YouSaid · the spoken record

Greg Dowling

lines on the record: 82
first: 2022-05-02
most recent: 2022-05-02
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

“Can be wound tight at times. I think I would tell a younger version of me that it's going to be okay. It's going to work out. You don't have to fritz over every job decision or that meeting you had with your boss or that manager. Most times things work out. Enjoy the ride. Smell the flowers.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the time that I was doing that, I got to weigh the bananas of Bill Belichick and Steve Kerr. So a great basketball coach and a great football coach. And as you could imagine, Bill Belichick was surly when I weighed his bananas. Steve Kerr was very positive and happy And they just both happen to live in the area when I was there.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you let me have one tangent, this is a fun fact. This is good, Dad. So I had all kinds of jobs. I was a teamster for Anheuser-Busch on a beer truck delivering beer. That was a great job to have in high school college, by the way. Love that. People love me. I worked at a catering area, but I also spent a lot of time at the local grocery store. Country coun I weighed vegetables. I worked in the produce section and sometimes they would stick you out on the counter and so someone would bring you a cantaloupe and you'd put it on the scale and you'd write how much it costs. Nowadays they just do that at the checkout line.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just a work ethic. Growing up in Cleveland, my mom's side, everybody worked in the steel mills. My great-grandfather worked in the steel mills. Grandfather worked in the steel mills. My uncle spent some time there between college in the steel mills. And there was this great work ethic that we had. And even when I was in high school and prior to high school, if I wasn't playing sports, I was working. My parents said, you're working. And I ended up put half of it away into my college fund, the Magellan funds. And that's really stuck with me that blue collar attitude. I admit that I have no blue collar skills, but I have that work ethic, that Midwestern work ethic. And that really stuck with me. And it's from my family.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So investing, as you know, you make a lot of mistakes. So two things. One, acknowledge you're going to make mistakes. And that's okay. It's about the sizing of your mistakes and sizing of anything. So be careful about sizing. And two, if you've been doing this long enough and your spidey senses go off. A little deeper, those would probably be two lessons that I've had to learn over the years.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there's a lot of people, there's always been a person that showed up in my life that has taken me to the next level. And I don't want to miss any of them. So I'll just acknowledge all of them, but I'll give you two fun ones. So I'd say two people that have the biggest impact on my professional life. Oliver Stone for his 1987 release of Wall Street, which I snuck into and I saw it. I'm like, this is what I want to do. And then Peter Lynch for two reasons. One, I read his book, One Up on Wall Street. Loved it probably the first investment book that I read. And my college fund was in the Magellan funds. So Peter Lynch was obviously the PM, famous PM for the Magellan funds.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't like some of the arrogance that comes from certain managers. Maybe it's because I was born just backgrounds, born in White Plains, New York, but I grew up in Cleveland. And maybe it's because I heard all the Cleveland jokes over the years. Your river caught on fire or your sports teams are terrible. And I don't know. Maybe it's just a little chip on the shoulder. But when you go in and you meet with an investment manager and they want to know if Cincinnati's on mountain time or they want to explain something, you're like, had you been in New York before? And you're like, just that lack of self-awareness, it drives me crazy at times.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hate when people are late. It drives me nuts. I'm very scheduled. And when people are late, it just throws all off kilter and I just hate it. That's my biggest pet peeve.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I would have said teacher, and I've been able to scratch that itch a little bit. I love the cook. That's another hobby of mine. I love to entertain. I'd love to open up a dive bar slash restaurant. That's probably what I would do”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ted, you know it already during the season I try to play two or three times a week. We have a private winter club that's really close to my house. So sometimes I'll even go skate before work.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have a lot of ENFs who have investment campaigns, who can invest in carbon, and that's okay. But for those who can, there's a real opportunity because when you hear Shell and Exxon say they're divesting, it doesn't go away. They just sell it to a private equity firm and it's kind of out of the shadows. And there's no money going into any CapEx and development there. So the money that's going there can return a pretty good amount, even if you assume the terminal value of the stuff that's left in the ground is zero. And so that's one way is copper a way to play the EV revolution renewables. So we've looked at some things there. But inflation has been top of mind rates and how the Fed reacts to inflation. That's probably the biggest thing. And no one's seen. You and I have been around long enough. We've got some great hairs, but you think of the 20 and 30 year olds, you just buy the dip. And if you can't buy it,”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pressing things that we're thinking about. Well, inflation, right? I don't know if we're going back to the 70s. There's very few of us that remember the 70s. If you look at my rhyme. So one of the things that we're thinking a lot about, you need to make sure you have real assets and you probably should have a Diversified basket of real assets because inflation is weird. It reacts very differently to both expected and unexpected. There's no silver bullet. And we're in a period of time where usually conventional energy historically has been the best way to play inflation”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've been able to then connect managers together. Like we had two players the last time we did this who hadn't seen each other, really knew each other were in the investment business. One played at Yale, one played at RIT. And they played against each other. And they're like, oh my gosh, I remember playing against you. And so they started talking. And, you know, some of these people share ideas and like, hey, we're in totally different areas. You're in private energy. But I'm doing some, looking at some private energy dad.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Play a hockey game. And so it's great over about a couple day period. We have 20 or 30 different managers coming in. A couple managers just love hockey. And they came to watch some of their friends in the industry play. And we have all these manager meetings that we can meet with our managers and then we can play and we support a charity. It's called Cincinnati Icebreakers. And their tagline is putting your disability on ice. It's just really cool that you can get out there no matter what disability they have. They're flying around and they're having a great time. And for some of them, this is the only time they've ever been able to be a part of a team or ever travel to a tournament and be in a hotel setting and do all that. So it's very special for them. And so we try to raise money for them. We've done it the last few years. Unfortunately, COVID has impacted that. So this is our first time that we're doing it. It's just really fun. It's fun because”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it's great to have you in person here in Cincinnati. So a lot of firms do a golf outing. Head golf. There are plenty of people at FEG who love the golf and certainly love an invitation to play golf. But I'm a hockey guy. I love hockey. It's a passion of mine. And there just happens to be a good handful of hockey people at FEG or spouses that play hockey. And gosh, one dinner one night where there's a big group of people and we're talking about hockey and they're like, well, I play hockey. And five people in my office play hockey. And so we're like, what if we did a charity event and we invited a bunch of our managers and the clients that come in?”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you're seeing better returns on the private side, but not many universities teach much on alternative investments. So what I try to do is at least give them an introduction to all the different types of alternative investments. I'll teach a section on private equity, for example, and then I'll bring in a private equity manager who's often visiting FEG to come in and do a case study for them. And also share the story of how they got into the business because yes, your job in college is to get good grades, but your real purpose is to get a job. And so sometimes just learning how you get into the business, who you need to talk to, what kind of backgrounds are helpful. And so I've been doing it for a really long time. I absolutely love it. And if anybody would ever sit in any of the classes, they would probably see a lot of FEG educational materials that I use.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there will be people that do that. There will just be less because some of that analyst work is going to be replaced by artificial intelligence. You're seeing the continued wave of passivity. You're just seeing artificial intelligence replace the whole thing in certain times.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I've, gosh, probably about eight years now, have taught a class at the University of Cincinnati. That's where I went undergrad. So I have an affinity there. And I teach an MBA course on alternative investments. Now, you're from the East Coast. There are a lot of people in this business out on the East Coast or on the West Coast. They're just not as many in the Midwest. I also think the world is going that way. We talked about private capital and everything else, but you think about just technology Most people in investment classes, in courses around the country, have this vision they're going to go and pick stocks or pick bonds.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then you're like, if you do enough of these, they work out. So we do research and work on it, but I think you have to be very careful on the Co-Invest because you're hiring, you're paying them to bring you the ideas. You're doing a sanity check on it. But part of that checklist is the fee structure. So you want to look at that. I mean, ideally the best thing is no fees, no manage bid fee, no carry. That's changing, right? So everybody did that, and now you're seeing, well, how about at least a little carry? So carry can be okay if there's enough of a pref there. We pass most times when there's a management fee and a carry because then it's just a fund of one idea and that's not great.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've been doing Co Invests for a handful of years now. We have a checklist approach that we look at it. Are they recommended? Have they done them before? Is it in their wheelhouse? Does it make sense? If it's on the private energy side and it's in the four corners and it's unconventional, we have no geologists on staff. And even if we did, we probably couldn't fly them out, have them do the work and make an investment decision. You're betting on the manager that you've known for a really long time. And you're making sure that you're aligned with them.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've got a train everybody on private capital. As you said, the crossover funds. We do try to have this devil's advocate process and the amount of private capital funds re-ups is just off the charts. We're seeing private strategies in every asset class. One of the things that we have to do is do a better job of cross-training and so that people can kind of step in and help out and also makes the analysts better because we don't have a hedge fund group. We call it diversifying strategies. That's mostly hedge funds. But there are some strategies that are uncorrelated that are private and that fall into that category. Can the hedge fund guys figure out how to do an IRR? We have to teach them these things. And that's an evolution as the world's going private. And so you need to make sure that your team can handle that.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting aircraft securitizations and sometimes there's a hidden factor there. So you have to be careful, but that's how that group works. If nothing else, it keeps people stimulated and we get the opportunity to talk through some interesting scenarios. How do you make returns? What are the risks? And I think it helps us in our overall process.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But every once in a while, you're like, wow, that's pretty cool. That's something that's interesting. You know, we did a This whole spack boom, we did a SPAC only fund that kind of made it. We've done Argentina debt fund. That was kind of a rifle shot. We've done a handful of interesting ideas in there. We're looking at barges now, like a triple net barge fund. That could be interesting. A lot of times I think that you have to be careful. It has a risk factor, and sometimes that risk factor is GDP, the economy. So you're like, oh, and this is really...”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we have all of our, as I said earlier, we have an open door policy. And if an analyst does a meeting with somebody, They're like, I took this meeting. I thought I was the right person for this group. But in fact, I don't know who the right person is for this group, but it was really interesting. Maybe it was a fine art fund or maybe it was carbon credit trading, whatever it is. But you thought it was interesting. We have a person that you descended to. And there's a group of us that get together on a quarterly basis and kind of look through the ideas. And I'd say 95% of the time we pass. We just pass because they might be interesting ideas, but no one's going to invest them. And it's not worth the missionary work. There's a high bar, right? That you don't want to do things just for the sake of difficulty, right? It's not the Olympics. You don't get any points for difficulty.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things I know you have here is what you call your weird ideas group. And you were kind enough to bring Cordillera guys. It should certainly fit into that onto the show. We'd love to hear more about that team and what you do inside it.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good. So we've even said for some investors, maybe you think about having some of the more conservative multi-strat hedge fund managers and think about it as a fixed income proxy.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you shorted, you might have had to actually pay or you weren't earning anything. So now you're actually getting something on your rebate. You're also seeing volatility and dispersion, which is good. You need dispersion, not just lockstep volatility. Everything's moving up and down. That's hard. Maybe a macromanager gets it. But most people are trying to take advantage, whether it's between two stocks or two bonds of some divergence. There's a lot more divergence. So what does it all mean? I think a good multistrat manager can earn six or seven percent. And that's nowhere near what it returned in the 90s or early 2000s. But that might be pretty good this year. No wanted that when the S&P was up 28%. But now when you have equity markets and fixed income markets down.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it certainly has been. Luckily, I think we were in the hedge fund area in the golden days, the Halcyon days, and there were great parties and great swag. It was a lot of fun in this private equity bubble they were living in. They're just not as fun, Dad. Not as fun. Yeah, so they had a great run. They've had a really poor, poor run. I think we're generally pretty optimistic on hedge funds, especially like a multi-strategy type of manager, because they tend to do better when rates rise. Because for a long time,”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that scary. I was just recently meeting with a few private equity managers who were talking about their portfolio companies. And we were talking about the same question. And it was uncanny because all of them said they were talking to these crossover managers and a couple names came up and they're like, oh, as soon as the Ukraine conflict started, they stopped returning my phone calls. So it pulls back. It seems like it's pulled back a little bit. I think it's smart, but you got to be careful and don't go with the Johnny King lately.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's going to be tough. I think you want to make sure you focus on the handful of managers that are really good at it because everybody is doing it. Either hedge fund, private equity fund, or long lonely equity manager are doing crossovers. And so do they have the ability, they just hire a team and from somewhere else. So you really have to dig down and dig deeper because the other issue is that because everybody's focused on the late stage area, which has become very pricey, they're moving down rounds into lower and lower levels that they've never played in before. Some have, some of the bigger ones have, but some of the newer ones have not.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were early adapters to some of that. And I think there was an arb there that you could go out and say, look, I'm going to buy late stage, but I'm not going to sell. I'm going to hold it. And I'm going to move quicker. I'm not going to need as many board seats. And I've got a big checkbook. That's worked really well. And that's been copied and copied and copied.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your returns are great. If you had access to a couple of those other managers out there, also your returns are great. But if outside of that, it's tougher sledding. So I think you have to be very cautious in venture. It is a access class, not just an asset class. And so that means you may not be able to do as much venture. There are still great venture companies out there. It's the new breed, the people that leave the larger firms and startup and do great at a smaller size, but you may want to substitute more growth equity versus venture because you just got to be very careful. Just because you have an allocation of venture capital, you shouldn't fill it if you don't have the right managers.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's funny, one of my colleagues is at one of the handful of big firms out there. He was telling me that all the institutions that were there at this annual meeting that like roughly a third of the returns were basically from this manager. So, if you had access.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Add ons. You can kind of build a platform up, and then you sell it up the food chain because they're going to deploy that money. If they don't deploy that money, they can't charge you. They are never going to return those dollars to investors. And I think that's true with private real estate and private anything these days is if you can kind of focus on the smaller end and sell it up the food chain, leave a little fruit on the trees so that there isn't the ability for the next fund to make some money. You can pretty consistently make good returns. But I would say that these are lower returns than you got in a previous 10 years with private equity, but they're going to be a lot better than the returns in the public equity market.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe less than a billion dollars, smaller funds. But there are 30 plus more companies on the private side with revenues over $10 million than the U.S. public market. Just bigger. And there's always poorly run family businesses. Now, I should say that they're even aware of the private equity bit. So they're more expensive than they used to be, but they're still less expensive. And you can grow those companies. You can do”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The private equity side. And it's not because private equity is going to generate all these great returns. It's that there is so much money being raised in private equity. The dry powder is amazing. Trillion dollars that's out there. It's a massive amount of money that's out there. So what do you do? Well, most of that money has been raised by the mega funds. It's like 80% when you get over $5 billion and it's maybe 50% when you get to a billion. So if you have the size and ability to invest in a Buy and build buyout firm, so lower middle market and roughly define that as EBITDA of like 5 to 30. Everybody says they invest in lower middle market, but it's ask them to define that. And these are oftentimes funds that are 500.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Rod Stateman is that even though markets are down this year. They're not down that much from all-time high. And so when markets are near all-time highs, there is less to do. So you've got to be very careful because there's always this call to action, especially we have all kinds of geopolitical issues all over the place and inflation and all that kind of stuff. So you feel good if you do something. I'd say maybe you don't want to do as much. So that's one general comment across all I'd askes. There is less to do because valuations aren't great. It's really hard at thy markets. So, therefore, be diversified. That'll help when there's some great opportunities. So let's talk about what you can't do. Even though there's not a lot to do, that doesn't mean there's nothing to do. And one of the areas that I think there's a great opportunity is.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So be a little shorter, pause, make sure you're getting every box engaged. So those are a few little tips for the COVID era or post-COVID era.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That everybody's kind of thinking about the philosophy in the same way, even though, like, you can talk about continuity, people can say like, yeah, we're all, but yeah, okay, what does that actually mean? So those would be a few tips. COVID has brought up a whole bunch of other tips because we've had virtual meetings, right? So virtual committee meetings are even tougher because you might have somebody who has bad audio, you might have people that are not paying attention, and you might have some people that are in person and some people that are not in person. And so the whole committee dynamic over COVID has really changed. We're also trying to change and adapt to that, just like we're adapting our research to this environment, trying to be more interactive. It is easy to drone on a Zoom call because you can't pick up the cues.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every committee is so different. They have very different personalities. And by changing one or two people It can be night and day. And so a lesson is make sure you have good governance, make sure you have a really strong IC chair. Make sure everybody's rowing in the same direction. If not, pause, go back, do a little bit more discovery work. Try to get people back together. Also spend time on the relationship. So if you're going to maybe it's a well-endowed theater group, ask go see a show and maybe go with a couple of the committee members get a real sense for who they are because that makes it easier when times are tough. You want to make sure that it's not transactional. Make sure there's continuity. Make sure”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I don't have a lot of great examples. I mean, there's a few examples where we've looked at you could just tell people aren't excited. They're telling you that they're excited about the opportunity set, but their body language is telling you something different. Now, it could just be that that's a bad day. They get a fight with their kid before he went to school. I mean, who knows, right? But those are little things if you start picking up on you can ask. And that's probably the best examples that we have to date.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you mentioned body language cues, and I know a lot of times people have the CIA training. You get all excited about the one week. Are there any of the things that you've learned that you've been able to kind of retain and use over time”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fill that gap. You ask, where is it going? I think it's going to be a little bit of both. I think our meetings will be more meaningful and that instead of doing a marathon all day meeting on site where we're exhausted and they're exhausted or we're flying to Hong Kong and our eyes are rolling back in our head, we're jet lagged. barely remember the meeting we can do a lot of that stuff virtually and then go there and spend time maybe as a group maybe you can go to dinner and see how they act socially. So I think it'll be better. And I think we'll be able to do more. The problem is you can almost overschedule. We found that we almost overscheduled Zoom calls. We note Zoom fatigue is real.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, what are little tips and cues that you do, which is frightening because you learn these things and then when your wife's talking to you and you're like, wait a minute, I'm picking up on something. So we try to do little things like that. We've also a handful of times had people just take a phone and put their video on and like FaceTime, walk around the office so we can see what their office looks like. Because that kind of gives you a sense of culture a little bit. Is it a fun place? Is it a serious place? I mean, those are little things that you can do to”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's still the hardest one to pick up on. You can augment that a little bit through the number of reference checks that you do. So maybe instead of doing five, you do 15, you do a little bit more. And then we've started to get a little bit smarter and we're still doing this. Do calls individually. It's really difficult to do a group or teams call in terms of due diligence because you might have people talking over each other. You can't pick up on individual Brady Bunch boxes that when the senior PM talks, the number two rolls his eyes. It's not even worthwhile trying to pick that up. So do it individually. And then when you get on site, try to do a couple more of these group meetings where you can pick up some of the dynamics. We've also done a little bit of training on just trying to.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you're right. I mean, it was really hard at the beginning of COVID. So first few months, I think we all thought, well, you know, We locked down for a couple months and then we'll be back on the road. And then we had a variant and another variant and it kept going and going and going. So you have to adapt. And we tried to adapt the best we could. So we really embraced it.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feels like the subtle things in culture a lot of it come out of meeting with a group of people at the same time and face-to-face meetings. And I'm kind of curious over the last couple of years through COVID, not so much like obviously you had to adapt, but what do you think this looks like going forward on these types of assessments?”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wow, that's a disconnect there. And so you try to look at is the culture supportive of their investment strategy because eat what you kill can be fine, but you just understand that's the culture that you live in. And there's been some very successful firms that have been that way. So you look for that. You just want to understand the culture because many firms are coached on. There's a lot of firms out there, PR firms that say, hey, here's what consultants are looking for. You need to use these buzzwords and they're incongruent. And so that's what you're really looking for versus a one culture where we have a bias towards.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First thing I'd say is there's no one culture. We're not looking for the exact same culture. We are just looking for a culture that is appropriate for the strategy and how they're set up. So, for example, let's say, let's go back to that very collegial firm. We're collegial. We share. And then the compensation structure is eat what you kill.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I hear that all the time, and some of the firms seem a little Byzantine in how you approach that. We try to be pretty research-centric. And the nice thing about FEG, so I've been here for 18 years. Many of the sector heads that I manage have been here longer than I have. So it doesn't change that often. So you know who the fixed income guy is or the real assets person is. And so it's really easy to do. But we all try to funnel it through. I mean, yeah, sometimes a consultant may get involved, but we are different. We're not so big because a lot of these bigger firms have created different offices with liaisons between consultants and research. And we just haven't had to do that yet. Hopefully we never have to do that. And so it's all pretty much driven here. So find out who the sector head is and call them or email them.”
2022-05-02 · Capital Allocators · Greg Dowling – Mid-Market Institutional Consulting at FEG (Capital Allocators, EP.248) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source