The Billion Dollar Partnership | Why Debate, Humility & Shared Vision Lead to Success

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the participants as of the date of recording. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Grace Media Digital, the exit interview, Timberlane partners, or any of their affiliates. This content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment legal or tax advice. It does not constitute an offer to buy or sell any securities. Pass performance is not indicative of future results. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principle. Did you start the firm and already have in mind, okay, we're going to pass a billion at some point. Was that always a milestone? No, I think now we're much more deliberate about what, how big are we trying to be and why there's like three phases where at first, you know, you do a couple of deals and it's more of a proof of concept for yourself, for your partnership, and also for your investors. And as a business owner, there's a really big difference between having no business and having a business. So there's that first moment, you're like, oh my god, this is real. Then, you know, you start realizing, you're like, okay, well, you need more staff, more support, and you go into this second chapter, which is, well, this definitely not big enough, right? There's a very fast declining feeling of profitability and scale. You realize how important some scale is. And then you go to the third chapter of what game are we really trying to win. And that's where I probably took us five years before we realized, hey, this is working as long as we keep growing. It's good. Welcome to the exit interview. Well, we are here with John Chafetz, co-founder and principal of Timberlain Partners. Thank you for joining us today, John. Glad to be here. You have very interesting story co-founding your asset management company that currently manages over 1.5 billion in assets. Can you tell us a little bit about Timberlain Partners and yourself? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, like you said, we're just a bit over a billion five of AUM today. I live in LA. We've done business in California, but in general, we're a north-west-based real estate asset management firm. We focus largely on multi-family properties, both acquisition and development. We have a couple of different strategies that we use to pursue the asset class, if you will. We also do some hospitality. But the way the firm came to be was a bit of a meandering journey. I'm a New Yorker. I grew up in New York and also here. Yeah, Brooklyn. Hey, yep. So I'll have some family in New York. And then we moved here in California, and then we moved back to New York when I was in high school. And after college, after I worked on Morgan Stanley for a couple of years, not in real estate, but actually in the energy group. And it ended up being the way that I got involved in asset investing was through that. We were buying power plants, wind farms, fixed assets. It was like kind of real estate adjacent. So I realized that I enjoyed being out in the world instead of just looking at financial products at a desk. Got it. It made it more tangible for you. Yeah, I realized that it was a little bit different than what I thought I was getting into, but it ends up being the genesis of my interest in assets. And I just as the GFC was starting to happen kind of before I didn't really see a coming. I didn't have enough experience to really recognize the science. I just decided that I wanted to do my own thing. I wasn't sure what. So I moved to Seattle where I met Dave Enzlo, who's still my business partners. We met, you know, 18 years ago now. So that's pretty, you know, it's one of the most important relationships that I have. And he had the opposite background. I was like Wall Street, you know, institutional training. And this gets to the DNA of our firm. He was more of a kind of family operator, family business operator of local real estate projects. And he wanted to do something bigger. He wanted to be outward-facing. He wanted to have clients. He didn't want to just run a family business. We just had a really complimentary set of skill sets and a great personal dynamic that has carried the firm forward for since then. We were originally what I always say is we were like literally, you know, two guys in a truck, which sometimes you hear about like a small asset management firm is like two guys in a truck, but we really were two guys in a truck driving around suburbs, figuring out what we wanted to do. Now we have 30 people and we've got a proper office in Seattle. If you folks down here as well that work with me. And it's turned into more of a what I would describe as kind of a semi-institutional middle size asset management firm. What brought you into finance in the first place? Oh man, I mean, we just did like a team building retreat where like with our I was up in Seattle and we had a facilitator and they asked like, you know, what's the title of your book and like the names of the chapters? That kind of thing. Like the first chapter for me was like, I what am I doing? I don't even, I felt like, you know, just like lost in the woods, you know? And so what I mean, yeah, that's what I mean. The one thing that I chose to do very deliberately was to just really, you know, be an excellent student. I went to Harvard and I did well there to where I was able to get it. It was like, what should I know clue what I wanted to do? Like I thought about like opening a taco stand in Paris, you know, like I really had no clue, which would have been awesome too, by the way, probably. But my upbringing and like a little bit of like a more conservative, like get a good job kind of background. I was like, you know, I was like, I was able to get a job in Morgan Stanley, which was like a great, you know, investment trading sales and trading job. Like, so I just took it. We're just waiting for you when you walk down the graduation stage. I mean, it sounds weird, but that's kind of what happened. You know, all the other peers in my class were like, I am here to like crush this. Yeah, and like, right. And that was never my energy and really like on the very first day. I figured out like, hey, one of the things you can do here is make money. I should try to be an energy trader because that's a good way to make money. Very quickly was like, you're not a trader. Like you're like a history major. You know, you're more cerebral. Then I'm going to have you focus on these more esoteric, like structured deals. So that was just, that was so stimulating for me. And then it got me excited. I was like, oh, this is interesting. I'm working on this deal. And there's, you know, foreign buyers and sellers. And I'm traveling. And I'm the analysis is interesting. So then I kind of, it was, it wasn't deliberate at all. And in fact, I quit, right? Like I quit Morgan Stanley before, just before the GFC, it's only really because I met Dave. And it was this, I'm a very relationship oriented person. So the, you know, the personal relationship that I have with him was so, so rewarding. And still is that it like motivated me to like move to Seattle, stay there for eight years, like put down roots. It's been a, you know, like a, a happenstance journey, like the first couple of years. And I think that might be partially why I was successful because it's definitely authentic. It wasn't like, oh, like I'm trying to be this guy. So this is my, I'm going to do wasn't it wasn't that. And what was it about your relationship with Dave that made you like really know that y'all could be in business together besides just like, oh, I have a great relationship with this person. Yeah. I mean, we were friends for a, you know, a year before we really kind of figured out that we had a greater potential, I think. A lot of people who are type A personalities, like have a hard time sharing. So you see a lot of firms that are led by like dynamic people who could never possibly fare responsibility with others. Like, and that describes me in some ways. But Dave and I just don't have competing skill sets. We really don't. And I think for an investment firm, I just think debate is important. You know, like some people are, you know, sure, like, you know, Warren Buffett or something is a genius, right? But but then he also had a sparring partner, right? And actually, like you ask him or you read his things, it's all about their debate. And Dave, and I always shared that like, hey, this is much more comfortable for me, like walking like any time you make an investment, especially if it's other people's money, it's a, you get used to it. But the first couple of times I'll tell you it's pretty attention grabbing, like the sense of responsibility is difficult to process. So having a co-pilot for us just felt like necessary. Incredibly necessary. And still does today. That was a part big part of we also like love fishing and skiing. And we used to like go Sam and fishing before work. You know, like my point is like, it's a really hard business to be in. So if it's not fun, then what are you doing? Yeah. We have fun together. We still do. Yeah. Did you start the firm and already have in mind? Okay, we're going to pass a billion at some point. No. I think now we're much more deliberate about what how big are we trying to be and why at what point did you get to that conversation? If I'm thinking about it, maybe there's like three phases where at first, you know, you do a couple deals and it's a more of a proof of concept for yourself, for your partnership and also for your investors or like, does this, do you, are you guys, does this make sense? And when you're really just two guys in a truck, you know, like a it's not that hard to find a good deal or two. It can be hard to raise money. Frankly, that was not that hard for us, but it can be very hard at that stage. And it's also profitable as a small, like if you're just a couple of people, you don't need to do that much business. Crazy. Yeah. And as a business owner, you guys as business owners probably know this feeling is like there's a really big difference between having no business and having a business. Then, you know, you start realizing like, okay, well, you know, you need more staff and you need more support and you go into this second chapter, which is like, well, this stuff, we're not big enough, right? There's not like, there's a very fast declining feeling of profitability and like scale, you realize how important some scale is. And then you go to the third chapter of like, maybe this is the beginning of the rest of the book, which is like, okay, but what are what game are we we talk about this a little time? Like what game are we really trying to win? Right. Exactly. And that's where I probably took us five years before we realized, hey, this is working. It continues to grow every years bigger than year before. It's starting to become intellectually lazy to just be like, well, we just need to be doing more business as long as we keep growing. It's good. I think there's been a debate between me and Dave as well. Like, I came from an organization at Morgan Stanley with thousands of thousands of people. Some people, I went to private school in New York City, right, in high school. There's a lot of without naming names like household name business leaders that I saw their personal life. And I did wasn't jealous of it either. So I don't have like, I don't you don't have the pine the sky version. Well, I just know that like, you know, like money to like the cliche of money doesn't buy happiness. I believe that. So I'm much more I'm not, I don't fetishize the size just to just to get bigger. I want it to be a great business. And Dave didn't know about that world at all. Like Dave grew up on a farm, you know, in Washington. So there's always been a healthy tension for us where he's like, why wouldn't we try to be like, I see as big as possible. Right. Right. And I think we've kind of triangulated into more of a mutual understanding of like, yeah, you need to be scaled. And you need to be scaled because I think because you need to be big enough for a really talented people to think that they can also have an incredible career working for you. That's the way that once you cross that line, right, it changes everything. Yeah. Right. That is the conversation with founders, particularly an asset management. It's always at what point do you continue to grow? And at what point are you stopping? And is it about, are you able to continue to provide returns? Is it about now you need to get a whole new level of staff that's going to take you to the next billion because the group of people who get you to your first billion sometimes are not always the exact same group of people are going to get you to five billion or 10 billion or exactly. And so just evolution. So there's a lot more operational considerations that need to go into play when you are continuing to scale as an asset manager. In this marketplace, we've obviously had an interesting 2025 in the last couple of years. What makes your space attractive for right now? I'm focused on my own perspective. We are not a public market company like with nothing that we invest in is in the public markets. Almost all of the money that we manage comes from highly sophisticated financial people like people who are in the finance business. A lot of real estate investors, but a lot of, you know, hedge fund portfolio managers, private equity fund managers, AKA people who are thinking about this exact question all the time for their job, not just like for their personal matters. Right. Right. For us multi-family and general on a national basis in our markets, but in all the markets in various ways has taken a huge valuation reset. So the everything we're we're very active investors last year and a half two years among the more active buyers of Northwest multi-family in the country. You know, like everything we're looking at is kind of 20, 30% down from previous highs. Sometimes more, there's a lot of distress in the credit markets. We're in a tough time for values for what we look at AKA in theory, like potentially a very exciting time to buy. And I also think if we're talking specifically about rental properties, you know, I think about there's sick in our business, there's cycles. The cycles are also not related to the stock market necessarily. It's not correlated to the stock market. There's its own independent boom bust of sure construction. You build a lot of apartments rents get softer because there's more apartments. Right. Construction slows down. Not as many apartments rent goes up. This is a very basic supply and demand thing that happens. What's a little bit unique about the moment we're in now is that at the end of the last cycle from our perspective, so kind of, you know, post GFC to sort of like the beginning of COVID, that's a 10 year period is probably getting ready to slow down. Instead, interest rates went to zero and we put a huge amount of money into the economy. So there was like a 10th inning, you know, or 11th inning of construction that I just don't think what otherwise happened really everywhere that there's like any kind of exciting story. You see this Seattle Salt Lake City Denver Austin Nashville Miami. Those are probably the ones that come to mind as like the obvious usual the typical suspects where this happened. And so in all of those place Scott Stale Phoenix, another good one, Vegas. All of these places basically have had to deal with not only an interest rate shock, but also kind of like a historic amount of cranes and new supply. And the double whammy of that is what has pushed values down in some of the best places fundamentally to own like all those places that I just mentioned. If you told me like, hey, where do you want to own property for the next 20, 30, 40 years? Like I would list all those places. Typically when it happens, the property gets more expensive. Right now it's a sweet spot where for for for other reasons, the property is like cheaper than usual cheaper than what it would cost to build too. That's another thing we look at. So in I think in all those markets that I mentioned, there will be opportunities to do that as well. By the way, I should also caveat like the shape of that kind of down cycle is not exactly the same in all of those markets, but the general pattern I think is similar. But like for Seattle, like we took it on the chin in 2024 more of a recovery moment now. I think you know, for example, we also look in Denver, which is feels like more like maybe the sharpest amount of pain is right now. So yeah, different cycle, different timing, but similar. But they all go through it, but just similar pattern. We anticipate nobody can, I perceive there to be a similar pattern coming. How is AI and sort of this tech wave impacting the space? So I don't necessarily see a like direct direct impact to it yet. Are you finding correlations? But what I do think, you know, the hardest thing for us, I think also creates a lot of opportunity, which we could talk about, like, you know, challenges are good when you market, but we've had so much uncertainty. So it was like, okay, there's tariffs. Oh my god. Like, what does that do? Are we going to recession? Or are we not inflation? What's happening? And so AI is like another, you know, we're not, it impacts everything, of course, but for us, the big question is like, okay, well, now what happens to labor markets, right? You know, like, are our jobs going to be taken by AI? Does that make it so that that's bad for what I do? I don't know, right? Because the people still are exist. So they need a place to live, even if they don't have a job. So like, it just, it's just like another perfect example of just when I think I see kind of what kind of world we're in for the next like year, please. Then you have this other, like, massive, huge, like, it just seems like the number of, like, ecstastentially changing things that keep getting introduced into picture is like more often than, like, you know, when my grandpa was in business or something, it was like, hey, like, this is the way the world's going to be now for like 20 years. Right. I would assume that a potential, like, crazy shift in the labor market where a lot of people were out of work, would be this obviously affect what you're doing, right? It could. Yeah. I mean, again, you know, like, but also rental housing is kind of what you get when you can't afford to buy a house anymore. Right. And we have rental product in a lot of places where tech firms that are leading the AI ecosystem are. The Northwest has a lot of those jobs. Now, some coding jobs are going to go away. So again, like, it's just, I don't know which one it is. So AI is a good example of like, that's why you want to be really diversified. Got it. At the scale of firm that we're at, right, which is I would describe as like a middle sized firm. Some of our value at is that we're, we can be contrarian and we can do things while like the bigger firms figure out what their policy is going to be, which takes a year, you know. Right. So AI kind of feels like that to me. Now, directly, it affects us. Definitely any asset management firm just forget about the strategy is directly impacted by AI because obviously, um, we may be able to be more efficient in how we look at data, how we like forget about what our assets, but just within the company itself. Right. I think I'm excited because I think like if you, you know, I'm 42, uh, Dave, my partner's 47. We're relatively young for the size of the firm we run. And so I think there's a bit of an exciting thing for us where it's like, oh, wow, we can, we haven't built such a large organization that would be hard to reach. Yeah. Exactly. I think you're almost at the perfect size because you can adopt really easily relative to an asset manager who has tons of infrastructure already in place. I was just in with our team last week. And I was really excited about the fact that the nature of what our firm is has attracted a lot of people who are accomplished, but still relatively young in their career who are who are tech savvy enough to embrace what is coming is coming. And we also live in a tech hub or our office, not me, but our office. Yeah. And Seattle is a big time tech market. So there's just a lot of available resources and dialogue in the air about like, what's the best thing to do with all this technology? Right. So, um, I feel like there's a ton of opportunity for firms like ours. You've mentioned a couple of times of having what it sounds like is a team retreat. Yeah. And so I'm curious as to at what point did you decide, all right, we're out of a size now that we need to start doing retreats? We started doing that when our team was relatively small, like five or six people, we started doing that. We would take a yearly trip to nothing crazy, but we'd go to the San Juan Islands or we would go to, I don't remember all the places, but it was more just to like have a high five kind of thing. For the last couple of years now, we don't, we actually don't really do that. We do more of what we call it like a strategic retreat. It's like in Seattle, where our team is, we hire a facilitator. And it's really more of like a, you know, it involves some fund dinners and some some team building activities and stuff like that. But the purpose of it is much more about prompting people to get into more collaborative shared shared vision place. Like, hey, where are we going? Why are we going there? How do you fit in? Why are my shoving all these KPIs onto you? Where do they come from? They're not random. They're not just to like get more out of you, right? It's because we're trying to win some kind of specific game and we all need to pull in the same direction. So once we kind of crossed the like 15 to 20 people zone that we shifted to more like, Hey, like, I don't talk to all these people anymore on a regular basis. And like, there has to be some vision time. Has there been an evolution and it's just based on what you're saying in your leadership or management style as your company and as your assets have grown in either how you communicate and how you, you know, when you can't touch everybody on the team, like what, what for you has evolved in your leadership style? Yeah, that's a good question. Well, I think it takes a while to realize like, you're the boss and people aren't your friend, even if you're friendly with them. Sure. And because Dave and I have a friendly relationship and we are friends. And that's always been the kind of foundational culture of our company is very friendly and casual. And it takes a while as a leader in that position to realize that like somebody might be even like scared of you or intimidated by you and inclined to just do whatever you say, whether they think it's smart or not. Whereas what I want is for people to push back on me. And there's cultural things where like I'm from New York, I'll tell you what I want. Someone from Seattle isn't wired like that. Our culture is like, hey, like I want to harness the wisdom of the group, which means that you have to be comfortable sharing and pushing back on whoever you report to. You have to be comfortable pushing back. I don't know, it's like a profound shift, but it's it's it's leaning into that, you know, Dave and I have had like not we've had outside business coaches at times over the past years like help us kind of figure out what that means for us. And what did the coaches help you help you clarify? Well, I think in a situation like ours where there's two people who really are the stakeholders, at least for now, there's just two of us who own the company. If we're not synced up on what we're saying. Sure. Then that just flows down, right? And and we always talk about like, how do you have a culture where it's okay for the two people at the top to debate one another, where that's perceived as like how we arrive at a good place versus being perceived as like, oh my god, like the people on this company are not in sync with one another. That's not good. Right? Because you have to form like a coal. You have to have a consolidated debate. Yeah. Right. And you have to have a shared vision. So a lot of the people to model that. Right. So typically what those strategic retreats look like or the coaching work we used to do looks like is like work just with me and Dave for a day or two. And then an invitation into the conversation afterwards to like, hey, you know, I'm a paid professional. Yeah. And I don't work for drown in Dave. So it's my job to kind of beat them up and but pressure on like, when you say this, what do you mean? Like, that sounds different than what John said. I asked you these thousand questions. You didn't answer them the same way. Right? Like, why didn't you? Like, is that really a disagreement or is it just a phrasing thing? Right? And then you use that to sort of pass along what you've learned to others. And I think they respect the effort. Yeah. People respect like, oh wow, like you actually took time to do that work. Thank you for sharing it with me. I think it's powerful. That's kind of what that work tends to be like for me. Right. Absolutely. Have you noticed after the retreats that it correlates to stronger culture and better performance? Oh yeah. I mean, I think so. For us, I think it's basically mandatory going forward. I mean, we've only been doing it for a couple of years. So I can't tell you like, look at all of this. But I mean, what I can say is that type of work has corresponded to also a lot of growth with our company and our company is probably doubled in size in the last three years. So it's just part of the same effort of it. And I think it's self-selecting. Like, if you have people, we've had people who don't want to do that work. They don't work for us anymore. Right. Right. So like, it's another tool in that sense. Just last week, I said, I don't really like doing this kind of work. I don't like it. I mean, it's not fun for me, but it's important. And it's like going to gym. And like, I don't really want people on my team who aren't don't realize that this is important. Doesn't have to be every day. We don't have to have like a course. You know, you don't have to like, we don't have to have a crazy combi every day. But at least once a year, I want people who get it that you need that. It's almost like a litmus test now for like, hey, you can't be more than a certain level of senior order in my company unless you get what this is about. Got it. When you're looking for talent, what is what is the key characteristic you're looking for for? Let's talk about investment team. Comfort expressing opinions. Especially in the investment function, like my worst nightmare is my worst nightmare is we set goals. People start to execute against those goals. Like, it's a widget factory. Like, hey, we're going to make a thousand widgets. They just go make a thousand widgets. We're not a widget factory. Like, if we, I want people to be comfortable telling me, I think our goals are not correct or need to shift. So it's really like, if I sit down with an investment professional, I start asking the questions and they don't have strong opinions about what they think. I might not even agree. I don't even care if I agree. But like, I just want strong opinions. I want point of view. That's one thing. And then probably I would also say for a firm like ours, we need, it's really hard to find investment professionals who are both opinionated and also humble. It's not that they don't go together. But that's kind of what I, I think we have people like that, by the way. So I know they exist. I mean, I think Dave is like that. Just in terms of to keep on that line of someone who's good for your company, does their connection to the fact that you're like literally building things that people are living in and awareness of that, that makes it important for people working for you to understand, like, is there an ethos around that? In the development arm, I would view it as almost like table stakes that the people you work with, like, think about what life is like and how it feels to live in this community versus that community and why one is better than the other because you're, you're a direct, you know, you're a direct participant in what happens. And the person who runs development for us, I just was taking a walk with him in Seattle the other day and we were walking through this in the water, the waterfront in Seattle is being redeveloped by the same kind of architecture. Did the Highline in New York like there's this pretty, pretty dramatic waterfront restoration thing that's happening. I wasn't like I brought him there to like observe what he's like in that type of place, but it was immediately dawned on me like he's looking around and he's fascinated by all of this. It's much easier for me to get comfortable with the risk that comes with investment. If you are also excited about what it does. So another example of that would be during my tenure in asset management, seeing investors who if they're looking at the retail space, for example, you notice a good investor from a great investor on the research team when say you have to stop at a CVS or and they're interested in the actual products. Yeah. Like you're going around in attention to where they're playing, speeding the label, the packaging like observing, you know, that's a great way to say. Yeah. During COVID, there was a research professional that I'd talk to and they and you know, while the madness of COVID was happening, they were taking notes on the understock and what got bought and what didn't get bought and all of those movements and I was like that it's fascinating. I mean, that's a really good research professional. We have a guy on our team, John Hoggerson. He ran investment sales for CBRE in our markets for like 30 years. So legend and legend in the space. And when you watch him go into project, any project, our project, someone else's project, it's kind of what you're saying. Yeah. There's just a level of attentiveness to what is going on with the product that is clearly authentic. It's one of the reason why it's successful. So John, can you tell us a little bit about what is the unique differentiator of timberland partners? Yeah. So obviously we talked a little bit about geographic focus. That's one area. And I would also say that just the scale as well being in that sweet kind of middle size where I think you're you're professional, but also nimble enough to tangibly believe that you could generate a better return than some of the bigger shops. I think that's almost like table stakes at this point for a firm like ours and really make it feel like we are almost like an extension of the RIA or a family office where they could call us ask us questions. We try to provide real insight like we write, we write a principal updates once a quarter. I actually get a lot of energy from it and we put a lot of time into it and people engage with it. Has there been any for you like pivotal you know setbacks or you know failures for you that that you were able to move through and like learn from we were a relatively early investor for outside capital coming into Salt Lake City. Historically Salt Lake City is pretty insular market a lot of local capital. It drives the market there historically. Now it's more national scale investors and even foreign capital coming into that market. That really started kind of in the beginning of 2010-1112 kind of when we were getting started. And we for reasons I don't need to go into decided that we wanted to go in there early. Which was completely the right idea. In hindsight great idea but we were scared so we were like we're going to do a deal and we're not going to hire any staff just for that. And so that the mistake there was we just by the time we realized that it was the right thing to do it was a different animal and a lot of the opportunity had sort of become efficient. So our investors were not upset because the things we did were okay but but it was kind of like hey you missed out what's the point of doing this right if you didn't go all in go all in yeah. So for example like we are rebooting our development strategy right now which has been dormant for a couple of years and we're you know we're we're not doing a development seeing how it goes like we're launching a fund we've hired a whole team of professional people to do it and it's a big investment on my part and Dave my partners part. But it's that's a good example of like if you're going to do it it's almost like a litmus test if you can't find the people to execute it independently and you can't you don't think it's too scary to pay for them or to compensate them to do it then that's a signal that you're not taking it seriously. Right. So that's a probably a big adjustment. What's a what's something you think about right now that maybe is an unpopular opinion. I think a lot of people have have just gotten obsessed with doing credit strategies the last couple of years and for good reason like it's been a great performer and so I like I like the credit business in general I think it's a great business people have done really well with it but it's kind of an example of something where I think the writing is on the wall that it got very competitive and I think the spreads are getting thinner and I think the risk is higher than what I think there's a lot of people who think that it's just easy and credit to make a double digit return without really taking any risk. From my perspective if you're making a double digit return there's risk that doesn't mean it's bad but it's not risk free and so people don't like it when I say that because they think like what do you mean like all my credit positions are not as good as I thought and I'm like not necessarily but probably some are but people don't like to hear that because I think it's been a source of comfort for folks that it's just like this easy safe thing. I don't really think that's true. Well John we like to wrap up the podcast by asking a question free personally obviously as an asset manager I think the definition of success universally is to outperform year after year and long term but personally what is your definition of success? I think there's a couple different elements. First of all one for sure as just a business owner forget about the investment side but all I had that's important to is just I want to provide a really exciting career path for other impressive people. That's one of the most satisfying things is just seeing that there's enough for someone else to lean into. I think in terms of the investment side itself I think what I realize now is that I like it's an obvious person to aspire to but like Steve Jobs I don't think he was trying to create a big company or small company. I just think he's trying to make the best products right and so I think investments are also a product right like so getting really clear about who is the customer and what can I do that is the best possible product for them right so if we think of ourselves as a high net worth private capital focused company which we do that would explain why we've leaned into some of these you know insurance kind of structural products that are kind of exotic but like I have a thesis that they are really a critical potentially critical product for some types of investors and our competitors don't really dabble in this space so I want to do that. I think it's potentially transformative for RAs family offices and things where I perceive our customer base to be. Okay great. Well John thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure thank you thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Yeah if you like this episode please follow subscribe share and if you'd like to learn more about Timberlane Partners you can find information in the description below. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.