years through directed trust services, but they're inherently unstable because we're the high margin business and the banks are the low margin business. Now we have a trust solution which is gonna allow us to compete with the trust companies in our market that we never had before. That's a huge new market for us. Not just that, but it gives us a great story to go to all the estate attorneys, all the centers of influence that we work with, to retell the story and also tell the Focus story so they can see how we've become a better firm. In terms of our existing markets, I'd just piggyback on what Michael says. I mean, we do everything in-house, right? We built this company, but we wear ten hats each. We do our own investments. We do our IT. We even do programming in-house. We do everything in-house. There's limits to that scalability of that model. I think that having Focus as a partner means that we can really focus on our clients and growing our clients and have them help us with some of the ancillary things that are otherwise basically just consuming time. You know, in fact, I'll not forget when we were first, maybe not the first time, but in the early innings of Focus in our, you know, courtship way back when, you know, obviously, we stress entrepreneurialism and independence. Kept saying, "We're gonna leave you alone. We're gonna leave you alone." You said something kind of interesting. I said, "We don't wanna be left alone. I mean, if we're gonna partner with you, let's be a partner." Back then, which was, you know, 12-13 years ago, you did not have the robust, you know, the Client Solutions and the Business Solutions that you have today. That was really the big eye-opener for us. You know, we had, as I'd mentioned earlier, we were already solving kind of the succession issue internally, but when I saw your deck and I saw the capabilities of what you could do for us, that was the whole game changer for us. That was what we ultimately have signed up for is the partnership. Yeah, 100%. I mean, we're here to grow, and it's a mutually accountable. I mean, accountable to us, but also accountable to Focus. As, again, we signed 30 days ago. 2 weeks ago, we couldn't do business in Canada, and we had 50 prospects who wanted our asset management services from Canada. We signed a subadvisor agreement in Canada. It's amazing. You know, on Tuesday, one of my institutional salespeople met a family office here in New York, used the Focus office. They were just talking about our products and services, but they uncovered a $100 million art collection, which they might want a loan against. Well, hey, Steve, you know, come price that out. These are opportunities that we couldn't have 30 days ago. I expect, Craig, to answer your question, I would expect Focus to be a double to us. If we could grow X, I think it'd be X times two. the model. You have to grow with the model, right? We have risk. They, Focus didn't then write us a check and say there's no risk on your side. Our side is that EBOC, right? If we don't grow that EBOC, we're gonna make that up ourselves. If you're not growing your business, it's gonna be very difficult to continue that culture that we have at the firm, and I know you have at your firm, of equity ownership through the management company. 'Cause we have 31 people in our management company, which is a big number. Regine kind of scratched her head and said, "You sure you know what you're doing?" I said, "Yeah, I think we know what we're doing," because that was our culture. You have to grow that business to minimize the risk of giving something back if you don't hit that number. That is the great model I think that Focus has created on the financial side. All the other things that they provide help you kinda take that growth to the next level. I saw a bunch of hands kinda go up here, so. We have a question from Patrick O'Shaughnessy, who's watching virtually from Raymond James. He said, "How does Focus's founding principle of never turning an entrepreneur into an employee extend into its merger and Connectus acquisition models, where the selling RIA does not retain a percentage of the ongoing earnings? I don't know how much I'm allowed to say, but an ongoing percentage of revenue is not bad. You know, I would say that's a start. I would say secondarily, you know, the balance of the offer is, yes, Dan and other passives, you know, receive an upfront check. You got 33 people you care a lot about. The ongoing enterprise of my 33 people joining into Connectus to be part of this platform is amazingly powerful. You know, it's not just about Dan, it's not just about Patrick, my other co-owner. It's about the employees, it's about the clients. All that balancing offer together made it a no-brainer to me, Patrick, out in the World Wide Web somewhere. Actually, you know, NorthCoast, you will obviously be an integral part of Connectus, not only because, you know, we just started this journey. I'm curious, where do you see the biggest areas of opportunity with your specific team? Well, yeah, I alluded to just a couple of them. I think on the scale of 0 to 10, our wealth planning business is probably a 5 or a 6. I hope to get to a 9 or a 10 very quick. Practifi, Amy's here. I hope to get the CRM done this year. I hope that you know, we manage probably at 25% of our product client net worth. You know, I wanna get that number up. I wanna go after that number. We have these products. We have these services. Let's do that. Secondarily, we have a very unique investment management solution platform. We do some equity hedging. We do some concentrated stock offering. We do some defined outcome product. I think there might be some partners at Focus that like it, but if not, hopefully they, you know, Focus can help me amplify that message and do a better job in those institutional arenas. You know, those are like right here. Those are like this month. I would say big down the road, and I didn't talk to you about this, Lenny, or I didn't talk to Regine too much yet about this or Rudy, but I would love the idea of a family of ETFs. We have long track records, GIPS audited, very portable, a family of risk-managed ETFs inside the Connectus Focus brand. I love it. That's, I see that down the road. I just, I guess I have to influence some people maybe. We'll definitely be talking. Yeah. Owen. Thank you. I think Dan addressed that why Connectus. I'm just wondering, other panelists, why not Connectus when you join Focus? What are the kind of benefits and thought process you were thinking about when you join Focus Connectus or Legacy, as a partner firm? Thank you. I didn't know anything about Connectus. You know, to be quite frank, I don't think we would've been a good manager in Connectus. I think when Regine and Eric and Andrew came to us, it was the type of firm we are, we just felt that the structure they have for the RIA business was much better for Ancora. And the whole culture of all of our employees owning something, that was critical for us. Critical. Again, 31 people in our management company, that's. I think that tells the story there. I would reiterate that. It was never really presented to us as an option. That's probably a better question for Focus. Which always came in as a direct offering. Yeah, I don't know, Michael, if you have a thought about that either. I don't have a whole lot to add to that other than. Yeah. No. It's exactly what Fred and Steve just said. I'm still trying to figure out what it is, but you know. Anyway. It must be good 'cause this guy's a good guy right here. Thanks, Fred. We grew up not far from each other, so. Well, I would say in many ways, obviously, and Rajini said this in her remarks, it's kind of the Goldilocks, right, kind of of menu of options where merger, direct or Connectus, which obviously, you know, Dan, you certainly explored in a lot of our conversations, right? With partner firms thinking about this with you know, going direct and obviously going, you know, eventually with Connectus. Oh, 100%. I mean, the difference for you guys, you have employees that wanna be owners and grow what they're doing over there and have that stake. My employees will have less of those opportunities. Yeah. That's a big deal. It's a big difference. Big difference. Yeah. Hey, Michael Young with Truist Securities. Just wanted to ask, when you were doing your deal, with any deal, there's challenges. Particularly I'm curious with the structuring of the deal, were there any challenges that you ran into and just kind of how it was set up and laid out to you? Also curious just how many deals you all plan to do as you move forward as a part of Focus. From our perspective, the structure of the deal was a little complicated because of the type of organization we were. I think the team that Focus had helping them as it relates to our structure made it a lot simpler. What I can tell you is that what we learned through the process is that there were some things that we needed help with, compliance being one of them. Anil and his team did an unbelievable job to make us a better company. I said to our people when we were going through this, I said, "If we don't get a deal done, we're gonna be a better firm because of it." I do think it's because they've done so many deals, they can come in and say, "This, this." We did a lot of good things. I mean, I believe our data room as it relates to all of our information, our financials, all about the client, I think that was very good. In fact, there were comments about that to our CFO. But I can tell you that because Focus is all they're focusing on is doing deals, coming to someone like us and helping and going through the process was fine. Us doing deals, we haven't done a lot. We really don't do deals. Our growth has all been organic. Now we've got two on the table that I can't talk about, but they're two that are very unique, and one's gonna add a new vertical to us, hopefully, that I think has great synergies between the two businesses. What I love about it is, you know, we're using Focus' capital, but we're still gonna have risk in that transaction, so there's still skin in the game for us. I'd say for us, you know, going from an S corporation with straight ownership is a very straightforward business model, and morphing into the ManCo OpCo model is a little bit more complex, and it takes a little bit of understanding. We were blessed with great representation on our side with a law firm that had built a number of ManCos already that had created the agreements. They were able to really walk us through. I mean, really, we created a whole new constitution for our firm, which was pretty cool actually, because, you know, we've been around for a long time and we were able to kind of correct some of the things that were kind of some of the sins of the past, you know, things that, like retirement ages, mandatory retirement ages, things like that, we could work into the agreement. It wasn't overly complex, but it was, you know, it's a bit. There is complexity to it. In terms of M&A, you know, we're a very deliberate firm. We know there's opportunities there. We're still sort of letting the dust settle, understanding the financials port over and get all that stuff done. Then at that point, we'll definitely be doing that. We're gonna take our time. Our transaction had a lot of complexity to it because of the organization that we were under before. I guess the one thing I would say about that is that Focus did an incredible job of being very thoughtful and thinking outside the box and coming up with something that was really a win-win for kind of all the parties at the table. I'd also second what Fred said, you know, through the due diligence process, and the Focus team is very clear about this upfront, they do not mess around on compliance. I think that's a good thing. You know, it was a lot of late nights, a lot of weekends. We were coming out of a bank where obviously we were highly regulated and a lot of oversight from a lot of different organizations. Still, we welcomed that very, very deep focus on compliance from Focus because we, you know, we wanna make sure that there's nothing that we're missing there and no stone that's left unturned. Great. I mean, all that, I would just add, you used the word Goldilocks. I think the due diligence process was a little Goldilocks. Not too hard, you know, not too soft. It was collaborative. You know, they're professionals, so it was very professional. Just one story. One hiccup that in the grand scheme of deals, it hardly even counts as a hiccup, but it was a little hiccup. Rajini is like, "Okay, I'll see you Tuesday." I'm like, "You don't have to come up here." It was like Thursday. "So you don't have to come up. It's not that big of a deal." She said, "No, I'll come up." Because she wanted the employees, she wanted everything perfect. 'Cause the offer is complete, and so if you have an opportunity to talk to everyone about the completeness and the balance of the offer is very exciting. I would say the due diligence process was, you know, again, very professional, very collaborative. You know, when we announced the deal, Rajini was on Zoom because it was very important because of the culture that we have at the firm. The first thing Rajini said is, "No one's losing their jobs. We don't interfere in your business. Your business is gonna be as usual. When you come in Monday, nothing's gonna change." I'll tell you, that comment to our people, they could hear it from us, is a huge deal for people that there is uncertainty when there's a deal. Yeah. This question is for any of the panelists, but Steve, I'll direct it to you first. We obviously can't get into deal specifics, but you've been again pitched numerous times like many of you have by potential buyers, and Focus has never paid the highest upfront multiple. You all made the decision to go with us. Tell us what your deal motivations were. Right. As I've said, you know, for us, it was all about, values and outcomes. What's the best outcome for our clients and, what's the best outcome for our employees for generations to come. That was what was the most important for us. It was so important, in fact, that, interesting story, the Friday before the week that we were gonna get indications from the four firms that we were talking to, we decided that we would all spend the weekend independently, the six-person team, going through all the notes, all the decks, and really and come back Monday morning and prioritize a list of firms without any knowledge of any numbers. We wanted to see qualitatively what was the best fit for our clients and for our employees. We all went back and did that. Monday morning, it was a bit of a scary time for me because I was very firmly in Focus's camp, but, you know, and we have a very harmonious and collegial firm, and I was concerned that there'd be divisions, particularly intergenerationally, because half the team were what we call third generation in our firm. Well, I didn't need to be concerned because Monday morning, we all put our cards on the table and it was unanimous. All six of us independently chose Focus, and I'll say, quite frankly, it wasn't even close. Yeah. I think for us, a little bit of irony in that we're big investors in private equity. For years and years and years, we hear these private equity managers talk about, well, we don't pay the highest multiples because we're good relationship guys and, you know, yada, yada. We just always laugh at that and cry foul at that. Yet, here we were on the other side of the table and basically, you know, life's little lessons that come back around you, but it's exactly as Steve just said. The multiple was not the most important thing by, you know, by a large swath. It was more about, you know, what was the answer and what solution was gonna be best for our clients and our employees longer term. Yeah, for us, listen, I don't think there's one firm that's a partner of Focus's where the client doesn't come first, so you wouldn't be talking to that firm. Of course. Right? You just wouldn't. I mean, that's, you can tell by the partners that Focus had and the people that they have employed, they are good, solid, high character people. For us, we talked about this a little yesterday. The check was okay. I enjoyed getting a check from Focus. There's no question about it. You know, we were monetizing our business and but we still had a lot of skin in the game. The most important thing, and I think we all talk about this, it's the client and it's the culture of the firm. Can you maintain the culture that you've created? 'Cause there are different cultures in every one of the firms that Focus are partners with. That was critical to us 'cause our culture is client first, family first, you know. Your job, that's kinda the third thing down the road. I believe Focus allowed us to do that and continues to allow us to do that. Here's the thing about that. You know, we've talked so much about, you know, there's some very impressive firms in this room and these incredible growth rates. Let's flip this on its head. I mean, our industry will inevitably go through periods of significant volatility. Our firm, historically, when those pockets of volatility have hit, that has been the pockets of the most significant growth in new clients that we have experienced. Anecdotally, talking to other Focus partner firms, they see the exact same thing. I think there's another side to this whole story that's not just market-driven growth. It's that when those inevitable pockets, air pockets of volatility, it's that client first model that is sustainable and is highly valued. We talked about it, I think, in Arizona. We know our beta. You know, we know our beta of our revenue as it relates to the market. We have a very low beta because of our alternatives platform and some of the other things that we do. You're absolutely right. I think that's when you shine. I mean, we never sell on performance. You know, we're not gonna be the greatest. You know, we're not gonna be unbelievable performance. We're gonna have solid performance, and it's all about the relationship, and then it's about protecting the assets on the downside. The only thing I'll throw in is there's the due diligence process and the offer, but you still gotta close. I had platforms, you know. I didn't know how they're gonna react to Focus coming in there. Yeah. What did Focus do? What did the partners do? They showed up to help with the closing process. That's an important element of my deal that I'd highlight too. I think we'll have a chance for maybe one more question and if there are no more, maybe I'll just say in conclusion, again, thank you so much for your time and we're so looking forward to getting to work with you all because we're all obviously very recent to the partnership. But any thoughts or final thoughts on the future of Focus' M&A model, right? The perspective of someone coming in really looking at this, right, and also doing the reverse due diligence, not just our rigorous due diligence on you. Yeah. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Well, my thought is, if you're gonna compete in the space against Focus, you better pack a lunch because it's a big offer, and it's a complete offer. You can't just come in and say, "I'll pay two more terms or two and a half terms," or something like that, because we're not smart enough to look ahead in the future. What are you gonna grow at? How are you gonna help me? What's your track record of growth? You know, we're smart enough to ask those questions. I think it's the larger you get, the more growth, the more deals you have to do. Focus, Len, I think the Focus has to maintain their high quality of the firms they're going after. Do not violate that. If you violate that's when the formula is gonna break down. I think that's where the risk is. I can tell you know, you've done 80 deals, and we spent a lot of time with you. That is not gonna change. It's such part of your c-- of your-- the fiber of the team, never gonna change. To me, that's the risk. I'm a shareholder. I bought stock. I don't think there's a risk there. I was at the partners meeting in Scottsdale recently, and it was a real eye-opener. I'd never been to one before. The quality of the people, the quality of the presentations, the knowledge opportunities, it was really quite incredible. One of the things that occurred to me at the time was that this is a positive feedback loop. I mean, really, the more acquisitions that are made, the better the more quality people brought into the ecosystem. Mm-hmm. The better it is for the entire ecosystem. I would reiterate, keep the quality high, but keep on marching. Yeah. Last, but certainly not least, Michael. Well, I think when we took a step back, kind of, as everything was closing, it was going back to that. Do we go independent or do we partner with Focus? Thinking through, well, what if we don't have these guys, but what if three or four firms right there in our backyard end up joining Focus and all of a sudden we have to compete against that? How would that make us feel? Where would that put us with our clients? Overly dramatic statement to make, but there's this little bit of kinda join them or die type of mentality that we had in thinking through that whole process. Again, it was an easy decision for us to make because of all the value add that was gonna be brought to our clients in that context. Well, I very much appreciate, again, you being here, your partnership and collaboration. Speaking of collaboration, we're going to now turn our attention over to value-added services. Again, a round of applause to our panelists. Welcome back. I'm honored now to speak with you in further detail about our value-added services. We've laid out a bold new vision for our 2025 targets today, and our value-add services are a key part of our unique value proposition that we've built to not only accelerate growth and expand margins at our partner firms, but also to position Focus to be the premier destination for future partner acquisitions. Today, I'm gonna address why value add. We'll take a deeper look into the what, but I'm gonna spend a lot of time on the how we've built and executed this value-add to the partnership. Lastly, where do we go from here? With $350 billion in assets across 82 firms in four countries employing over 4,800 people, Focus is operating at incredible scale, by far making us the largest player in the industry. The strength of our partnership is our greatest asset and has driven the evolution of our value-add services since we founded Focus. Our partner firms are highly diverse, as was gathered by the panel so far in terms of their business models, the clients they cater to, and the services they provide. In many ways, these diverse businesses are living laboratories, and we at Focus have the privilege to collaborate with them and listen to them every day. Coupling diversity with scale gives us a unique and bespoke opportunity to approach adding value, which in and of itself becomes a competitive advantage. Let's just take a quick step back and look at why this is important, right? Trust is, of course, at the center of every client-advisory relationship. What's fascinating is that we saw an increase in trust across the partnership during the pandemic, but it's also across the industry. I mean, 90% of all investors reported increased confidence in their advisors, and 83% believe that the account balances grew because of their advisor's help during the pandemic. We are seeing that client priorities are going to continue to evolve. In order to maintain that trusted relationship, firms are just gonna have to do more. Advisors have to offer a wider breadth of services, and they're going to need to hyper-personalize this advice and highly curate it to the specific need of an individual client. Clients want better digital access. Firms no longer have the luxury of waiting to implement this digital transformation. It's going to become essential to stay best of breed. Scale is necessary, right? To make this happen, build out the infrastructure, it requires a lot of time and a lot of resources. Today, right, only a minority of RIAs are actually offering the whole differentiated breadth of services. You know, on the left-hand side here, for example, you'll see trust solutions. Well, in this industry report by Envestnet, only about 20% offer it. I mean, private banking, only 7%. By the way, as you've heard from the panelists, those are two of the things that are a big part of our complete package. That's where Focus comes in. That complete package is because of our scale, our resources, and our expertise. Partner firms have that instant access to those services without having to hire or train or build or possibly fail in creating it internally. It frees up partners' time to spend, you know, time on getting new clients and obviously continuing to maintain and enhance that trust. Also this wide breadth of services also helps position RIAs to better meet the evolving needs of their clients as financial lives get more complex. By offering this complete package day one to our partner firms, they can build even longer-lasting relationships, and the client doesn't outgrow the firm, right, in the future. Better outcomes for the advisor, better outcomes for the client and the evolving client need, and a better outcome for Focus. It's a complete alignment of interest. Much like we talk about the evolution of client needs, firms need to continue to evolve their businesses. The most successful firms are those that are gonna continue to advance in all aspects of, you know, attracting talent, solving for succession planning, upgrading their tech stack, and of course, staying hyper-focused on growth. Our partner firms absolutely thrive on tackling these challenges, and Focus surrounds them with all of the tools to do so. Given all of that context, what exactly do we offer to our partners? Well, in the beginning of Focus's journey, we were a value-add partner in improving the business practices of our firms, and over time, we have gotten involved in a large way in directly impacting the end client of our partner firms. We shared this slide with you at our initial Investor Day, presenting our vision of where we hoped we would get to with our value-add programs by 2025. I'm happy to share with you that not only are we well on our way, we have enhanced our value-add program faster and better than we planned. We've not only been busy implementing what we said we would two years ago, we've added additional capabilities beyond our original vision, such as recruiting, such as family office services, such as trust and estate planning. We believe this is now the right set of value-add solutions to focus our efforts on by augmenting these with additional resources, building momentum, and deepening the expertise in these specific areas. You saw this in Regine's presentation, but we now have formally separated these services into two main buckets, Client Solutions and Business Solutions. Client Solutions, cash and credit, trust, portfolio and asset optimization, valuation services, so a client that may have a business that needs a valuation of that business, insurance solutions, family office, and concierge services. This allows Focus partner firms to extend their scope in offering additional superior service offerings in a best-in-class client experience. Business solutions, M&A, business strategy and leadership planning, marketing and organic growth, operations, technology, and cybersecurity, business intelligence, talent management and recruiting, finance, legal, and regulatory assistance, and of course, the best practices and knowledge-sharing across the partnership. These are all designed to drive accelerated growth and stronger performance directly at the firm level. Importantly, we provide all of these solutions in an opt-in and non-control manner, and every RIA is different, every client's different. Our firms are actively utilizing these services. In fact, and we heard it in the M&A panel before. You know, we surveyed actually the partners that recently joined us over the past two years. Virtually all stated that our value-add programs were a significant reason for choosing to partner with Focus. How did we approach the development of these programs? We didn't just build value-add services to simply add to some portfolio suite. We built them because we knew there is a need, and it's the secret sauce of our partnership, right? We are over 100 people at the holding company, working intimately with our 82 firms, soon to be 83, and actively listening to them. The learnings from the partnership are then backed by our own big data under the Focus Clarity System and the institutionalized expertise that we've built at Focus now for several years. Then we build from the ground up, not top-down. The outcome is a truly bespoke open architecture solutions that can be scaled and can be easy to use. It's built for clients, designed for advisors, not cookie-cutter solutions. I want to spend a few some moments now on getting a little bit deeper on at least a few of our service offerings, and we're gonna have our panel here moderated by my co-founder, Rajini, with 5 of our esteemed partners who will do even a bigger deep dive. Let's look at cash and credit. We'll look at portfolio optimization on the client side. On the business solution side, talent management, operations, technology, and cybersecurity. Cash and credit solutions is essentially a private bank utility without the associated baggage of a private bank. We launched this a few years ago, and now the fully dedicated team has grown to 11 Focus employees and soon to be 12, with collectively over 200 years of commercial and private banking experience, led by Steven Canup. There are 30 or so active lending institutions that have been curated carefully into this approved network, each with a different suite of strengths, depending on the individual client need. Of our 82 partner firms, 40 are actively using the utility, and another 10, as of the third quarter of this year, have told us that they are actively looking to use it. It's just a matter of the client need, so over half of our firms. Importantly, the Focus team works behind the scenes between advisor and that lending institution through a proprietary loan portal that we've created to ensure a best-in-class client experience. To just give you some numbers to date, we have helped now originate or advise on over $2 billion in loans and an active pipeline of another $300 million as of November 1. Additionally, over $320 million of client cash that has been placed across our deposit programs to get better yields on cash management. This terrific momentum is also being accelerated with our recent joint venture announcement with technology provider Orion that provides thousands of advisors on their platform access to this expertise, which in turn improves our scale and pricing power. I realize this is a busy slide, but again, the overall process is simple. This is a great example of what we mean when we say our solutions are built for clients, designed for advisors. Our entire open architecture private bank offering flows through a proprietary loan portal. The client comes to his advisor with a bespoke lending need, let's say, you know, a commercial loan. The advisor then inputs the request in the portal, and the Focus team immediately seeks bids from the network of lenders, allowing the advisor to present the best option or maybe the best options. That second opinion is a terrific value, right, in that client relationship. But now let's say the client's satisfied with one of the bids, and the Focus team then continues to work behind the scenes with the advisor and that lending institution until the loan closes to ensure minimal friction, right, in the client experience. The client says, "This has been terrific, and now you know what? I wanna buy a plane, and I need a loan." Well, the advisor then comes back to the portal and is not beholden to bank A that provided the original commercial loan, right? Let the best solution win amongst the network and make it easy to use and make sure there is no friction in that client experience, making it a best-in-class experience. It's designed to strengthen the relationship between the client and the advisor. Now let's take a look at portfolio asset optimization. As our partners look to grow and keep adding value to their clients, we are often asked about best-in-class investment solutions and ideas. At the holding company, we have the ability to look across, you know, the firms, and what we see is while, yeah, many are asking for certain investment solutions, there are an ever-increasing growing number of our firms that have best-in-class strategies as part of their value proposition, right? We heard a little bit about that in the panel before. We have now built an ecosystem where partners can leverage each other's investment expertise in a bespoke and scalable way. Again, we don't mandate our partner firms to use any of these offerings. Rather, we wanna be able to make the best in-house or third-party solutions available to them, so they can evaluate and decide what's best, of course, for their client. Let's take an example. SCS is our partner firm in Boston with about $30 billion of assets under management, $12 billion of which is in their alternatives. Their private equity strategies have generated well north of 40% since inception. Net returns backed by a team of 25 investment professionals. We're gonna hear more from Tony, who's gonna be on the panel and who's the CEO there. We recently hosted CIOs across the partnership at our investment summit in Phoenix, and a common theme was clear: clients are demanding access to alternatives more and more and more. You know, building out this platform, of course, takes substantial time and resources, and it took SCS several years. Now another partner firm can leverage the best-in-class solution instead of building it out on their own. To make it even easier for our partners, we recently created a white-labeled fund white-labeled fund platform through a third party named CAIS, allowing for a streamlined client reporting experience and a streamlined way to do the fund due diligence. Partnership adoption, that's pretty recent but has been pretty terrific, with over $300 million of invested or committed capital to that solution as of Q3 of this year. Again, we're leveraging scale where we can and building capabilities for and with our partner firms in a bespoke way. All right. Let's now go over to the business solution side and really talk about talent management. Because the industry, we all know, continues to face a talent crisis. You know, the number of retirees is outpacing new hires, and over 100,000 advisors are expected to retire in the next 10 years. Yeah, we surveyed our partners around this and they all believe recruiting is gonna get more and more difficult. 61% said hiring talent is harder than 3 years ago, and over 45% said they are worried about a talent shortage over the next 5 years. We're talking about the best-of-breed firms, right, in the industry. We have set about to institutionalize and turbocharge recruiting like we have M&A for our firms, okay? With all of our proprietary programs, we're tackling the challenge in a decentralized way, and to date, our M&A and sourcing team has put in place 40 enterprise-level recruiting agreements, and it allows for a deep and differentiated reach in candidate sourcing that goes well above and beyond, say, one partner firm's reach, right? The early results are promising, with 22 new advisor hires year to date across 10 firms despite the war for talent, and many of whom have come through already with their books of business as advisors. We're very, very bullish on recruiting and institutionalizing recruiting across the partnership. It's more than getting in the door. You also, of course, need to retain and develop exceptional talent in the industry. That's also where we step in. We help with potential path to partnership and compensation structuring, as well as put into place succession programs to ensure generational continuity. You know, we leverage the power of the partnership by hosting annual talent summits and have created formal HR networking groups across the firms. Talent management and recruiting is a big deal, and it's another example of how we can leverage the scale at Focus to provide exceptional resources to a huge partner and industry need. Then lastly, let's take a look at operations, technology, and cybersecurity. As mentioned earlier, digital access, of course, is ever increasing in client importance. We enable our partners to create premier client experiences by a highly curated tech stack. The key to all of this is first our ability to curate at scale with 82 partner firms, which equates to 82 different technology needs. Our scale you know, allows us to build a solution that isn't just some blanket solution top-down. It's not gonna work for everyone. Secondly, the volume and speed at which we can affect change, and 80% of partners have upgraded their infrastructure after joining Focus with our help, okay? We have more experience with technology upgrades than anyone else in the industry. Lastly, the cost hurdles. You know, we're able to overcome meaningfully, and we simply just have better pricing on most solutions due to our scale. Quickly, what does the wealth tech stack actually consist of? Well, again, there are countless options, and they're ever increasing, but there are really ten areas that matter, such as trading and rebalancing, CRM, you know, client onboarding. Our team here at Focus has intimate knowledge of these ever-changing technologies in these specific areas, and they know how they can integrate. It enables us to take this modular approach for our firms to use only what they need and want to use, while still making sure that there's a fully unified tech suite. Again, a great example of how we think about building solutions for our firms in a customized way in meeting the evolving client needs of digital access. The entire wealth tech platform is then backed by a holistic and exceptional cybersecurity program. You know, interestingly enough, we can. We actually add value to prospects even before the actual acquisition with in-depth cybersecurity assessment and as it's part of our rigorous due diligence program. Given that our client base is predominantly high net worth and ultra-net worth, cybersecurity protection is obviously a must-have for safe information. Our 10-tenet comprehensive approach enables our partners to remain vigilant, meet ongoing regulatory requirements, and keep client data safe by anticipating potential threats. Hopefully that provides some insight into the programs we have built and a philosophy behind how we've developed them. We've been hard at work to deliver and enhance value to our firm's businesses and their clients. We're extremely proud that we have outpaced our original 2025 vision of what our value-add services have now become. We did all this building from the ground up, creating solutions by listening and learning from our partners and their clients. That is advisor and client friendly, that is bespoke, that is open architecture, and that positions our firms for even greater success. Our goal now is to turbocharge our already successful offerings in three ways. We're gonna further deploy resources across all the offerings, building them out as we always have, not with bloated overhead or massive infrastructure, but taking a nimble approach. Secondly, we're gonna continue to build upon the momentum of our growing scale. The larger the partnership grows with specialized areas of expertise and centers of influence, the stronger our network effect and value-add actually becomes, right? Ultimately, we believe this will manifest in improving outcomes and driving better economics at our partner firms. Which brings us back to our long-term targets. Our value-add services help to accelerate growth and expand margins for our firms. Additionally, the differentiated offering will continue to attract new firms to the Focus partnership, which not only builds our scale and diversity, but can only further enrich our value-add solutions. Value-add services is absolutely one of our three key pillars here, along with permanent capital and entrepreneurship. This is truly a competitive advantage for our firms, for our firms and for Focus as we continue on our path to Focus 2025. Thank you. Now it's my pleasure to introduce Rajini and our five partner panelists to share with you. There really is no other partner doing exactly what Focus is doing. They don't really have a direct competitor. I think it's the range of services they offer. First and foremost, the collaboration. Focus Client Solutions, valuation partners. All types of different solutions with respect to credit, all kinds of cash management strategies. The succession of a business, how to go about doing that, how to transition a client. Banking services to insurance to trust services. I'm still learning and exploring and digesting everything there is to offer. These curated value-added sort of capabilities are gonna ensure that no prospect or existing client, you know, really will be able to outgrow the capabilities of us as a firm now that we have these kind of additional value-added services. Thinking about new business lines or thinking about how to grow our business, both organically or inorganically. They've added value in all of those ways and more. If you wanted to put an equity options plan in place, what would that look like? If you wanted to run your payroll and bring the next gen through, as far as promoting people, what does that scorecard look like? You just get that kind of handed to you. That industry know-how and kind of best practice was huge. It seems like every time I turn around, we have something new to offer to our clients and to our team, to help our value proposition that's coming from Focus. Focus has really allowed us to bring down those barriers and have real conversations through the natural network where you can always pick up the phone and call someone and know they're gonna actually answer. When we think about marketing, we have access to a Chief Marketing Officer. When we think about compliance, we have access to an experienced compliance team. To know that we would have somebody looking over our shoulders saying, "Hey, have you thought about it this way?" Or giving us perhaps that little nudge to do something a little bit better. The retention of the client base has improved, and performance SKU no longer becomes an issue. I'm not sure I would've been willing to do that honest work and self-assessment without some real feedback from people that I deeply respected. It will all yield a stronger, longer, better relationship with our firm and clients. Good morning, and thank you for staying with us. This is our value-added panel. You've heard about bits and pieces of value-add from our other panels, but this is a deeper dive. Delighted to have five of our partners here, each from an eminently successful firm before they became partners, who have further turbocharged both their business solutions as well as the client value proposition as a Focus partner. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us today. Would love to start with each of you telling us, just introducing yourself and a little background about your firm. Michael- Sure. Can we start with you? My name is Michael Eckton. I am the co-founder and CEO of Crestwood Advisors. We are a Boston-based wealth management firm with offices certainly in Boston and also in Connecticut. Like other firms here, we literally started back in 2003 with 0 assets and an idea to build a different model. Had a wonderful track record of organic growth that has certainly gotten better since we joined Focus in 2017. Tom? I'm Tom Myers, CEO and Senior Wealth Advisor at Bordeaux Wealth Advisors. We're based in Silicon Valley. We also have an office in Seattle. We serve about 180 families with $3.5 billion of assets at the beginning of the year. We just crossed $4 billion recently. Serving an ultra-high net worth clientele. Average assets per relationship's about $20 million with an investment approach that uses an extensive amount of alternative investments. All right. Tyson Beam with Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman. We were founded in 1967. Came into Focus in 2017 with the second generation at that time. We are primarily a business management and family office service, servicing entertainment, sports, and ultra-high net worth families. As you can see, about 550 employees, no assets under management, which I think is unique about us. We'll talk about that a little bit more later. I'm Tony Abbiati. I'm a Co-Founder and CEO of SCS Financial. We're an independent wealth manager based in Boston. We set out in 2002 to tackle what we thought was a simple but pretty big gap in the ultra-high-end wealth management space. We focused exclusively on the very high end, and our basic feeling was that it was an area of the market that was completely broken, and that with a few simple foundational concepts, we could help to fix it. We basically felt that if you had $200 million, there were some basic things that you should ask for in your wealth manager. One is that they should be completely conflict-free. That essentially eliminated all the banks and brokers, which is where most of the money sat. We felt that you should demand some version of a outsourced family office. We knew we could provide that. You should demand very thoughtful, carefully constructed investment solutions, and so we set out to emulate what the endowments and elite single family offices did. We've grown from 0 to about $30 billion over those 19 years, and hopefully upward from here. Joe? I'm Joe Sweeney from Cornerstone Wealth. We're headquartered in suburban Charlotte with six offices throughout the Carolinas. I reside and have an office in San Francisco. As you can see, we're the smallest of everyone that's been up here, but the Focus has certainly helped turbocharge our growth. It also represents a transition from our original focus on the mass affluent to moving upscale to business owners and particularly working with executives at venture-backed companies. Very cool. Talent is the most important asset in our business, so we'd like to start by talking about that. Tony, if I may start with you. You've had a very seamless CEO succession with you taking over at SCS while you've expanded team, while you've grown the firm. Tell us about that. Sure. Well, I mean, I think I'll start with many of the groups that end up choosing Focus have, not all, but have succession planning on their mind. It's one of the tensions in these companies. We actually use it now a lot in competitive situations that firms that have not done anything try to use that as an advantage. The reality is founder-led independent RIAs have tension in them because there's a question of what is gonna happen to that company down the road. Focus is a solution that relieves that tension. Yeah, we had succession planning on our mind, and about a year and a half into doing the transaction with Focus, we came to them and said, "We're gonna start with the CEO transition, and we're gonna test your resolve." A guy by the name of Pete Mattoon had been our CEO for the first 17 years, and he, when Focus did the deal, he was the primary face of the firm, and he wanted to move into an Executive Chairman, non-management committee role, and I was gonna come into the CEO role. Focus was terrific. They asked a lot of questions. They wanted to find out if there was a story behind the story, which there wasn't. In the end, they didn't flinch, and it was at that moment that I knew that we had a real partnership. We have since tested it even further. A year ago, we transitioned our Chief Operating Officer role, and as you can imagine, with $30 billion, we have lots of accounts, and we have a complicated operating platform, and I wanted to give the job to two younger people. Again, Focus asked a lot of questions, but we knew we had their support, and they helped us think through the comp, the equity, the transition, the softer parts of how this all works. In a few weeks, we're gonna transition the CIO role, and our CIO is gonna move into a non-operating seat, and we have a terrific new CIO starting. In four and a half years, we have transitioned CEO, COO, CIO, restructured the management committee, and through it all, Focus has been truly right next to us, helping us do this all. It's been great. Thank you. Let me just offer, we are a client of SCS on their alternative side. In thinking about these synergies across the Focus platform, Tony, thanks a lot. I mean, our alternative offering would not be what it is without you and your firm. Great. You're welcome. You've had a lot of hiring too. Tell us about your experience. Yeah. At Bordeaux, we joined back in 2017, and one of the first things that we did upon joining Focus was sitting down with Focus and developing a three-year strategic plan, which at the core of that plan involved really installing a culture of growth in our firm and setting some pretty ambitious targets. To achieve those targets, we definitely needed to up our game from a talent management, not just managing talent, but the sourcing and attracting of talent. You know, Focus has been instrumental in helping us deepen our bench to bring more talent into the circle. When we joined Focus, our firm was about 10 headcount. Today it's closing in on 30. A tremendous amount of growth. Focus really has been instrumental, I would say, in really every step of that process. We were, you know, really a founder-led firm at the beginning. We're now closing in on 5 partners. Every single new partner that we've added really came as a result of our collaboration with Focus. The third partner of our firm was directly the result of a resume that was floated to us by Focus. An individual that came in has really helped transform the culture of our firm to one that's much more business development and growth oriented. Our fourth partner came through a recruiting source that was, you know, sourced and vetted by Focus and happened to be someone that I worked with 20 years ago. They helped connect the dots and bring him into the fold with a very creative and tax-efficient solution that enabled him to get equity in the management company tax-free. Our soon-to-be fifth partner is really someone that we sourced as a result of a PR and marketing campaign that we did with Focus's marketing group. That again was someone that, you know, became aware of Bordeaux because of what we were actively doing out in the community. Without a doubt, we would be nowhere near where we are today without the help of Focus in building out and deepening our team. Thank you. Michael, you've had some career padding. Yeah. Thankfully, the first order of business when we joined Focus was not replacing the CEO and having a transition there. Perhaps that's in the works at some point. You know, providing a career path for people at Crestwood is really from the early days and from before Crestwood was even started, a foundational part of what we were trying to do. Because three of us had started the company, worked at an organization when there was a lot of turnover in the professional staff, and we saw how disruptive that was to the client relationships. For us, when we're asking our clients to trust us to be partners with them in managing their resources and guiding them on their wealth, having that consistency of the relationship and the continuity was very important to us. You know, we again did a very good job in building the organization, but part of the reason that we actually joined Focus was to have that sustainability of what we were trying to achieve for clients through our employees. That certainly happened since the deal. We've doubled the number of people who are partners at Crestwood, part of our ManCo, and we now have a better structure for what the employees, how they can migrate up into the organization and have that partnership path in the future for them, which is something we really want them to have. I mean, somebody else in one of the earlier panels highlighted how important that was for the entrepreneurial spirit. Certainly, it has been at Crestwood, and we want that. We think the employees who work with us and the teammates who work with us are drawn to us for that opportunity, and we wanna be able to fulfill that. Great. The biggest value-added Focus comes from the partners. Joe, you have a wonderful story about how you found your new CIO. Yep. We had just joined Focus in the beginning of 2018 and became clear that one of the founders, our CIO, was on a 3- or 4-year path to be transitioned out. As a relatively smaller firm, we weren't contemplating what we needed then. We had some great conversations with Sukanya Kuruganti, who almost feels like she is a Cornerstone employee, we spend so much time with her and Sukanya because we wanted to, you know, think about what would we need when we're gonna be $3 billion, when we're gonna be $5 billion. If any of you have been on a search committee, I mean, you know, these things can take forever. What we did is, we were introduced by Sukanya to six different partner firms. All were incredibly generous with their time, taking an hour or two hours to talk about what we would need. One, actually, Michael, your partner, Robert Icks, was. I spent the longest time with him. I spent two hours with him. I'm sorry. The net of this is that when we went to the search firm, also having been introduced by Sukanya, we had very well articulated what we were looking for. Our search took from beginning to very successful and 10.5 weeks. Again, I know many of you have been on search committees, like, searches do not happen in under three months. It happened under three months because of how well prepared we were, because of the generosity of people like Robert and five other CIOs. Oh, the real success story, Cliff Hodge, was probably 33, 34 then. We thought he'd be on a four or five-year track to partnership. It took two years. Great success. You found the right man. Great. Found the right person, and the former CIO was able to retire a little bit early. It was just a it was kismet how well it worked. Awesome. You have this talent, but then you have to empower this talent, create efficiencies. Tyson, GRF is one of our largest firm with respect to headcount, and you have a very complicated business. You guys have done amazingly well in empowering this talent. Tell us about that. Yeah. I mean, you know, at 550 employees and, you know, an average tenure of about 15 years per employee, you know, managing that talent and giving them opportunities has been a great reward for us throughout this process. You know, we've also brought in a COO during this time and a chief information officer as well to help that. You know, we've created new partners organically from within the organization as part of this. And, you know, really empowering them in a way to be part of a committee structure, to be part of the, you know, ongoing changes and growth within the firm of, you know, a change in accounting software and looking at CRMs and looking at other technologies, you know, like Addepar. Ways to service the clients and also, you know, make us more efficient with time and give us the resources to do that. I mean, who knows better than that than those that are on the ground with the clients and talking to them every day and seeing what the needs are. Empowering them and getting their feedback and a lot of that's been a tremendous, you know, an opportunity. You know, having employees from Los Angeles to Nashville to New York to London, everybody has a little bit of a different insight to what's important for them. You know, time zone, you know, client needs, you know, regulatory issues. It's really complicated to make sure you get everybody on the same page and collaborate and find the right solutions for that. Great. Just to build on that a little bit, if it's okay. Those of us who have been around building these independent wealth management firms know this like the back of our hand. My guess is the investment community may know conceptually, but the operational infrastructure of these firms is a really big deal. If you get it wrong, you're gonna be mired down a path of Excel spreadsheets and too many people and lack of profitability. It's really hard to get right. It's really hard to get right and scale, and have your advisors. You know, we coin these terms, investors invest, advisors advise. The reality is both spend their time on stuff, right? We knew that we did a lot of things well as we built the firm. Growth was one of them. I think we advised well, we invested well, but we weren't where we needed to be for a $30 billion firm on our operating platform. Focus has been truly invaluable on that. You know, they not only have a bird's-eye view of what all the other Focus firms do and what the industry does and what has worked and what hasn't worked, which is much different than getting a sales pitch from a fintech company. They also have relationships with many of the most important ones that help us get to the top of the company quickly, negotiate pricing. We have transitioned a massively complicated operating system over to Addepar this year. We have implemented a technology called Canoe, which helps with all of our private investments. We have revamped our cybersecurity through a group called Drawbridge, all of which were Focus connections, Focus helping us through the entire process. You heard Lenny talk about our budding business called SCS Investment Partners. The infrastructure of that is a fintech company called CAIS, and we would be nowhere with CAIS if it weren't for Focus as well. It's a really big deal, and I think a lot of companies, when they start, they just build the operating platform the best way they possibly can. When they do a transaction with Focus, they say, "Okay, if I'm gonna go from here to here, we really, really need to spend some time and energy on this." It's not the most glamorous part of the business, but it is the part of the business that, you know, that separates the winners from everybody else. It's the same alternatives platform that Joe has been using. Michael, you are a heavy user. Yeah, very much so. Just to touch on that, you know, Tony and I are in different businesses and serving different types of clients. He's in the ultra-high net worth. We're in the high net worth client. One of the gaps in our investment offering has been the alternative space. We recognize that. We believe what's held us back is a different skill set required to be in that space than what we thought we had in-house. We are happy to leverage the 20-year investment you have made, not only in that skill set, but in the accessibility to get the types of managers that we can now avail to our clients. That's a real example where, you know, I caught a glimpse of Lenny's presentation about how those value-added services are accelerating growth. We are going to fund from our client pool a significant amount of money into the current fund and future funds as well. But, I'm estimating about 30% of the assets that are being used to fund this round are coming from either brand-new clients, which were intrigued by this as we were talking to them, or outside money from our existing clients that were elsewhere, the money was gonna go elsewhere and coming in from other places. It is expanding our opportunity, and we are an example. We're not just that, but other value-added services are accelerating our organic growth that, frankly, we've been quite proud of over the years. Yes, we're absolutely finding the particular resonance among 30- and 40-year-old founders of venture-backed companies, where they're seeking alternatives. I mean, you have to have this arrow in your quiver or you have no game whatsoever. Then similar to you, we certainly don't have the infrastructure to build it all ourselves. We have a very thoughtful CIO, but who really needs to stand on your shoulders to be able to be successful. If I could just add on that, though, because some of the earlier discussions about M&A and the due diligence that Focus did certainly, you know, gives a clean bill of health that it's a good organization. Just the accessibility as part of the partnership that Tony and his team were willing to give us to understand, teach us, and give us the type of exposure that we couldn't get off the custodial platforms when you're just going and picking at random somebody who's offering a competitive product. You're heavy users of other Focus Client Solutions also. Yeah. It's, you know, we're. None of this was really as thought out as it is now back in 2017 where we joined, but we're in the wealth management space. We've worked with clients for 20+ years. Many of these clients are asking us to be named in their estate plans and help them with other types of services. The trust services in particular is very interesting to us. The cash and credit solutions allowing us to speak to other sides of the balance sheet of our clients and really deepen those client relationships. That, you know, we thought we had very good and intimate client relationships, but this is allowing us to get that much more involved and provide solutions and be looked at as what we're trying to achieve with those clients. As I alluded to moments ago, it has accelerated our growth. Without getting into details of numbers, last year with this calendar year is our fastest organic growth, both in dollars, of course, given our growing scale, but also as a percentage. Again, that's something that we've always focused on. When we joined Focus, we had told them we had zero interest in inorganic growth because we thought we had a very good story and a good model that we did not wanna get distracted by trying to figure out someone else's problems. Joe, you are another heavy user of Focus Client Solutions, the credit, the trust, et cetera. You have some fascinating stories. Yeah, we're absolutely power users. There's a scrappiness to our little firm. My background is not wealth management. This is my third career. It's only been about six years. It always struck me that no one wakes up in the morning saying, "I've got to change my wealth manager." Many people wake up, particularly business owners, with some financing problem. I've got two great stories that have led to happy outcomes. One is a venture-backed company. It's here in New York. Steven Canup and I have been calling on them for probably 5 or 6 months, working on a line of credit to replace an existing line of credit at 11% with something about 4% or 5%. Here's what was really fun. When Steven came in to meet with these folks, he said, "Oh, well, I've got, you know, 3 banks that will, you know, participate on this thing. That'd be very interesting." When you think about Focus Credit Solutions, with this universe of 20 banks, ultimately, there's gonna be every distinctive competency that you wish to find to solve your clients' problems will reside somewhere in those 20 banks. In any individual bank, they're not gonna have competency across every, you know, every desired outcome. In this case, we just had a meeting with them two days ago. We are taking over their 401(k), their employee stock purchase plan, and then we're working with the three founders on their personal financial situation. We're there because we've understood their business. We've shown empathy with their business, dealing with the problem that was facing them before a very successful financing round. This is all thanks to Steven Canup. A second story is similar to that, and this is a really fun situation. In June, I met a gentleman who had just sold a company, his first company on a five-year earn out to an Israeli public company, for, you know, a decent amount of money. We're obviously very interested in chatting about that. He said, "You know, I can't have this conversation now. It'll be at least October until I've sorted out some tax situations, but my new company does solar installations for low-income multifamily housing in California, taking advantage of a tax credit regime in California." Now, again, you might say, well, that's a pretty narrowly defined use for a credit facility. Once again, Canup comes back, he's got three different banks, we're about to put it in place. We've been having conversations from June till now with this, not yet a client, until November first. We respected him. We didn't push him in the conversation. We have a nice mandate immediately on November first. Oh, by the way, he wants to sort out how to create a family limited partnership. He needs valuation services, so we can pass this along to his kids, and would like the trust service as well. We bundled all this up into one client where we had long conversations, not to do about what, you know, nothing to do about our ultimate goal, but was very successful. To put a nice bow on it, we had another client who's a lobbyist in Sacramento. One of his clients is one of the three large dairy co-ops. All of you know that coming out of Glasgow that methane emissions is a big issue and an existential threat to the dairy industry. In a conversation with this gentleman from Sacramento, he said, "You know, we're looking at methane recapture and, you know, it's a thing. It can be converted into transportation fuel, and, you know, it's just one of the things I'm working on." I happened to raise, since this gentleman is involved in solar and other renewables, "Do you know anyone who knows anything about methane recapture?" He said, "Oh, I built one of those plants, seven years ago." I've now put two clients together. The gentleman who is the lobbyist just referred us into three additional people because we're helping. He looks very good in front of the dairy committee. Then my partners have the great joy of being able to talk about, yes, Joe Sweeney and methane, it's not surprising they go together. I want to take a break here and see if there are any questions from the audience or our virtual audience. Please, Craig. Thank you. Rajini, I was wondering, why don't you guys offer alts from the center of the firm with all those other services? Tony, with your 41% returns, I imagine, you know, you're seeing demand from some of the other partners. What inning do you think we're in terms of the migration across the partnerships to alternatives? Take it. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I'll answer the second one that was directed to me. I think we're very, very early. I mean, I think we're in an industry broadly that unless you set out your firm to compete at the very, very high-end with, you know, against the Cambridge Associates and the very, you know, large firms, it's not an industry that has built out high-quality alternatives. It hasn't had to. It hasn't needed to be part of it. And historically, it is a stock and bond industry, the RIA industry. I think we're early, and I think that it's gonna be a big part of the future. And look, we're happy that we leaned into it really, really heavily 12 or 13 years ago, and it was a good time to do it. We were able to build relationships that, you know, you could never build today. It's an area of the market that you're either in the underbelly of it or you're not. It's very hard to get in, and it's very hard to become part of the ecosystem of venture, of growth equity, of where people are going and how people are positioning. We're happy to have gotten there early, but I think it's, we're in the first inning. I mean, I think it's gonna be part of wealth management for the future. Can I try and answer the first question? Sure. Oh, okay. while my business is actually answering? It is because, frankly, we wouldn't want them to. I mean, it is a different skill set. Then if with all of Rajini's skills and Rudy's and Lenny's skills, you know, the last thing we would want them to do is try and create an alternative solution that frankly would take 10 years to build anyway. It's just not something we'd be interested in at all. To further elaborate, when you think about talent, Steven Canup came from a bank, you know, everyone up here is not big on banks. But let's face it, if you're an entrepreneur, you do wanna be set free. Steven brought his relationships in. He's able to create the virtual bank from whole cloth because it was a better opportunity for him. Anyone who is a successful alternative person is not gonna come to Focus. They're not gonna depart. Any startup, I think I would be suspicious of whatever would be offered. I certainly feel much more comfortable with someone who's done this for over a decade. Craig, we think about value add in three ways. If it does not exist in the industry, we set out to build it with the right talent. Cash and credit, classic example, doesn't exist, had to build it. Two, sometimes it is just leveraging the scale of Focus to create beneficial pricing, sometimes for clients, sometimes for our partners, sometimes it's just customization. A lot of the work we do with our tech vendors, a lot of the work that we do with research providers is similar. A ton of value add comes from each other. Where we see, SCS is an absolute juggernaut in our alternative space, but we have Ancora. Fred just told you about what they do. We have Crestwood. Seaside Advisors brings in ESG. You have Beryllus that brings in deals and a whole lot more. When we look at this industry, what we think we need to help build, again, leveraging third party and internal resources, is an infrastructure whereby it is easy for partners like Michael and Joe, who want to use the alternative services that Tony or Fred or others may have to offer, is create a seamless way for them to see what is available, along with research, along with the material that they need to talk to their clients, create a process where capital calls become easier and make it simple to do the reporting. That is what we are trying to build, leveraging the skills that our partners have to enable access to other partners who want it. Questions? Yes. One of you. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, sorry. No mic. There it comes. Sorry. I don't know. I'm used to the mic. Question for you guys. Focus built a very valuable network, not just for partner firms, but as you continue to add various value-added services, the vendors that pipe into that, I imagine, find it quite valuable as well, especially as the end market grows, the RIA industry grows, et cetera, right? Like, people that wanna service that industry continue to expand. Focus currently does not charge the vendors that are plugging into it, my understanding, and, you know, to preserve independence, et cetera. Would it bother you, or would it change your perception of the independence of Focus if they were to start monetizing relationships with the vendors that are piping into you? I'll take a stab at that. Go ahead. Yeah, I don't think it would be something that we'd be particularly keen on. You know, if there's a pay-to-play model and if people are buying shelf space, if you will, it removes the independence of what we're getting from Focus that exists today. We know when we work closely with Eric Amar, when he comes in and we talk about sort of the things that are important to us and what we need, we know that what he's gonna come back and what Molly might suggest on the system side is not something because they're gonna get an extra couple of bucks in the back door. It's the same with our clients, right? You know, we try to provide objective advice. We make a point of saying the only way we get paid is what you as a client choose to pay us. We don't wanna have that conflicted impression, even if it's, you know, not really conflicted. If there is a pricing benefit that goes to our partners, we benefit from it as economic partners anyway. I think Rudy, Lenny, and I would say that we never, ever wanted a vendor relationship with our partners. We're partners, not vendors. It's not about an overhead charge to them for what we do. It's about the benefit to them, the benefit to the client, economics of the partnership grow, and we benefit from it. You had a question. Everyone, thanks for participating in the panel. I just wanted to start off first with a question on the value-added services and try and understand if there are any product or capability gaps that currently exist on the Focus platform that you'd like to see them add. I hate to. Go, Mike. I respond to this one too, but you know, and I'm thinking of a conversation. I think it's Mike Viturris at breakfast this morning. He wasn't planting the question, but he was like, "Hey, I might ask this, like, thing." It was interesting 'cause it was along the same things of what should they be providing that they're not. At least from our perspective, there's really not a lot right now. I think part of understanding that is we most of us individually are very focused on our business day-to-day. So the idea of tapping into a cash and credit solution is not even something that I might think of because I don't necessarily know how to use it. Because, you know, they're in touch with 80 of us, they're hearing from others that this is a pain point in their organization, and then it's coming back to highlight the capabilities. Like, frankly, I'd even put in the M&A thing for that, at least as it applies to us, because it wasn't something we were interested in. And it was only then brought back to us in identifying the platform we had built to support our own growth of how this might be leverageable for our organization with the right fit. I will also say, I'm thinking of Tyson in particular in thinking this, and one of the things that I know some days I could benefit from is that a woman in Billions who's like an in-house therapist. You know, if you have 500 employees, boy, I'd get someone like that in your office for most days. That would be a great asset, actually. Yeah. I mean, I'll pick up on that. I think, you know, one of the things we've talked a lot about growth, you know, it's a growth model, the leveraging of resources. You know, even events like this or the regional partners meetings or, you know, Zoom calls we have, you know, the collaboration that happens amongst the partner firms to help solve problems. I mean, we're all in the solutions business. We're in client service, but we solve problems all day long. That's what we do. You know, sometimes you don't know what your problem is until you have a conversation with somebody. I think that's where we've seen the evolution of some of these services come from. I'm sure there's gonna be something. There must be. Either a partner firm will solve it and try to roll it out to the rest of the other partners, or Focus will help us solve that and be a more collaborative effort to roll out for the rest of us. I mean, we found, you know, just in conversation with, you know, firms like Vista Wealth, we've tried to find solutions for, you know, the entry-level, you know, entertainer who's not made a lot of money yet, but doesn't really have a good solution for their first SEP contribution. Hopefully, they become, you know, the biggest star in the world like a lot of our clients are, but they gotta start someplace. We all know the relationships, once they're established, we're very good about, you know, keeping them, you know, connected to us and strong, and managing those relationships. The sooner you can get in, especially in the entertainment space and the sports space, the more likely you are to have that relationship when the big check comes in and when the big payday happens. We're trying to find solutions for those things that exist within the firm. That's great. What we've seen is thoughtfully you have embraced, you and Rudy and Lenny and the team have embraced feedback that you've gotten from us. I mean, trust services were a big thing. I mean, that's an important thing because your response was humina humina humina until you know until this. One thing that just for all of you to contemplate just at a macro level here, so there's sufficient enthusiasm among the partner firms. There's 14 of us who will have been up here, who have been up here throughout the day. 13 of the 14 had to fly in. 9 had to fly in from halfway across the country or more. We're not Focus employees. We're here because we're excited, and we wanna see each other as much as have a chance to talk with you. At least reflect upon that on these days where, or as you leave this day and you think about the interaction with these three panels. I mean, we're here because we're very excited about Focus. You see, we don't have to do any talking. We just have to let them do the talking. Let's get back to growth, because eventually all of this leads to growth, like you've been saying. Tom, if I could have you elaborate a little of that. Sure. When we joined Focus, you know, our business development marketing program really was pretty exclusively on client referrals. We'd pick up the phone, and that's how we got new clients. One of the things that we realized is we really needed, you know, to get our word out. We were a very well-kept secret. We're sitting in the heart of Silicon Valley, opportunity all around us, and with Focus's help, really sat down to really understand, you know, how to build a much more effective business development marketing program. Worked closely with John Michnock and his team from day one to really, you know, read out of the Focus playbook. You know, fast-forward, we joined in 2017. That was a year of kind of building out infrastructure. Setting strategic plans, et cetera. 2018, record year of new clients. 2020, record year of new clients. 2021, set yet another record just with three quarters in. Of course, we're very fortunate that we're in Silicon Valley in Seattle, two very hot tech markets. 2020 was a great example of how we started to see liquidity events, you know, starting to pick up in the second half of the year. We collaborated with John and his team. You know, offices in California and Seattle and whatnot are mostly closed. How do we access all this wealth creation that's happening around us? Long story short, we developed a program that really started with one company, Snowflake, where we had received some referrals where we were able to develop and devise these webinars that were, you know, we had sent out hundreds of invitations to people that we had targeted that we knew had very significant amount of company equity and were gonna need to be doing something with that to diversify. The companies don't necessarily wanna sponsor these programs, but through artificial intelligence and some other avenues, you know, we're sitting down and putting on webinars with 30, 50, 100 potential clients. Leveraging, you know, the video conferencing technology, which has always been around, but now everybody knows how to use it. Really a neat story and, you know, no way could we have figured it out on our own, for sure. Focus was very helpful in pulling that together. Which ultimately led to John creating an IPO playbook that became available to really any Focus partner firm that wanted to pursue that. That's the beauty of it. We have ET laboratories. Learn from one, teach the others. If I can try and put a number on this, let's call it the X factor. Revenue, when you started as a Focus partner to today, what's that X factor? Understanding that it came from multiple sources. Yeah. In terms of change, it's both change and frankly, more recently, the rate of change, but we are three times as large today, both in terms of revenue and assets as well than we were when we joined almost five years ago in 2017. What is even more exciting is we can see that the acceleration and the rate of change and that growth, and it's quite exciting for the organization. It's exciting for the talent too, who can see that growth and see the opportunities being created for them. Tom? Yeah. In the 4.5 years that we've been part of the partnership, we've yet to do a deal, so our growth is 100% organic. Our revenue has grown north of 30% on an average annual basis. I'll be a little more qualitative about it since we don't do assets under management and the like. We exceeded every expectation on budgeting and growth. I think the one thing that was mentioned in an earlier panel discussion was the opportunity that comes across for in the acquisition space for those incoming companies, the ability to springboard off of the platform, the collaboration that exists in the original firm is tremendous. They can do things that they didn't have access to before, 'cause they have resources, because they have mentors, because they have a different level of referral source. I mean, I would expect us to continue that rapid growth and that exponential increase, especially as we come out of COVID and live entertainment continues on and all those opportunities continue to exist. So we've been part of Focus for four and a half years or so, and we have almost, not quite, doubled in revenue and assets over that time. Our basic business model is an organic business model, and if you sat through a, you know, a business planning session at SCS, it would have, let's get 10 or 15 new clients this year, and they'll average around $100 million, and that's $1 billion-$1.5 billion, and let's just do it year after year after year. That's sort of- Just like the rest of us. That's basically the business plan. We did buy a company this year, so we had a little bit of a boost this year because we did our first acquisition. We have also, as we talked about earlier, spent a lot of time over the last year or so on non-growth-oriented succession planning, rebuilding the operating system. We call it Get Fit. We're ready to springboard for the next bunch of years. Joe? We've gone from probably mid-single digit organic revenue growth. This year will be about 20% revenue growth. We have the best pipeline we've ever had. You know, of course, I'm incredibly jealous of my fellow Food and Wine Society of San Francisco member, Tom Myers, with 30% growth. But it's substantial. As we look forward, we reviewed the pipeline that either Focus Credit Solutions or the alternatives lead will be very important for 80% of the prospects, the substantial prospects in our pipeline. That's great. When Rudy, Lenny, and I started Focus, the dream was the best of both worlds for advisors and their clients. It was about empowered advisors, operational efficiencies, and an expanded client value proposition, leading to that X factor of growth. You heard from these five gentlemen, but if you applied across Focus, it ties exactly back to the number Rudy had in his presentation, 15.4%. That is the dream. Thank you so much for joining us today and your insights. We're absolutely honored to be your partners. Thanks for having us. Before I close out the session, actually I wanted to respond to just one of the questions. I was sitting there in the back watching the panel and ready to jump up, so bear with me for one second. There was a question that is essential to our model, essential to the opportunity that we saw when we entered the market, and essential to our culture and our contract with our partners. No, never will we produce products centrally and push it down the throats of our partners or clients because they would be building a wirehouse. We would be building an asset manager that just looks at distribution. We do not look at our partners as a distribution channel for what we do. It is their decision. It is their fiduciary responsibility to ultimately pick the best solution in the market, and we are here to help. If we do not have the best solution, they need to go wherever they want to go. You know, I come from a world where ultimately, unfortunately, we were really good in pushing underperforming, overpriced products down the throats of our clients. This is the world we left. This is not the world that we are in today. I hope that, from this day, you agree that we are the market leader in an excellent market in the U.S. and beyond. Our track record and scale is unique in this industry. We have a model that surrounds successful entrepreneurs with capabilities and resources that they could not find in any other place in this industry. Most importantly, you met many of our partners here today, and you saw them on the video, it is the quality of these partners, the quality of these entrepreneurs that is our calling card, and that is truly, you know, the future of this business. $4 billion in revenues, $1.1 billion in EBITDA, a margin of 28%, I hope you agree is an ambitious target, but it is an achievable target. Thank you to our partners, our colleagues, Tina, Virginie, Lenny, for making this event possible. Thank you for your interest. Thank you for investing in us, and please do join us on this very exciting journey that is ahead of us. Thank you.