Serial Innovation in FinTech with Purpose Unlimited CEO Som Seif | At the Money

Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts radio news. >> This week on the podcast, yet another banger. Sam Safe is founder and CEO of Purpose Unlimited. One of their holdings is Purpose Investments about 40 billion Canadian. Uh he is a serial entrepreneur and financial innovator. He created the world's first Bitcoin ETF in Canada long before uh the US came up with one. He built one of the larger ETF firms uh in Canada, sold it to BlackRock. Uh on and on the conversation goes about all these fascinating things. I I thought the conversation was really really intriguing and I think you will also with no further ado my conversation with purpose investments safe. Sam Safe, welcome to Bloomberg. >> Oh, Barry, it's great to be here and thank you for that kind introduction. >> So, I'm kind of fascinated by your background, your career, the whole multiple innovation, serial entrepreneurship. Um, but let's roll back to the early days. you wanted to be an architect and then you went for a bachelor's uh in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Toronto. What what was the original career plan? >> Yeah, I mean I since uh as long as I can remember, architecture was um my kind of goal and that fundamentally was something that just inspired me. I loved the the mix of the creative side of my brain and the call it systems uh uh and structural mathematical side of my brain and bring them together and just design was always something exciting. the the interesting thing was that you know so now you're faced with this decision you apply to you know school for architecture and for engineering and then in my you know I went and spoke to a couple of architects and every single one of them said this is a stupid uh career choice uh you won't be doing anything that you will uh you think you'll be doing it'll be grunt work you won't enjoy it and there's no money in it and I you know of course said whoa what am I signing up for so I um I said okay I'm going to go do engineering with the idea that maybe I'll switch and fundamentally that was not going to happen. Uh and you know I was in first year of engineering and said okay what is my second choice? What what else? And um you know I I really loved the the concept of strategy and uh finance. Um I I didn't know anything about finance and and hadn't been learning anything about it but I got excited about investment banking and things like that. And so you know ultimately I decided that was the path I was going to pursue. And uh coming out of uh an engineering degree, I ended up um luckily um just a timing really uniquely at the end of um 1998 uh got an opportunity to to join the biggest bank in Canada, RBC in their investment banking division. And so engineering was a really interesting um path towards it. Uh and you know at the time the the tech bubble was happening and I guess someone in investment banking said hey we need more engineers in here to tell us you know how to think. Uh and the learning curve was pretty amazing in terms of starting with nothing um and basically learning on the go. >> Huh. So you spend six years at RBC helping them build out their structured products group. Tell us about that experience. What did you learn? >> So investment banking is one of the amazing uh early learning experiences and I've always been in sort of pursuit of you know learning and and call it pushing myself to certain limits and you know investment banking today is very hard. investment banking 25 years ago was even harder and and you know young analyst young individual you're ultimately working on um you know amazing things but at the same time you are you know being you know you're working like a dog like 80 to 100 hour weeks that said um there is no better place as a 22y old 23y old 25year-old to ultimately have immersive learning like and so um it was amazing for me uh when I when I went into it it's funny I I had um as a young individual always uh you know I was an immigrant to Canada you know I didn't you know my family was good middle class family but we didn't you know have stuff so I always dreamed about this idea of all the riches and golds and things like that and you know investment banking kind of one of the things that kind of excited me was this idea of you know hey you're going to make lots of money and um and you know the interesting thing was during the tenure you know first few years you know you start making good money for a young individual and then you kind of realize Wait a minute. This isn't actually motivating me. I remember uh succinctly I came home. I was 25 years old. It was 3:00 in the morning or 2 in the morning and and I just sat down and kind of weeped because I said, you know, I'm working like a dog and and I'm pursuing this goal, but I'm not happy. And I had to actually go through a deep rooted perspective of like, okay, what is the thing that actually drives me? What is the thing that actually motivates me to wake up on Monday morning and skip to work because I'm still enjoying what I'm doing. And what I realized was uh that the thing that actually I was in pursuit of was the idea of um seeing my ideas progress, seeing the things that I was doing have real tangible outcome. And I go back to that principle of what was it that excited me about architecture or design. It was this very simple principle of you know when you build something uh or you design something you can actually see it in front of you afterwards. And so I actually correlate that that really u uh specifically around what was the thing that was my intrinsic motivation. So at that point I just said look I'm still learning. I'm I'm having an amazing time but am I going to ultimately achieve what I want here? And and I said I I won't. So I kind of gave myself um a put I call it. I was 25 years old and I said okay I I'm still here learning. I'm going to build my networks. I'm going to do all this stuff, but if I'm in seat on my 30th birthday, I'm going to resign on that day. Uh and and that kind of wake woke up my mind to what else is out there. And over the next number of years, I started thinking about what was it that was going to be the next for me and uh that ultimately came when I was 28 and started Claymore. >> So, let's talk about Claymore. You you launched this in 2005. Globally, ETFs were a thing, but not the giant they were today. They certainly were a tiny niche product in Canada back then. Uh what did you see that all the other banks and all the other finance bros completely missed. >> So you're absolutely right. So in Canada specifically there were 14 ETFs listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange uh basically all by Barclays IUnits uh at the timeshares. Um and in the United States uh you know of course ETFs were um still starting to become popular specifically in the institutional crowd retail crowd you had I think firms like wisdom had just sort of entered the business and players like that and so it was a it was not an area that was logical or call it clear that said I had um one of the things I had the benefit of I'd actually covered asset management firms globally during my time at RBC and um I'd actually got the opportunity to cover Barkley um and got to know the leadership uh of the of the organization, helped them raise some capital, but more importantly was supported and understood what they were doing on the indexing ETF side. And it got me really excited. I started to see the trends, but what I struggled with was the fundamental principle of um you know, passive indexing. I I I really did. I I I actually love the principles of what indexing did. Uh and at the time, ETFs were deemed as indexing, right? That was the concept, right? It was actually anything you did outside of pure indexing was a no no. The industry players would say, "Well, this isn't an index." And so, um, I got really excited about, uh, you know, the the idea of, you know, what what an ETF does. It's low cost, great product in terms of wrapper and structure, a transparent discipline in its approach, uh, using an index. However, I just hated the fundamental principle of what market cap indexing did, which is basically buy high and sell low, right? So, um in around the time that I uh left RBC to start Claymore, um I had actually read a research paper just serendipitously came out around the same time in 2004 by Rob Arnot and Jason Sue. Uh and we'll spend some time on Rob who's a really important person in my life. Uh and they had published this article around non-market cap weighted indexes, >> smart beta. Yes. And it was I I I read this article and I'm an engineer so I love these technical things and I just got excited and um uh basically a couple months later I reached out. We went down and uh spent time with Rob uh in Pasadena and he was a big thing. I remember Rob was a pretty big deal but he took the time. He spent half a day with me and I walked out of that office just having clarity on the future of what I was going to build and more importantly uh the future of where the industry opportunity was and um and that was the the principal starting point of the vision for building uh claymore and you know the future of what I felt was going to be a really amazing thing around indexing and the future of indexing around and we used of course we launched the first public investment fund on fundamental indexing the RFPI indexes. >> Huh. Really interesting. So you grow this to 34 ETFs and a couple of closedend funds and about $8 billion Canadian I think or 6 billion US. >> Uh what was the hardest part of building that sort of asset manager considering all the other products were giant bankowned? Well, you know, Canada, of course, has um many structural I mean, it's an amazing uh region for opportunity and financial services. That said, it is also um you know, highly concentrated with the big banks and the control that they have with their distribution. And so, it's a very challenging market for independence as you can imagine. That said, um you know what I I really uh I go back to the period we had a really amazing product. No one knew what it was. I remember we'd go out uh in 2005, 2006, 2007. We'd sit down and talk to advis advisers across the country and you know I'd walk into a room and I'd have a signin sheet and saying you know name and and email but then I'd ask the question how many of you use ETFs and back then it was one out of 10 would say yes. Most people were like what's an ETF? what EFTs you know like this was the time right and u but I fundamentally uh believed what we were doing was important and it was uh you know we grew in Canada of course remember we're about onetenth the size of the American market so you know 8 billion aggregate would be like 80 billion in that time frame but we actually in the first couple years grew to about a billion dollars um so uh beginning of08 we got to about 800 million uh which is a great great outcome early on in in you know from nothing um and Then in the real thing happened in 2008 you know and and it's you know it was a really great wakeup call and call learning for me we went through 2008 and every single month in '08 we grew positively we had the net positive sales I think we were >> despite the ongoing >> despite the market environment and in September and October specifically we had positive net sales and um and I think we were the only firm in the country that had that the principle was that disruption was critical for us at a time when we were trying to build the challenger idea and tell a a really strong narrative. We needed the complacency of our investor base of the advisor community of institutions to wake up and say hey wait a minute you know what should I be thinking about next and that was a really important point so coming out of 2000 we ended up in 2008 growing from 800 million to 1.1 billion despite the headwind of the markets and then in 2009 we went from 1.1 billion to 4.4 billion. >> Wow. So just an accelerant coming out of the financial crisis. The next year we went from 4.4 to 5.7 and then to 6.8 and then ultimately 2 months later when we closed the deal with Black Rockck to sell it um it was 8 billion. And the momentum was just so unbelievably strong. And the reason was because when people the the financial crisis occurred people left the market and they were going to cash and then when they were re-entering the market they were asking themselves now what where do I go? what's the best investment vehicles and all of a sudden ETFs became something that they were learning about understanding and we were right there and it was amazing at the same time we also saw the acceleration towards the trends that were happening in advice as you know the movement towards uh discretionary portfolio management you know the the the historical mindset towards commissionoriented new issue type business that became challenged because of the the market uh and the banks and the broker dealers wanted more stability so advis ers started to transition their practices towards more discretionary investment processes the model portfolios and ETFs of course you know fit extremely well in US we've of course seen the RAIA movement coming out of that and those were an amazing backdrop of trend um that that just drove the market and in parallel the ETF industry alongside of it and it's been an unbelievable number of years for for everyone >> really interesting so so the sale to black rockck what motivated the exit what was the process like and and how hard was it to let go of this thing that you had built? >> Very hard. Um so there's a uh my my financial partner in the call it latter years was a firm called Guggenheim Partners. Um >> and an amazing or a partner and organization worked really well with them and you know really proud of the relationship we built there. >> Um and the interesting thing was of course I I had sort of approached them and said let's let's sort of you know let me buy you out. um you know we they'd had a great outcome um and it was a wonderful outcome but but you know we just sort of couldn't get to a price that made sense so we decided to go through a process and I at the time felt okay we'll run a process but I'm going to also be a buyer at the process and I agreed we agreed to that at the end of the day though uh the process was very robust um Black Rockck was um a leading partner at that and uh I remember um pivoting multiple times as the price kept going up on who my partner was going to be to finance uh my my buyout and then at the end I remember um on in December of 2011 I was u it was my daughter's birthday I was on the phone with one of my strategic partners around the purchase and we had we were having a conversation about strategy execution plan and then I got off the phone I walked down to my wife and I said I'm holding on too much the price has gotten well above what my target price was being too emotional um I think that the right thing to do is to sell. So, I called the bankers. Uh, I said, "I'll put my name behind the Black Rockck bid." I flew down to New York on January 2nd. We spent a few days in a room negotiating the purchase sale agreement, and we announced the deal, I think, on Jul uh January 11th, and close a deal on March 2nd. Um, and that was um it was a really difficult period for me. I had a chip on my shoulder. I built this thing. I you used the word serial entrepreneur earlier, and I actually have never believed I'm a serial entrepreneur. I don't build businesses to build businesses. I build businesses because I truly love what I do. I'm in pursuit of really building things that have endurance, have great value to our customers, that really think about changing the industry. And um and so this was a moment where I felt like something was being ripped out of me. Uh and so I had a chip on my shoulder. We we closed the transaction. Um and I said, I need to take the time. Uh I actually ended up building the the the business plan for what I was going to do next, which ultimately was purpose. and while simple uh within 30 days, but I said to myself, if I start today, I'm going to fail because I'm not doing it for the right motivation. I'm doing it for the wrong reasons. I want to do it because I'm in pursuit of getting back in the business. And so, I ended up um consulting for the regulator for a couple uh weeks and then I ultimately went to um uh with my wife for 3 months uh overseas to Southeast Asia and I detached. I back then we had blackberries. I still probably have blackberry. Uh people famously know I love blackberries. Um but I had a blackberry and I turned it off and no one could get a hold of me. We went throughout Southeast Asia and it was the greatest thing and I said to myself, if I come back and I have the energy and excitement around this business plan, then I'm going to do it. And of course we came back and um uh you know I when once we landed in on in North America, you get all the texts and all the news and and my energy just started to really powerfully go up and I said, "Okay, let's go." And I registered purpose and started the business plan. So, we're going to talk in a little bit about why I think you're a serial entrepreneur, but you said something that I'm kind of fascinated by. Um, and it requires a a degree of of self-awareness that many people in our industry um sometimes don't have. I don't want to say always don't have. Um, we all have blind spots. You said you became aware that you were too emotional, too self-involved, too you were holding too tightly. H how did you come to that realization? You know, listeners are bored of hearing me talk about my early days on a training desk, but I became very aware that, oh, this is just way too much fun. You're you're trading for the dopamine hit, not for P&L. you either have to become more disciplined or shift your career. Um, what was that insight that led you to say, "Oh, I'm gripping this way too tightly." >> So, I I think self-reflection is one of the great virtues that we all should have. Uh, it's one of the things I think often people don't have enough of. And I actually think, you know, it's something that um requires anchoring to sort of uh early on to the kind of goals and the things that matter to you. So, you're disciplined around what you're self-reflecting around. And it's hard as humans like we're we're not trained. Our mental state is not trained this way. So, um it's just something that I've I I feel very confident in my ability to constantly be asking myself, am I on the right track? Am I doing the right things? Am I pursuing the right goals? Am I uh going to achieve the things that I want to achieve on the path I'm on? And that um that's just I think it's a critical learning and and you know the growth mindset that comes with that curiosity um and willingness to be vulnerable is critical as a human. So this is um this is I think a really important thing. I think our industry uh can always use that because you know I like I love the financial services industry one because it starts with a really amazing mission. We are here in service of individuals to help them ultimately achieve their outcomes, their goals, their I mean it is such an unbelievably high mission industry and we don't do enough to talk about that. Instead, we talk too much about ourselves. We're self-centered. We talk about, you know, hey, let me tell you about me and now that I'm done talking about me, let me talk to you more about me. And you go to someone's website, it's always about me, me, me. It's never about the customer. And so, there's this amazing opportunity as an industry to step back, reflect, and say, why are we here? what's the actual job that we're here to do and it is ultimately in service of individuals and their outcomes 100%. And we complicate that so much and so I think self-reflection on that as an industry is a big opportunity and those who get it are those who stand out and differentiate more than anybody else. >> Really really fascinating. Coming up, we continue our conversation with SA Safe, founder and CEO of Purpose Investments, discussing financial innovation. I'm Barry Rholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. I'm Barry Rholz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. I'm speaking with Safe. He is the founder and CEO of Purpose Investments. So, we were talking earlier, you sold Claymore to BlackRock and instead of taking a couple of years off a month or two later, um you essentially start Purpose as well as co-founding Wealth Simple. So many people take a breather after an exit. Why go straight back in and why two companies at once? So um I had as I said earlier I had a um very clear eye on what I wanted to do next. I I was uh really excited about where the industry was going, what we were doing, what the momentum we were seeing and uh and felt actually now I had this amazing gift. Uh I was blessed with a blank piece of paper and so when you have a blank piece of paper so often times businesses want to keep evolving. You want to but but you have to kind of deal with your legacy you know and and technical debts and things like that. And so I felt blank piece of paper I can get to do. how would I start from scratch? And so I had this great energy, but I looked at both the continued evolution of modernization of investment management, but I also saw a bigger picture opportunity in wealth management. I said the opportunity is not just, you know, let's build asset management products cuz when I started Claymore, I came from it from a technical engineering perspective and I said when I look at all the billboards and I look at all the advertising, all it says is, "Hey, we beat the market. We did this." And I said, "Okay, well, the the job to be done is to beat the markets." And I thought that's what we were supposed to do. So I was in pursuit of building a product and a business that ultimately solved for helping people beat the markets. What I realized and one of my great stories around this was the first product we launched was the Canadian fundamental Rafi fundamental index and we launched that and uh it was amazing. Um, but it hit its 5-year numbers in 2010 and just early 2011. And of course, 5 years, you start to see real track record. And at the time, it was the number two Canadian equity fund. It beat every active fund, all the like the main index. It it outperformed by 200 basis points. And that's a great accolade. Of course, in our industry, that's what you know you you are really excited about. And I felt wait a minute I actually don't know if we actually did anything because it went down in 2008 just like the maiden index 35% or whatever it was and I also looked at the journey I said if someone had bought it on day one when we launched it and held it all through that 5 years they would have received that return but the reality of what human nature was is that they were buying it at different times when they got fearful they were selling it and you know their return was very different than the fund's return and I asked myself I said did we actually change the industry. Did we do anything? Yes, we did something great technically. The product was excellent. We were moving the needle of how the industry operates, but we weren't changing the way the client and the customer was experiencing what we did. And so that informed me and at the same time I told you about Guggenheim was our partners and they had been working on their wealth part of the business with Danny Conorman. And I had this wonderful gift again to have the opportunity to learn and understand how the Danny was brought in to help them understand how to help billionaires and wealthy families and and call it patriarchs and matriarchs to understand the transition from wealth creation to wealth management. And it was so powerful and the principles of what Danny talked about um really resonated with me. I became a student of behavioral science and that sort of became really paramount to my view of what a modern asset management firm needs to think about which is not just beat the markets but develop investment products that actually have outcomes and goal orientation towards them. How do you help advisors and investors you know ultimately communicate together and work collaboratively around the actual goal the customers are asking us to do which is help them meet their goals. And so I just felt the asset management industry, wealth industry both could ultimately optimize around that. And that was what purpose mission was going to be around is outcome oriented modern investment management. Optimizing for all the inputs and how we manage money, not being active, not being passive. And then second is how do we help restructure the way wealth management could ultimately be oriented towards the customer journey as opposed to hey we're just going to give you a 60/40 portfolio. >> Huh. Really, really fascinating. Te tell us a little bit about Wealth Simple um which I described earlier as the default investing app for a young generation of Canadians. What did you see before apps like Robin Hood were big and successful? Um that was a thing that young people wanted. >> Yeah. And so the the the principal insight that I sort of had uh was um you know if you looked at the way that the industry was operating one of the big negatives that was that because the industry made so much money the margins were so good we actually relied in in a lazy way on what we call average economics. So what does that mean? Where do you see that? It comes out as on average you know I like to run money for bigger customers. On average my bigger customers make me more money and on average my smaller customers don't make any money. And how does that show up? You know, smaller customers get treated poorly, get high fees, um get relegated to lowquality services, and uh larger investors ultimately get all the value and people are gravitating towards hey minimums and big fees for big big services for high net worth and ultra high net worth. And I just felt that was stupid. I the only economics class I took in in engineering was something called ABC economics. And what that is is actually activity- based uh um um economics. And so the idea of unit economics and I said what we need to understand in this industry is that I actually disagree that small accounts don't make you money. I just think that the systems the principles of the infrastructure of the industry are poorly designed to serve smaller clients. And so what I felt my whole wealth model was how do we restructure the e the infrastructure of the industry? How do we think about it from a unit economics using technology and structure and pipes that would ultimately allow for that? And then what you do is bifurcate the value uh for the different segments of customers small early stage customers middle mass fluent all the way to ultra high net worth based on a service level offering and the service level offering would change and increase based on the needs of those customers. So the that was the principle and I said at the earliest stage if you're 20 years old 25 years old this is the most amazing period to build for but but the industry was treating them awful. So I said let's go build this and so we started with the technology the infrastructure and what well simple has done is really unbelievable. It has become in Canada the most competitive platform in financial services against the big six Canadian banks. Canada has never seen anything like this before. And it all is rooted on serving customers where they're needing us to serve them right when they're getting started or along the earliest stage of their journey and then helping them compound not only their wealth but also the overall financial experience as they grow from 25 30 35 40. It has been an amazing experience and you know today well simple I mean I think we're we run about 150 billion but we're doing more in net deposits than the biggest bank in Canada RBC. That is an unbelievable statistics and I'm proud of what that team and what the organization is doing to challenge the industry and change the way Canadians are served. So, let's stay with Wealth Simple a minute because initially I assumed this was kind of a Robin Hoodlike app with free trading and gamification and you know up to but not quite sports betting like that sort of hey this isn't going to get anybody to their goals. It's fun entertaining stuff during the lockdown of the pandemic. um tell us about Wealth Simple in terms of the differences with an app like Robin Hood. >> Yeah, so the starting point actually is you start with the customer where they need you the most, right? When you're 25 or 30, you know, you're either just getting started, you might have 5, 10, 20, $30,000. And the principle of is you want to help them ultimately get going. So building a discipline, a structure. So we have the manage money programs which are you you open an account very simply and clearly. you basically build your portfolio and your portfolio is basically a glide path on the markets and and such. And then you surround that with you know the types of um services and solutions. So direct trading accounts um you know cash management, credit cards, uh you know all the crypto things like that that are really important. So my my principle is there's always a a view of attention of these things. I come from a different way of it which is these are things that people are going to be in pursuit of and what you want as an organization is not to duck your head in the sand at any stage if you're an adviser you know saying hey I don't do crypto is actually a wrong message or because your customers are going to be in pursuit of it we know that 60 70% of high net worth individuals have a direct account and many of them are curious and engaged in in in buying interesting areas like that so I think an advisor firm or any firm a financial service firm has to find a way to balance balance the foundations of what is good long-term you know call it disciplined investing along with satiating the needs and the desires of what an individual wants so that they don't always um you know turn their head to I need something different and that actually comes from the mindset of find a safe and secure way to do those types of things on behalf of the customers and educate them and size it effectively so so you know like for example well simple recently got approval to do prediction markets and this is a really high tension area. It's you know people have a you know binary view of this and my view is if customers are going to be doing it you want them to do it with you in a safe and secure way than to do it elsewhere and that's how you have to ultimately be building around but uh at the same time the whole business is oriented around helping someone where they need it the most around their financial journey so they can ultimately achieve their goals. That's it. So I I this discussion about whether or not you're a serial entrepreneur, I I have to click through a bunch of things that you've built that are fascinating. Starting with the world's first spot Bitcoin ETF back in 2021, long years before the US approved one, it it crossed a billion dollars in the first month. How did you get the Canadian regulators to approve this? How'd you make them comfortable 3 years before the SEC was comfortable? >> So, uh, first off, I I have had a deep thesis on crypto uh for a long time and and that's the starting point is I wasn't doing it because hey, cool dour idea. Let's let's launch this and throw some thing against the wall. I had um, you know, in 2016, just like most people, you know, I'd been like, you know, been asked about Bitcoin and I was like, I don't know, it looks like a sort of scammy thing. and that I sort of self-reflected and said, "Wait a minute, people are actually asking my opinion on this. I should go and do some research." So, I spent the time learning and and understanding the space. I actually the best way to do that is make an investment. Um and you know over the next 12 months um I just became this student of what was happening. And you know what really excited me was of course Ethereum which was this call it um sister uh uh technology that was really around um taking what Bitcoin had done and and and really expanding the capabilities of it around smart uh uh crypto and all the rest. Exactly. And so I got very excited about that. And so what I said was we're so early in this the infrastructure is not there. the the the fraud risks all of it for for investors is going to be so high. So I actually launched the first publicly traded vehicle on um uh Ethereum called Ether Capital partner with a group of people and I said we're going to raise some money. We're going to buy Ether on the balance sheet. effectively, you know, we've seen these now become more popular in the last number of years, but it was the first one. And we did this in 2018. And I'll tell you, it was an amazing thing. And my message was we're going to find a safe and secure way for people to co-invest alongside of us on this really great journey because of the the asymmetric opportunity of this bet that informed me on so much. And then at some point, and we used to do self-custody in that corporation, all the rest of it. And then at some point, we started to see the infrastructure change. And that's when we went into the regulator and said, "Look, there's an opportunity here. or the infrastructure is changing around how you can custody and fit this into a liquid ETF structure. We worked with them for 9 months and ultimately got them comfortable and this is a really important principle that I believe we as an as a reg manager um we have great ideas great innovation and as long as our ideas are aligned with where the regulator wants the future to go it's really important to engage with the regulator and have that dual relationship that idea of helping them educating them on where we need to get to. And so that was the kind of work we've done all throughout my career and we did that on crypto and and frankly we're really excited that we got the opportunity to launch it and that that model what we did actually ultimately informed the series of products that launched in the US a couple years later on how ultimately to structure ETFs uh in the crypto space and and of course the industry has grown and we've moved an asset from the fringe all the way to the core which is what ultimately my thesis was in a deep way >> and ETH capital today is in what structure? We actually converted it from that corporation to an ETF once uh that was available and and and again there we built staking into it and those things weren't again available in an ETF form or or call it doable until they were and when they were we ultimately moved to the most efficient vehicle which is the ETF structure. Let's talk about longevity pension fund um launched in 2021. Uh the world's first income for life mutual fund which uses longevity risk pooling to pay lifetime income like a defined benefit pension. Uh investors include alons and how is this different from what in the US we think of as traditional annuities. So this is actually uh so first of this was my original thesis on purpose which was you know the industry was all solving for the accumulation phase. Let's build them investment products to call it solve for how do we save money but no one was really solving within the asset management industry around the the challenges of decumulation. Um and it was kind of left to the insurers you know with annuities and and with defined benefit pensions and such. And I just felt there was this gap there that was really critical. And you need to deeply understand um the sort of the the principles of of um you know how longevity and structure and all the rest of it were going to be critically in there. And so I um I asked the team I said we need to solve for deccumulation and we were in pursuit of it. We were spending a lot of time working on it. Ultimately, we came across a structure and and I I I just got really excited and and the principles we had to go to the regulator again and say there are some exemptions we need to make this work. If I if I step back for a moment, the greatest financial product ever created in our business or in financial industry is the defined benefit pension plan. And frankly, if you go back to what that represented, it was such an amazing bargain. You join a company. The company says, "We will in an institutional way organize to have a savings program alongside of your career. And it will not only solve for your savings needs while you're working, but once you retire, it will also solve for your income longevity for as long as you live and in some cases your spouse." That is like if you think about the journey of a customer, it is the most unbelievably comforting and principal thing that we've done. And the industry has done everything over the last 40 years to break that down, >> kill it. Yeah. >> And on on with the concept of, hey, we're giving you choice. And that has been so bad for people. So I always believe that we needed to get back to bringing the system back. If every Canadian, every American had access to a defined benefit pension fund, 95% of them would be unbelievably better off. The reality is it's not good for the industry. It the the fragmentation allows for agency to increase. And so what I've always said is how do we bring this back into the structure? And so longevity pension plan was designed on how do we build a pension plan for all? How do we do that in a mutual fund structure which is accessible the annuity structure that is of course it works similarly. The problem is it has um it has the struct structure of you have to go off book for an adviser. So advisors don't really like them. Investors have to ultimately go through an insurance structure and it's individualized. Whereas the defined pension plan is is a pool. And so when you get longevity risk pooling like that which is done in a defined benefit pension plan, why couldn't you do that in a mutual fund? And that was our principle. And so we designed that. It's the first fund to really incorporate longevity risk pooling. So, putting lives together with a mutual goal of I'm putting money at work to ultimately solve for um my lifetime comfort that I'm going to have income for life and if I die early, I'm ultimately supporting the cohort, but I'm getting what I needed from it. >> So, I want to click through four other innovative products, but I don't want to spend all week on it. Let's let's click through these four quickly, starting with cash management ETFs. >> Yeah. So cash is something I think that of course everybody needs access to. Um so we had launched the first money market ETF in when I was running claymore uh when I came back with purpose we saw the movement towards deposit uh rates were much higher than money markets. So we actually went and the the unique thing we did there was we went and built a uh ETF that linked to a deposit account. So it's not to a security. So it's actually one of the first of its kind. And um and that was a hugely important thing back in 2014. And of course, the cash management industry has grown dramatically. We haven't seen this in the United States yet. So, we haven't seen deposit-based um cash ETFs. We've seen money market uh based ETFs, but we haven't seen deposit based. So, it's, you know, based on the buck, you know, it increases based on the on on the value, doesn't fluctuate, and it goes right into the bank deposits of, you know, several banks and you get therefore a higher rate. So, we were really really proud of that innovation. And it has it goes to show the kind of principle first or the first principle mindset that our organization always thinks about is solving problems because many advisers moving to discretionary were saying like I want to bulk trade cash but it's uh my organization isn't making it easy so I >> you have to sweep it into custodian at night into it really is is it should be capable of being automated and maximizing yield without increasing risk but there are just a million impediments in the way. I sell QQQs and I want to go into cash in my B balance of my model. I my administrative assistant has to go and do all the basically account by account. Now with the ETF, you're able to go from um uh from you know QQ's to cash and then back to QQS or whatever you were doing in just a simple single trade. Let's let's talk about optionbased income products. I've never been a fan of this as a brokerage product. It just felt like there was so much um cost, so much commission built into it. It really when when you're dealing with relatively tight margins, it's a challenge as a retail investor to derive any value out of it, real value. It's certainly great for generating fees. Uh how do you how do you manage a uh an option-based income product that works uh for the retail investor? >> So, let's start with the principle why, right? Um, I believe that options and derivatives actually play a really important role for management of portfolios and return streams. So, it goes back to that principle of can you design outcomes and the trade-offs that come with options because that's ultimately what you're doing whether it's call options or put options. And so, for an investment return stream that you're designing, options can be really powerful. That said that to your point they're high friction for an adviser very hard to execute and and you know across your business but two for individuals it's very hard and very expensive to you know the spreads and the costs and the sizing but it's excellent. It's actually what option structures are really designed for ETFs and and institutional money management in a great way because you can do at scale really amazing programs. So we've been doing these for 25 years. You know back when I was at RBC we used to help uh firms build them at at at Claymore. I'd built them and then at um at purpose we've done it and I find that they are so designed so perfectly designed for the structural outcome that you want to ultimately create and manipulate in your return stream but they do come with trade-offs. Um I'll give you a great example. One of the first things when I was in my, you know, starting in my career in talking to adviserss, um, the f the thing that they, the old school adviser would say, oh, I write put options or call options for a couple of my clients on their on their, you know, large names, but I can't do it for all my clients. And I'd say, why do you do that? Well, because, you know, I'm owning this stock and, you know, if I'm going to own it for the next 10 years, why not generate some income along the way? And that that was a really important mindset that people had, but they couldn't do it across their business. And I said, "Well, if I own a name like JP Morgan, um, and I'm going to own I love JP Morgan. The actual optimal way to own JP Morgan is to have 80% long JP Morgan and 20% covered call overlay JP Morgan. So that you're generating the long-term beta of JP Morgan plus you're generating some ongoing uh, return from the option income as volatility is there and you're taking advantage of the volatility to generate a return stream. And that's the best way optimally from a risk adjusted basis to generally own most stocks. So how do you do that? And so if you design product, we've designed something called the yield shares which was designed specifically around single name stocks that we people most love and then you write options against them to generate the option income so that it complements a long only position. How do you avoid getting called away when the stock has a a sudden surge and all the problem isn't merely hey you can always go out and reby it but now you have a giant capital gains hit you have to pay when the stock gets called. >> So in in one thing in Canada is we don't actually have the difference between short and long-term capital gains. Yeah. So it's a really nice thing. Um you know you can buy and sell something in a day and ultimately get capital gains treatment at the lowest rate. Uh our rate is a little higher but but still it's uh that's >> 23% short-term 30% long-term. >> Yeah. So our long-term is uh 25 27%. >> Um the uh uh the principal mindset though is this is what institutional programs are really great at. You don't write one option on one strike price on one position and you stack them. So you might have if you >> it's a whole matrix different strikes different dates >> and then with technology today you can optimize all the structural elements of do you roll it for tax efficiency? Do you ultimately buy it back? Do you um do you where along the curve an option do you basically roll the capital into at any point? So you're constantly in this call it um vintaging of your portfolio overlay which is really important. That's what institutional money management needs to do. If you're just singularly buying one option on one strike price, that's actually a very low quality uh execution. >> Yeah, we used to see a lot of that on the brokerage side. So the single stock yield shares, how many different versions of this are there or are they all tossed into one? Oh, we we have um uh single names. So, I I I think we might be at like 20 something, 25. I I don't know the exact number, but it's north of 20 um Canadian and US names. And uh they've been very popular. Um you know, they've been very popular with both adviserss and direct investors. >> Huh. Really interesting. Coming up, we continue our conversation with Tom Safe, CEO and founder of Purpose Investments, discussing why he built Purpose Unlimited. I'm Barry Britz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. I'm Barry Rholz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest this week is Sam Safe. He is the founder and CEO of Purpose uh Unlimited, which also owns Purpose Investments. Uh he has founded and sold a variety of different um companies over the past, let's call it 20 almost 25 years. Uh so so purpose is now about 31 32 billion Canadian or about 22 billion US across ETFs, cash alternatives, private assets, etc. Uh tell us the problem that purpose is trying to solve for your clients. >> Sure. So um total of purpose actually run around 40 billion now. 40 billion. Yeah. On the platform. So on the asset management side just over 30 and on the wealth side now just around 10. and growing quite fast and and the principal mindset has always been so on the asset management side was you know let's build a modernization of investment management and products and services to meet clients where they need to be. How do we help advisers and investors build more resilient portfolios not just long only equities and long only bonds but how do you optimize for the types of return streams that support a world where potentially bonds aren't your protective asset? How do you optimize for the types of return streams that ultimately are designed around an outcome as opposed to just the return of a beta? And so those are the first start and we we have the inputs of we care about not only the the quality of our investment product uh that we manufacture but also the call it artisan quality of our investment inputs. So the team um the capabilities the process for investment strategy uh using both quantitative methods active methods in each of the different categories. I think the second component was then we have this big picture that goes back to this system and I you know I use the reference to the defined benefit pension plan is a phenomenal product. How do we redesign the way advice and investment management work together on ultimately achieving a client's goal? And so we've designed this whole infrastructure around the wealth management to support one the movement towards independent wealth management. So as you know in the United States you've seen the US RAIA segment, Canada has a nent segment there and you know we've saw this really important movement towards and a need for that. So we built the infrastructure to support a movement towards independent wealth management but then also the services and the tools and the capabilities over and above that to support advisers in basically driving their businesses towards more planning based portfolio outcome u oriented investment management and wealth management and experiences as opposed to you know I pick better stocks than the next guy I'm better at delivering better returns more around how do we help customers ultimately achieve their goals and so we've built all of this technology and systems around that outcome. >> So I I like the idea of emphasizing outcomes over benchmarks but you know we have half a century maybe longer of organizing portfolios around um those benchmarks and trying to beat the index. Explain what's wrong with that approach. >> Well it goes back to the behavioral science part. That's first. Uh and second was it's also a structural thing. Um if you go back to the last um the last 10 years or so uh when I looked at the the space I felt that the industry had become a little bit complacent towards this idea that the call it um uh the best and optimal portfolio was a 60/40 portfolio and the reason was if you actually spann yourself out and looked at the returns of the 60/40 portfolio going back you know 100 110 years which we did the research on it actually only out you met its long-term goal of 7%. Um, in five of call it 11 or so decades and this is you know a couple years ago we did that research and those of those five three of them were in the period of 1980 to 2020 and um and so I felt that that had created this bias anchoring bias in in called it the industry. You know Barry the the one thing you realize about our industry is that very few people have a historical experience beyond 1980. Most people's career spans are from 1980 onwards. And so, you know, you get biased towards what you know, what you see. What do you see? When interest rates go up, they pretty rapidly go back down. Um, when you look at any 3 or 4 year cycle, the 60/40 portfolio generally was giving you positive returns. And so, that meant, hey, that's an optimal way to invest. I looked at it and said, "Wait a minute. If you actually look at periods where interest rates actually not just go up a little bit and then come back down, but actually go up and stay up, how does that affect bond portfolios, how did that affect the overall balance portfolio?" And so I said that we needed to be prepared for that. And that's was a starting point. The second though was this behavioral component. And I just said, "Look, at the end of the day, you know, we've kind of lost touch with what the customer actually is asking us to do." And the customer wakes up and says, "Look, I I I what I care about is I want to know when I wake up, I'm going to be okay." And you need to be in the business of serving me on helping me solve that question. Am I going to be okay? And like a pension plan, you should have a liability, a goal, and you should have an input, which is your portfolio, your savings program, and your portfolio all designed around are you going to be okay? And I felt that, you know, the idea that, you know, we should wake up and say, "Hey, we're gonna we're here to beat the S&P 500 or we're here to beat some benchmark was a silly concept. All that matters to a customer is am I going to be okay?" And everything we do every day should be in service of that. And so that's how I always looked at it. And and the principle of the design of an investment firm should be around the kinds of programs and asset strategies that help an adviser build better portfolios to answer the question of am I going to be okay with their customers. So I I have so many different ways to go with this that I'm I'm very enthusiastic about. Um maybe we'll put a pin in the whole idea of outof sample testing because everybody is so framed by it's not just um their own hindsight bias but the recency bias of what they just experienced entirely has such a big uh issue. But let let's stick with the concept of behavioral finance and the 6040. I have gotten a lot of push back for saying if you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, do you really need bonds? If you're not going to retire for well, a 20-some year old may not retire for 50 years. Uh yeah, there's some emotional salve from some ballast that's uncorrelated and doesn't have the volatility of equities. But if I go back in time, forget what the market did. If I was 20 today, I wouldn't own a single bond. And if I was 75 today, I would own a whole lot more tax-free munis. So, it raises the question 6040, does that make sense for forget 20-year-old, for anybody under 50? Uh, it's actually a really important question. And in many cases, the answer is no. You don't need bonds. And you know, the reality of it is that if you look at the last five, six years, bonds wouldn't have done you any good. And so, you know, especially in an environment like we're in right now where, you know, the the greatest risk right now to a portfolio often times is the volatility, the uncertainty and interest rates and inflation. And so, I I think it actually the return Well, this was logical in 2018 2019 zero right? >> You go from 1980 to 2020, you have 40 years of bonds. >> Phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah, I mean that was >> that's that's a unique >> but but the thing that was the thing that was the big driving force was the movement between the 70s to the 80s when interest rates spiked into the teens. That was the thing that set up of course the next 40 years of declining interest rates. And so you have to step back and have that context. It's just like timing the market. The reality is is that if you'd bought in the mid70s you would have had a horrible experience with that portfolio structure. There's pre and post Paul Vulkaract and that's the defining >> but it's actually different that it's pre and post the economic situation that was happening that led to an inflationary spike that we ultimately had to address and that was what you were dealing with. But but to your point recency bias drove people to believe that this was the optimal way to invest. I think for an individual again it goes back to okay yes equity is a hopebased strategy. Investing is a hopebased strategy. And when you're in your 20s and 30s and 40s and even potentially, you know, 50s because, you know, I'd say call it 20 years before retirement. Call it like a pension plan. T minus 20 years. Anything between minus 20 years plus is a lot of you have a lot of room for hope. Hope is a wonderful thing that you should take advantage of because you know ultimately you want strength and momentum and you have the time to get it right. But once you get into that T minus 20 period, that's the period where you better have some structure and discipline to what you're ultimately achieving to get to T. Because the one good thing is you can move T. T can move. That's the time of, you know, retirement. That can move. You could say it's 65, but if you really needed to and your advisor said, hey, it's a bad time. You need to move to 67. You can move to 67. Hey, it's going really well. We can move it to 63. But but T minus 20 is a really important window where structure, discipline in your portfolio has to be designed. everything before that. Absolutely. You can take as much hope as you want. You can take as much risk as you want because you haven't entered that window. That's how I look at it. >> Really interesting. Uh a as someone who's partial to the math and science half of my brain, I'm curious how you reconcile the rigorous structured um environment of being an engineer. like there is an internal logic and a a set of hard mathematical principles that govern that. How do you reconcile that with the squishy emotional side of all of Danny Conaman's teachings which is hey this is just how we are built. We weren't made for this sort of decision making. >> Yeah. I think uh the beauty of when you marry um the first principles uh you know call it linear kind of thinking around what engineering can do and then you apply that with the nonlinearity of human behaviors it's actually a phenomenal we call it um a mixture of of thinking and that's what you want you want those multiple inputs to basically change your mental model of how to design and think what I love about engineering in general is it is a reverse engineering mindset it is going back to the hypothesis the scientific method right which is I have an idea of what the the answer will be, but I'm going to do everything I can to prove that. So, if you apply that to any problem, which is, hey, I'd like to solve for this problem. I have an idea of how to solve it. And then you reverse engineer how to ultimately get there or you build around the scientific method of it. It's a wonderful way to approach problem solving in general. And then if you bring in the input. So one of the things we did at purpose is we've actually brought on behavioral scientists to actually support the organization in our the way we think about product design, the way we think about marketing and all the things we do because it actually helps influence the mental models and the way that we make decisions. Those are really powerful. So I I just believe it's it's goes back to that original comment around the creative mind and the call it uh structured disciplined and mind. I think you bring those two together. It's a very powerful mixture to um to to build with. >> Really really interesting. So So we've been speaking for an hour and artificial intelligence has not come up which I I think is a first uh this year. Uh how do you think about AI from a managerial perspective? How do you think about it from an investment perspective? Um uh what do you see uh the impact of this going forward? Especially I'm I'm I appreciate the opportunity to ask someone who's an engineer about this because essentially uh this is software engineering at at the highest level. >> So I've never been more excited in my career. I feel uh a sense of um energy in the last nine months uh specifically coming into 2026 that I've just been um excited about because of what this new technology is enabling us and and and more importantly it's not just how do we build features or you know solve some problems or create a little bit of incremental productivity. It is about the grassroots you know go to first principles of how should we ultimately design the way we work the way we optimize our business in and around a technology replplatforming. You know it would be no different than in 2000 if you were going through this period and the internet was now becoming real and scalable and you were sitting there as a retailer or any other business saying if I just think about the historical way to run a business and I've got this new thing I think you lost. Whereas if you actually said no no no I need to redesign the way I work to this new platform. Mobile era which was a different one same thing I need to redesign the way we work and AI is the same thing. So we've been at at purpose have been really deeply embedded in the way we operate the company. Um the the first thing is we we are effectively driving forward deploy engineering data science and product across the whole organization. We are driving into smaller teams and squads. We are rolling that out across everything and we're driving the company with this mindset that what we what a modern organization needs to design around is vulnerability. Um the ability to have like innovation and and intelligence moving through the organization constantly and data flowing and communication you know and this is on top of of course leadership strength. In the past the organization was all driven by leadership strength. How good was the leadership? And my view is vulnerability and communication are going to be the things that really drive and AI enables for that in a really amazing way. What what that is is a system of way you work. So we are doing that in a great way. At the same time though you know when I look at the industry we are still stuck in this idea of AI as a feature set. So I'm going to design features. I'm going to design a something I used to do to that I that took me an hour. I can do it now in 5 minutes. Those are really cool but that's no different than what Excel did for us. You know, you know, the accounting industry, you can imagine, you know, when Excel came was a little nervous, but then actually adopted it and wanted to do it. It created great value. But what this actually allows for is a way to change the way we operate. And that's what I hope that the industry really leans into more deeply. >> Really, really fascinating. All right, I only have you for a couple of more minutes. Let's jump uh into our favorite questions that we ask all of our guests, starting with who are your early mentors who helped shape your career? So I talked about Rob or not and and Rob is someone that I care so deeply about. He not only introduced me to his own way of thinking. Rob has a special thing and you spent time with him. Rob is um he you know unbelievably intelligent that can go toe-to-toe with any Nobel Prize laurate. You know from an academic perspective but at the same time actually is an excellent communicator and marketer. you that's a very uh unique rare combination and he taught me that in such a deep way so much of of who I am was during that formative years of working alongside and seeing him in motion so he's been an amazing person in my life um he also introduced me to um his advisory group which were people like Harry Marowitz per Peter Bernstein Rick R you know uh Keith Ambbecker some of the most amazing deep thinkers that I got this immersive opportunity to spend time with that just informed med so much of my principal thinking um at a time when I was very raw and really open to that curiosity. It was exciting. >> Really, really interesting. I have some hilarious Rob Arnot stories that I will share with you off air. Um let's talk about books. What are some of your favorites? What are you reading right now? >> So I um I I love books and autobiographies are one of the things I I actually think you know people always say learn from failure. I love to talk about learn from success. So, how do you learn from people's, you know, careers and lifetimes, successes? So, um, what some of my favorite books, um, An Education of American Dreamer by Peter G. Peterson. I don't know if you've read that one. A phenomenal great story about an individual who of course ended up co-founding, um, Blackstone later in life, but just an unbelievable journey about an immigrant family who just basically moved. He just did unbelievable things and the the evolution of a career that's so fascinating. Um, Creativity Inc. I, you know, we were just talking about that. >> I I literally just got it delivered two days ago. >> I love that because when I finished that book, I said to myself, the if I was to ever write an autobiography about my career, I hope it would sound like this. It was the the creativity of what Catsville did, but but more importantly, the relationship of how he explained his partnership with Steve Jobs and the love he had for Steve and the way he was so intricate about that. It was just so in in inspiring for me. I loved it. Um and then you know I I look at uh some of the of course recent books that have just really inspired me around um unreasonable hospitality. I think one of the greatest business books, one of the best business books that has been written in the last couple years. If you haven't read it, it's a critical book. Uh and then I I um recently finished uh a couple years ago the um Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss and it is unbelievably strong and in fact yesterday we had the team from Chris Vos's group come in and train our people on how to apply that type of negotiation skill into our daily way we work. It's an unbelievable way to think about the concept of being comfortable with the word the word no. um we we're so afraid to hear no in life and in in business, but actually allowing no to become something that lets you get to yes is really important. Whereas it's so counter to all the things that people have learned through the Harvard programs around getting to yes. It's it's actually an unbelievable way to think about negotiation and marketing. >> One of the people I work with just recommended that book, Never Split the Difference, and it's sitting on a pile. I'm holding my hand up this high. Um and uh I was like, "All right, I'll get around to it one day. I'm going to have to move that up to the uh a little higher in the pile. Um let's talk about streaming. What are you either watching or listening to? Either Netflix or podcast or whatever. >> We have four kids at home. So, uh you know, my wife and I are always trying to find that hour to to stream. Um the one show that um you know has really touched me is the showrinking, of course, on Apple TV. And it it just the way that um the writer Brett Goldstein talks about emotions um and you know communicate it's just such a touching I I I finish every episode and I think I'm teareyed every single time. Um that's been an amazing thing. But my wife and I we love you know lots of different shows. We just don't get to we have like seven different um series that we are in the middle of watching right now. Uh and uh but but we try to find that time and uh it's an important time for both of us. >> You you mentioned Unreasonable Hospitality. We just finished the final season of The Bear >> and throughout that show, you can see some of the ideas right from that book. >> You see it in in season two, you really see it. Yeah, that's when it really becomes uh prevalent. They of course >> the little hot dogs and all the stuff they do to uh go over over and above the Call of Duty. It's it's impressive. >> It really is. >> Um so our final two questions. What sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad interested in a career in either investing or financial innovation? >> So, you know, I'd say there's two answers to this that are important because we're, you know, you got the tension of what's happening with AI around this industry. I'll start with the foundations. We This is a wonderful industry to be in. Um, and if you look at the sort of trajectory, financial services as an industry will continue to grow meaningfully. If you're in the wealth industry, it will double and the asset management industry will double just in the next 10 years by by virtue of savings and market appreciation. So, you know, as an industry participant, the size of the pie is growing and continuously. So, that's a really good thing. Two, you've got an aging demographic of of of individuals in the space. You know, advisers are constantly aging and so there's a huge opportunity for younger talent to come in. And so, that's an awesome setup to be in the business. The principle I go back to is it's an amazing place that has high mission, but I want young people if I was to come into it to really focus on how do I achieve this to help like the the customer truly win as opposed to the historical mindset of I'm here to basically manage money and do all these things and I think there's a really amazing opportunity to do that in a great way and approach it. If I take the tension of AI, you know, there's always this question of like what's it going to do to the advisor industry or the investment industry and I look at it as only enabling. If you think about the opportunity for a young person today, this is going to be an unbelievable period. The way I would approach this though is recognize as a young person that a career in any financial service or any career is not a sort of a set of stairs. It's actually looks more like a Jcurve and you're going to have to go through very difficult periods that look very uncomfortable where you look like you're not doing great to ultimately see this great outcome and that comes from curiosity, learning and immersing yourself to ultimately take risks and do really important things. It's an unbelievable time right now I think as an individual uh and a young person coming into the space. >> Good answer. And and let's jump to our final question. What do you know about the world of investing, of ETFs, of again of financial innovation today might have been useful 25 years ago when you were really ramping up? >> Well, I mean, I I I think that um I go back to the constant learning of, you know, how behaviors and emotions uh really drive outcome. And I wish, you know, I'd learned that earlier. I wish I'd kind of been exposed to it. I think the most important thing though is it is this idea of how do we help truly solve problems um along the journey of a customer. How do we put the customer and their moment of need at any point whether they're 25, 45, 65 or 85 and ultimately help them with the types of services and solutions that drive that. If I had had that principal mindset 20 plus years ago, I think I would have built even more powerful businesses back then. It's really fun to do what we're doing, but I I wish we had done this even earlier. >> Sam, I am so glad we finally got to do this. We We've tried to set this up a couple of times and the dates just uh kept getting uh crossed. I'm thrilled uh you came in to do this. We have been speaking with Sam Safe, founder and CEO of Purpose Investments. If you enjoy this conversation, well, be sure and check out any of the 650 discussions we've had over the past 12 years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify Bloomberg YouTube wherever you get your favorite podcasts. I would be remiss if I didn't thank the crack team that helps put these conversations together each week. Alexis Noriega is my video producer. Shan Russo is my researcher. Anna Luke is my podcast producer. I'm Barry Riddlez. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.