EDDIE BROWN: Coming from outside of the wealth management industry, your perspective was very different than many that have spent decades in financial services. Are there few that you would highlight that we could share with others?
ERIC BECKER: I would. I would give three examples of things that you probably would only learn from the client side that have been impactful in how we've thought about the business. The first would be when I was 28 years old and had already had some entrepreneurial success, one of the large wirehouses reached out to me and came down to visit me in Baltimore, had already exited two businesses and was working on a third, and we had this wonderful lunch. And at the end of lunch they said, ‘It's too bad that you don't meet our minimum…
EDDIE: Wow.
ERIC: …and we look forward to when you do, and we'll be here for you.' And I remember that feeling of rejection and feeling small. And that was tough to hear, because when you need help, you really want someone to be there for you.
The second thing I would mention that was influential was my dad. My dad was this wonderful first generation entrepreneur, in the Christmas business, one of the coolest businesses that a family could be in. But my dad never had access to the types of resources and talent that we have and that you have available. And so as I saw him later in life, his later years really weren't what he had hoped for. He really didn't have access to great planning and great advice, and I think that it affected the quality of his life. And so for Santa to not have had the benefit of that is something not lost on me and that we want to make sure that we provide for the families.
And the last thing that I would mention is not knowing, quite frankly, as an entrepreneur, the difference between a fiduciary and someone in a different model, suitability or other types of concepts. I didn't know that. I actually had the presumption that my advisors were fiduciary. And it wasn't until this journey that I learned how important it is to have access to independent fiduciary advice. And that's certainly something I would tell anyone who is thinking about who should serve their family, is to find someone who is independent, capable, and a fiduciary, a true fiduciary. So those experiences, when we formed Cresset, we tried to address those so that family members have a lifetime of planning.
EDDIE: What we've done within Schwab is how do we accelerate and fuel that, and I hear the fuel that you needed. This is all very personal to you and I know that the values that you employ in your own family have helped inform the values that Cresset has.
ERIC: And so, of course, there's the very all-important financial and planning and investment side, but then they're the things that we do to help families to be more highly functioning. And so whether that is in having a family mission, thinking about family governance, how they work together around service and philanthropy to others, having programs for next gen and even for children. And it's that combination of making sure that the financial objectives and the investment objectives are met for the future, as well as making sure that the family stays together and hopefully is as highly functioning so that they can lead a better life. And our thesis is, is that if a family can succeed together, that they will have a greater impact in their community, and sort of one family at a time that then, hopefully, has a very big impact over many years.
(1222-2WV6)