YouSaid · the spoken record

Bob Oros

lines on the record: 63
first: 2025-06-16
most recent: 2025-06-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Connect with over time, it may be the most valuable asset that you have if you think of it that way. So nurture it, throw it, but be purposeful about it. Really think about those people who add value to you and you can add value to them and make sure you're staying connected. I don't think enough people think of it that way. I was reminded as going through a transition and I started thinking about who do I want to reach out to and have a conversation. And I just started writing down names, not people that I'd met once, people I had real relationships with. And I was pleasantly surprised how long the list was. Then I was blown away by how eager they were to have a conversation. And well, what are you thinking about next? And I would tell them, I'm not looking to go work, but I'm looking to get involved here and there. And they're like, let me introduce you to this person. That would be, I guess, the wisdom I would leave people with.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've spent time with college students. I'm quite involved with my alma mater. And I look at how these kids are involved and how engaged they are. And they're showing up to things on Saturday mornings. They're showing up to things at 8 a.m. on Friday morning. It reminded me something I wished I would have been more studious about then was get involved. Look for any opportunity to be involved in get engaged and whether that's in your company or while you're in school or in nonprofits. I just think there's so much goodness that comes from getting involved and the connectivity that happens between people and the impacts that can be made as a result. I was meeting with one of our younger associates earlier today. One of the things we started talking about was being purposeful with your networks and really recognizing your network and the people you”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think the mystery I wonder about is what I'm going to do with the rest of my life now. And I'm going to try to unravel that because I'm such a believer, and you need to maximize every minute. So that's sort of my great mystery in front of me. Part of going back to school, what I'm looking forward to is actually taking history classes and philosophy classes to try to learn from people of the past because very few things in life we haven't seen before just in a different way. So I'm looking forward to sort of connecting some of those things from the past to things we're dealing with today.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will tell you, I have more appreciation now because I'm in reflective mode. I've received more out of this life than I ever could have imagined and feel blessed as a result. I was raised the right way. I give my parents all the credit. They raised me to work hard and earn everything you got. Nothing was given. And if you do a good job, keep your nose to the grindstone and add value, then you'll be taken care of. I never could have imagined how this has turned out, but internally grateful for it.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My first paid job was delivering newspapers at 5 30 in the morning, the Detroit Free Press. So I would lay on my couch waiting to hear the stacks hit the front porch. And then I knew it was time to get up and roll the papers and put him in the front of my bike and then ride around my paper route delivering papers. Those were in the days to get paid, you had to go collect. There was no online. So I then had to go in the afternoon and knock on doors and collect money. I've always valued work because anything that you do that someone's willing to pay you for is special. Even delivering a newspaper because to the people receiving that paper at 5.30 in the morning, I'm part of their daily routine. If they didn't get that newspaper, I've set their day off in the wrong direction.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've had to think a lot more about that now, Ted, because I used to say my hobby was work, which is just a lame excuse. I love spending time at our house on a lake where I found it's just my happy place because it represents all the... Who started skiing later in life will appreciate it. It's a lot easier to learn when you're five and you have no fear than when you're 35 and have plenty of fear. I've become a decent skier where I can ski blacks out west. And so really enjoy doing that and do some annual trips with my brothers around skiing. So those are a few of the activities. And then I'll probably start to pick up my golf clubs a little more frequently.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“this commonality that we could connect on. I've learned the more vulnerable I can be, the better. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't show up and cry like a baby in front of people. I'm not a big crier, but short of that, I've learned the more open I can be, the better.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The big one is vulnerability. People connect to people. They don't connect to CEOs. They connect to the CEO, the person. So be vulnerable. I will say earlier in my career, I wasn't vulnerable. I learned, no, no, you don't let people see you sweat. You don't show emotion. You know, always be cool. And there's certainly times that's needed, but letting people see you're human. Acknowledging where you whiffed on something. That's on me. I got that wrong. Letting people know my life is not perfect. And let me tell you things about my life. I've openly shared. I have a daughter who suffers from severe anxiety. Once I became open about things like that, I connected to people in a very different way. Because all of a sudden, they're coming up to you like, oh my God, me too. We have this commonality that doesn't matter what our titles are, what we do in the organization.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To it. Adaptability and having a planning mindset have been two big things that I probably always believe, but after living it the way we did, that's ingrained in how I think about leadership. The last one is transparency and availability as leaders. What I've learned is I'm leaving is people aren't coming up to me and saying thank you for all the growth. You'd like to think, I mean, my private equity firm may be thanking me for the growth. But where I'm getting people who want to say something to me reflective, it was around the support they got, the mentorship they got, the friendship they got, the transparency. And so it was just the humbling reminder as leaders, we have so much impact on people. It gets easy to underestimate the way we act. What the words we choose, whether we smile or don't smile, leaves people in a certain way. I've really been humbly reminded of that.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I learned anything over the last six and a half years, it's adaptability. I didn't come into this ever expecting to navigate a pandemic. We all know there was no playbook for any of us on how to do that. We went from Friday being in the office to Monday telling everybody to stay at home. It taught me adaptability that never get too ingrained in how you do things because you may be forced to change. It also taught me always think about scenario planning. Always understand how your business to the best of your ability is going to behave in different conditions. Fortunately, that was something I had learned years ago from coming out of bigger companies where scenario planning, which is part of the muscle. And we were doing that here. Now, what I learned during the pandemic is we didn't scenario plan bad enough. So plan for the really bad stuff so you understand, like if the S&P loses 40%, what happens to your business and how do you react?”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you look back at the 30 years you've been involved, been particularly these last six, what have been the most important lessons that you've taken away from success as a leader in this organization?”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I'm actually going back to school and going to take part in a fellowship program at the University of Chicago around leadership in society, which is a small cohort of individuals from around the world working on their next chapter of purpose. So the thing I can promise you is I don't use the R word, retire. It just seems like not the right word. And I couldn't be more excited, most of all, because people need great advice. Whether it's an institution or a client, people deserve great advice. I love being part of an industry that participates in that and helps people achieve their outcomes. So I expect to still have a lot of fun, be involved just in a slightly different way.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, someone can step in and keep it going. We talked about the baton earlier. Really true here. You don't want to have happen is, oh, I decide I'm going to leave and we don't have a CEO and now you're interiming it. And that's really disruptive. So always wanted to be really thoughtful about it. And I don't think it could have worked out any better in terms of how we handled the transition and the individual we've selected to come in to be the next CEO of Hightower. I'm excited for him to join us here in a few short days. I will continue to stay on the Hightower Board and continue to enjoy the fun. And then also it gives me the opportunity to do some other things. I've recently become a grandfather, which is kind of a cool new chapter of life. And yes, if anyone thinks I don't look old enough, I am 59, so I'm appropriately old.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll say move on, but not move out. So I agree. And it's funny you said it that way, Ted, because I've told people the next few years are just going to be way too interesting to not be involved. But I also recognize running a firm day to day is not a job. It's a lifestyle. It's a 24 by 7 activity. You don't get vacations. I don't say any of this begrudgingly. I embraced it. I accepted it. My family accepted every vacation I'd be sitting in the hotel room for a few hours a day. But there also becomes a point where you know it's time to let someone else come in and bring their fresh ideas and thinking. I tend to be a believer in shelf life of leaders and roles. This is year seven for me, and it's been a privilege of my career to do it. I knew it was the right time for me to help foster succession here because you also have an obligation as a leader to make.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“DBD until we start to take these out, does the complexity of getting a retail client to understand how they work is very different than an institutional client. We haven't tested that enough now to have a formed view, but that is going to be another layer of complexity in terms of driving adoption”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Big watch out would be we have some blow ups. These investments come with risk. For most of us, if we've been around long enough, we've experienced one of those things blowing up on us. And usually not because of any fault of our own. The big gotcha will be if we have some really visible blow up of a manager that we've put a broader set of retail investors into, that could create a pretty significant headwind. Also, you have a lot of these alternative managers coming up with interesting new models for doing this that try to solve the liquidity need that most retail investors have. But can you do that and still retain the performance you want to see from these private market investments is still a question mark. Those are the types of things that could slow it down, but I don't see something that will stop it. I just think the momentum.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're the client, would you rather have 40 pages of charts and graphs or a two-minute YouTube video that tells you all the salient points about your performance for the quarter, just does it in a format that's much more interesting? And guess what? They can also synthesize the advisor's voice. So you feel like it's your advisor telling it to you.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they'll do the work. And they'll work 24 by 7 and they'll never complain. I may not be doing it justice, but what's really interesting about that is it's not us having to like make a bet on some new application. It actually comes and sits over the things we already do. The tough thing in a big firm is if you come in and say, yeah, I've got this new artificial intelligence portfolio accounting system, but to use it, you have to get rid of all your other portfolio accounting. That's got huge execution risk to us. But if you come in and say, I've got this digital thing that sits over your systems, just allows you to use them more efficiently, that's really interesting. Or another application that came my way was take something like a performance report. Very common most advisors use them. They're usually long and very technical. This application will take a performance report, turn it into a two-minute YouTube video.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Side of it, but also in the back office in terms of having a platform that can support the growth. And then not to be cliche, but AI, not in the form of alternative investments, but artificial intelligence. Ted, I've seen more real applications starting to come to market are really interesting and have value in the last three months. And I've seen in the last three years. So I think you're going to start to see AI really start to transform these businesses. Some advisors are going to choose to ignore it. If you ignore it, you ignore it at your peril. I'll give you one example, the concept of digital workers that you can think of just like physical workers. And you're now balancing between when do I hire a physical worker and when do I hire a digital worker? And that digital worker will know exactly what your systems are, how your processes work within that.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to continue to see consolidation through acquisitions. And we've seen record numbers of transactions over the last few years. But honestly, we've still seen little consolidation because you continue to have more new RIAs being created. You're going to see more meaningful consolidation, including big firms that come together. Because think about if you're a 20 billion, 30 billion dollar AUM RIA. That's a big RIA, but you're still a long ways from a $200 billion, $300 billion firm with real institutional scale. Firms are going to have to ask themselves, can I get there or do I have to get there through combining? So I think you're going to start to see some platforms coming together. As I alluded to on the investment side, we think private markets is going to be big, which is why we're investing not only in the front of office, the investment.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would tell you, come to the center, meaning come to the corporate teams, the home office, as opposed to trying to go out to a thousand advisors individually, which we still have managers trying to do that. That's just a hard road. If you want to have a strategic relationship with Hightower, work with us from the corporate enterprise. And then we can help you navigate where would you best fit, whether it's in essentially managed program, or if it's with direct to our advisors, we can help you understand which ones are best suited to work with someone like you.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Short answer is it depends because today advisors may maintain their own investment committees and they're making their own investment decisions. If they're outsourcing it to our investment solutions team, led by Stephanie Link, then Stephanie and her team maintain the committee and are making those investment decisions. We've grown that from $300 million when I got here to over $6 billion today. Advisors are increasingly showing a desire to let go of the investment side of it, probably a little slower than the industry expected, but it is happening on the NEPC side, obviously they maintain their own investment committees. It's a little bit flexible still. That will tighten up over time. So just really depends on whether the advisor is managing all the investments themselves or not.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In this case, there's plenty of debate on where we should start, where we're choosing to start is likely something around private credit. So we think we need some tried and true things like private credit, private equity, real estate. We've also had good success on the Hightower client side with thematic investing into the privates. For example, last year we rolled out a cybersecurity offering. And we think cyber is going to be a big theme here for years to come. That investment raised a good amount of capital and it's performed very well. So continuing to like define some interesting things like that that are a little bit outside just your normal private credit private equity will continue to look for those types of thematic investments as well.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Many things you get there one step at a time, but you get there by the unique ability to give them access where they couldn't get it on their own. One of the benefits of any PC is representing large institutions, they can get access to virtually any manager. And those managers typically don't want to play in the retail well side because they don't want to deal with a bunch of small clients. We can now give them. So, we're going to roll our first one out in the first half of this year with any PC. Our expectation is we're going to get at least $100 million of capital raised with each one of these.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's still historically looked a lot like the 60 40 portfolio, but we think we're going to start to see some shift there. And especially around a growing allocation to private markets. Today, on average across all a hightower, think of us as five to six percent allocated to privates. We think that number is going to be 12 to 15 percent over the next three to five years. We're seeing the demand and it was part of the rationale for doing the deal we did with NEPC.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I now have one of the largest institutional consultants who does it for the largest institutions, who can now do it for all of Hightower. They also have a very scaled OCIO, so as more and more advisors decide, I don't even want to build portfolios anymore. That's not my highest and best use. We're now going to leverage any PC for that. And then, of course, going to my comments on private markets, we now get access to any PCs private markets expertise where they have 22 analysts who do nothing but work in the private market space. And we are going together, curate access vehicles that Hightower advisors and clients can then leverage.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So instead of having an advisor out there coming up with a great idea for a private investment and then putting a subscale position on the platform, we're now curating these investments from the top and making them available to our advisors to invest behind. And that's really an investment committee made up of advisors and our corporate investment experts. That's growing in success and arguably has been very successful. We also just made an acquisition of a business called NEPC, one of the largest institutional consultants in the US. And we made that acquisition and wanted to have any PC part of Hightower specifically so we could start to centralize more of the investment operation. So we don't see value in having 140 versions of asset allocation.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Many ways we still are pretty diverse across our advisor teams how they invest money. What we've tried to do is make sure, especially on the risk framework, that we've got tight processes around things like that. And that could be like concentration risk in a single investment, things that are pretty basic. In terms of the client experience, we've tried to create a best-in-class experience, especially through technology. We made the decision we wanted to invest in our own client experience. So we're not just licensing someone else's, which allows us to really use all the data we have to create that experience around the investment side specifically. We've started to lean into the private market area as an area we think we can create top down value creation.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“RIA, and you're thinking you want to take professional money, you need to be ready for what that means because that means you're going to have to run it as a professional business. For me, coming out of big institutions, it was a very comfortable shift because I expect to do those things. I expect to like have a business case for a decision to invest in something. If you've been running your own thing for a number of years, 25 or 30, and you all of a sudden have somebody else at your boardroom table, you better be ready for it.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We can drive the maximum benefit for the firm. This is all about how do you drive maximum value to the client, knowing if you do that wins accrue to the business. So I love the fact we have an investor that gets that, who's been willing to make sizable investments in the business on behalf of the client. That's across the board. I got here six and a half years ago. We didn't have a national trust company. We didn't have an estate and financial planning team. We didn't have a tax preparation capability. We didn't even have an industrial strength accounting system. We now have Oracle. I can promise you, a multi-million dollar investment like Oracle, it's hard to directly see the ROI. You're not going to get another client because of it, but it's going to help us run the business a heck of a lot more efficient. Private equity has been good for the business. I don't think it's for every advisor. I'll be clear about that. If you're running a multi-billion”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You might suspect I'll be positively biased. And I actually think for the industry, private equity has been overall very good because it forced an industry that was very cottage, very subscale to run in a much more rigorous way, which I for one think is good long term for clients. Because if you're running businesses as lifestyle businesses, it sort of implies at some point there's an end to that because the lifestyle ends and the lifestyle may end with the advisor's departure. When you think of the good of clients, you want these advisors and their practices to continue to persist. Private equity is given that fuel to really grow the industry up. Specifically, our investor, Thomas H Lee Partners completely respects, we are a fiduciary business and it starts and ends with the client. This isn't about what the spreadsheet says and how.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Senior principals event had over 300 people together in Dallas, Texas, a record number of advisors in attendance. Those are really important for us because that creates that connectivity, not just with the leadership team, but also with each other. So we put a lot of work”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In our deals, because we're doing true acquisitions and the principles are receiving material proceeds, there are restrictive covenants that come with these, non-compete, non-solicit, non-accept where it's enforceable. You don't want to have to depend on those to be your strategy for defense. We have the occasional advisor who departs and tests those things and we always protect them because we need to protect the business. What we really do is we want to capture hearts and minds. We want advisors to feel so well served here and to feel so connected as part of the community that they would never want to go anywhere else because why do it? It's not going to be better. So we put a lot of effort into culture. We put a lot of effort into creating a community of collaboration. We just hosted our annual.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Once you have an advisor that you bring into the platform and it's working, just like you're able to buy someone and bring them onto the platform, there's a big market for a successful advisor getting poached away. I'm curious how you've thought about retaining the successful advisors on the platform.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We try to always go back and do after action review. What can we learn from this? There's no guarantee. Everybody's got the right intentions when you're doing the deal and they're telling you what they think is how they view things. Better understanding the team underneath that person and what their capacity was to step up and take more on is one learning. It's almost like you're in an investment. Many investment managers when they're buying an investment, they'll create a sales thesis at the same time. Here's the reason I'm going to buy this investment. And here's the thesis for when I sell it. And it sort of helps them take the emotion out of it. For us, one of the learnings is, hey, we're doing this acquisition, but what's our thesis for if it doesn't go well? What's the playbook here? And do we step in and have to think merger or is there a next generation that's already there that we can have confidence can step up?”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cross investment management, you have a lot of situations that have that key man issue. I'm wondering if you learned anything from that example about how you might try to tease out that possibility in a future acquisition”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's so front of mind. So then we look at it and say, Does the business team have the ability to sustain from within? Or do we need to think about combining it? So in this case, we've actually chose to combine it. And we're going to be merging it into another one of our advisor practices who's really well suited just from a demographic, a type of client they serve, how they serve them. So the ending hasn't been written yet, Ted, on this one, but did force us into some rapid planning, which rarely is good. And we certainly will expect we'll have some client loss as a result because the individual departing is such a visible part of the team.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'll take the ones from early on out of it, and I'll take one not by name. It was a deal very prestigious firm, been around a long time, but very centered in the principle. That's the risk in these businesses. The founders, in many cases, have their name on the door. They are such a big part of these businesses. The founder ultimately woke up and decided I'm ready to move on with life. It wasn't 10 years post-deal. It was three years post-deal. So it forced us into a much more rapid transition of the business that we weren't prepared for going into it. We would have hoped to have gotten at least five years from that leader, but also we understand. Sometimes things change in people's lives. And the individual had just gotten to a point where he didn't have his joy in this anymore. We're actually just live in motion on this as we speak, which is why.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The number of acquisitions you've done, you mentioned a few at the onset that maybe didn't go as well as you would have liked when you hadn't fine-tuned your lens. I'd love you to think about one that you thought was going to work out and then didn't. What happens when something doesn't go according to planned?”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because there's this valley when you go through change where it just feels overwhelming and hard and you're focused on that. We want you focused on serving your clients and getting new clients. Typically those 90 days are really key. We find by the end of the first year, if this is done well, the advisor is now completely stable and can now be accelerating their growth”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then they will pick it up and really think about it as a 12 month activity. Now, the heavy lifting is happening in the first 90 days, but we like 12 months because it really takes you through every cycle of the business. And we recognize change is hard. And anybody who says change isn't hard clearly has never changed because I think it's hard for us as humans. And it's hard in a business. Think about you've been around 30 years doing things a certain way. And now you join another firm and those things change. So your cheese has been moved and you need to sort of get comfortable with where it's gone and how you get to it. So we spent a lot of time on change management and making sure they've got lots of support during that because the worst thing that can happen is they get distracted from the business of the business. We recognize the quicker we can get them back to normal out of what I sometimes will refer to as the valley of doom.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We agree on value in sort of key terms, we get to signed LOI. And at that point, we're really going to do the last 60 days of real deep due diligence. We're going to go from looking at compliance, operations, investments. We don't make everybody conform to one investing philosophy, but we do have a framework for what we're comfortable with. And are there managers that we just don't have that maybe we can go out and add to our platform? Are they managers we just aren't willing to add for some reason. So we're doing all that really, really detailed stuff. Once we get to definitive documents signed in closing and we've already by that point brought our integration team into this as well because these are not star handoffs. Think of it more like a relay race of a baton being passed. So our integration team has been getting up to speed during the due diligence process, running a lot of that detail.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also quite common. So, if you think about that example, we buy 50% today. We buy another 20% in year five. Hopefully that 20% in year five is worth infinitely more than it is today. So that's where we introduce flexibility is how much we buy up front. Do we put future step up purchases into the deal? How do we split cash versus equity? How do we allocate that split between partners? So that's where we have quite a bit of flex that we can employ on behalf of the seller.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be cute, they're flexibly inflexible. There's some flexibility there, but we have a standard type of deal structure we do. There's not that much variability to that, where we can be quite bespoke is the way we structure the deal from an economic standpoint, meaning we do typically asset purchases. So we're buying 100% of the assets, which in these businesses are mainly the client relationships where we can be flexible is how much of the economics do you want to sell us today versus maybe down the road. And that's different than some buyers. For example, maybe we agree we'll buy 50% of the economics today. We're still buying 100% of the asset, but you keep 50% of the economics as the advisor business, which still gives you skin in the game. And that can be exciting to someone who still wants to work in the business.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lot of data exchange because data doesn't lie. So it's nice to have the narrative, but we look at a lot of data. We go through that process. It's usually pretty iterative. If we think there's alignment there is when we'll provide indicative value. So we'll give them an idea of what we think the value of their business is. Maybe they agree. Maybe they disagree.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People come to us in a variety of different ways. Sometimes it's relationships. Some of us have had personally. We have a lot of different bankers and consultants who bring opportunities. We also have a self-sourcing team. So that's top of the funnel, how things get to us. It's all about understanding objectives. So if you're a seller, we want to know why and why now, what's really important to you. If we're not aligned on basic things like that, we're just not going to spend time. It's just too valuable. What I really encourage sellers to do is get really, really specific. Give me the one or two non-negotiables in something that would be a good outcome for you. And I really mean it when I say one or two, because if you have five non-negotiables, I promise you they're negotiable. Come up with one or two things that no matter what I do, this has to be part of the outcome. Then we get into.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Next generation that's been identified, so hopefully they've been investing in their talent. Most of all, and it may sound cliche, but we're looking for consistent same store sales growth. And that's the part that really separates ones that we'll lean into versus ones that will normally pass on because these businesses are so tied to the markets, in many ways you can think of them like index funds that index off the S&P. And if the S&P is up 23%, like we saw last year, they're all going to tell you, oh my God, I'm growing record revenues. And that's okay, but that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for those businesses that have created a clear ability to go out and win the next new client. And they've got a process for doing it. Now, do they have to be growing top quartile? No, because we know if there's growth, we can improve it.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You set off to do anything for the first time, your first couple of attempts probably aren't your best because you need to learn. We learned a lot from our first few deals and then really implemented discipline on what we thought was a fit for Hightower. I'm a big believer there's a buyer for everybody. So if you're an advisor thinking about selling, there is somebody out there who will be the right buyer for you. May not be Hightower. That's not a reflection on you. It's really just we have a very specific mold we're looking for. One, it starts with advisors who still want to continue to work in their business. We're not the place to come if you just want to sell and go. There are others who would be okay with that. We want you to continue to run your office in most cases. We just want you to do it with a partner who can free up your time to run it even better. We got to love the talent starting with the leader. We're looking for”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of a big firm and still maintain some optionality and flexibility in how they did business, but also what it gave them was a clear succession plan. So if their clients are asking them, like, well, what are you going to do? Is you get older? They've now answered the question because they have the leverage of a bigger firm that they can rely on. The other thing was access to more and more capabilities. 25 years ago was good enough to focus just on the investment piece. Now you really need to have solutions across the spectrum, ranging from trust services, deep estate planning expertise, tax preparation. And we've built out all those capabilities that give our advisors the opportunity to work with their clients even more holistically.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different ways. One, we wanted to create much more of a holistic firm where we could create a little bit more consistency and conformity and commonality of how we do business, always giving the advisor flexibility where we think it matters most, but having unlimited choice of where you custody assets doesn't necessarily create value. We decided to tighten that up a little bit. And we also shifted our focus from lifting out advisors from the full service firms to doing registered investment advisor business acquisitions. And that was really playing off of a trend, which is the RIA industry highly fragmented, meaning more than 16,000 individual RIA firms, most small to mid-sized. We saw a big opportunity to do a couple of things. One, offer advisors an opportunity to become part.”
2025-06-16 · Capital Allocators · Bob Oros – RIA Perspective at Hightower (Private Wealth 7, EP.452) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source