What's the one lesson that you learned from all the new construction sales or your time at one of the nation's profound largest builders that you've brought into your business today?

I say it all the time.

It taught me accountability.

I had real responsibility.

You know, I was really young.

I started my internship at 20.

I turned 21 during my internship.

For all the agent team owners and even brokerage owners that are listening, if they have aspirations about one day selling their businesses, because you've just went through an incredible process, what is the one or two pieces of advice you'd give them as they think about getting ready to go through a process like you went through?

Just be curious how you've seen the industry in general mature over the time that you've been in it.

yeah I mean it it's become an industry right and and to your point it's it's probably I don't know if most companies, but a lot of companies are certainly looking sort of social first these days.

And when I started, as I was saying, it was like we had to convince people to be on Facebook.

The pitch was not, hey, you should hire movement strategy because we're the best.

It was, hey, I really think you should invest some small amount of money on these places because increasingly all of your consumers are there.

And so that's been a huge shift, right? convincing people to be on social, to convincing them to spend more of their dollars on social, to people increasingly understand that.

And there's also, from an agency perspective, it's become a much more crowded and competitive space.

Where's the biggest impact that AI is having on the social landscape, do you think? Is it content creation, just the amount of content that's being created at scale, the ability for everybody to be able to tap into AI and somewhat become a creator? Where is AI having the biggest impact on your part of the industry, which is the social side?

What's really happening out there and what's probably the lowest hanging fruit right now for the walleyes? I

think what makes Devil's Lake really special to me is that, you know, we don't have zebra mussels in the lake, knock on wood.

And, you know, talking about these algae blooms and all the fishing got really good, you know, when we started to see some of that, you know, it's the type of year where I don't know if it's just the increased water temperatures, where the fish have a higher metabolism, or if it's just the fact that you get these algae blooms and it's almost like an umbrella where it offers some shade, but you can catch fish right below the boat in a lot of cases in five, six, seven feet of water this time of year.

And, you know, there's a lot of places where I can think of, you know, in Minnesota, for example, where you do have zebra mussels, you have extremely clear water.

It's good walleye fishing, great fishing, but it's really turned into a casting game with forward-facing sonar, where I can think of many good fisheries where if you're not using forward-facing sonar and casting at fish that are, say, 40 to 60 feet away from you, and you're Using a jig or a slip bobber, you know, you're going to have a really tough, tougher time, you know, catching any walleyes.

Whereas out here, you know, I'm seeing people, you know, just tourists, you know, just people coming out here fishing that, you know, you get three, four or five people in the boat.

They're dragging bottom balsers below and behind the boat, catching all kinds of fish without forward facing sonar.

Do you have any like particular preferences when it comes to, say, speed or leader length, you know, just color? You know, do you have any sort of a process or preferences on any of those topics?

Is that something you've been seeing as well amongst your sort of institutional clients?

Yeah, so let me answer that in kind of two ways.

I think the interactions I've had with, I would say, some of the more sophisticated asset owners is this pursuit to kind of understand, identify, kind of size the optimal sustainable investment universe, right? And so when you look at, let's say, the MSCI Acquia universe or another one, you're talking about 35,000, 4,000 names, kind of roughly, maybe less, maybe more.

I think there is an effort by many sustainable investors to say, look, I need to reflect the values of our beneficiaries, but I need to have something that still kind of captures all the, let's call it the equity risk premia in the space.

So what does that universe look like? And this is public information.

I kind of point to the podcast I had with PGGM where they have kind of reduced that to 800 names.

And again, they think that universe is the one that is able to kind of capture all this equity risk premia within that size that also reflects some of the exclusions consistent with their values.

And indeed, I should come back to where we probably should have started this, but in discussing what you're doing at Man Group, which is just to ask you to tell me a little bit more about, so given a concrete example there, but more broadly about how the sort of thinking at Man Group has changed on the role and the skill sets required for an RI team.

ended

you know i I try to go through this thought process without beating myself up.

So forgive me as I stumble through this.

Right? But like...

I feel like if...

Like nobody owes me shit.

Don't nobody owe me nothing.

So there was never any physical.

So just think that-

It's too real.

It's too real.

[laughs] Man, it's too real, bro.

It's too real.

Because I think so many times, right? Like you...

I know for me in relationships, I didn't even realize I was really falling for somebody until something bad happened.

[laughs]

Mm-hmm.

And they tell you, "When you take this, um, and you put it with exercise, you have increased exercise capacity, um, you're likely to build muscle, uh, more rapidly, develop more strength, to be able to do more reps," um, that is all really accurate.

It's well-studied.

Um, when they say for healthy individuals that don't have medical illness or kidney problems, it's a safe supplement, it is a safe supplement.

That's been studied really, really well as well.

So I think in those categories, they're spot on.

Um, and it really becomes more of, you know, what physique do people want? Are they trying to push themselves on strength? And if those are things they want and, uh, they're otherwise healthy, it, it's a, it's a great supplement and you do get results from it.

Mitchell has the answer, so let's get into it.

From the, from the people you were meeting?

Yeah, from the people I was meeting, but I was building relationships, like relationships with Rocket.

And then, you know, a few years later I met our, our partners at Veterans United and then New American Funding, and, and I started...

The reason that our company is where it is is because I pioneered the model of a brokerage that is a distribution warehouse of consumers, meaning working B2B with other organizations.

What I, what I noticed was instead of me having to go to an open house to meet a client and hopefully find a client, or hoping that my phone rang from a past client of mine, if I could work with businesses and they had the clients, all I gotta do is service the business really well and I could get more of it.

And I started to become the guy.

And so when you look at Zillow, uh, you know, I was, you know, one of their founding people on their advisory board.

And then now what?