Carlyle's Head of Global Wealth, Shane Clifford on Why It's Time to Rethink Private Markets

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If you work in debt markets, Ninefin gives you everything in one place, deal flow, breaking news, data, AI tools, and it all works together. Listeners of the Wall Street Skinny get a free 30 day trial. Just email Wall Street Skinny at 9fin.com for access. That's Wall Street Skinny at the number nine, F is in Frank, I is in indigo, and is in fancy.com for access. Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Wall Street Skinny. So this is a super exciting episode for us because we are here at Carlisle's headquarters in Manhattan. Carlisle for those of you guys too, I mean everyone knows who Carlisle is. But they are basically one of the most prestigious private equity mega funds in the world. And I know personally from just my experience, it was sort of like seen as the pinnacles. Like you get to the more instantly, and then you go to the Carlisle if you're so lucky. I was not that lucky, but we got a lot of people in our day out. We're here now. We're here. I'm here. So anyway, so we are sitting down with Shane Clifford who is the global head of wealth here. And so he's going to get into basically all the stuff that we had no idea in terms of their capabilities, in terms of like what they're doing on the wealth side. So let's start, Jen, like what are we talking about today? Yeah. I mean, listen, this is extremely embarrassing, so please bear with me when I ask this very first question. It's okay. I have a lot of embarrassing questions. So this is going to be a great episode, so don't worry about it. You know, for us, and especially given Kristen's background, which we'll get into, but we knew Carlisle as one of the biggest and most prestigious names in private equity in the world. So when we heard Carlisle global wealth, we stupidly, and maybe some of our listeners may have been laboring under the same misconception. But we assumed it was private wealth management, like ultra high net worth individuals managing our money. Can you please explain what exactly is Carlisle global wealth? So usually people go great question, I'm going to say fair question, okay? So let's kind of peel the onion back a little bit here. So if we think about Carlisle, Carlisle has been around, I found it back in 1987 by David Rubenstein, Dan Danielo, and Bill Conway. Fantastic guys. The founders are still here, and very much a presence at the firm, along with the C-suite led by Harvey Schwartz. So Carlisle today is give or take right around 460 billion in AUM and growing some big, big firm, right? Yes. But you're right. What are we known for? I think the brand, which is a very, very well-known brand in the business these days. And for many, many years, was all about bringing those private market capable, and we can even dig into what does that mean? We'll kind of table that for a second. I would tell you that historically, what we've always done here is we have brought our investment capabilities to pension funds, to sovereign wealth funds, to so to large as they're called institutional investors. Yeah. More recently, firms like Carlisle have started offering those investment capabilities into the wealth channel. That means different things to different people. Broadly speaking, what does that mean? It means kind of that, that banking ecosystem. They'll think about the marbles and morgans of the world. It could be a bank of Singapore and the more like, all of these firms, it's how do we bring our investment capabilities and offer them through an intermediary out to end clients. And I always think about my father and loads of retired dentists, Dan and Florida, who's a prime candidate for what we offer in the wealth side. So, question. I started my career in Morgan Stanley in the Financial Sponsors Group, where we were working with private equity firms like Carlisle, and the classic path, a lot of these people who went into financial sponsors, wanted to go into investing roles at Carlisle, helping to do those traditional leverage buyouts, where you raise money from institutional investors like the sovereign wealth funds, the pension funds that you were talking about. And obviously, there's a very specific path in the sense that you're a cycle. You have to fundraise. You have to, you know, there's the investing period and then you have to exit and it's this whole big thing. How are you now taking sort of that, almost like a clunky process and actually making it so that anybody can invest in these, in the private equity of companies, like what is the actual mechanics? Like, I'm a very technical person. How are you doing? I'm not a technical person, so bear with me here as we try to unpack and get to this. So historically, you're absolutely right. What would happen is firms like Carlisle would have done these in what we're called closed end vehicles, right? So we would offer, we would wrap our investments into a closed end fund structure. What does that mean for folks listening to us, for the one listener that's listening to me right now? I'm sure you guys get way more than I do. So I would tell you this. I would tell you that it is a 10 year structure. So we're typically calling, so let's say an investor says, "Hey, I want to put $100 into your closed end fund." We're going to call that capital over the course of the first three to four years. So probably we're going to call $15, $23. Why are we doing it that way? It's as we see opportunities in the market, we're going to need that capital to then invest and purchase, to do whatever we want to do, whatever transaction we want to do. Then over the subsequent years, we begin to start returning that capital to you. But the money is more or less locked up for 10 years, maybe more in some cases. That is the old construct that we used to offer, and as well, we used to actually offer that to the Wealth channel. We still do. Your ultra-high net worth clients definitely are fine with that. Your institutional LPs love that construct. However, today, we talk about these evergreen funds, which kind of sounds like we should be at a home depot in the garden center right now, this means it's evergreen. What are those? That is where we can now take the money in, so that $100, we call it up front. That's great news. You don't have multiple capital calls. Two, we offer, so it's monthly subscription, so monthly and quarterly out. Typically up to about 5% of the value of the fund can be withdrawn at any given quarter. These vehicles get referred to as semi-liquid. I call them semi-liquid funds, this is the reality of them, and I wish more folks in the industry would call them that. Today, what I think you have is you have a much better mouse trap in terms of how to access what Carlaw does from a wealth perspective. I ultimately feel that you need to be vehicle agnostic, so I'm less concerned about how you want to access us. I really want to make sure that we're just offering our best investment capabilities in the structure that works best for you. Does that make sense? Absolutely, but I come from Charlotte and with Carolina, and every other house on my street, someone is operating a private equity fund out of their garage. I know the name Carlaw, I don't know Joe Schmo, private equity investor who lives on my block and if you're listening neighbor, sorry, but what differentiates your strategy and your capabilities from the run of the mill every day private equity investor, other than simply your size, right? What strategically are you doing differently? What operationally are you doing differently in Carlaw? You know, so I would say first of all, I think the fact that we're global is a big difference. We've got investment teams on the ground around the world, and I do think size and scale matters in this business today because I think ultimately we can play in a very large sandbox in terms of the types of opportunities, the types of investments that we can take down. This is a business where I think ultimately what you're going to see happen is you're going to have a dumbbell here approach to this world where you're going to have some very large GPs, general partners, as they're called, like Carlaw, some very large managers that really do kind of offer a big, broad bench of private market capabilities, so we're going to be doing things in credit, in equity, both all in the private space along with secondaries and co-investments, other things that we can say, what do those mean, but we're offering a broad suite as well of our real estate capabilities, all on one platform for those end LPs, for those end wealth clients. That's very different than on the other end where I think you're going to have, and where you start to see coalescing, folks that do one thing very well, or one kind of nishy thing where they're like a, you know, a small buy out VC tech vehicle, right? That's okay. They're going to do one thing. What I will tell you is the folks we talk to today, whether it be a large sovereign or it be a large banking wealth platform, I would say that they want to do more things with less partners, so they're looking to actually do more, so there's an attraction to having folks that can do, that have multiple capabilities. Just you want to do a little buy out front, right? We do work business together and let's just keep going and let's just add more to that to what we do. I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah. And sorry, really quickly, I want to follow up again, two more technical terms that I have heard. Again, I do not know what these are. I may not either. So we'll see. Well, so you talked about evergreen funds. What are perpetual funds and interval funds? What does that mean? Yeah, so there's basically, so a perpetual is just another way of saying that it's always in market. Like it's perpetually in the market, so it doesn't ultimately close. My wife said like a closed end fund ultimately has an expiration date on it. A perpetual vehicle does not. So that's just evergreen and perpetual are kind of interchangeable kind of words that are used. We probably as an industry should probably kind of all get around the table and agree on something. They mean exactly the same thing. This is helpful. So that's good news. Interval fund, that is just one of the legal structures for a U.S., but you'll have people talking about tender funds, rick funds, BDCs, interval fund. They're all different ways of constructing a typically a 40 act structure. So under the law, a 1940 act vehicle. So this interval fund is really just a legal construct. There's different types of legal constructs, but interval fund is one of them, and it's one that's quite broadly used today in the U.S. wealth market, less so XUS, right? So we tend to do things more out of a European jurisdiction for our international fund. 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I don't know if either of you are recurring, recovering lawyers but I sometimes, so I do feel at times that that jargon sometimes acronyms as well when you join a firm and everyone has the internal you know these are all things that just complicated and then ultimately the great part with my job at times is I get to spend a lot of time out talking to folks and that's where you realize you really, this business is about storytelling, I ultimately really strongly believe that and you've got to, I think about one of my early early bosses you shouted at me, shouted a lot at me but he was always like keep it simple and he wasn't wrong and I think we over complicate things in this industry sometimes in a way that when you then go out to the world to explain it it just sounds like gobble-de-gook. Yeah well and so some of the terms that you used have frankly been new on our radar over the past two years, you were talking about secondary and you were talking about the emergence of private credit in these portfolios, I'm really curious how you see the shifting mix of the different types of investments in investors portfolios going forward you know who are partnering with Carlisle and what do you think is surprising, what do you think people aren't talking about, what are the trends for the next to call it two to five years? With your crystal balls, I mean. Yeah, you had to get involved with one of my boys at home as look here's what I'll tell you, I grew up in what was called like the alternatives world, right, like people like oh I want to work in all, so I had no turn and you know I kind of was on the hedge fund side so the more liquid side is where I originally started my career. Interesting. What's curious to me about that word alternatives now is it's a little archaic, it's a little kind of out of step with reality today, so here's what I mean by that. I think we need to be talking about capital and there is private capital and there's public capital. Yes. It's that straightforward, so if you think about let's use the Wilshire 5000, the Wilshire 5000 comes out, believe in the 70s, someone can fact check me on that, but came out in the 70s at that time 5000 underlying companies listed in that as part of publicly listed companies. It peaked in like an in around 7,000, today I think it's about 34, 3500 publicly listed companies on it. What has happened? The vast majority of publicly traded companies today have now gone private or a big share of them. So therefore if we all and I'm sure you've done episodes around diversification and the benefits of it and people talk about that, if you truly believe in diversification, you believe in capital and you believe in being able to get access to public and private capital because if you don't have access to that private capital, then you're not getting true diversification today in your portfolio, so that's what this conversation is really about, so it's no longer about alternatives. I would say now it's about capital. Well, just to echo, I mean, the way that it was explained to me when I first heard the term "alts." It was like you have your public equities, like your apple and video, whatever, and you can invest in public debt, treasuries, those are your traditional, and then the alts are like this special other category. And now to your point, it sounds like it shouldn't be alternative, it should be part of like the traditional, it's just its private or it's whatever it is. It's at the core now of what folks are doing and when I think about it, whether one is accessing the public credit markets or the private credit markets, you know, there's a lot of, in particular kind of mid cap firms that tend to really do a lot of private, they prefer the private loan market, the private credit market, it's just a better construct for them. That's perfectly okay. I'm also okay if they do it through private credit, through public credit, right? So I use myself as something. So I think people need to kind of, I think we, as an industry as well, need to do a better job of explaining that, and I think we as an industry need to get rid of the word alternative. I think it's kind of, that's in the past as far as I'm concerned. Well, I think reframing the conversation about diversification is something that also, frankly, is a consequence of the markets shifting dramatically in the nature of the way they operate over the last, call it 20 years, right? All of a sudden, your bond portfolio, your portfolio of treasuries, is no longer the hedge for your equities portfolio, the way that we were all taught, right? When you first get into the industry, this goes up, that's going to go down. Now it's risk on, risk off, and all of a sudden the correlation between not part of your portfolio and what used to be called the odds, right? All of a sudden, there's much more, I think there's a different type of diversification to your point that a private equity investment is not going to behave the same way as a public equity investment in your portfolio. And both have merits and both have a place in the portfolio. So I really do subscribe to, if the old portfolio was that 60, 40 portfolio, today it's about the 50, 30, 20, and that 20% in private markets. So that's the new world that we're in today, and people throw out the term, they call the democratization of all, right? And I would have had a word, I would say the responsible democratization of all, because I do think ultimately, and you guys are doing an awesome job of kind of educating folks, just generally about so many things in this world on the financial side, but responsible is a key word because what do I mean by that? I really mean education. And that's at the core of, I think, as an industry, we're getting better at it. We're putting a lot of effort into it, but we've got a long way to go. And what would your responsible democratization look like? Just play that out. What would go wrong? I think, you know, you've got to talk about liquidity of this one. You have to be very straightforward and open and direct and transparent about what liquidity means in private markets, and what you will have in the event of a market correction, and how these vehicles are organized in that way. So I think liquidity is probably the number one topic that we spend a lot of time with folks on. And I'm curious, actually, also on the transparency side. You know, it's interesting because there was recently, I think, Trump was saying he wanted to go down from four times a year that companies have to report down to two, hopefully trying to incentivize more companies to go public, because obviously filings are a pain in the butt. And like, it takes a lot of time and a lot of energy and all that, and it's expensive and blah, blah, blah. But I will say, if you have, like, all these additional buyers who are now investing in private companies, and there's not that disclosure, like, how do you inform the public about the investments in these private companies when they don't have that regulation? Just curious. I think it is an interesting difference between a closed-end vehicle and an evergreen or perpetual vehicle in that. We have to disclose all of this. And it's on a publicly listed website. So I think what was interesting, even for a firm like Carla, is like, wow, all of our underlying investments now are kind of -- they're out there, right? They're there in a way that historically, a firm like Carla, it wasn't all necessary -- it was available to institutional LPs. It wasn't broadly available now in this world that we exist in, which I think is a very healthy thing. And here in Carla, we've certainly embraced it. I would say that transparency is now kind of out there in front of everyone because of the legal disclosures that you have to make around these evergreen funds, which is ultimately good for everybody, right? Because I think the one thing that Carla, we have is we have investors. And they're going to -- they're very proud of what they do. And ultimately, if we can represent that out there in a public domain in our portfolios, you know, and our performance, by the way, on these vehicles, is out there in the public domain as well, net of fees, all of that good stuff. So that stuff that I think is healthy for the industry, I think more transparency, better education, these are all cornerstones of what I think are just -- is a good market. Yeah. Shifting gears here a little bit. You mentioned that you came from the hedge fund side of things. So I'm really curious to understand what your path was. We are terrible podcast hosts, we did not research your full bio in advance, but I do know that you came from Limerick, Ireland, is that correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's a fun attempt? How did Young Shane end up here at the helm of Carlisle Global Weld, and what was your path through the hedge fund world? I wonder should I bring the mic in? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to start whispering. It is. You know, it's funny. I did an internship here during my undergrad and I went to university back in Ireland. And so born and raised, correct, in Limerick, Ireland. I came over, did an internship, and I was like, wow, you know something. I really do think that this wall street thing was for me, right? And I -- now wall street for the most part is condos, you know, like you're kind of -- it's like -- but I -- so I said after undergrad, I was going to come out here and go figure it out. I came out here and, you know, didn't have any family or friends in the New York area. Didn't know what I was doing. I was absolutely clueless. And I do look at my American colleagues and go, wow, they had such a head start on me in many ways and just knowing the lingo, knowing how to present themselves and meetings and whatever. And it's really -- it was really eye-opening to me. So I got my big break at Merrill Lynch. And that's where my career began. And I've been very fortunate over the years to have a great career, had a lot of good mentors. I've always been in what we call distribution, what's that? So we've got two engines. If you're in asset management broadly, right, there's two big engines. There's the investment engine, I think everyone functionally kind of understands what that is. And then there's the distribution engine. What does that mean? Because it's a little confusing to call it distribution. It gets called investor relations, it gets called marketing, business development, lots of that. It is basically the sales engine, so these folks have to have something to invest, right? So we've got to go out, this distribution engine goes out, and they capture those dollars to bring them to the investment folks to obviously then an on-we go, right? So those are two core things. I've always sat here in distribution. I've had marketing product, sales job, both institutional wealth. I've covered different geographies at different times. So it's been a fun ride. I can tell you that I'm loving my time at Carlyle. It's a really interesting unique place. It's got, you know, it's DC routes. I've worked for probably more New York centric firms, perhaps prior to this. And I'm really enjoying the time here, and in particular, the C-suite's a lot of fun to work. We genuinely have a great time working here. Well, I have a question. You are so easy to talk to, so I feel like if there was like an intern, no, but it's true. I mean, like you are very personal, you talk to a story telling, and I actually would love to get some tips just for anybody who wants to get better at that, because you're clearly very good. But for younger people, because that's a lot of the audience that we are getting to, they want to break into, you know, to this type of a role, and they want to be able to talk to senior people like you. What are some tips to just being able to approach someone's senior and have a conversation? Like what are some of the things that you want to be talking to to like the junior people who are coming up? Okay, so I will, so I've never disclosed this, but I'll give you a little scoop here on the podcast, right? Here's a scoop, right? So LinkedIn, LinkedIn is great, fantastic. I probably get, no, it's 50 to 100 resumes and requests for a cup of coffee per week, right? So someone writing me a very nice note saying, hey, you know, and that's done a little research on me. You know, they'll make some kind of connection and they'll be like, hey, would love to meet you for 15 minutes for a cup of coffee. The reality is there aren't enough hours in the day, and I feel so guilty about it because I was there once, I came over here and I was networking, and eventually through networking I got my start in this business, so I understand how hard it is. One thing I will tell you is, I watch people, how many times do you come back to me? How many times do you try and get in front of me? Because at the end of the day, if you're going to be successful in the business that I'm in, you've got to be able to face rejection, you've got to keep coming back. So I ultimately, if someone's quite persistent, I tend to then enjoy it and start to like it, because you have to have a little bit of a screw loose if you're in this business, if you're in a seat like mine. And those are the people that go, wow, they probably do have the DNA, but if you send me that kind of generic from your university careers, you know, that you can tell. And it's all the same, and if you just say me, that's lazy, it's not original, I'm not going to see it. So you've got to get creative, and you've got to be persistent, and it's not going to be easy, and it's not fun, but you know something, if you really want it, it will, like I truly do believe that you can make it happen, but it's not going to happen in a linear fashion, and if you think that, and you're going to make lots of mistakes, and it's going to work out in the end. Oh, and by the way, I didn't think I'd end up doing what I'm doing today. Obviously, you know, but like the reality is, your life, you know, and we even separate our personal from our professional, but it's actually just one life. Life happens, right? Like you get, you know, you have a partner, you get married, there's children, there's you move, you know, I've moved countries, I've done different things, and all of that, you're trying to navigate all of this, and you're trying to navigate a career and all of that stuff. So I would just say to the younger folks out there, stay at it, be realistic, it's not linear, be persistent, and try and separate yourself from the hurt, be a little creative around it. Don't be, and lean into who you are, but don't, you know, I'll tell you one thing I'll stop talking now. No, no. I do hate people that when I meet them and they'll all go, oh, so tell me a little about yourself and they go, well, I came to New York when I was 22, fresh out of blah, blah, blah university, and I'm like, that's so much original. It's so dull and boring. It's also, it's like they're reading down their resume in this linear fashion, right? And that doesn't tell me your story. Give you a like. Are you? What makes you authentic? Because at the end of the day, if you're going to be in this business, you're going to be across the table, across the table, at a coffee shop, at a restaurant, in an office setting, across a conference room, where you're going to have to connect with people. And in order to connect, you have to be authentic. So I want to know the real story. And I love people that have an accent. I love people that have a real, a real story to tell, lean into that. And you're going to be a lot more successful. I love how you describe basically trying to break into finance, like converting to Judaism. Like, we're going to tell you, no, three times, you were going to get some very persistent LinkedIn message after this. But no, I think trying to discern that grit, right? And how can you pick up on that through very limited interactions with people is something that's challenging. But speaking about that career path, when Kristen and I were in the industry, we didn't even know this existed. I was at a sales role, but I didn't know that this specific role existed. So I'm really curious. Aside from that, you're going to say qua, that authenticity and that grit that you're looking for. What is the toolkit that you look for in someone who wants to start their career path in this industry? And everyone is so focused on exits. What do they come out of it with? Yeah, so here's what I would tell you. I think, first of all, find a good firm that you think will be a good cultural fit for you, and then take any job at that firm. Just get in the door. Don't worry about it. One of my best hires was out of the compliance department at a prior firm that I worked at, and this individual has gone on to have a really great, successful sales career. So just get in the door, and then you can network once you get in there and figure it all out. So that's probably part of it. Don't be so hung up on, I've got to be in the analyst program. If I'm not in the analyst program, I'm a failure. My whole life has been just breathed. It's okay. You're going to do just great. Okay. That's number one. Number two, work hard. Like nothing beats hard work in this, but people notice. People that work hard. People notice who's staying back to help get something out the door, and you'd be surprised at how many people don't do that these days, and then the other thing is ongoing education. Your CFA, your Kaya in this piece of the world is really, really key. Thinking about going back maybe even part-time, getting an MBA or some sort of a master's degree. We're always meant to be learning through, and I think as well, by the way, in your 20s, it's a lot easier. It's you guys. It only gets more complicated. If you ask me now to go, it's probably so crying. And then you go things like your 7 and your 24 and all these other things. But my God, in your 20s, do as much of that as you can. And if you add all of that up, it's really going to help you down the road. Oh my God, we talk all the time about how it's like we recently turned 40, and it's like, I feel my brain get, and I want my 20-year-old brain that was a sponge for just every case of the information back. But actually speaking of people in their 20s, what are some things that you have learned from like Gen Z that you think has been valuable? Yeah, I think we're obsessed with kind of this generational divide, right? And I think we've kind of created this conversation to a large extent. I think that there's a lot of great positives from Gen Z. I think in particular, they're understanding an embrace of social media. I do think that you can amplify your message using social media, and I think they're the experts at that. So I try to do a lot more, for example, in a really bad way, but I try unlinked it. But I will tell you, it's got really great results. So I work with the Gen Z generation to figure out what that should really look like. Because that Gen Z generation, they're fast going to become our clients. Whether they're sitting at an investment consultant, kind of looking at our funds, or if they're working for the CIO of a pension fund, or they're on a wealth team at a Morgan Stanley, for example. These are folks that we've got to figure out how to communicate with them, how to market to them, how to educate them. And I think that there's a lot to be learned from them. I think they've got great energy. I think they perhaps approach the work day differently than I do, and I'm still trying to get mine. What does that mean? I think that they, and I think especially those that came up through the COVID, I call it the COVID generation, they just had a very unstructured situation, perhaps through the tail end of college, or maybe the first part of their career. And now they're coming into a slightly more structured environment. And I think it's like, how do we begin to work together? I think ultimately, I'm very much result-driven, unless concerned about some of that day today, I just need to know that you're going to show up and be present when I need you to be, and we're going to help grow the business. And if you get excited about that, and I think Gen Z are ambitious, they want to get after us, and they just need perhaps a little bit of mentoring on it, it's probably the best part I would say about it. So, they're good people. Yeah. Well, and I think it is so interesting. You were talking about, like, Carlisle on the scene, right, Vio Langton, and it's just, it's so interesting, because it's so different from when we were coming up in the industry where it's like, these megaphons, I mean, we're so, I mean, the investments, it was all very buttoned up, very like, well, you know, you know, and then now it's just, it's so cool to see the embrace of this new, you know, this new social media, like, whatever, to try different ways of reaching people. And so, anyway, just-- And by the way, it's hard, you know, it's kind of, it's a little humiliating when I look at myself sometimes online, and you see the video content. We say successes on the other side of French mountains, like one, so you can get over feeling ridiculous on camera, you've done it. But you scale it. Let's bring it back to real numbers here for a second. In the US, there are, give or take about 300,000 advisors. How do we get to 300,000 advisors? I can't, I cannot staff to physically, in person, do all of those meetings. So I have to leverage technology. I have to leverage these platforms in order to kind of really reach 300,000 of them. I think right now, you're doing a really good job if you hit, you know, 75 to 100,000 of them. But ultimately, you know, and I think it's as this moves from kind of the ultra-high-net work to the high-net work to the mass affluent, that whole retirement space, what's going to happen there? Question mark. That's where we need to kind of start to think about technology, social media, and really using them for all the positive that they bring, in particular, in education. Well, you know, you talk about all of the increased disclosures and education that has to happen, right, as far as these firms going from being these secretive organizations to now embracing all of these new sources of capital and new investors. But you have to kind of live that across the entire bandwidth, right? And you can't say, oh, you know, here we are on paper, don't you love us? How do you get there? Right, and how do you build that relationship? I have a totally separate question, and this is going to sound pretty easy. I mean, I'm a Gemini. I thought it was that question. I knew. Okay, good. We've definitely done a podcast before where Anthony Scaramucci read Kristen's horoscope on the podcast. That was a Gemini too. I don't know. That's not where I was going with this. I saw that you guys now have a partnership with Red Bull and Formula One. So it's funny because sports investing and the sports arena and the intersection of that and private capital is front of mind for everyone now. But I'm not going to lie. I hadn't heard anything about Formula One racing. Talk to me about this partnership with Red Bull and Formula One. What is happening? What is the purpose behind this and how did that come together? Sure. So, oh god, it goes back a while. So, a group of really smart folks and me got together and we were trying to brainstorm around how could we kind of reach out in a different way and, you know, through sport sponsorships. And we originally looked at golf, we looked at tennis, we're all quite safe and I think as well, look, the car law brand is very, we're very protective of it. We really should, you know, so it's very important that if we're going to associate our brand with somebody, we need to make sure that it's really protected and that really they have as much kind of protection around their brand as well. So, that's at a core piece of the puzzle. But ultimately, what we quickly realize when you look at these partnerships, a lot of them are regional. So, you can do something that's very US-focused, something that's perhaps in the Middle East, something that's out of the Southeast Asia, very few of these partnerships are global in nature. So, ultimately, we landed on F1, on Formula One because it's global, car law is global. I kind of say we're global, because we're kind of that global local firm because ultimately all our teams are local, which I think gives us an advantage, but so we landed on a global effort, which was Formula One, and we then really dug in on Oracle Red Bull Racing and realized that they kind of, they were the unique, interesting, and perhaps as well, maybe not the obvious choice for us. You know, I think people thought we would have went with, you know, yeah, something a little more boring, maybe. You know, you think about private markets at times, and you know, these firms, at least the perception out there might be that they're not as exciting. So, I think we wanted to change perception out there. I think what's cool as well with Formula One is it's 40 plus percent female in terms of viewers. Is it real? Yeah. I think it was shocking, actually. And I will tell you, they are hardcore fans. I was just at Austin last year. First, they are all in, all all in, so, and it's a growing, the demographics are very healthy. It's got the right eyeballs that we're looking at. I do think some of their recent efforts on streaming services and everything has transformed their thing as well. So, when I look at it today, we're really excited about it. I think it's early innings. We're kind of figuring out how to do this. It's very new for Carlisle, but I think ultimately the partnership, if we sit down again 18 months from now, you're going to be like, wow, you guys got a lot out of that. It's a multi-year deal that we've done, and we're kind of excited about where it could go. That's so cool. I also think it's so aligned with the private wealth sphere because when I do think about the elite ultra-high net worth individuals out there, I imagine Monaco and F1, and like that's what comes to mind, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I'm thinking of. Well, actually, because you had mentioned there was a large percentage of women viewers of Formula One. I also, like, we were talking ahead of this about how there's actually a very high percentage of women at Carlisle II. I'm just curious what the stats are if you had that. Yeah, it's really interesting, and it was something when I got here that, you know, I found very compelling, and our, our clients really love to hear about this. It's the fact that at Carlisle today, nearly 50% of the assets are managed by female colleagues and the investment teams across the firm. So that's fantastic news for us. It's fantastic news for our clients as well. So, yeah, I'm really, really excited and kind of proud for my colleagues that do that day and day out for us. What are the biggest areas that you are focused on from a growth standpoint going forward? Sure. So I'll channel Harvey Schwartz for this side out, which is hard to do. So I would tell you as a firm, the areas of growth are going to be for us, are going to be wealth, certainly. So that puts me in the hot seat and my colleagues and it's a team sport, though. That's a good news. So in good times, I'll take credit and bad times I'll say, well, we're a team sport. So I'll tell you, wealth is really, really front and center. At credit is an area that we just continue to see significant growth. The moment you see in the whole asset backspace, and then I would tell you, insurance is one that I think we're going to be doing more in going forward. So you mentioned interestingly that growth in credit. I think we've touched on this a little bit. Private credit is not just direct lending. There are so many other sides of it, the asset backspace as well. Why growth there? Yeah. So look, think about credit along a spectrum, right? And on one end, you've got CLOs and Carlyle is, depending on the quarter with the number one or number two, CLO manager in the world, right? That's right. That's right. Yeah. Great. You're former colleagues, we're there on the team. So on one end, if you've got CLOs, and on the other end, if we say we've got kind of opportunistic credit, right? So that's going to, that's the more illiquid, we're weird kind of the more illiquid side of it, call it five year plus type money that we're kind of, so it's slightly more law. Then right in the middle, you've got this direct lending, which is probably the one that most folks are most aware of, that kind of came out of the global financial crisis in '08, '09, and that was where, you know, the banks kind of left that middle market space, and folks like Carlyle jumped in and really started to provide that lending capability to middle market firms, and have done well ever since there. Then you've got things like the asset back world have come into space right now, so I think what you have to do is, when I think about Carlyle, ultimately, I think the way to think about it is, if you're a well-client, you really just want access to the best of credit capabilities, so what we try to do is, for the most part, our flagship vehicles and everything we do, are going to offer you those things along the spectrum in one vehicle, and we, the portfolio managers, are then dialing certain dials up and down, depending on how the markets are, right? So, if there's more of an opportunity in direct lending, then you would see that go up and vice versa, it might come down. So, this isn't segmented out, these strategies aren't segmented out in different funds? So, from a wealth perspective, you can do one or two things. You can offer it in a commingle structure, we have them all together, or as well, we can offer a vehicle that perhaps just has direct lending. There are pros and cons about you, if some folks that really like to pick and choose their own kind of ingredients, it's kind of like cooking to a certain extent, where do you want it done, do you want kind of it done for you and brought to the table, or do you exactly, or do you want to actually kind of be there and choose the various ingredients? I think from my seat again, we're very comfortable with either version, but if you're in my seat, I've got to make sure that we can scale those funds, so at times you need to just make sure that if you're going to offer a single investment strategy, there ultimately has to be enough market demand for us. Back to the entire distribution mechanism, how, when you think about the problem of you said reaching 300,000 financial advisors, and you're doing all of this education, so many of them are coming from this very traditional, okay, you have your 6440 portfolio, you have your whatever, illiquidity scares us. How do you get someone comfortable with that illiquidity? What is that, where do you think about matching their needs and thinking about accessing all of those different objectives across 300,000 people worth of financial advisors and wealth managers? Yeah, so I think ultimately this is about storytelling, okay. Now let's explain storytelling in the seat I exist in today. So if you're trying to educate or if you're trying to get an investor to put money in your fund on the institutional side, you get to sit across the table ultimately over probably a half hour, and you're going to get to pitch to the board of trustees who have the votes, the CIO and staff who have kind of been in the weeds and really dug in, and the investment consultant, which is an outside firm that helps staff and trustees kind of choose which firms come to this finals. And there's an 80 page deck and you're probably going to get to 20 of those slides in that deck to discuss the benefits of doing that. And you got about 30 minutes to do this. Now that's fine because the people across from you, they're going to make the decision, they're going to vote and they're going to choose who they think is right for their fund. We move to what really is an intermediary sale, and I think intermediary is a key word here because on the well side, we Carlyle, we are talking to the intermediary, we're talking to the financial advisor, the private banker, the relationship, they call different things in different places, but let's just call it the advisor. We are talking to the advisor. Typically one of my folks is going to have give or take five to six minutes. 310 max, 10 on a good day, but let's call it five to six minutes. So that 80 page deck probably has to be three to four pages, probably three pages. And it's got to have some charts on it and you've got to distill it down in a way that's quite straightforward. And then they've got to tell the story onto the end client. That advisor is going to in probably two minutes and under. So you're right, that is where the storytelling comes in because it's not about just kind of telling, here's our performance, here's what we do, you have to kind of, you have to weave that into a story that the intermediary can tell onto the client because I think ultimately people understand stories. So that's why, for example, if you're selling a real estate fund, being able to say, hey, you know, you're going to own part of one Vanderbilt and there's a picture of one Vanderbilt which is where we are today, right? That's something that people can understand. I think it gets trickier when you get to some of the more esoteric things like if you're selling managed futures or that's where the storytelling gets a lot more difficult. But I do think that you need to be able to tell a story. So we're doing a lot of video content around that as well because to your point then on how do you scale it, you got to be able to tell that story in five minutes or under and you got to be able to put it on a video that someone can watch on their phone, on their train, you know, on their way as they walk to the gym in the morning or something. That's how advisors today are digesting this information. So if you want to do some educational content, let's say you want to talk about the benefits of direct lending, better be under five minutes, better be a video and you better be able to push it out the door. There's like so many parallels to what we're trying to do where it's just like, create a bit. Like actually, almost like thinking in social media terms, like thinking in video creation terms. Like we need to basically reach this group of people who then also have to reach someone else. This is like this game of telephone. So you have to make very, very certain that they understand it. And so I will ask like for this younger generation who is coming up and who wants to get good at stories and wants to actually get good at not just the video stuff, but also like the communication, the in person. Like how do you recommend getting that skill of storytelling, especially like as we try to, you know, people try to differentiate themselves from AI, from chat GBT. Like how do you actually like get up the curve and get good at that? So don't forget that. I would say first of all, it starts way back when in your teenagers, get a part-time job that's in the service industry. That's where, you know, if you're in the, if you're a waiter, if you're, you know, if you're a bartender. The importance, if you're just even working like the snack shack at your local community pool, that beginning there will serve you so, so well, like there's so many people that when you talk to them about where do this all begin, they'll go, oh my god, well, it actually began when I was 15 and I was blah, blah, blah, blah. That's kind of the where you need to really start to think about it. Ultimately, I do think that and this is where maybe I'm curious to get your view on this. I really do think that you have to be yourself and what I mean by that is, if you're an introvert, be an introvert, don't, you know, like there's all these sales and books that are, you know, 10 ways to be a successful sales partner, you know, how to become, you know, likable or if you're not likable, I'm sorry, you probably shouldn't be in sales, right? But don't, don't force it on to, so I think you need to be very honest of well about what your capabilities are and people will react really well to you just being you. And I think I've always noticed as well, people that kind of are very forced in terms of they're trying to present themselves way, way back when I got some presentation skills and were like, you know, state up front what you want to achieve in this meeting in three bullets, then go through the three bullets and then reiterate them and ask for the business. And what you realize is it's very contrived and these advisors in this world that we're talking about today, they're getting pitched all the time. So you're not going to stand out if you do what everyone else is doing. So whether it's you're trying to get in front of me, you're trying to get in front of an advisor, you're trying to be successful in this business, if you take away one thing from me, figure out how to separate yourself from the herd. And if you figure that out in life, you're going to do really, really well. Yeah. I think one of the things that's so interesting that you touched on is the idea that, you know, there was this prescribed way of doing sales that was very old school and how it has transformed. But at the end of the day, when you look at what that sales approach looks like across so many different people within your organization or within other organizations, right? It's, you're not selling a product, right? You're at the end of the day, you're solving a problem, right? And so I think identifying what that problem is amongst the entire, whoever it is, who's considering Carlisle, who's considering any, who's considering any kind of investment for their own purposes, right? You're ultimately trying to figure out what that problem is. What do you think the biggest problems are generally speaking in the capital markets right now that people are trying to solve and what is leading them to make different, is it, hey, listen, global uncertainty is higher than ever and we have all these various geopolitical forces that we're trying to navigate and we're trying to solve for that. Is it something else? Is it concerns about, I'm really just curious what you think the biggest problems are out there? Yeah. So I've been traveling an awful lot recently. I was out in Hong Kong and Singapore a couple of weeks ago, Madrid and Milan before that. I'm heading out on Sunday to Tokyo and a part of why I'm doing all of these trips is to see here in terms of what are our partners, what are they trying to solve for in a client's portfolio today? I would tell you that there's definitely a bit of trepidation around the credit markets. I think people are a little anxious there based on recent headlines as to, is that a canary in the coal mine or not? Do you think that anxiety is warranted or do you think that, and I don't know if we're allowed to talk like markets here so you can let me know, but like, I mean, everybody has been calling for the credit market bubble about to burst now for Chex Watch. How many years? So are we there? Is it early time? I tell people, you can ever time markets, right? Ultimately, you cannot time markets. Therefore, I think what you want to do is just make sure that you're working with great firms that do great underwriting. And diligence. That underwriting and diligence is so key. So the great thing at Carlisle is, we have that in house. And you're kind of, you're common earlier around like, there's so many firms in this industry today. I think where firms like Carlisle do separate themselves from the herd is, is on things like that because at the end of the day, you do need warm bodies to get after that and really diligence and underwrite any of these investments that you have. So those are the things that are going to keep you out of the headlines. Carlisle has been staying out of the headlines since 1987. I'm not going to continue to, but I'm not going to be one to try and time markets. Oh, yeah. Now, when we started our careers, 2007, 2006, but Lehman, C.D. Yeah. We're in Stanley. Don't recognize me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, yeah. It was not ideal. She, what aren't we talking about that we should be talking about here? When it comes to this entire distribution channel, when it comes to what's happening with the access to private markets changing, I want to make sure that we're capturing everything with a conversation. Is there something we missed? Is there some big takeaway that you think we're not getting at here? Look, I think the, the 800 pound gorilla right now is retirement and what's going to happen there. Obviously, in an executive order here in the U.S. come out over the summer. Will that want that allow truly access to the 401K defined contribution space? You know, we're told that there will be a follow-up letter from the Department of Labor in the New Year, and that will probably provide the some guidelines around what that could all look like. I think from, from my seat today, I'm the defined benefit side of the life. So those that, you know, if you're a, do you mind, sorry, for our listeners who may not be familiar with these distinctions, just outlining. I mean, they may sound self-explanatory, but we've never actually made those distinctions before. Okay, yeah. So, a defined benefit plan, that is a plan that is run by, by your, by the company you work for, by the union you're part of, or by the state that you're an employee of as a public employee. So, if you have a mom or a dad that's a teacher, for example, they're probably in a state or a local pension fund, that's run for them, and they get an automatic, they're contributing in, but also the state is contributing into that. That's a defined benefit. That's the classic pension fund that started in the 1930s, right? Yes, we have a pension fund. Then you have the defined contribution, so that's now where the onus is upon the individual to be allocating in. So, that's that 401k world, so that's where, that's the world that I exist in. You guys, where we are contributing into it, and an employer may or may not be matching a contribution up to a certain amount. Those are the two worlds, historically, you could access private markets in the defined benefit world, so a fireman, a teacher, a nurse, for the last 40 years. You need to make their assets grow in the future, but they don't have a pension fund. Because the pension was making that decision. So, Dave, ironically, lots of individuals have been benefiting from private equity, private credit, for not knowing it, for so many years. It seems to be the case I made, by the way, for being in sales and trading at Lehman. I was like, "Your parents get it, they're a pension, I'm helping them, it's real people." And now finally, it looks like we're going to have some ability, question mark, as to how that's all going to work just yet, but we're going to have some ability to offer private market capabilities in the defined contribution space. I mean, it sort of just would make sense, because you're not really supposed to take your money out. So, the illiquidity actually makes sense there, because you've got a penalty if you try to pull your money out. So, irony here is that 100% agreed, because we've allowed it already in your more liquid investment account, that people trade in and out of. But for those of us that think over it, no, I'm older than you guys, you can see from the hair. It's all fake. But when you think about it today, if you have an investment time horizon that's probably 30 years out, or for some folks listening, it's probably 40 years out, private markets are probably most appropriate in your retirement vehicle, but ironically today, that's the one place that you probably can't get them, and hopefully in the new year that will change. Okay. I have to ask, for the cynic, for the skeptic, who says, "Hang on, why are you now? Why are all these things that forever excluded the, quote unquote, "retail investor?" Why are they now opening up to that market? Is it all the other money is tapped out, and there's no exits from these things? Or is there a bigger strategic reason that it makes sense other than what we've talked about? I think it's a bigger reason, because ultimately you, again, it gets back to that conversation around diversification and access to investments. Why am I penalized in my retirement account, in that I cannot truly access all of that capital that I mentioned earlier? Yeah. I can't access it from my retirement account, so I can't manage the risk the way I would like to in my retirement vehicle, irony around that, because the one place I really would like to manage it is in my retirement vehicle. So that's at its core, what this is about, is bringing it to a fair and equitable outcome, so that folks like all of us have the ability to invest in private markets in our retirement fund. So I think that's at the core of this conversation. How it plays out over the coming years is going to be really interesting for all of us to watch, but I think it's going to be a net benefit ultimately for all of us. I mean, it just seems like such a no-brainer, because I mean, I don't know, if they really want to put regulation like, before whatever, after a certain age, you have to start like moving money out, because you need to have the actual income when your old are, but like the early part of your career, it just sort of seems like a no-brainer. And it's great. Look, you can look at, for example, I'm a big fan of the Australian pension system, and in terms of what they're doing there. We have the super. Yeah. The supers are great. And I think in general, a lot of, you know, the demographics of all these, all these countries are really in a free fall right now. Yeah. I'll be having Japan next week. That's a big, big topic when you're there. So I think we do need to be more creative, more thoughtful around the whole retirement space. So anything that kind of takes us out of, you know, what was legislation that was put in in the 40s, 50s and 60s, and kind of updates that for today's environment would be a fantastic outcome. And I think retirement means such different things now. We talked about this generational divide. I never want to retire. That is my, but we're still going to be doing this when we're like 90 years old. Oh, my God. But when you talk about retirement, retirement investment accounts, right? Like I think that it just means something and the way that people think about how, you know, for better or worse, right? I think the way that people think about the longevity of their careers and the life cycle of their personal investment strategy has shifted so much from what was supposed to be protected in a certain way. And I think that, I mean, this is just me speaking. This isn't, you know, but this is just me speaking. This is just my personal view that I think giving people that additional flexibility. A life expectancy is going on. So we all need to be doing a lot more. We all, you know, it's a time of year where all the squirrels are out, you know, and they're all putting all those nuts away. And I, you know, like squirrels and nuts, I do think we all need to be much better about that. All of us. So that's one thing that I think 20-somethings aren't great at. But it's also the diversification element because if you're investing in the S&P right now, you're investing in five companies. You are not diversified. Your portfolio is not diversified. Exactly. That's the only thing that you try to story. So I think it's a way to access diversification for the everyday investor that you otherwise can't. Well, and I'm talking about taking money and putting it like just invest early, I mean, that was the one mistake. The one mistake, yes. Yes. Is it the one or the other now? I don't know. I know. Didn't Einstein say that? Warren Buffett said that. Oh, Warren Buffett. Oh, Warren Buffett said that. Oh, Warren Buffett said that. Oh, Warren Buffett said that. But no, I mean, it's funny, because we were saying we started our career during the Great Financial Crisis. So I was so scarred about like putting my money into riskier things. And it's like, I mean, how dumb am I now? So this is, I mean, I have like a, we did a real, unlike teaching my daughters. Like, I would teach them, invest when you're early, like, they're whatever. Two, seven, like. But talking about those Gen Z investors who are coming up, I think they almost have the opposite problem. They've only ever seen a market that goes up. That's true. Oh, I just, I just parked my money in the S&P and just go straight up, right? Isn't that just what it does? So I think there's education that has to be done on that front, right? As far as. And humans, when it comes to investing, have short-term memory. Yeah, over and learn the wrong lessons that terrorize us. Yeah. And ultimately, we have to learn time and time again. So I do think at the end of the day, diversification is key, access to private markets and access to Carlisle are three things that I live by. Love it. Well, Shane, this was amazing. Thank you so much for this opportunity to speak with you. It was fun. I enjoyed it. We'll make sure that we have your LinkedIn profile on our, so you'll get like a thousand messages now because all the, everyone's, they're going to try three times a piece, yeah. That'll be awesome. Well, thank you again. This was awesome. Appreciate it. Thanks.