#146—Kurt Miscinski: Architecting a Firm that Lasts: Strategy, Culture, and Ownership at Cerity Partners

Kurt Miscinski is the co-founder, CEO, and President of Cerity Partners, one of the fastest-growing firms in the wealth management space. Today, Cerity manages over $130 billion in client assets—but it started with a different vision: to create the first truly global, enduring professional services firm in wealth, drawing inspiration from firms like McKinsey and Deloitte, but applying it in a field that historically hasn’t operated that way.  

In this conversation, Kurt shares how that vision came to life—not through consolidation, but through a partnership ethos and a language shift that reframed everything from equity to culture. This is a story of architecture: how to build a firm that scales without losing its soul, and how to align incentives, ownership, and strategy to fuel long-term value. 

In this episode, we discuss: 

• How Kurt went from being a CPA and Deutsche Bank executive to founder of a firm redefining wealth advisory 
• Why Cerity’s operating model borrows more from McKinsey than Morgan Stanley—and how that unlocks scale 
• The strategic philosophy behind reinvesting 100% of profits and how it shaped the firm’s culture of ownership 
• How they use mergers to create a better firm, not just a bigger one—and why that distinction matters 
• The role of language in shaping culture, from avoiding the word “employee” to framing every merger as a partnership 

Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
00:55—Introducing Kurt + the topic of today’s episode
02:42—If you really know me, you know that...
05:30—What's your definition of strategy?
06:19—Creating Cerity—the founding story
08:57—Deutsche Bank and McKinsey as inspirations for a services-based business model
16:33—How has Cerity created a culture of partnership within the firm?
26:34—What is Cerity's model for capital allocation?
30:21—Where does the strategy office sit within the organization?
33:33—What are some of the principles that form your competitive differentiators?
37:03—How do you balance and maintain the coordination of the various services offered, as your clients evolve and grow?
41:03—What is your process for reevaluating and expanding your client services?
45:08—Closing

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Additional Resources:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtmiscinski
Cerity website: https://ceritypartners.com/

Thank you to our guests, thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinkernetworks.com/podcast

Transcript

Kaihan: Well, Kurt, thank you so much for being here. I know you have a lot of things to do, very busy, and it was not easy to find this spot.

So I really appreciate you making the time to talk to us. Thank you. I'm gonna open with the two questions that I ask. Our guests often. The first one is just to us to get you know you personally.

It may have nothing to do with your work or your career or your professional ambitions. Could you complete the sentence for me? If you really know me, you know that

Kurt: That I have an endless number of goals. I've always been a very goal oriented person, both personally, professionally. I think it's just part of my natural makeup and wiring, but always have know, a list of things that I wish to accomplish, you know, from Saturday and Sunday mornings, you know, even around my family to clearly throughout the work week.

Kaihan: How do you keep those in existence for you?

Kurt: Well, I think it gives me a sense of purpose and an energy. I come from an incredibly modest family and always aspire to be successful, however defined, and just always wanted to be the best version of myself. So I always set up, I'm gonna do that. I have to put the work in. And by putting the work in, I need to set goals of what am I looking to accomplish and that has given me a great sense of focus and and a purpose and, quite frankly, a a great sense of fulfillment.

Throughout the course of my life.

Kaihan: That's awesome. That's aspiring. Do you write them down on paper? Do you write them down digitally? Do you look at them every day?

Do you look at every month? Like, what what what is some practice?

Kurt: Yeah. Some some might will write down, but but often it's been very good of keeping that mental list. Like, I know exactly what I would like to accomplish, and I've never I've never been a person that's set out that I'm competing against others. It was always what am I capable of doing? So to some extent, extent, compete with myself to accomplish something and what do I need to do to do that?

I've always been a fan of other successes. I've always cheered on others, so I've never been a per person that had ill will for others accomplishing things quite frankly, I've always looked at it as motivation and inspiration to see others accomplish things both personally such as being a good father, good husband, good friend, good son, and clearly professionally. You know, great business leader. Entrepreneurs or just individuals who are effectively at the the top of their professional crap, whatever it might be, be it a doctor, an attorney, or any other profession.

Kaihan: Got it. Yeah. No. It's suppressive, you know, I need some kind of, like, physical something to remind me

Kurt: Sure.

Kaihan: But sounds like you you have a a a a very extensive capability of short term working memory or whatever that is. That cognitive capacity, which is not surprising at all given what you have achieved. So far, next question, and we're gonna talk a lot about strategy. And we have people who are experts in strategy, who study strategy, and we never get the same answer to this question. So whatever you say is is is right, what's your definition of strategy?

Kurt: Definition of strategy is the coming together of a mission of a vision and specific actions that need to be taken and executed to accomplish a goal, to accomplish an objective, to accomplish a level of defined success. I've always felt was the the definition of strategy.

Kaihan: I love it. I love it. There's kinda, like, three layers of, like, a pyramid, the the mission, the vision, and the choices or something like that makes a lot of sense. So I wanna start off by talking about the that's not the early part of your professional journey, but the early part of the journey that of what has become Cerity Partners. That kind of going from zero to ten, fifteen, thirty billion assets under management, which is something that anyone in your profession would chalk up as as the success.

I know you're at a 130,000,000,000 assets under management. But let's start off with that entrepreneurial journey. So my understanding is you are at Deutsche Bank, and you're part of the leadership team in wealth management. And you recognize the opportunity. So I'm gonna ask you questions about four different things.

How did you recognize this opportunity? What was it that you saw that you could do that could create a competitive advantage? And then talk a little bit about how you operationalize a competitively advantage. Because I know you've talked about language and you've talked about systems and processes and people and culture and then talk to you a little bit of asset allocation as you had grew from zero to the 15 or 30. Yeah.

To to talk talk a little bit about, you know, your your at Deutsche Bank. And what do you see? Maybe it's when you met Howard Milstein. What did you see that had you recognized there was an opportunity to do something that became seredity?

Kurt: Yeah. Maybe a little bit of context for answering that question, and I started my career out of school at my opinion, one of the greatest professional services firms that were around at the time. It was the largest accounting firm in the world, you know, where I didn't turned and then received incredible training to be a true professional service provider. And at the time, probably took it for granted as a a young 21 year old of, boy, I just came out of college. Now here I am at this incredible firm university system, training, learning, developing, being pushed in a good way to pursue advanced, you know, degrees and professional credentials, but all of that instilled a a great deal of confidence and knowledge, not arrogance, but confidence and knowledge of I had a command of the subject matter, and I was prepared to be a terrific adviser to clients.

Unfortunately, that journey kinda changed with the late nineties in the corporate scandal era that led to changes in the accounting world where the big a collapsed into the big four. And then I spent over ten years at collectively what became part of Deutsche Bank, and so kinda felt what I went from the biggest accounting from the world. It's one of the largest global investment banks in the world. And there was a lot to learn, you know, a lot to learn from a a Deutsche Bank, which know, participated in everything for our mergers and acquisition advisory to capital markets to global transaction banking, commercial banking, asset management, wealth management. And I'm very grateful that know, that organization put a great deal of development and training into me including some leadership training.

You know? But along the way, you know, what I had contrast it for my early years of experience professionally, to my days at Deutsche Bank is that a true professional services firm, it felt was this great, timeless business model. You provide advice and service to your clients for a fee, and it was always enamored with the great enduring professional services firm. So, like, the McKinsey of Management Consulting, which will celebrate a hundredth anniversary next year. Deloitte, who's arguably the largest in its professional field with a hundred eighty year history, and a law firm like Kirklandellis, which is now the largest law firm in the world with a hundred fifteen years of history.

But these are terrific enduring professional services firms know that play at the the top of their professional craft. And I thought, the curiosity, why wasn't that in wealth management. There's clearly large wealth management divisions embedded within large banks and in some cases in insurance conglomerates, but not a standalone pure global professional services firm in wealth, like you would see of McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and Management Consulting, or Deloitte, Pricewaterhouse, Ernst Yawn, KPMG, and accounting, or law firms like Kirkland Ellis, Provost, Win and More, Davis, Polk, Sullivan, and Cromwell are to their profession. So was inspired, you know, to write a business plan. I I had a little nudging from a few clients who were exceptionally accomplished, who actually approached me and said, if you ever thought about doing something entrepreneurial, let me know.

I would welcome the opportunity to back you, and I I joke with them and said, apparently, I'm not a good adviser or encourage me to do something. But, apparently, from their words, there was something they saw on me that seen that I had either the energy or or the aptitude to try something like that. And I I don't think I up to that point, I ever really would have viewed myself as an entrepreneur. I think I was a hardworking student who then took seriously, you know, being a professional, worked hard to become as good of a professional as I could be that led to really good things. But, you know, once I started to interact with individuals of terrific and incredible, you know, professional and entrepreneur success, and to have a couple of them, you know, reference, might you consider doing something effectively that the seed was planted and that's aid, you know, turned into a green shoot and enough that the the age of coming up on 33, you know, going into 34 said, might might I do it a little bit of a business plan?

And the vision was, you know, to build, not not to be a Kurt's firm, but to be a great and enduring partnership, to be part of building what could be a first of its kind, global professional services firm, in wealth management, in the mold of an enduring partnership. And through time, to build a brand and a reputation arguably as reputable as the McKenzie at Deloitte or Kirkland Ellis are to their profession. So I shared that with a little over 40 individuals with whom I've worked or knew well for my career up until then. And and, thankfully, 38 to be exact said, if you do this, I'm in. Wow.

Terrific. And then and then the next daunting task came, like, how do we fund this? And that's that's where serendipity kinda came in. Mhmm. I had been contacted by Howard MELSTIN, a very accomplished business man in in New York, let alone very influential and philanthropic and other circles.

And he asked me, invited me to come meet with them. And after about fifteen minutes in ICD, he said, what would you think about, you know, going into business together? And that that took me by pleasant surprise, but I kindly accepted his his overture, and, you know, that led to then some confidence of, hey, if someone of Howard's accomplishments sees value in building something like this, then hey. Maybe we're onto something. And that journey began at the February, beginning of twenty ten, and as my grandfather would frequently remind my sister, brother, myself, Now sometimes better be lucky than good.

It was just very fortuitous timing to start a firm like ours at the bottom of the worst business market cycle we've ever seen, not only in our careers, but quite frankly, I've ever seen in our lives coming out of the grate. Financial, you know, February, 02/2009. So needless to say, we were we were afforded wonderful tailwinds of a recovering market, and then there was other secular trends for our industry. I think the great financial recession and not because I had some great foresight just because experienced it.

Kaihan: So so it it is really interesting. I I I started my career at McKinsey, and there is this foundational story of the person not McKinsey, but the person who kind of recognized. There was this opportunity to professionalize consulting. And I'm kind of hearing that in what you see, but you said your 33 or or so at the at that moment. Is that right?

Kurt: Yeah. That that's right and fair. Given what you just said, like, one of the many books I've read is the firm, which Yeah. About the development of McKenzie. It was Marvin.

It wasn't Marlon.

Kaihan: How are you?

Kurt: It wasn't know, Bob Mackenzie or Tom Carney, and I'm the ultimate separation into McKinsey and Company and AT Carney. Yeah. But at MAR at Marvin who really decided, like, hey. We could create a true professional services firm Yeah. And that's that's effectively was the vision from day one that we're gonna create this great enduring professional services firm

Kaihan: Yes.

Kurt: Firm that has great commitment to developing every colleague to be at the highest of their professional craft. I mean, just to few years ago, I invited Bob Sternfell, who's the current global managing partner of McKinsey to come speak to one of our annual partner off sites. And I asked Bob in front of my partners, how much how much do you invest in education and development And that that year that he was there, he said this past year, we invested a billion dollars. That that kinda translates to over $20,000 per colleague of Mackenzie. And to me, that's a great professional service or firms that are investing.

If you take a look at Deloitte, you know, Deloitte has 465,000 professionals globally and 20,000 partners at that firm. But if you've never been to their global university in the last lake. It's Yeah. Rivals, you know, the top universities in the world. So in my opinion, this vision of being this great enduring professional services firm

Kaihan: Yeah.

Kurt: That starts with the foundation of this commitment of how do you create a professional service for us. How do you support that? And then you probably experience that in McKinsey yourself for probably great training and development?

Kaihan: Yes. Yeah. You we had David Wharton who wrote a book called Evergreen Company, and he was talking about kinda part of the dilemma is kind of kind of hearing and hearing. I might be off. But it's, like, in financial services, there's a little bit of a shopping around.

Right? Like, you know, I'll I'll go from one firm to the other and whoever pays me the most in that year. My book starts again from scratch, and I will you know, just, you know, just jump around where I can get the best deal. But then you then there is a disincentive for the firm to invest in people. And so, like, to invest in people in year one, two, '3, four, you gotta kind of have if you're looking at employee lifetime value, you gotta kind of look at that this person's gonna be around years three, four, five, six, seven, but it seems like you were able to you you saw you were able to and you were able to overcome that that dilemma.

Kurt: I think part of it was, you know, having a ethos from day one of build a palace, not a prison. No build a place. Everyone wants to be build a place where we're all contributing to this great palace that we're in. Again, our our firm was never founded to be my firm or to be a few of our firms. It was created to be a thriving and enduring partnership, you know, a firm owned by its partners.

I think that mindset, that cold true mindset that partners of our firm, like, they are business owners of our firm, a level of care and attention to take care of our partnership, to train develop the next generation of colleague who was gonna gonna be the successor to all of us to continue to serve our clients and generations of our clients. And so feel rightly or wrongly that a partnership culture, you know, has a different dynamic, one in which there's great interest to wanna be there for twenty, thirty, forty years, one in which no partners of the firm could do great things for clients as well as have their own personal wealth creation opportunity And I think if you could align those two objectives, you know, you'll have great tenure without high levels of turnover because we don't even use the word employee in our firm. It's we're colleagues and we're partners. We only have clients. We don't have customers, deals, or transactions.

We never acquire anyone or anything. We merge with another firm to create a better firm. We're not a consolidator, aggregator, or a roll up. Like, would you say, McKinsey is a consolidator, aggregator roll up even though they've had many of mergers and acquisitions to get different expertise and talent. If you look at Deloitte's hundred eighty year history, hundreds of mergers, to become who they are today, and and that's a mindset.

It's a mindset of, like, this is a professional services firm in the mold of a partnership. We're building it together. We share success based on meritocracy. Of how we're contributing. So we purposely built our firm that you could have as good or better of an entrepreneur opportunity within our firm than if you just try to do it on your own and that based on sharing success on meritocracy, your economic opportunity could be equally as good, but there's just clearly many more resources within our firm, you know, to be able to leverage, to create that opportunity for oneself.

Kaihan: I love I love that you went into the language because, you know, what I'm hearing is you have this concept and then you operationalize this concept. And I do believe my father was a professor of communications for fifty eight years, and so I really kind of come from this idea of this social constructionism that the language that you use shapes the options that you see and how people think and shapes our perceived reality What are some of the other things that you looked at in terms of creating this idea of we are a partnership in addition to the language? What systems, what processes, what incentive structures, you know, one of the things I've as I understand, the divergence of, you know, McKinsey breaks up, and there becomes of AT Carney and McKinsey. And one of the big differences is that McKinsey has one profit pool that's shared across all partners as opposed to having regional or office levels. So, like, what what are some of the more other tangible things that you did to really design your organization to lean into this differentiated

Kurt: Yeah. First, it started with the design of this will be a partnership, and therefore, there needs to be a partnership agreement that clearly lays out effectively the manifesto that we partners the firm. These are the things we agree of what we should be doing as partners. And here is how we actually have true effect on how our partnership is is shaped. So within our partnership agreement, it is really clear on what requires a vote of the partnership to conduct certain activities, you know, to do the things that we we wish to do.

And then separate from that, you know, we thought if we're a group of partners, great partnerships have very little hierarchy, meaning it's not about being 15, you know, deep into an organizational structure. So we purposely have been building a very flat organization or a group of partners, and each one of us has partners, we have our responsibilities. So a partner whose job is to develop and serve clients, your responsibilities, the partner of our firm is to be our chief financial officer that's that partners' responsibilities. My responsibilities, you know, help lead the firm to go pursue our our mission, our vision, our strategy, roadmap, make sure we have the right organizational design and the right colleagues and the right roles to to do everything. So we we don't look at it as anyone partners more important than the next.

We simply have each of us partners have our roles and responsibilities. Then from that, it's the sharing success on meritocracy. So how we share the firm's cash flow and how we even share our firm's equity is based on partner's contribution to the growth and the profitability of the firm. So any partner in our firm could become the firm's largest shareholder. If he or she simply earned it through contribution to helping the firm grow clearly in terms of revenue and profit, which which has the high correlation to value of the firm.

And so, you know, in our firm, effectively, it works this way. If you're contributing to the growth of the firm at the average partner's contribution, your owner will stay roughly the same. If you're contributing above the average partner, your ownership will start to climb in terms of percent ownership conversely. If you're contributing below the average partner, then other partners are receiving more incentive equity and therefore your percent ownership will will decline. But whether your percent ownership is declining flat or rising as long as the value of our firm continues to rise, the value of all partners' capital accounts continue to rise and appreciate.

And I'll have to say, you know, when I reflect in my entire career, it it seems so obvious of this work so brilliantly. Why why wasn't it working that way elsewhere? But, you know, different different dynamics, not every organization is a partnership. Some are true companies, and in which, you know, ownership is held predominantly outside of the firm, you know, where most companies publicly traded companies, you know, probably at best. The ownership held by people in the firm is, you know, 10% or less, and ownership outside the firm, 90% or more, but, you know, partnerships that have forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, 80%, or maybe as much as a 100% ownership within the firm.

Now then you have the opportunity to say, how are we sharing this in success? And so I I feel these have been the key ingredients for helping our our firm grow and and thrive, granted far from perfect. Always continuing to challenge ourselves on

Kaihan: Mhmm.

Kurt: Where could we get better, but we have those to discussions openly with each other. Every year, we have an annual partner off-site, and a third of that time is just building relationships. I've always felt you become friends with your colleagues and your partners. You could get through any spirit of discussion. If you don't have those relationships, know, people are more inclined to, you know, dig the heels in the sand if you will on almost any topic.

But when you know someone, you respect someone, you trust someone, if they have a different view, you respect that they have a different view. If you don't know them well and they have a different view, you often have a different and, quite frankly, more of an adverse reaction to that. So we spend a lot of time with that. Then secondly, we talk about strategically what do we want to accomplish in the next three to five years. Align on that.

Say, great. So now it's never a surprise when we're doing things towards that. And then lastly, it's always important to talk about the more tactical things. Like, what are the hot buttons in the firm? What are things that we need to remedy?

Like, quick in the next three, six, nine months because they're pain points and they're frustrating people or it's taking away people's energy. So we're we're fairly disciplined in that, you know, making sure we get together for a meaningful amount of time every year, know, and knocking off those strategic and tactical things that need to get done as well as making every partner truly feel, like, I'm part of shaping that. Like, I'm not just the order taker. Like, I'm I'm part of, like, how we're doing this. And so our hope is we could do that for the foreseeable future.

Now clearly as we get bigger, you know, it becomes more challenging of how do you do that. You probably saw, you know, a little bit of that at at McKinsey, like, how do you harness you know, a growing organization to still have that intimacy of this great partnership. But I still see evidence that very large partnerships have been able to do it. Mhmm.

Kaihan: So let's just double click on, like, one aspect of those kinds of decisions that you're making. I also wanna go a little bit to asset allocation, reinvestment choices. Right? So we'll we'll talk later about your I mean, you've you've had a really diverse set of acquisitions that have or or mergers that have expanded your capabilities. But, you know, you being a CPA, you being a wealth adviser and now and and running a firm, I I imagine that you have a mindset or, you know, a way of thinking of what do we do with the profits?

How much should we distribute? And then what do we reinvest? And when we reinvest, do we reinvest in the core or horizon one or horizon two or what new areas? Just maybe you could tell us what you're you have a philosophy on capital allocation.

Kurt: I would do. First, we're very disciplined around the traditional five year plan. Is am I truly developing a five year plan with a five year financial and capital plan? So we're currently in our third five year plan. I'm very proud to report the last two five year plans.

Now we've outperformed, then I I would be remiss not to say past performance is no indication of future results, but feel that that discipline creates much clarity in in our firm. We have made a decision since we founded a firm to reinvest all profit in the firm because we're gonna be a 100 year old firm know, very nervous about, you know, distributions. I say to be funny. You know, those first distributions could be effectively like the gateway drug that once you turn them on, turning them off becomes very, very difficult. So we've designed a compensation philosophy within the firm that appropriately compensates colleagues and very competitively for what everyone's roles and responsibilities are, but that as partners of the firm, we're building this terrific firm that we've even though going on sixteen years, feel very young, you know, relative to what we're trying to build that's enduring, so we need to reinvest.

And and that has served partners here well because the the compound annual growth of partner's equity has been very high. So, thankfully, that has been the saving grace of no partners questioning about might we distribute profits because when they see the balances of their capital accounts going, alright, this is working well. And so I I think down the road, be it five years, ten years, twenty years, there might be a point where the pace of growth and and your growth and equity, you know, might slow a bit, and then you might entertain for the first time. Might we now complement this by distributing some profit, and you could get to a point where you have so much profit, you don't have ways to put that all the work, and then therefore, you know, distribute it out to the shareholders of the firm. But thus far, we've reinvested every dollar of profit since we started the firm.

Kaihan: Is there a I'm just maybe a little tactical here, but is there a mechanism for a partner that's approaching retirement and just, you know, wants to

Kurt: There there is. Yeah. We have a Dell clearly defined in our partnership agreement. But when partners of our firm now decide to retire the value of their capital account at retirement, they have one of two options to take it over 12 consecutive quarters. Where it allows an orderly way for them to get liquidity and allows all the other partners, the firm, to purchase that equity in an orderly way or option two, if they would like to take it over a long period of time, which is five years, and still keep their equity in a common equity of the firm.

So whatever portion is not redeemed on an annual basis, they're still participating in the common equity and growth of the firm.

Kaihan: Fast saying. Okay. So and then I'm gonna switch a little bit now to at scale. Right? So it's just imagine, you know, you you you you you've you've crossed 30,000,000,000 at some point, and now you're headed towards a 130,000,000,000 assets under management.

Where does strategy fit? Where does it fit? Because strategy can be m and a discernible. So it could be KPIs. It could be your board presentations.

It could be the internal consultant. It could be operate. There's so many different things that strategy could be. And in a flat organization as you have and especially I found in financial services, it's not always clear where strategy should fit. So where's this trick for you?

Do you have a a strategy office? Do the different partners like run their own strategy? Where are those decisions located?

Kurt: Yeah. I would say, I'll I'll I'll answer it now. But in the first easily seven, ten years, we're a more modestly sized firm, you just simply couldn't afford, you know, to have a a colleague dedicated to thinking about strategy. So it's, you know, whether you're the founder of a firm or you're a cofounder, but effectively that concept of the co founders have a vision of what they wanna build, have a strategy road map, hopefully put together a disciplined five year plan or something equivalent, and now you're executing blocking and tackling. And, of course, iterating because certain things you thought were gonna happen, don't, and you gotta pivot.

So you gotta be very agile is saying, hey. That's not working as well as we thought. Might there be a a better way? But as you start to mature and as you start to reach scale and so as we're now you know, we went from a scrappy start up fifteen years ago to now 1,500 you know, colleagues and professionals of our firm. Right?

Different different size firm. And and now we've evolved many different capabilities. So now strategy and execution of that becomes increasingly important and and therefore now need to have, you know, a dedicated group or groups of colleagues. So, you know, formed and, you know, for the first time, a true kind of chief growth officer, strategy officer to say, hey. We need somebody to make sure that every given day, they're looking at the landscape, looking into the marketplace.

Like, what is all possible? Where is that effectively green space, white space, weird as we see the intersection of unmet needs in which we are so well equipped to to deliver against those unmet needs. How do we better position in the marketplace? How are we being responsive to new innovation and things that are disruptive and how are we pivoting. And so that, you know, now now we have developed, but that that took nearly thirteen, fourteen years, about fifteen years to get to we now feel that we're in the place.

You know, we have a a terrific leadership team, very open, very transparent, you know, with each other. So there's no secrets, if you will. It's and we talk about these things, but we definitely charge few of these colleagues, your your responsibility is to make sure we are all well educated on what the trends are, and then when you're a hockey fan, like, where's the puck going? Because we need to be skipped where the puck's going, not where the puck's at.

Kaihan: Yeah. Because I would think, especially with a a less centralized organizational structure, you can get this proliferation of visions. Well, I guess visions brave you can bring together, but, like, what are our competitive advantages? What what are the the the the heuristics that we would use to say that this is the kind of thing that we are you've got. I've we're a partnership.

We've got we are a we're we're a fiduciary you probably have certain principles. So and maybe just talk to me about what some of those principles are that maybe speak to what you see as your competitive differentiators versus your competition.

Kurt: Yeah. We we feel that we're building those competitive differentiators. You know, definitely, we're a a humble group of professionals in our in our firm, not believing, you know, we're the greatest things since sliced bread, or we've courted the market on great ideas. I think we're what we are positioning and building, you know, to be competitive is this enduring firm whose brand, you know, stands for stability, stands for excellence, and we feel that in our industry, there's not many brands that have established that, you know, not many brands that have established themselves in wealth like a Deloitte is to its field, like a McKinsey is to its field, plus that vision for building a first of its kind global professional services firm. And so although we have a full suite of services, although I believe we have a timeless business model of offering advice and service for a fee, Although we operate of not trying to sell our client's things versus advising them where they never have to question, is this good for you?

Is it good for me? But really feel at all times that what we recommend and the advice that we render is truly in their best interest, and it's good for them, and and it's the building upon that trust, but backed by the demonstration that the professionals at our firm are at the highest in their professional craft, and then do that through enough time, and now you've secured your competitive advantage, and that is the brand trust and loyalty that, hey, before you make your decision, you should talk to Siri partners. Like, to me, that's the best litmus test we have for brand identity that the increasing number of prospective clients who inbound inquiry to us to say I I was told by a friend, by a family member, from what I heard, I needed to check with your firm to see if you would be the perfect provider before I made a decision. Ultimately, in our in our profession, there still needs to be great chemistry between people. So although you can have the perfect brand and the perfect capabilities, know, the colleague in front of any particular prospective client needs to be able to create, you know, the bond and the personal chemistry because there's still ultimately a bit of the personal choice of people or people.

And so not everyone is solely enamored with a brand name. A lot of people are driven by relationships. So if they met Tom and they really liked Tom's nature and how Tom did and Tom was at this firm they heard of and a great reputation, clearly the probability of success is is high, but it still requires Tom to have a great connection, have high EQ, you know, with with the client.

Kaihan: So, I mean, this brings up an interesting challenge that we see a lot of firms and I'm saying firms just because we're talking about finance service by companies, which is CLV or, in your case, client lifetime value. You know, like, I've got a relationship with Tom, but you have all these other capabilities now. You know, we'll talk about touch down ventures and your CVC capabilities and How how do you how do you, you know, come because I because I could just be a Tom customer. Yep. Right?

And not have benefit from these other capabilities that Cerity offers? How do you maintain the the the coordination of of of these different capabilities?

Kurt: Yeah. Well, I I I view as being a professional services firm know, whether you came up in management consulting, accounting, the legal profession, and and others, and you start with your core clientele, and you serve your clients the best of your ability. You're constantly assessing Are there any unmet needs that our clients have? And if so, how could we curate that? How do we bring them, you know, services and solutions for those unmet needs?

And then as you continue to grow, you start to assess what type of clients are we serving? Are they business founders? Are they corporate executives? Are they, you know, highly accomplished professionals? Are they entertainer and athletes?

But you start to look and say, where are we? Really being successful where does our service resident. So we are a full service firm.

Kaihan: Mhmm.

Kurt: Why is that relevant? Because regardless of your level of wealth, you could easily be dealing with five or more advisers. An attorney for your trust in state planning and accounting for your tax planning and preparation, a financial planner to make sure you understand, like, what's my road map, one or multiple bankers. You might need loans and depository products and things of that nature. Every one of us need various insurance solutions, life, disability, long term care, property, casualty.

And so for a typical individual, especially an active wealth creator, they often simply don't have the time or the interest to chase five or six different advisers and be at your home office on a Saturday with a bunch of documents in front of you going, like, alright. I gotta make sense of all this and what do I do? And you're probably frustrated after a long week because now I gotta fill out forms and get this done and follow-up. And, of course, no one's available. For my questions right here on a Saturday.

So then Monday, I'm already busy at work. We get up to figure out time. So I repeat all this because this is what drives frustration. And so that's why from day one, we built a full service firm because among the things we do that are very valuable to our clients is we do it all so that our clients don't have homework, our clients don't have that administration, or our clients don't have that follow-up in everything they're doing in their financial lives. Coordinated.

Kaihan: Yeah.

Kurt: And it's congruous with with with one another. So that in of itself became powerful. Now for some of the other capabilities, we said, wow. We serve a number of business founders and leaders And then they started asking us because of our investment acumen. Hey.

What do you think about this sector, this industry? And often, they were asking because it was of interest to them because those areas might be a competitive threat or these certain companies might be a competitive threat to their own business, to their own franchise. Really, that's what led us then to develop having a corporate venture capital advisory service to say, might we be of value to our private clients, who are leaders of companies, by having a group of colleagues who have the breadth and depth of expertise to help them with their companies, you know, invest in start up in early growth stage businesses that will help them remain innovative and competitive. Maybe give them a pipeline of future talent. Maybe give them a pipeline of future mergers and acquisitions.

Kaihan: Right.

Kurt: And so that's what led us to say. That's a natural evolution. Furthermore, and a growing number of our private clients have a growing interest to invest in start up in early growth stage businesses. And now because we're helping our large corporate clients, you know, make those investments off and there's opportunities to invest alongside big companies in Australia. I'm not really looking into this.

So it makes sense. It all comes together very powerfully, but all led by what's the next extension of how we could be of value to our clients.

Kaihan: Yes. I gotcha. I gotcha. And when does that when do these conversations come together where you get the full view around the client of what else could we do? Because I've seen, like, in your acquisitions, I've just I've I've I've just looked up some of them here.

You know? Like, you acquire Cook wealth that expands into Raleigh, Janice's wealth and debt. She got I've got these these regional acquisitions, but then you have these cape then you have these customer segment or client segment acquisitions like agility gets you into nonprofits. But this, you know, this this CVC acquisition or merger is a whole capability. So I would think that when do you guys get it in an annual partner meeting where you guys do this?

Or is it Yeah. It's But but but always or

Kurt: Yeah. Yeah. No. No. Definitely definitely part of the planning process.

So when we talk about it in the next three to five years, what capabilities do we not have today that would be powerful for us to have, to better serve our clients, to better put us in a position to grow more powerfully because of these capabilities. And then we we set course. We identify, you know, what capabilities would be beneficial, and then we are very methodical. Like, how do we go find the best individuals to be our colleagues and partners to do it? Do we simply hire really talented people to be our colleagues and build the de novo?

Or do we find a group of colleagues who just happen to have their own firm already proven an ability to do it at a very high level. And effectively, we merged to now have this capability and to create a better firm. So last year was a terrific year for that. We identified, you know, probably two to three years ago, hey. Corporate venture capital advisory be a powerful service.

How might we incorporate that? We also identified that, hey, many of our clients, our private clients, are major beta factors to foundations and endowments where they serve on the board of trustees of academic institutions or on investment committees of foundations and endowments. And over the years, we probably received several 100 RFPs from our clients. Like, I love what you do for me. Might you also do this for the Liberal Art, you know, college that I'm on the board of trustees?

Mhmm. We would get their RFP, and we open it up. And, of course, rightfully so, the RFP would ask how many of these do you have? Are you GIPS compliant and show us your track record doing this with other institutions. So that identified to us, boy, if we had that capability, that'd be very powerful.

So we set out to go find that, and we welcomed 60 incredible colleagues with our merger with agility of which three of our colleagues who are partners of our firm were the former CIOs of large university endowments, which gives us incredible, you know, expertise and credibility to do it we now have a long standing top performing track record that's, you know, compliant with measurements of investment performance. So now the next wave of those opportunities, we are so well positioned to be successful. And so that was something we identified just as recently as three years ago and already mobilized and now ready have the solution for it. And of all the things we did in the first quarter of this year, that was the biggest contributor to growth. And that capability was just something we developed in the last year.

So if you have the right capabilities in the right situation, they could be activated quickly and powerfully because there was effectively that pent up demand.

Kaihan: Yes. Yeah. And and and you have a system, a culture, a partner mindset that makes agility and and and touch down, you know, view you as the as the natural thing to add on to. It's very smart. I'm starting to see the flywheel now.

I have so many other questions, but we've reached the top of our time with you. Kirk, thank you so much for staying with us and then sharing your experience here. You've got a number of podcasts. You've participate. You contribute a lot and very generous with your time.

Any last comment for our listeners that you'd like to share?

Kurt: Just a thank you very much appreciated the invitation to join you here on the podcast and big fan of what you're doing. I'll continue to follow you. Thank you.

Kaihan: Awesome. Thank you, Kurt. Appreciate it. Have a great weekend, Shadi. Thank you to our guest, Kurt Mucinski.

Thank you to our producers, Kareen Reyes, and Zac Ness, our editor and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please. Follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Cayan Cripendorf. Thank you for listening.

We'll catch you next time on another episode of Out Thinkers.