Integrating Philanthropy into Financial Advice with Rob Nelson

But if you want to play the role as a trusted advisor, I think this has to be part of it. I think you're missing a moment to be in a circle if you don't. If a client is opening up to share with you about why giving back to that organization resonates with them, you're gonna learn something about them that they may be when share with a lot of people. Most people don't talk about how they think about giving to people in the workplace. And a lot of times they don't talk about with their friends, but being in that spot, you immediately deepen a relationship or a level of trust in a way that's next level, almost always, and it's pretty special. Hi, I'm Leah Barr. Welcome to a better way for doing good the Foundation X podcast. Here we sit down with change makers, innovators and dreamers who are building a better way for philanthropy and social impact. Just a quick note before we get started, the ideas we share here are for general information only. Nothing you hear should be taken as tax, legal, or financial advice. For guidance on your own situation, we always recommend talking with a qualified professional. Welcome back to a better way. The Foundation X podcast, it is officially episode four. We're excited to be here and joined by CEO and founder, Rob Nelson. Rob thinks we're being on the podcast. - I'm honored and happy to be here. - I'm happy here. We make every one of our guests sit through their bio being read to them. And I think it's important not only because we want to orient who you are to everyone listening, but because it's always really nice to take a moment and ingest to the things that we've done and how we've gotten to this point. - All right. Rob Nelson, founder and CEO of North Rock Partners with more than 30 years of industry leadership and executive management experience, Rob leads the overall vision and strategy at North Rock Partners. Since founding the firm in 1993, Rob has built a reputation for delivering holistic client for services through innovative advisory solutions. His approach integrates personalized financial strategies, expert investment guidance and long-term wealth management to help clients unlock their greatest potential. North Rock Partners was founded with a clear mission to provide a truly client-centric experience for integrity, transparency and excellence are at the core of everything they do. Through the firm's signature personal office model, North Rock delivers tailored solutions that go beyond traditional wealth management, empowering clients to pursue their ambitions and live their best lives. Under Rob's leadership, North Rock has grown into a trusted partner for investors, entrepreneurs, athletes, fortune 500 executives, and multi-generational families around the world. He oversees the development of North Rock X and Foundation X, expanding the firm's impact through innovative platforms that further elevate client success. Is that capture everything for you? - That today it does. You can see how a number of those things tie into our conversation today. - Yeah, yeah, there's a lot here, not only through the personal office and the advice model, but of course in the founding of Foundation X and everything that brings us to a better way as a podcast, but also as kind of a ethos for how we move forward. So I'm excited to dig in. - Me too. - I'm gonna start these conversations with our generosity tabletopart cards. And if you don't mind, I'm gonna pull one for you. We do it off the cuff. So I'll just pull it, ask it, and you can answer how it feels, right? - All right. - Okay. Who is the most generous person you know? And if you could describe them for us. - The reason that's a tough question is I have, I've been very lucky in my entire life to be surrounded by a lot, a lot, a lot of generous people. And so narrowing it down to one, two, three, four, five, six is really difficult for me. One or two people come to mind. The one that probably pops in my mind first, should I give his name? - Sure. His name is Dwight Walbotany, and Dwight, I grew up in the same hometown. He was actually our county sheriff, and unconditionally would give his time for anybody and meet whether on duty, off duty, still to this day, and just an example of what unconditional generosity means. And has been an inspiration for me my entire life of watching him and having other people like him, I won't go too deep here, but I also have a client. He has been such an inspiration for me as well. I've been working with him for 20 years, and his generosity with time is generosity with resources. It's just his second nature for him. And he actually had a really big impact on for me watching and observing him when I was still only 10 or 15 years into my career is what helped to form how I think about giving, and actually was inspirational enough where I wanted to follow that lead, because it would allowed me to not only watch that, but watch the impact that he was making, and that's a little addicting when you see that and watch how you can transform people's lives, and so those are a couple of people that come to mind. - Thank you for sharing it. We talked a lot in our first two episodes, just about the impacts of generosity and how you can on the surface see it as one incredibly small act, but you never know the ripple effects that it's going to have and how that transforms. So interesting to hear that even as you describe these people, it's not only started in with you, but how it's translated to how you've shaped the firm, how you've shaped the decisions you make. So I always love hearing these. - It is lucky. I've lucky getting into this career, but when I'm in my 20s as a financial advisor, working with people that are more established in their life, and watching them make decisions, and then watching them, 'cause in my 20s, I grew up in a giving community. So giving back into your neighbor and watching all the people is something that I played a role in my life, but I didn't really get it of how it could have a central role to your life and actually be deliberate about giving back until I was probably my late 20s and 30s. And I don't think I would have got there without having people like to wipe, but also having people met my clients and observing them and watching them go through the whole process from vision to actually giving their time and resources. And that actually, I probably caught on to it earlier because of that. - Yeah. - Lookier than most, to catch it early. We'd never ask our guests to do something we won't do ourselves. So I will also pull one and read one. And then answer it for myself. The question is what other ways can you be generous, other than financially? Honestly, what comes to mind for me is just in what you're describing of how we watch our clients. And I think I have a client, I watch a lot, give generously with their network. And on paper, it looks like they may just be making an email connection or they may be introducing someone interesting to someone else, but it's actually expanded who they are in the world. It's expanded the way that they show up. And I think the connections with people can be an immense, generous blessing that isn't just a financial contribution. So our clients are providing inspiration at all corners of the world. - Completely agree. - I'd love for you to talk a little bit just about how you got into financial advising. You mentioned it just in your early years, but how did that start for you and how is your role evolved today? - For me, I'll give the real-world short version, stumbled into financial advice in early '92. When I learned about it, I was in my senior year of college and through a friend of a friend at an event, as I was starting to explore, what was out there, I was a major in business, emphasis in finance and computer systems. And at that point in time, when I was thinking I would take any job, a goal was to find a good company and get a job in the mail room and work your way up. But I was talking to a friend of a friend and they were a financial planner, financial advisor here in the cities. I was going to school in Northern Minnesota. And as they described the role that they played with their clients and their relationships and the depth of planning, they had passionate about it, I asked if there was an opportunity of how I would, what's the path to be able to get into it and through a lot of interviews and process and research, I was able to find a path to be able to get into the same company that he was affiliated with, the catch at that time, which I didn't really recognize the significance of the decision I was making that time as your independent contractor self-employed, the company he was affiliated with was called IDS, it became American Express, which became a Mara Prize. I definitely would not have signed up to be an independent contractor if I would have understood what that meant of being self-employed. But once I had already made the decision that graduated college on a Friday, started on Monday and realized that you actually have to generate a business and bring on clients, which I didn't have really any network. And I just started the process. I was lucky though I was renting space in an office with a lot of other financial advisors and could ask them how they came into the business, how they generated success. And through them guiding me and asking a lot of questions, just follow the path and kind of worked my way up. But it was pretty old school back then, that you would actually go down the phone book and you would get in touch with people during dinner and ask if they'd be interested in on getting information on financial advice and financial planning, you'd send them a packet and you'd follow up with them. And you'd try to have them hire you as your financial advisor. But as I did that, it grew. I added one client at a time that we're looking for a financial advice. And you do that over 32, 33 years. And it has a compounding effect. But the role was always comprehensive advice, especially in the first couple of two, three years. It was leaning to anything and everything that they needed for a vice. And it was, yes, it was run in best months, but it was run tax, it was around cash flow, state planning, legacy planning, charitable planning, executive compensation, it was just whatever they needed. The spirit was to help. And that's ultimately how the business grew and continued to grow. And by the time we're in our third or fourth year, clients were starting to become advocates for the word. And it really just grew upon itself over the years. And ultimately, it's North Rock is still built off about that spirit of trying to be the trusted advisor at the center. A goal from the beginning, I was always to earn the right to be at the center. And that still is who we are today. And the service, are still based off of responding to what the client needs and delivering upon them? You've been a huge proponent for philanthropy, generosity, charitable planning, and the space of financial advising and wealth management. I think at a time where most people weren't, I'm curious how that started for you. When did you realize that there was a space there? Yeah, I can't. That was led by clients. That wasn't led by me. That was in response of with clients from my first year where giving was central to their lives. If you want to be trusted advisor at the center, you've got to move to where they are. There can be some complexity to it. It doesn't necessarily need to be always, but there can be some complexity around it, or providing clarity. Actually, the state-of-the-word financial, you want to be their advisor, financial and non-financial, and you see that there's a need or they're needing guidance or they're looking for a thought partner. It was just leaning into those moments when it comes up during a meeting or when it comes up in life. That's really what led it as just trying to be that source and that resource for them. That's great. I'd also be curious how your personal life ties into that. You mentioned a little bit just about growing up at a certain point in this journey. There was some growth and development in your hometown, seeing mentors being engaged in their community and getting back. I'd love to hear about what's happened for you personally and professionally have kind of come together to form what generosity looks like for you. Through generosity, most of the people don't know that they were mentors to me, but I gave a couple of examples on the early side of it, but there were just lots and lots of people that were just givers and watching them. Especially growing up, where I grew up, I grew up in a small town in Westermen, it's called Ashby, 450 people, farming community, and it was an environment of watchoff for your neighbor in service of others. I had a wonderful family and wonderful parents, but the community played a role in raising me too and shaping the values. As I graduated from Ashby and moved on, there were so many people that had an impact in my life. I wanted to continue to see if there was an opportunity for us to have an impact on them. We've got that. Then you have watching clients give back in the impact. It's led to a couple of two or three or four different paths of aspiring to do good and give back in a better way. The ones that come to mind in the way where it's played a central role for me is we have a family foundation that I've established with my wife and my son and his wife and a couple of other family members. That has become a central way for us to give and find different creative ways to get back. One of our first initiatives in establishing our family foundation was an initiative to give back to my hometown. Fortunately, when I was 30 and my brother was 28, he passed away from leukemia and it had obviously a profound impact on my family, but also had a really big impact on my hometown. He was a played a big role well-known and we set up a scholarship for seniors every year as a way to give back. We saw in a little bit of an example at that time of what it was meaning for those kids and their families to have that scholarship, but as the years went on and, you know, seven, eight, nine, ten years go by, we thought about, is there a better way, a bigger way to do this? We started asking people in the community what were the needs and one that we could see was the opportunity for kids that were in a rural community to maybe have them think a little bit bigger about what's out there in the world, understand the importance of education beyond high school, was part of it, we saw that there were some people in need within the community. Why I would mention that is it's an example of just wanting to do a little of having a little bit of an impact and gathering a couple of people that turned into something that's way bigger than I would have anticipated and end up having a little bit of a snowball effect. What happened to happening was as we were starting to ask people questions about what was the opportunity for impact, we get tell that across the community, which is also very common across most communities, there was a lot of ways to give back in the community. People would raise money for the ban ban growing to on a field trip, the need to buy new jerseys for the baseball team or whatever it ended up being and there was dozens and dozens and dozens of fundraising initiatives that were happening across the community, all in small little increments. What we ended up doing was talking to community leaders and bringing them together and say, what happens when we set up a central community fund to enable giving back in a more effective way and a better way. Through that, we ended up setting up three pillars to the community foundation where people could see their money at work across these three areas. One is we set up a scholarship program that actually ended up being for all kids grades one through 12. So if you're a first grader in Ash, but you start your scholarship program, we bring all the first graders together and we talk with them about a scholarship program, which is awesome. But we're starting a story with them talking about education, having an impact and ends up being a progressive scholarship. So if you graduate from Ash, but you might have eight to $12,000 in your scholarship fund and the goal is simply to have two eighth graders having a conversation about what are you going to do when you graduate? You're trying to raise expectations. It also the second pillar is the school itself trying to have an impact on curriculum supporting teachers and the supplies and their initiatives and having an impact on the school in general and it's also the community where we revitalization building out the park, improving the senior center, people in need. What ended up happening is the total community rally to round it. We're now you have this town of 450 people. Basically, we've had now five years in a row. We are average, get back in the community is like $500,000 a year. And it's been huge. And so you're rallying a lot of people around the central need and that's been great and simply seeking a better way of doing good. Thank you for sharing. If I know anything about you, I know that scholarship day at Ash, be is one of your favorite days of the year. So I'm really glad you have the chance to share that with with the audience and those are very entertaining days. So yeah, you can you're you're meeting with every class grades one through 12 and it's very different with the third graders to the 11th graders of what you hear when you ask about what do you want to be when you grow up and it's it's been really great. I have familiarity with the organization and one of the things you probably feel like you can't say that I can from my vantage point is in that journey and that trajectory, it's not only just achieved so much for the local community, but it's becoming a model for other rural community foundations and what it looks like to serve a community well. So so we talk about ripple effects. It's far beyond just the individuals who stay within that community or live there now. It's actually becoming something that I think people say they're doing it right and how do we make that makes sense for us. I think what I was talking to a foundation group about this last week is I think when you can touch it and feel it and see it. So the people in the community can see what's happening. They can see improvement. We try to be completely transparent and so then you build trust. We also brought the people that lead that are at the board level of that foundation are all the community leaders. The trust of people. It's not led by me. It's led by the community and there's been a formula that's established and there is something there that we we thought about gosh, how can we help other communities do the same thing because it's actually had an exponential impact. The community is probably giving four or five times more than it was before but it was simply because people trusted it. And when you can know that it's going to benefit you in one way or another, the buy-in is just significantly higher. We hear from our clients all the time about everyone just wanting to feel more connected to the impact of their gifts. Imagine if that was in your backyard and it's just more beneficial and more helpful for everyone. For sure. Yeah. I'd love to get into foundation X and talk a little bit just about the impetus of foundation X coming out of North Rock Partners. How did that come to life for you? What was the first idea for foundation X as a business unit? The foundation X was trying to solve multiple problems at the same time. As I talk with leaders within North Rock, also in the community. And even I think probably what put me over where where I wanted to do something different was building or establishing my own foundation and also doing that on behalf of clients and seeing how cumbersome that was. It's really challenging. You know, my own foundation, I must have worked across five, six, seven, eight professionals. And I have a background in financial advice and it was it was complex for me. There's a couple of times I almost thought about stopping because it's like this is just a pain in the butt. But that was once like, we've got to be able to streamline this to make this easier. But at that exact same time, we were trying to solve other challenges from a company perspective. How can we have a bigger impact on our community as a as a collective? And and thinking about that, I gave you the example of feeling lucky in my 20s, being able to watch clients and not having an impact on me. I thought there is there an opportunity for us to support our employees and they're giving. And then it was actually thinking, is this something that we could provide for the community? Not just our clients, but for those that are in the community that want to give and want help with creating vision, they want help on the planning process. They want help on anything related to it. If we can create something that can be people come direct to foundation acts, they don't have to be part of North Rock at all and come to foundation acts because they have an idea or a vision and they want it to bring to life a little bit like happened with me with my foundation, which is called arrow giving, can we create those kinds of moments? And for somebody that wants to give $10,000, can we have it make it feel like it's 50,000 or 100,000 and have an exponential impact and so foundation acts, it really isn't just about people that want to have a foundation, it's just people that want to do good, people that want to have an impact through a lot of work. Yours included a lot more of the mind. You put a lot of energy into the this, it's having that impact. And even though we're still in the early years of it, you can see something that's long term sustainable. There's a legacy impact here where people in the community are coming and we're leading in with them and bringing, helping to bring a vision to life. I've watched our employees lean into this and you want to make a $200 gift and you want to see about how you can make the most impact on that. Awesome. Let's talk about it. And so you can meet people where they're at. But I would say that there's an obviously hidden agenda, but the agenda of actually turning somebody into a giver in their mid 20s at an earlier agent, they may be otherwise would have. We do things as a company. We support our individual employees. We're obviously having a strong role in, that's a central, deliverable for us and our clients and more than ever, we have people coming direct to us from communities across the US and outside of the US too. And we're helping to support them and that feels good. And so it's a completely nonprofit activity for us and if we're up to me, it'll go on beyond our lifetimes. Yeah, yeah, it's truly life giving work. One of my favorite facts about philanthropy is it's an actual manifestation of how we view ourselves in the world the way that we give. And it's such a privilege, regardless of dollar amount, to be at the center of that. With someone, our employees, the community, our clients. And so I just echo everything you said, it's been amazing. I think one of the things we hear in the marketplace a lot is like you're connected to a wealth management firm that feels strange. Some people have called it an unlikely duo. I'm curious at those early days, was there ever a risk for you in centering philanthropy in the wealth management space? Ooh, I would have probably viewed it as a risk to not. Our goal is to be at the center. And if this is something that's central to your client's life, like how could I not have that? So I, I, so yeah, the risk would have been not to play that role. Otherwise, clients are going to be going through an important part of forming mission and vision for their lives. And you're not at the table with them having that conversation. And so I never viewed it as a risk. Yeah, that's great. One of the things we hear from advisors sometimes is that they're hesitant to engage in these conversations. And I don't know if it's our advisors as much as just we're hearing that sentiment from advisors in the marketplace, maybe feeling like they don't necessarily have the expertise to have those conversations or don't know how to bridge the gap between financial advising and philanthropy. What would you say to an advisor who has a tent about it? I've heard that too. I would challenge them in every part of a advisor's advice that they delivered their clients. They were, they didn't have the capabilities at one point in time. So this might, this is just added to add it to your list. As if you're not feeling comfortable, like you were maybe on a state planning advisor, tax advisor, whatever component of advice you were delivering, I guess it always starts with what do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to be as a financial advisor? What's the role that you want to play? And if you want to play a role as the investment advisor, exclusively, no problem. Maybe that doesn't fit in. If you want to play the role as the insurance professional, no problem. But if you want to play the role as a trusted advisor, again, at the center, just play the role as a trusted advisor, I think this has to be part of it. These are from for many of our clients. This is in their top three. You've got the kids and health that might be in their top two, but this follows behind and this is part of their life. And I think you're missing a moment to be in a circle if you don't. Can you share any examples of how you've seen those philanthropic or values based conversations deep in the relationship with clients? Yeah, it's, you know, it's almost immediate. You have the opportunity to see what makes a client tick. If a client is opening up to share with you about why giving back to that organization resonates with them, you're going to learn something about them that they may be when share with a lot of people. They don't mean a lot of times they don't talk about with their friends. They'll talk with their within their family. But being in that spot, you immediately deepen a relationship or a level of trust in a way that's next level. And it's it's almost always and it's pretty special. Yeah, that's great. Rob, I'd love to just chat a little bit about the state of the industry today and more specifically, the state of financial advising and philanthropy. But these conversations are coming up more and more in the general marketplace. We're seeing more articles. We're seeing more content come out as you've been in the profession as long as you have. Tell me a little bit about why you think this shift is happening and why it feels more urgent today than before. Our industry is changing. Our industry is changing a lot. What is quickly, especially over these last four or five, six years as advisors are recognizing that they have to play a bigger role in their clients lives, playing their role. And we all grew up in a different way. Sometimes you'll grow up in a maybe a product based or you're micro open and investment focused or an insurance focused. But the almost across almost every part of our industry, deep, comprehensive advice is growing quickly. And so deepening your value proposition is really prevalent across our industry. And so I think you're seeing this as a component of that. Also, clients are now comfortable leaning into their advisors to help them with all things. You've got two components, what's happening with our industry, the components of people that are looking for advice and they're also looking for execution. And which puts a lot of, puts some burden on the advisors, but you know, how lucky are we? So they're looking to consolidate their advice. They don't want to have it where they're getting advice from an investment professional and two insurance professionals and a banking professional and a tax professional and a state professional. They're looking to consolidate the areas of advice into one, two, three, four sources. And at the same time, from time being one of our best, one of our top deliverables as well, they don't want to have to go do it themselves. They're looking for a partner that's going to go help them and execute on their behalf. And actually, and clients are more comfortable sharing, you know, what's important to them. They are more comfortable sharing their values. And I think that those things combine where you're seeing a little bit more push right now. You described it earlier about foundation X, but we see the same thing just in that sub-sactive the business. Our clients don't want to be in the business of running another business. They want to be at the forefront of generosity and the things that make it joyful and time, giving them time back in their day to day to focus on that. Whatever it is, is I think it's one of our biggest differentiators and how we can show up for them. I would also related to our industry, but actually just a step outside of our industry is I think you have more people that have started giving initiatives such as a foundation or a giving plan. But let's just talk about people that have started a foundation. They have a vision for what they want to build and they need help in building it. And they never signed up to be a business owner. And they're realizing quickly that this is a business. Yeah, there are taxes. There's a need for a business plan. If you get really lucky, you have an employee and all of a sudden you're running a website and there's work that goes into it. And that's not necessarily what they had signed up for. They wanted to have impact. And so the opportunity for us to be a partner and fill gaps. It doesn't have to be where we run it out. Run it all. It can be in any lane from running the board meeting to helping you create vision, to the execution and seeing that need and having people recognize that they have the need has been powerful. Yeah, it's hard to describe sometimes. I think it's so niche that some people are like, am I really going to have a professional help me with my giving? Is that something I can do? And then we joke with them about, well, you're not doing your own taxes. So we can think of it similarly. It's how do we get you at the forefront of the things that work for you and make sense for you and take off the burden of the house. I think what we've done with a handful of clients that we have that have actually wanted to go that far into building a foundation or creating that kind of a giving initiative is like, what's role you want to play? What are you going to be good at? And then let's try to do everything else around you. That's been really a powerful combination where they have expertise around them and they're playing the role that they dreamed of and that's cool. I think we get the really, really cool role of telling them like, it's possible. And I don't know who was told you it's not possible, but it's possible and we can help make it happen. So that unlimited possibility is just a really fun path to walk down. I think you know this, but our family foundation would not have come to life with our foundation X. It was not only on the on the vision, the creation of the vision of it, but the execution got a lot of big dreams of what you want to have happened, but actually the the execution partnership every day, every month and it has been very powerful and it's wise long term sustainable for us to. Yeah, and in that iterative process of we may know our North Star and exactly where we want to end up, but the path we take to get there can bob and weave and we can learn from that and grow from that. And I think we see this a lot with our clients of them just wanting to get it right right now and we can do all the things right and and then maybe we make another choice to be on a different path or choose a different future and that's all okay. We're just happy to walk down it with them and decide what's the next best thing. Yeah, it's really fun. Foundation X is entering its fifth year. We're rounding the corner on four about to hit five. I'm curious in that journey short, but sometimes the days feel long. What are some of the big moments that stand out for you? You know, I think for foundation X right now is it's becoming everything I think what we all would wish for. You know, there's challenges to bring that to life and you've been at the front of the line on that and that's that's by which is it wouldn't have happened without people like you giving their time and having the impact that you do. It's actually the response from the community and the response here with with our employee base has been really powerful where I would say that this is officially part of our company culture and I didn't know if we'd get there. You have some hopes and dreams about what it can become, but right now across all of those four lanes that I mentioned earlier, I see us to I see it delivering in our communities and you see sustainability. But that's probably the, that was the big one. Getting to the point where you can see long-term sustainability and as I mentioned, this could be something that goes on beyond our lives. It's not like you need to take your foot off the gas on any point in time here. There's a lot more work to do. A lot more work to do. There's a lot more people in continuing to be in need across the planet and a lot of people that want to step up and give back in a better way. And so the opportunity for us to, when those people are looking for that, be there available for them as the right partner. It's our opportunity to have an impact by them having an impact and that's kind of the fun part. You agree with you on the employee piece too? I think watching our employees turn the corner and to have it be something originally that was just brought to them. And now you can see and feel that they have ownership of it too. Which is amazing because in order for it to live on, it should live far beyond any one of us as individuals. And that's for me, that's one of my favorite things. Absolutely. Yeah. As you look ahead in the industry, it's you kind of see this intersection of financial advising, wealth management and philanthropy. What do you think is next? I think we're going to go through a moment. I think we're going to go through a moment for a number of different reasons. But I know there's a little bit of an overstatement of the impact of AI in our world. But I think AI is going to accelerate a lot. And I think it's going to allow people to get more connected to the planet for good or bad or whatever that ends up being. But it's going to get connect people to the planet. And they're going to see there's areas of need and be able to connect with people that have similar values and in a common way of giving. And so I think AI, not only just on the ability to have transparency, but the opportunity to understand how to have impact, I would anticipate that that's going to accelerate giving initiatives. I don't know what's going to accelerate the complexity of giving, but it actually is going to be probably making more approachable. I think as we go through not only the world becoming more complicated, but actually becoming smaller at the same time, I would anticipate that giving is going to be a central theme that's going to run across organizations and for people in a higher volume. And so it's exciting, it's challenging at the same time. And I hope we get to play a small role in it. Yeah, I think at a minimum, it's going to illuminate a lot for our clients and helping them understand just what are the issues that our communities are facing globally and to your point, like, is the world starts to become smaller? How do we make an impact on those things? It'll be really interesting to see how they latch on to different parts of it. A year aware of this, Leah, but we did this back to my hometown and trying to connect to the planet. This wouldn't have happened a decade ago, but we have an amazing organization that where my family foundation participates and it's called the Gong Road. And I was with the founder of that point, I think they said that up 20 years ago. And I was able to watch them. It's basically it's an organization that is looking to provide education and tools and training for people that are in poverty communities within Africa. They just do such great work. We try to connect those dots that we just talked about and connect two things at the same time. On, we set up sister communities between fourth graders in my hometown of Ashby and fourth graders in Kenya. And these classes are having the opportunity to get to know each other. A lot of it's a lot of it's virtually, but through technology and tools and video and everything else. We are setting up these learning communities where we're opening up the eyes of these fourth graders and our intention is actually to have them grow up together where they'll continue to know each other and they're having curriculum and classes and beyond. But what does AI do that? And so the ability to connect and also help communities that way in unique innovative ways I think is going to be powerful. Those kids in my hometown and Ashby, they wouldn't have been able to point to Africa on a map. And now they're actually understanding the lifestyle where they grow up with a food. They're understanding a day in the life and their their eyes have have opened up and it's opening up the world to everybody. Yeah, yeah. There's some of my favorite pieces to read. On paper, it feels so small. You know, they're talking about the weather or they're talking about what a day of school looks like for them. But you can start to see the relationships get formed. And I just I'm really glad you brought this up because it's probably one of just the most fascinating things. That the organization has done in trying to connect to these students. And from both communities help them understand what opportunity looks like for them. Think about like what you can create there. And we're in our two or three years into this. If we can have that fourth graders continue to keep those classes connected and all of a sudden you're in tenth grade. It just doesn't seem like that big of a deal to potentially explore what Africa means. So explore what Europe means. You are making the planet smaller for them. And again, raising expectations. And so I think AI is going to have that impact of where we have to create the bridge, but it's powerful. And hopefully scourge generosity in their teens. That they get a chance to start even earlier than their 20s or 30s. So yeah, amazing. We love to end this podcast the same way every time, which is with some rapid fire questions. And so I'm just going to ask them to you quickly. You can give me the first word or a couple words that comes to mind. But I have a couple if you're up for it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay. First one, you've chatted about this a lot, but I'd love your short answer. What does a better way for doing good mean to you? The short answer is I'm in the world of finance and solving problems. And so I think it's the it is actually taking the two of the most complex things together. Resources and time and finding and bringing it for anybody in their unique needs. And helping them to solve that problem for themselves. Having each of anybody that we come in contact with find their own unique way of a better way of doing good. Bringing together resources and time and that's probably what I had the first thing I'd get to. That's great. One value that has inspired your leadership. The first value we hold out as a company. And it's probably what I grew up with, which is in service of others. I don't think I really realized it until maybe 15 or 20 years ago. This is just my own personal comment. You know, I where you realize that that's what it's all about. And so our business, our lives are in service of others. I grew up in an environment and service of others. That's probably what is a driving force. It's not just in the way we serve our clients. It's also the way we serve each other within our company. The way we serve each other within our communities. And it's become a way of purpose and meaning for all of us that I that I that I'm around every day all day. And that's probably the one that comes to mind. That's great. So last one's easy. What's your go to coffee order? I wish that was easy. Am I my go to coffee order? Because I make everything a little complicated. Actually, in the morning, I start with a black coffee with heavy cream and MCT oil blended. Go for a little walk in the morning. And then I sit down, grab a coffee, gives me the jumpstart and sends me away. And it gets the body going. That's perfect. Rob, I really can't thank you enough for being here. I knew we were going to bobbin weave in this conversation in the most interesting way because your professional experience, your personal experience, the things you're doing on a day to day basis all have flamethrpean generosity and a better way centered around it. So I'm glad we got to just go wherever the conversation took us really happy. You could just share your voice and share your stories with everyone who's listening. This is an example of you putting time and energy into something to bring something to life to have a better way of doing good. And congratulations on the podcast. Congratulations on everything you've done with foundation X and you're having an impact. So thank you. Yeah, thank you. Really appreciate it.