Using Data and Stories to Build a More Intentional Practice

(upbeat music) A prospective client walks into your firm with $5 million to invest. Your newest employee who's been there for just four weeks turns down the prospect. For Dr. Nicholas Brown, this was a sign that something was working. In our episode today, we traveled to Munich, Deutschland, we got a Germany, to explore how Nicky and his team at Neuen und Fiedzig have built an advisory firm around a remarkably clear sense of identity and translated that identity into everyday decisions. We'll get into their data-driven system for evaluating prospects, how they measure capacity and client communication, and why Nicky believes that sometimes growth can be a challenge and what years of working with journalists have taught him about storytelling. And then we'll explore an unexpected influence on his approach to business, his academic work studying the Irish Revolution. It's a fascinating conversation about conviction, evidence, growth, and building a firm that knows exactly who it wants to serve. Welcome to managing your practice. I'm Stephen Demand, your host today with Dimensionals Practice Management Team. And I'm so excited to be joined by Dr. Nicholas Brown, founder of Neuen und Fiedzig in Munich, Germany. We're going global here, and I'm so excited. Nicholas serves many different roles. He's an advisor, he's an entrepreneur, he's an author, he's also a historian, which I particularly am excited about. And one of the things I found most interesting as I've gotten to know him, is that all of those identities, they're not separate. They work together and influence the firm he's built, how he approaches his practice. So, Nicholas, Dr. Brown, great to see you. Fright McSaire, Guten Abend, Guten Tag. How are you doing? Great to see you. If you want me to all say it's a line so thanks a lot for having me. I'm really, really very much excited to be invited now for a podcast. It did a lot of podcasts here in Germany, but it's the first time that we go global and I'm so happy that it can maybe contribute a little bit. So, great to be here. Well, your story is broadly applicable and also how you run your practice and your business and your approach, there's a lot of great lessons. And we can dive right in with how you think about identity and the identity of your firm. When you created your firm, what did you think of when you wanted to build this firm and the identity you wanted for it? I'm maybe just to give a little bit more context. Well, management critiques like in the US, you know, that have some sort of evidence-based investment in the core and then trying to answer all those question problems, anxieties that wealthy people have regarding their wealth. They simply do not exist in Germany. It's just a sort of developing country. 95% of the market here is still a commission-based product selling and the few that do evidence-based are just to basically asset management. When we started the firm, there were a few moments that were really decisive and that was when we decided that we wanted to be very, very intentional who we want to work with and who is it for? Like, for example, the beginning I tried to explain to our clients to be like they're having a restaurant. You know, you could have a restaurant somewhere out in the mountains of skiing area and you have this all-sheen food, you have Italian food, you serve pizza and you want some ketchup, you get it, you want some Thai food, you get it, or you have this really, really nice middle restaurant for the Japanese food just from specific area in Japan. And somebody gets in there and says, "Where's the ketchup?" I mean, we just be kicked out. Both is business model, but we are those who serve this really specific food and we do not care who doesn't like it. It's not for those that don't like what those like it and I think it was beginning with the strange name of a company that translate into the number 49. And nothing to do with the 49ers, it was just that a number represents rationality and also that a number allows you to tell a lot of stories. We didn't just want to be called brown herringer or herringer brown or some interchangeable name. And at that moment we said, okay, if 10 people go on our website, a website of a company that literally didn't exist, okay. And there are six that say crap, we're the numbers, we're the facts, we're the figures. And two say, this is quite nice. What could we do that those two really love it? And the other eight, all of them really hate it. So that was always there to be really intentional who is it for and who is not. - That is great. And I recommend going to Nicholas's website anointedfeatsick.com and if you're listening in English, obviously, as we're listening in English, you can translate it, Google translates it. They also have an English version. It's just about 10 of our blog posts are translated, but the core is also in English so you can switch the language. I'd love for you to share with the audience, say counterfactual of where you were working, your previous experience and how that informed how you wanted to build your current practice and what that taught you. - The first company that I worked with was a commission-based bag and it was just awful, just forget about it. Nothing to be learned and this is not a business model. At least not a business model I like to work in. The second company I worked with was a fee-only bank and they had really good intentions to be polite, but they had this problem. We serve everybody with every need and you get the client gets what he wants. And what we said at the beginning was, no, the client should not get what he wants. He should get what he needs. And in order to achieve that, we have sometimes to say, no, I don't know if you know this firm snatch by Gary Chi. And there's this famous quote in this maybe a free country, but it's not a free shop. Well, then it's not for you. And I think people, if it comes down to their money, they want to have consistency, they want to have reliability. I'm a huge fan of change, I love change, I like to think that move, I like new music, I like to go to different countries, but there are some parts of your life where you want to have peace of mind and continuity. And that's for example me, that's family. And financials and maybe also my health. And how does that show up in the values you have for the firm and how you've aligned those values with the business? So when we started the company, there was one courtroom, David Booth, who said ideas are cheap. So it's like, stay the course, be consistent. It's all about implementation. And do the perfect job for the people that trust you and who you made the company for, that was one thing. And the other thing, in order to achieve that, we have to be consistent in filtering our clients. So if it's not a good fit, we have to say no. I was quite hard at the beginning, when we literally had just some pay rent. Now just we had really good income as our last employer, and then we were back to zero. And then it's sometimes hard to be consistent. It's better not to get 10 new clients rather than to lose one. Instead, it was another problem that faced with my former employer. So we would win 10 new clients and lose eight old ones. That's not a good business model. It just drags you down, you have unhappy clients, and most of the work you do is futile. So it does make sense. So that was one thing, and that goes down to our processes, when we're trying to filter, before we invite people for our first conversation, we do a short of screening conversation in order to find out if they are a good fit. And I want to get to that fit assessment. But before I do, one of the things that becomes clear our conversations and talking with you is your conviction and your passion for what you do. Tell us about how conviction shows up in what you all do. I think that one way in order to be successful in your life probably is just to run the numbers. Okay, but you're gonna be financially successful and end up being a mess. But deep in my heart, I'm quite a romantic. If you're really, really good at what you do, and if you really convicted that what you do is okay, that gives you so much power, so much energy, and the people that you're trying to convert from prospect and the clients, they feel it. And that is why brand is so important for our company, 'cause some people think brand or marketing is just painting wonderful pictures with a lot of colors, or having a cool slogan, or promising a lot. No, it's about consistency, about people read a blog post, and they would feel and sense the same values, the same core ideas when they come in our office. The way that office is shaped, the way we sit down at the table, the sitting situation, the way that we are friendly, and write them with open arms, the way that we talk to them, it's just, it's all consistent. And what really free-to-mind, just trying to be consistent, and not being afraid about the people that don't like it, everybody who doesn't like us is a really, really good news for us. They're probably 100,000 people in this country that could work with us giving their financials. We could probably serve 500 if this company goes really crazy up through this roof. And why should we choose people that do not fit? That's make sense. It's just a bad business decision. Can you share any stories of a time you or someone on your team maybe turn down a client that wasn't a good fit? Yeah, the two stories that come to mind, and the one was at the very beginning, so it was a birthday week three or four of 49, and we were full of adrenaline, and it was like a fight for survival. And we said, okay, we're gonna start with the smaller clients that are really, really loyal in order to train. Okay, and the first five appointments were with our A+ clients. If we go bust and let us have it quickly. And in one of those conversations during the first three weeks was with the biggest client of my, co-founder Stefan, and he said, "Okay, I'm going to test you with a five hundred thousand years, but I don't want to pay the whole rate." And here already is sort of cheap rate at our form employer, and I just pay you this and that, and we said, "Okay, this ends the conversation." And he really looked child shocked, and then we looked at each other and he was out and said, "Did we really do it? Did we really do it? No, what have we done?" And another is just, I'd say four weeks ago. We have a new colleague here. He just started beginning of July, and he was three weeks in the office, I'd say, maybe four. And he did one of those greening conversations, because we normally do by the service advisors of the juniors. And this guy had a five million euros or more or less six million dollars, and he was really a friendly guy, you know. We had a bad cut feeling, and it was so global, can you show me your numbers, how was your performance, what do you want to do to convict me that you can blah, blah, blah. And he turned him down. He was four weeks in the office, and there's somebody with six million dollars, and he says, "No, I think it's not a good fit." And I said, "Okay, we really got the message across. We made this guy, and he's really hilarious. It's a really good hire for us." But he's so strong after three or four weeks that he turned him down. He just said, "Okay, let's check with my boss what we can do for you." And I said, "Just he just literally turned him down right now without any question asked." And I was so proud. I'm proud of him, but I was proud of the company, how strong, because Brandis is very much important to give orientation to your clients, but even more for the employees. That leads me to one of the favorite things that you showed me before, you know, dimensional, we're known for the five factor model and having a factor based approach. And you took that to a whole new level with the three factor model. Tell us a little bit about that, what you've done, and what you've created there in terms of how you assess prospects. Again, the copyright for this great idea is not mine, but it's of a very young employer. At the stage, when he developed this first idea, it wasn't even an employee here. We were sitting in a bar in Italy at the beach, and I said, "Lucas, we have this problem. Could you think this too? We have so much people that I would like to work with, but not all of them are who could fit, and how could we filter instead of just using money?" It's obviously a very, very important criteria, and still the most important criteria. No kidding. You could be as nice as possible. If you have the money, it doesn't make sense to have a worth of money. That was the beginning of the model, and we worked with that for more than a year. It's now a little bit more complicated, but the beginning was, "Okay, we take the investable assets, divided by a million." If somebody says he has three millions, he has three, and then we multiplied with the lightliness, and we had different scores of lightliness. This person is wonderful. That would be 1.2, or neutral, or I don't know, really, but it seems quite okay, but I'm not really sure that's 0.8, or I don't like this guy. That's zero. At the end of the story. Then it's at least the willingness to take advice. We did a split from, I think, 1.5 for a desperately need help. 1.2, a need help, neutral. I don't know. Yeah, probably can do this about my own, or maybe you can win me, or I'm just looking for somebody for coffee and a sparex partner. So then, if say we have someone with two millions who super, super nice and desperately need help, would have a higher scoring, than a person who has six million, is not that much likeable and says, "I probably could do this on my own." Then when we talked about that with other advisors, "Oh, okay, you can afford this, you're so successful, that's such a lifestyle decision." No, it's expected where you. It's an expected return, and that was funny because after a year we came back to this algorithm, and then we tested the assumptions against the facts, and we found out that we've been too shy in the measurement. So a desperate need help should be 2.0, and I probably can do this on my own, not should not be 0.8, but 0.4. So we tested our assumption with the real data, found out that we didn't measure the data, clear enough. So for the next year, it should be measured better, but it was a lot of manual work involved, but we had really clear pictures. And it was very funny, because we tried to add up a lot of data as much as possible, also in the prospect and process, and to see what correlates with success or not. For example, if somebody comes from Munich, it's more likely he would join us, and that doesn't explain the difference between talking in presence or having a Zoom meeting or an online meeting. We found out that people that have, say, 2 million euros or 20 million euros, the amount of money invested doesn't make a difference at all. So now our three factor model is on the same level like Farmer French, so we now we have also five. It may be in six, if somebody comes to a referral, 80% of those prospects become clients. So if somebody comes to us through the three weekly column that are right with their Spiegel or my books, we have 50/50. If somebody just comes to Google, it's 20%. So again, that's expected where you, it's not that much data points about 200 data points. So there's a lot of noise in it, but sometimes if it's 80 to 20%, that seems to be at least a tendency. And we tried to filter out like hidden variables, like, you know, Google could also maybe correlate with friendliness and willingness to take advice, but it doesn't, it is a separate factor. I love the approach, and I think the fact that you iterate on it, but then also evaluate it. I mean, it's a true evidence-based approach to working with clients. And am I correct? You have it built into your systems, right? Your technology. It's not just run on a spreadsheet. It's part of your systems that you have. Yeah, we collect all these data in order to do the assessments later on, and it's really great how the intuition of somebody who's a service advisor and does more as an admin job in predicting this going to be a client, how good they are. It's really incredible. And again, it's a lot like a culture of trust in this company. We trust people that do at the end of a food chain in a hierarchical system, and we trust them to decide who we talk to. So I really like this because it works. And we also do match that against the capacity. So that's the second step. So the minimum score that you need in order to have it get an appointment is to minimum of two at the moment. It's 3.6. And other work would be on a waiting list for a while. So it's adaptive almost like on an airplane, you know, the airplanes full already, the price of entry, it becomes higher. So that's scoring goes up. Is that fair? It just makes sense. I think it's a 12 week diameter or six week radius. A cycle. Yeah. We said, okay, we could talk with 15 new people. So that was arbitrary. But in the end, we found out it's a quite good number. At the moment, they're less than nine slots free. So the minimum score goes from two to three. That's it. And then again, it's not a lifestyle decision. It's just pure. Yeah, it's an expected way. Well, I love it. It's measurable and that you track it. And like I said, you go back and you revisit it. Let's move to the capacity piece. When we look at our data from the advisor study, biggest constraint for higher performing firms is capacity constraints, capacity is evergreen in terms of the challenges. How have you addressed that? And then what have you seen? What's worked in terms of connecting the ranking to your capacity? I think more or less, all the companies that are successful struggle with capacity. Now, we'll be also sold out in the, the data. Not really sure if that is just a gut feeling. Or if they really know what the capacity really is, and if they have clear assumptions, one single advisor can advise maximum this and that amount of clients. And out of your daily time, you can devote, say, 60% for client facing, but the rest is working the background. So what we started with is just measuring the communication with our clients where every client has a goal or an aim for a minimum communication score. So if you're a plus client, whether you should have, for example, a communication score of 24, a personal conversation more than an hour in the office is 10. And after half a year, it's five and after a year, that's gone. So an email is one point and it's gone after month. A team's call is whatever. 95% of advice is proactive. We don't wait for people to contact us. Cliented contacts are the bad news. We haven't done a job. So what you do as an advisor in the beginning of the week, you look into your communication score tool and you look at those clients that are wrecked. It's like traffic light. And then you send an email to them. Oh, we haven't talked for quite a while. But you like to book an appointment. And then we're trying to address those issues on what we call the client journey that are not yet solved. And then we measure how much time do we spend with our clients and with our prospects? We try to have a two to one ratio. That's how we ended up with those 15 new people that can we could talk to when a circle that amounts to about three miles. We use Power BI to visualize the data. For example, I can look at the communication score and I can see, okay, the person with the worst communication score, it does the best job is myself. We have a tool that sees the we can measure the efficiency. Yeah, because you know, you might have clients are ultra, ultra green, whereas others are not being cared for. So we also measured out like over advising. We just tried to measure every information that could help us to deliver better jobs for clients. And when you're collecting this, when do you find the time to review the data? How are you getting systematic in reviewing it? Just imagine you are a client of mine. We have now this 90 minutes conversation. Afterwards, what probably old advisor should be doing is writing a short transcript, protocol or whatever of the conversation, what other topics that we addressed, what other follow ups. Okay, like most of other companies, but now we use AI transcripts, putting their whole thing in an agent that might try to structure, read over it, is it's okay. Everything that I do is now is connected in our data or a CRM. We work a lot with Microsoft dualists, put it in there, said, okay, that was a one and a half face-to-face conversation with Steven. This is the content. Okay, it's face-to-face, it's not your minute, that's a communications call for X. And then it went into the Power BI data. It's just all optimized. So it's just what I see in the end as a visualized diagram, geographic diagram or those raw diagrams, like a pie chart. So for the advice of the amount of manual action needed as a minimum. Wow, wow. I mean, so great. And you all built that within Power BI. You built it within the Microsoft system, right? Or you had someone build it for you. I think with our hiring, we sometimes had some sort of positive version of accidents. So we hired an advisor. It was something our fourth employee. And he didn't really like to do it with the device. And they said, well, I would rather be a COO. We said, are you kidding? We have four people. We don't need a COO. We need somebody to care for our clients. And he's now our COO, COO, and he does all the online, all the data architecture. And then two years ago, I came across this young guy. I was sitting at the beach. I said, well, around a half a year later, he didn't have a job at that stage because he didn't know if he should do a PhD in an economics or should he go around working. And he was in a sort of analysis paralysis. So I said, okay, before you hang around all the time and thinking about it, why don't you do a project for six months with us? You said you were working with Power BI. I'm quite interested in what you could do for us. And then he came in here and it was the weirdest job interview ever. And said, okay, the data that you have here, because we want to do our financials of our business side. They were all crap. I can't work with that. And you don't know what you want. And you don't know what I should do here. And I said, okay, could you do something with the client data? And then he get bang, you know, eyes wide. Oh, well, this is great. And then he said, okay, we make a project around that. I said, okay, you can do this half time, maybe six months or maybe a year. After six weeks, he was finished. Wow. No, you have a job for a half a year. It wasn't that well paid. But after two weeks, I'll see your old tin said, oh, we can't let him go. Wow. So it's like an accident. We didn't even know that we needed him. One of the things we noticed with higher performing firms is they're always on the lookout for talent. And they hire ahead. But I think your perceptibility and your openness to look for someone who maybe there wasn't a need right at that moment, but that trial basis, I think was a great lesson. But you're always looking, always on the lookout for good talent. There's a famous Thomas Jefferson quote. He said, I'm a big believer in luck. And the harder I work, the more luck I find. So they're wishing off that also for, you know, for soccer players or football players, the more trained the more I look at half. Yeah. There you go. There you go. Well, I'd love to pivot a bit to talk about your work with the press and a big part of the identity and an niche you found is working closely with media. How did that come about? What's your philosophy on that and any advice you have to advisors who may want to pursue that as an avenue? Yeah. Again, that wasn't really an accident. We were always interested in getting the message out. And even with my former employer, I sometimes did some sort of brief interviews. And then we had a chance to work together with the suture site. And that's in Germany. It's one of the two leading papers. It's the leading paper for the south of Germany. And it's a way like the people had read the suture site for them. What's printed in there? That's the truth. They do not really question it. And through a contact, I got in contact with the people that did the money issues on there. And then we found some sort of common enemy. The common enemy is really good to gather behind the flag. And that was those doomsday profit, profits that say, okay, the end is in here. We should all buy gold. We should go short on the market and all that. And then they are telling you their sell and then they're going to trying to save your soul by applying their products and do obviously not work. And so then in this way, we developed a relationship of trust because I helped them to work through the numbers, the performances. And that was just a starting point. But what I learned from that is with journalists is saying with like with their clients, not a single one of your clients is interested in your solution. They don't care at all. That's a pain in school by caratures. They don't care about your solution. They only care about their problems. And when I talk to other advisors here, but also in the US, they say, okay, we have this and that and that and that. And again, then we have to teach and educate the press that they tell their readers. It doesn't work that way. They don't care what you have to say. It might be wonderful what you want to say. It might be just cheap commercials for your own company. If it's badly done, but it could be wonderful, but they do not interest it. They don't want to know. They want somebody to help them solve their problems. And that was something that I learned working with the Zootoucher Zeitung. And then it was Shilok. And it was again, this you know, the more I trained the more luck I have because there's a three weekly column in the Zootoucher Zeitung on every Friday. And let's talk about money. And it's small as a whole page with a picture and an interview. And normally they have tons of them on their back list. But at that stage, there was nothing in the left and the back list. And then this journalist remembered me and said, could you talk about the book you were just writing? And it was another trigger. Or I just read this book. And I would just send it only to you to read it before it spread it. So that's a preview for you. And I said, how did you like it? And I said, okay, let's do an interview of the book. And I was the beginning of our first we call it the growth crisis. Because at that stage, it was doing COVID. We didn't grow at all. We just were trying to survive. And at the end of 2020, we had literally not a single client one. We got them all through the crisis. That was okay. And in December, we won two new clients. Okay. But that was all. And then in February 21, we had 60 people calling us. It was like being locked in the sweet shop. And then I got in contact with their Spiegel, which is the most important news Mac of Germany. They were still more than a million readers every week. And it did same trick again. And then we had three pages interview. The print version of the Spiegel. And again, it was good luck. People clicked on that interview a lot. And then they asked me, would you write this column? But it was the general idea to start with this help themselves solve their problems. This journalist has one question, how can I fill this blank sheet of paper until this evening in order to do my job? And with somebody read this, that's the two question. How can I feel it was content that people like to read? That's a great lesson to listeners out there of one forming the relationship that's not self-serving for you. But again, put yourself in their shoes, but reaching out to any media journalists in your network or in your area. And then getting a sense of what their needs are and maybe connecting them to others before leading with yourself as the primary self-promoter there. So it's a great lesson. A lot of journalists around money goes about investing and hottest news latest. And we're trying to get the speed out of it, you know, relax. And what is money to do with your life? Aligning your use of capital with your values to quote, "collrichence." And that's our niche. That's what we put forward in every single blog post. It's not about money. It's about your life. I think that's so important to be clear on that. You mentioned the books. Tell me a little bit about the decision to write these books and what that taught you and how that helped you serve your business as well. Yeah. To be honest, the beginning writing the book was an ego trip. And I really thought a little bit bad about it and working together with my business partner. And after being for 20 years on the financial industry, I really felt like I want to write. I want to write. I just want to write. It's very much important for me. I said, okay, I want to get the message out there. And please pray to God. I pray to God, let us win at least two or three clients. And that would amount to three or four millions AOM. At that stage, we were growing our growth aim of goals 10 million per year. I want to say, if I can contribute one third or quarter of that through my book, at least Stefan won't kill me. So then again, it was the pandemic, you know, and I was sitting somewhere in a holiday home of my father in the North. I was playing Hemingway looking on the sea and writing my book. And here, the business was more or less down to zero. And we talked to all the clients. They were all behaved well. They got them through the crisis. Then it was nothing to be done. And it was awful. And I really felt bad. And I totally underestimated the impact. Because because the first part cut us into the sutra which is the second one got us into the spiegel and then the whole three-page interview with a third book again. We got three pages in their Spedal and that makes us more relevant for clients. It's good for the client retention. It makes it much easier to get referrals because we are relevant. It's crazy. I'm telling the same things that I told ten years before, but now it's in their Spedal and in their presses and the book, the book, it's out there. So it must be true. It's crazy. If I say it, I'm the author, yes, I'm the founder, but if I compare my knowledge, if it comes down to investment, to one of the younger guys here at Austin, you know so much more than I do. But it's the authority of the title. It's a little bit like catching me if you can. Fake it to make it. You'll take it until you make it. Well, tell me, I mean, one thing you didn't fake was your academic background and as a historian and there you went really deep is on the Irish revolution. What did you learn from that work and research and how does that inform how you show up today? Yeah, to a certain extent, don't take it too seriously, but there's some parallels. What we do here, I did my research on the Irish revolution and the career fighting and the Civil War and propaganda. So still what I'm doing is sort of storytelling. I'm a storyteller. The Irish revolutionaries were storyteller. I was doing research on the way they were telling their stories and what we do is some sort of career fighting. You know, we are in a land that has a commission based financial industry. They serve the clients very, very poorly and and we're the good guys. So we feel like we're fighting for the right thing. It has part of our corporate language, you know, like, like, we don't do that much of banking bashing anymore, but we still do it. We're very, very clear. It's not what we do. We hate it. We're trying and all those books that are right, they are not directed towards become a client of 49. It's become a good, self-directed person that knows how to decide about their money on their own. It's about empowerment. And then there are a few people that said, okay, I don't want to do it on my own. There's too much at stake. So, yeah, welcome. If you think you can do it on your own, do it on your own, then it's not for you. Easy. I think the scarcity thinking is really, really bad. If you start up the financial advisor and you think in a mindset of scarcity, the client said, this guy has a client that I conserved. He's taken them away from me and it's a zero sum game. It's not a zero sum game. So we every week, we send clients to be to other advises because we do not have enough capacity. It's the word of abundance. So it's relaxed. But coming back to the Irish revolution, more specific. I don't know. They asked funny code about a guy who wrote the volume on the history of the 17th century for pensions. And he was asked by his little kid. Was the 70th century decisive for the history of pensions, the animals. And he said the 17th century was decisive for the history of everything. And it's like for me, so researching the Irish revolution is essential for everything. It's a key to understand the word, probably not, but for me, yes. Well, I love again, the passion for a particular topic and to go deep on it. And we always learn from history. And it rhymes. We're doing a sort of after the so-called linguistic turn that some sort of past modern history was to understand how much language shapes reality. And if you want to make people being at ease with their wealth, it's about communication. It's not about investing. With investing, you can achieve more or less nothing. If it's not connected to managing expectation, matching the investing with the personal goals, anxieties, fears, dreams, the next generation, and all those things. If it's not connected to a text that makes sense about what has this money to do with your life, it's worth nothing. Investing on its own, what you can achieve with investing as such is you can ruin everything if it's not fully. And that's what I like so much about the evidence-based investing. You can manage expectations. You do never have to promise more than you can keep. I promise you, which will have 30% downturn soon or later. Now we're here, promise kept. And I promised you I won't leave you alone in this situation. I'll get you through it. I think that's a deep understanding how language shapes reality. I think that's at the core of 950. I think it should be at the core of every financial advice. Helping people make sense out of their life. How do you train or develop your staff to have that communication, those skills, and work on the storytelling? Yeah, we try to get staff from other companies and trying to re-socialize them or re-educate them. And that's a really tough one. You can get people that really love securities. Normally, you are still used to active management. They have so much excited about the new conference of their board or the Fed or whatever. And I'm just bored with your death. So we normally try to get people from the university. And we have now a quite good process of having interancy for three months and we're trying to build up a funnel. So the last hiring that we made was an ex intern of us. He was with us last summer and we said, I'm so sorry, we really like you lot. And we hope to see you again, but right now we do not need capacity. And then we had a short board meeting and said, okay, if we want to be ahead of the curve, we should hire yesterday. And we take a while. But people that come from the university, you have to just be patient and give them time. So then we call this guy on the first day and said, in general, what do you think about coming back to us and moving to Munich? And they said, okay, got to check this with my girlfriend. Next Monday, we had 60 minutes and a conversation at the end, he said, okay, okay, then we all said, I just one thing that I forgot, how much do you pay me? That said, you get the same like the other skit when they started. Okay, that's fair. That was it. But before that, we sometimes took us ages to find some money and empty two experience that we made with it. Please tell us your advisors. They all ended. One ended, not in a disaster, but it just ended after three, after six months, it didn't go nowhere. No, that's a evergreen challenge for firms. And so the fact that you're thinking about getting ahead of it is a great approach. But let me add one thing about hiring people. I think there's something about being very specific who you want to work with, but also who you want to work with as an employee. And Stefan and I started, we said, should we ask somebody else? We want to join us. And I said, okay, we have three criteria. Is he able? Is he, if it comes down to investing and advice? Will the numbers be okay? Will you track lines? And what we like to see him every day? And so you have to be very intentionally who want to work. Then how big the firm growth? If you think you want to have a firm with hundreds of people, it's okay, but you should think it through. Is that the way you want to work? That was a reason why we increased minimums. So we're now at a minimum of, yeah, the minimum score is two, but the, but at least you should have 1.5 million euros. Well, I just love how intentional you are about, again, taking an evidence-based or metric-based approach to your business. I think all listeners out there can learn from that and hear how you've incorporated it and how it's just part of the culture of how you help make informed decisions for your firm. Nicholas, I'd love to end with a question I ask all participants on our podcast here, which is we stand on the shoulders of people who've made an impact in our lives. And I'd love to know if there was a particular teacher or mentor or educator that made a particular impact for you or lesson that you learned and what that impact was or what that lesson was. Yeah, okay. I was thinking a lot about that question because we weren't obvious thing would be my father who died last year. The person I would like to mention is a guy who was called Eckert Heldenald. He was my professor at Munich when I did my PhD and we were quite small group at the core. It was seven eight students that did a PhD with him at the same time and we did this postmodern history. And it was not so much his intellectual input. It was a lot of intellectual input. He's great. He's like, we all refer to him still as the master when we meet each other. So he turns 80 at this stage and I hope you're going to see him on his birthday. But he was able to enable an environment in which thinking across Boris or behind certain points was possible. It was not like, I'm the big guru and I'm going to tell you and sometimes the result is really crap. We really, really, really took it very far. No, I had one chapter in my PhD where I had a conversation with a revolution that was shot during the revolution and I did an interview with him. Okay, that was a great idea, but it was crap. So I did publish it and it's this atmosphere and everything could be possible if we could think it. And I really, really liked it because there was no authority in his functions being our professor, but in the way that he made us think. And I still profit from this to my present day. Wow. Well, and we all profit from it now too. I think it's a fitting lesson as we're going across borders, you know, quite literally across continents here. And you being able to share your insights. So thank you. Danke Zäh, Danke Danke Shun, and we were so appreciative of your insights, your takeaways, your perspective, and your stories, and the work you're doing in Germany. And we wouldn't be here with all DFA. Definitely not. We really like the job that you're doing. It's incredible, valuable for at least for us in a developing country here. If it comes down to a relevant form of investment advice. So thank you a lot and thank you for having me. There was a lot in our conversation today, but three ideas really stayed with me. First, clarity creates discipline. Nicky's team gets remarkably specific about who they want to serve and they're willing to say no, even when millions of euros are sitting on the other side of the table. Second, measure what matters. They've built a system around prospect, fit, advisor capacity, client communication, even how much time is being devoted to existing clients. And then they go back to the data and test whether their assumptions were actually right. Third, words matter. Nicky's background as a historian came through throughout our conversation. Language shapes how people make sense of the world. For financial advisors, that means helping clients connect their money to their goals, values, and ultimately the life they want to live. The broader challenge for all of us is to build practices where those values are visible in the decisions we make, the people we serve, and the systems we create. And since we spent some time in Germany today, I'll borrow a line from one of my wife's favorite German expressions. "Alas, Hattin, Inda, Nordee, Verst, Hetz, Vaj." Everything has an end. Only the sausage has two. Fortunately for all of us, this podcast is not a sausage. So one ending will have to do. Thank you, Dr. Brown. Thank you, Nicky. Thank you all for listening. I'm Stephen Demand. See you next time. Thank you for joining us for Dimensional Fund Advisors Managing Your Practice Podcast. For more information, please visit www.dimensional.com. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP is an investment advisor registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 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