Podcasts about Transaction

Silver Bow Mining signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Jefferson County Metallurgical Complex in Montana through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, committing roughly $28.6 million in cash at initial closing plus contingent value rights, royalties, and profit interests tied to future milestones. Mining Stock Daily spoke to president Doug Stiles and CFO Wade Black about the transaction. The complex includes two processing circuits, the Montana Tunnels M-Pit, and related infrastructure that the company believes could eventually help process ore from its nearby Rainbow Block deposit, pending a feasibility study, shareholder approval, and Bankruptcy Court sign-off.

Transaction volume across the country is down roughly 35% from a few years ago, and wholesalers and fix and flip investors are feeling it in every part of the business. Brian Snider walks through the top ten issues hitting real estate investors right now, from tighter underwriting and softening buyer demand to inconsistent marketing and thin exit strategies. He also covers where AI belongs in your workflow, why offers made is the one KPI worth tracking above closings or profit, and the budget rule he applies to every marketing channel he tests.   KEY TALKING POINTS: 0:00 - Top 10 Issues Intro 2:40 - Tighter Underwriting 3:39 - Managing Your Data 5:16 - Using AI the Right Way 6:31 - Softening Buyer Demand 7:39 - Consistent Marketing 9:18 - Sales Conversion Skills 11:22 - Multiple Exit Strategies 12:19 - KPIs and Tracking Offers 13:52 - Finding Support & Community 15:03 - Outro   LINKS: Instagram: Brian Snider https://www.instagram.com/theindysnider/   Website: Collective Genius https://thecollectivegenius.com/team-members/brian-snider/   Instagram: David Lecko https://www.instagram.com/dlecko   Website: DealMachine https://www.dealmachine.com/pod   Instagram: Ryan Haywood https://www.instagram.com/heritage_home_investments   Website: Heritage Home Investments https://www.heritagehomeinvestments.com/

Zachary Beach bought his first house for little more than closing costs. The seller was mid-divorce and could not make the next payment, so Zach took title subject to the existing loan and later sold it on rent to own. That messy first deal came together as about a seventy thousand dollar deal and broke him into the industry. Zach went from bartending to his father in law's real estate business at twenty five and has since completed or advised on over a thousand deals. He is the CEO of Smart Real Estate Coach and a three time best selling co-author of Real Estate on Your Own Terms, The New Rules for Real Estate Investing, and Sell with Authority for Real Estate Investors. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: How to structure creative real estate deals with no cash, no credit, and no banks, why implementation beats knowledge, how the three paydays system turns one property into three income streams, and how those same skills scale into acquiring companies. ZACHARY'S JOURNEY: Zach did not grow up around entrepreneurship or financial literacy. His first transaction was selling golf balls three for a dollar as a kid, and his real estate company is named Watch Street after the block where he picked them. After burning out on bartending, he joined his father in law's old-school, paper-heavy business and built the systems that became Smart Real Estate Coach, now a real estate investment company disguised as a coaching company with deals in more than eighty markets. KEY INSIGHTS: Creative financing is a people business first. Zach carries multiple tools, including seller financing, subject-to, and lease purchases, and matches each to the seller's problem instead of throwing away most of his leads. The three paydays system is the core model. A property sold on rent to own generates a deposit up front of three to ten percent, monthly cash flow, and a future cash-out from a built-in buyer. Rent to own only works when it is set up right. Zach would criticize ninety nine percent of rent-to-owns himself, which is why his team runs a quasi-underwriting process and credits the down payment toward the purchase price. Perfect for W-2 employees seeking a way out, burned-out investors watching the traditional model stop penciling, and operators exploring acquisition-driven growth. FOR MORE ON THIS EPISODE: https://www.coreykupfer.com/blog/zacharybeach FOR MORE ON ZACHARY BEACH: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharyrbeach Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZRBeach/ Company: https://smartrealestatecoach.com Free books offer: https://3paydaysbooks.com/dealquest FOR MORE ON COREY KUPFER: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreykupfer/ https://www.coreykupfer.com/ Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator, and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author, and professional speaker. He is deeply passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast. Get deal-ready with the DealQuest Podcast with Corey Kupfer, where like-minded entrepreneurs and business leaders converge, share insights and challenges, and success stories. Equip yourself with the tools, resources, and support necessary to navigate the complex yet rewarding world of dealmaking. Dive into the world of deal-driven growth today! Episode Highlights with Timestamps: [00:03] - Introduction and Zach's path from bartender to real estate dealmaker [08:38] - The first real estate deal, a subject-to purchase on a roughly $180,000 property [22:55] - The biggest mistake investors make and why implementation beats knowledge [32:56] - The three paydays system and how creative financing creates three income streams [36:15] - Addressing the rent-to-own criticism and the quasi-underwriting process [43:12] - The integrity real estate roll-up and acquiring elite educators Guest Bio: Zachary Beach is the CEO of Smart Real Estate Coach and a partner in multiple seven figure businesses. He went from bartending and personal training into his family's real estate business at twenty five, and has since completed or advised on over a thousand deals using creative financing strategies including seller financing, subject-to, and lease purchases. He is a three time best selling co-author of Real Estate on Your Own Terms, The New Rules for Real Estate Investing, and Sell with Authority for Real Estate Investors, and he co-hosts the Smart Real Estate Coach and Not Just the Transaction podcasts. He mentors students across the country and is building an integrity-focused real estate coaching roll-up. Related Episodes: Episode 191 - Jack Bosch: Building a real estate education business on real deal experience. Bosch's path from investor to educator parallels how Smart Real Estate Coach teaches from actual transactions. Episode 183 - Kent Ritter: How to invest in real estate. Ritter's emphasis on consistent execution over big promises reinforces Zach's point that implementation is what separates successful investors. Episode 332 - John Martinka: Buying businesses and the dynamics of roll-ups. A useful companion for Zach's acquisition strategy and the difference between aggregating for size and adding real value. Episode 293 - Sunny Vanderbeck: Serial acquisition, roll-ups, and building a repeatable deal program. Relevant context for anyone thinking through an acquisition-driven growth model. Keywords/Tags: creative real estate financing, subject-to deals, rent to own, no money down real estate, three paydays system, seller financing, lease purchase, real estate coaching, Smart Real Estate Coach, Zachary Beach, W-2 to entrepreneur, real estate roll-up, real estate acquisitions, deal-driven growth, DealQuest Podcast

For the past few years, multifamily investors have been hearing the same prediction: distress is coming, sellers will be forced to sell, prices will collapse, and incredible buying opportunities will finally appear. But where are all those deals? In this episode of the Small Axe Podcast, Nico Salgado looks at what's actually happening in the multifamily market in 2026 and tackles a question a lot of investors are asking: Is it finally time to buy multifamily—or should you keep waiting? Transaction volume remains low. Cap rates have expanded significantly from their 2022 lows. Some owners are facing difficult refinances and upcoming loan maturities. At the same time, there is still a tremendous amount of capital waiting on the sidelines. The massive multifamily crash many investors predicted hasn't arrived. But that doesn't mean opportunities aren't beginning to emerge. Nico explains why distress doesn't always mean foreclosure. Sometimes it's a tired owner, a partnership that wants out, a loan coming due, a property with deferred maintenance, or a seller who has finally become willing to negotiate. He also breaks down exactly how he would approach the market if he had $100,000 today and was trying to buy his first multifamily property. In this episode: Why the predicted wave of multifamily distress hasn't materialized What higher cap rates mean for apartment valuations Why lower prices don't automatically mean better deals Where smaller investors may actually find distressed opportunities How upcoming loan maturities could create motivated sellers Why waiting for lower interest rates could backfire How Nico would invest $100,000 in multifamily today Why today's market gives smaller buyers more negotiating power How to underwrite deals without relying on aggressive rent growth Why cash reserves matter more than maximizing leverage The warning signs that would make Nico walk away from a deal Why you don't need to perfectly time the bottom to build long-term wealth The goal isn't to buy just because prices have fallen. It's to find a good building at a basis that makes sense, finance it with debt you can comfortably service, keep enough cash in reserve to survive the unexpected, and create value through better operations. You don't need thousands of distressed apartment buildings to hit the market. You only need one great opportunity. Start underwriting. Build relationships. Talk to brokers and lenders. Make offers. Learn your market. And when the right opportunity shows up, be ready to move. Keep swinging that axe.

Most of life runs on a deal: you give me this, I'll give you that. Marriage is the one relationship that was never supposed to work that way — and yet it's so easy to slide into keeping score anyway. In Week 3 of Sex, Love, Work and War, we open Ephesians 5 to ask what it actually looks like to love and respect someone with no conditions attached.Along the way: why couples who deeply love each other can still feel completely unloved, why every guy secretly wants to be a hero, and why the real question isn't "would you die for your spouse?" but "what does love look like on an ordinary Tuesday?"This isn't a message about trying harder to have the perfect marriage. It's about a God who didn't wait for us to go first — and what changes in a marriage when that's the model.

Send us Fan MailWe tell the story of the Chicago dinner where Ronald Coase walks into a hostile room, and by the end everyone votes with him, led by Milton Friedman changing his mind in real time. Along the way, we unpack why transaction costs, not moral blame, often explain when law and institutions shape outcomes. • the Aaron Director dinner and the vote that flips • why Milton Friedman becomes a political symbol and lightning rod • critiques from the right and left on markets, shareholder value, trade, and Chile • Pigouvian externalities versus Coase's reciprocal harm framing • the Coase theorem as a benchmark and why real transaction costs make institutions decisive • the “twedge” on comparative advantage and the “no free lunch” remix • listener question on tax horizons, regime uncertainty, and the permanent income hypothesis  LINKS:Who's afraid of Milton Friedman (a video)Milton Friedman Lives (a blog post)Steve Medema, "What Happened on Blackstone Ave?"Mary Roach, BONKIf you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com !You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz 

What's up fraud fighters, and welcome back to Fraud Forward!This one started with a can of hairspray. Jen Lamont and I were getting ready for a networking event, and somehow a conversation about hair products turned into a conversation about the future of fraud prevention in banking. Because we ended up talking about her mom. A career teller in banking for decades. Someone who knew multiple generations of families, who turned down promotions to stay at the window because she loved the people, who took pride in the role in ways that I think a lot of institutions have quietly trained out of the job. And that got me asking a question I haven't been able to shake since: have we made it harder for the people closest to our customers to actually see them? We still call tellers our first line of defense. But we've also loaded that line with sales goals, referral quotas, transaction time expectations, compliance responsibilities, and lobby metrics. Meanwhile, fraud has gotten more human than ever. Scammers aren't just stealing credentials anymore. They're manipulating customers into moving the money themselves. And the only person standing between a coached customer and a wire going out the door is often a teller who has been measured on everything except whether they noticed something felt wrong.Jen brings a perspective to this conversation that I think is rare and really important. She's a fraud professional who grew up watching her mom build a full career at the teller window. She's seen what that role looks like when it's valued, and she's spent years as a practitioner trying to figure out how to rebuild some of that in institutions where the teller role has shifted into something almost unrecognizable.This is not a conversation about blame. It's a conversation about what we've inherited, what we're still questioning, and what we could do differently.What you'll hear in this episode:Why Jen's mom's career as a teller, and the pride she took in that role, is the lens for this entire conversationHow teller performance metrics in banking have shifted from relationship quality to sales and efficiency, and what that costs us in fraud preventionA real wire fraud scenario that shows exactly what happens when a teller has a bad feeling but no clear authority or path to act on itWhy the authorized versus unauthorized distinction misses the coercion behind authorized push payment scamsWhat tellers can see that transaction monitoring systems miss, including behavioral fraud signals, coached customer body language, and vague answers to routine questionsWhy Jen sent a $35,000 wire she knew was fraud early in her career, and what changed after thatWhat a direct escalation path to the fraud team actually needs to look like, and why ticketing systems are not enoughWhy prevented scam losses should count as strongly as product referrals on a teller scorecardWhat a senior teller career path and frontline fraud specialist role could actually look likeThe phrase you should keep in your pocket for any frontline employee dealing with a suspicious transactionYou should listen to this episode if you:Work in fraud or risk and want to understand what the career teller in banking brings to your fraud prevention program that your systems cannot replicateLead a branch, manage frontline staff, or set teller performance metrics and want to know whether your scorecards are creating conflict between service speed and teller scam detectionAre trying to build a better escalation path between your frontline and your fraud teamWant practical, actionable recommendations you can bring back to your institution this weekHave ever seen a scam succeed because the teller had the right instinct and no room to act on itAre building a fraud ambassador program or a senior teller fraud specialist role and want a framework for thinking through itCare about the human cost of fraud and want to hear a conversation about it from people who have sat with those losses

Patrick Larkin, Partner & Practice Leader, Cerity Partners Three years after launching his independent RIA, Patrick Larkin merged with Cerity Partners—but not because that was the original plan. He explains how ownership changed the way he viewed enterprise value, optionality, and the future of his business. In Summary Going independent is often viewed as the destination. Patrick Larkin discovered it was just the beginning. Louis sits down with Patrick, Partner and Practice Leader at Cerity Partners and former founder of Oak Hill Wealth Advisors, to discuss an unconventional journey: leaving Wells Fargo to build an independent RIA, then choosing to merge that business just three years later. Rather than following a predetermined exit strategy, Patrick shares how ownership fundamentally changed the way he thought about enterprise value. A conversation with a prospective acquirer revealed that buyers weren't interested in purchasing a book of business—they were looking for a business. That realization reshaped how he invested, hired, delegated, and ultimately positioned his firm for the future. The conversation from our Build Grow & Transact series also offers a candid look at life after a merger, from evaluating cultural fit and partnership to balancing autonomy with the resources of a larger organization. More broadly, it illustrates how ownership creates optionality—and why the most valuable decision an advisor makes may not be the one they originally envisioned. The Storyline After spending nearly 15 years building a successful practice at AG Edwards, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo, Patrick Larkin launched Oak Hill Wealth Advisors in 2022 with a simple objective: build a business on his own terms. Like many advisors, he expected independence to be the final destination for a long time. But then there was the realization that ownership changes more than economics; it changes perspective. And it became the beginning of an entirely different way of thinking. As acquisition inquiries arrived sooner than expected, Patrick realized something that fundamentally changed his strategy. Sophisticated buyers weren't evaluating his client relationships as a book of business; they were evaluating Oak Hill as an enterprise. That insight shifted his priorities from maximizing short-term profitability to building a business that could thrive beyond its founder. Just three years after launching, Patrick chose to merge with Cerity Partners—not because he was looking for an exit, but because he believed it strengthened the future for his clients, his team, and his family. Louis and Patrick explore what led to that decision, how ownership increased the value of his business almost immediately, why he compares independence to an IPO, and what advisors should consider if they hope to create options for the future—even if they don't yet know what that future looks like. Topics Covered Building enterprise value versus maximizing annual income Creating optionality through ownership Leaving Wells Fargo to launch an independent RIA Why buyers value businesses more than books of business Evaluating strategic partners and acquisition opportunities The economics of independence and business valuation Life after merging with Cerity Partners Balancing autonomy with enterprise-scale resources Leadership, succession, and building beyond the founder Long-term ownership and partnership models > Download a transcript of this episode… Listen and Learn Highlights for Advisors Why did Patrick decide to leave Wells Fargo? (11:07) Patrick explains why growing frustrations around control, firm priorities, and the ability to build his business eventually outweighed the comfort of staying put. How did going independent immediately change the value of his business? (21:42) Patrick introduces one of the episode's biggest ideas: why launching Oak Hill felt like taking a company public and how ownership increased the firm's value almost overnight. Why did Patrick sell only three years after becoming independent? (20:03) An unexpected conversation with a prospective acquirer completely changed how he viewed enterprise value and accelerated his long-term thinking. What separates a business from a book of business? (21:42) Patrick discusses why recruiting advisors, delegating client relationships, and investing beyond himself made Oak Hill more attractive to strategic buyers. Why Cerity Partners? (26:48) Rather than focusing on valuation, Cerity emphasized culture, partnership, and long-term alignment—qualities Patrick says ultimately mattered most. What is life actually like after a merger? (37:57) Patrick offers an unusually candid perspective on autonomy, leadership, and why he says he hasn't second-guessed the decision once. Key Takeaways Ownership creates opportunities that often aren't visible until after independence. Enterprise value is built by creating a business that can thrive beyond its founder. The first acquisition conversation can be valuable even if no transaction occurs. Cultural alignment may ultimately matter more than valuation when selecting a long-term partner. Independence doesn't eliminate future options—it expands them. Strategic transactions can strengthen outcomes for clients, employees, and owners simultaneously. The goal isn't simply to own a business; it's to create choices for what comes next. https://youtu.be/f7FGLGjBbyo Quotable Moments “The day Oak Hill launched felt like the business had gone public.” “Potential acquirers weren't interested in buying a book. They were interested in buying a business.” “Ownership isn't simply about control. It's about creating optionality.” “The fear of leaving is almost always worse than the actual experience of leaving.” FAQs Why did Patrick Larkin merge with Cerity Partners only three years after launching his RIA? Patrick explains that independence changed how he viewed enterprise value. After learning what sophisticated buyers were actually looking for, he intentionally built Oak Hill as a business rather than simply managing for annual profitability. Why does Patrick compare independence to an IPO? Because ownership immediately transformed the economic value of his practice. Rather than participating in an internal succession model, he owned an independent enterprise that carried substantially greater market value. What changed after Patrick became independent? Beyond gaining control, he began making decisions through the lens of enterprise value—investing in advisors, systems, and infrastructure that would make the business less dependent on him personally. What made Cerity Partners stand out? Patrick cites the firm's culture, partnership model, meritocracy, long-term vision, and ability to combine local autonomy with enterprise-level capabilities. Is this episode only relevant for advisors considering selling? No. The broader lesson is that ownership creates flexibility. Whether an advisor ultimately remains independent or joins another organization, understanding how enterprise value is created can influence decisions from day one. What is the biggest lesson Patrick hopes advisors take away? That independence isn't simply about leaving a firm. It's about creating the ability to choose what comes next on your own terms. Patrick explains that independence changed how he viewed enterprise value. After learning what sophisticated buyers were actually looking for, he intentionally built Oak Hill as a business rather than simply managing for annual profitability. Because ownership immediately transformed the economic value of his practice. Rather than participating in an internal succession model, he owned an independent enterprise that carried substantially greater market value. Beyond gaining control, he began making decisions through the lens of enterprise value—investing in advisors, systems, and infrastructure that would make the business less dependent on him personally. Patrick cites the firm's culture, partnership model, meritocracy, long-term vision, and ability to combine local autonomy with enterprise-level capabilities. No. The broader lesson is that ownership creates flexibility. Whether an advisor ultimately remains independent or joins another organization, understanding how enterprise value is created can influence decisions from day one. That independence isn't simply about leaving a firm. It's about creating the ability to choose what comes next on your own terms. Related Resources From Start-Up to $31B Behemoth RIA: The Catalysts Behind the Growth of Mega-Firm Cerity Partners Ownership Matters: What Advisors Need to Know When Evaluating Firms Top Tips for Setting Your Business Up for Success Years Before a Move Patrick LarkinPartner and Practice Leader Patrick is a Partner and Practice Leader in the Lansdowne, VA office. He is a member of the Lansdowne Practice, where he works closely with families, foundations, and non-profits to help them define and achieve their financial goals with clarity and confidence. With a deep specialization in retirement income distribution planning and complex risk and wealth management strategies, Patrick is known for helping clients simplify complicated financial decisions, reduce uncertainty, and build sustainable, long-term plans. His approach emphasizes fiduciary responsibility, transparency, and personalized guidance — ensuring clients always feel informed and empowered. Prior to joining Cerity Partners, Patrick was the founding member of Oak Hill Wealth Advisors, where he built a highly respected independent advisory practice that earned the trust of families, professionals, and mission-driven organizations across the region. His leadership was instrumental in shaping a client-first culture that continues today. Patrick's work is rooted in a passion for long-term relationships — guiding clients not just through markets, but through life's milestones such as retirement, business transitions, philanthropic planning, and wealth transfer across generations. He takes pride in being both a strategic advisor and a steady partner to the people he serves. Patrick lives in Bluemont, VA, with his wife Angela, their two children, Paige and Sean, and their Golden Retrievers, Huckleberry and Genoa. Outside of the office, Patrick and his family enjoy an active lifestyle — whether it's hiking and backpacking on the Appalachian Trail, biking the Great Allegheny Passage, or sailing on the Chesapeake Bay. These experiences reflect his belief in balance, resilience, and enjoying the journey — values he also brings to his work with clients. NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Diamond Consultants. Neither Diamond Consultants nor the guests on this podcast are compensated in any way for their participation. View the transcript of this episode… Build, Grow & Transact: From Breakaway to Transaction in 3 Years A conversation with Louis Diamond and Patrick Larkin, Partner & Practice Leader at Cerity Partners.      Louis Diamond: Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is Build, Grow & Transact: From Breakaway to Transaction in 3 Years. It’s a conversation with Patrick Larkin, Partner and Practice Leader at Cerity Partners. I’m Louis Diamond, and this is The Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wirehouse, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned. And each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education-driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at 908-879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual Advisor Transition Report. It’s the award-winning, data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Louis Diamond: Ownership as a way of creating opportunities you can’t always predict. That’s exactly why we created our Build, Grow, and Transact series. Independence isn’t the end of the story. It’s often the beginning of thinking differently about enterprise value, optionality, and what comes next. Today’s guest is Patrick Larkin, Partner and Practice Leader at Cerity Partners, and formerly the founder of Oak Hill Wealth Advisors. Patrick spent nearly 15 years building a successful practice at A.G. Edwards, Wachovia, and eventually Wells Fargo before launching his own independent firm in 2022. Just three years later, he merged that firm into Cerity. At first glance, that timeline might seem surprisingly short, but as you’ll hear, the merger wasn’t a change in direction. It was the result of seeing his business differently once he owned it. Yet, it’s this perspective that really brings that thought home. Patrick said the day Oak Hill launched felt like the business had gone public because overnight, what had been viewed as a book of business became an enterprise with substantially greater value, some four to five times the value of what it was worth at Wells. And that realization changed the way he invested, the way he hired, and ultimately the way he thought about the future. Pat and I also talk about something advisors don’t often discuss candidly, what life actually looks like after a merger. How much control do you give up? What changes day to day? How do you know whether you’re joining a partner or simply selling a business? Whether your long-term plan is to remain independent forever or eventually join a larger organization, Patrick’s experience is a reminder that ownership isn’t simply about control. It’s about creating optionality and putting yourself in a position where the next decision is yours to make. So let’s get to it. Patrick, thanks for coming on our show today. Patrick Larkin: Oh, my pleasure. Nice to meet you, Louis. Louis Diamond: You too. So let’s start off basically how we start every interview. Tell us about yourself, your background, and how you found your way into our industry in the first place. Patrick Larkin: Yeah, thank you for asking. I knew I always wanted to be a financial advisor. That part really wasn’t in question, but upon graduating college and being a 22-year-old, I knew that it was probably not practical to walk in and start advising people my parents’ age with their life savings. Probably wasn’t going to be a recipe for success. So I took a quick tour through the pharmaceutical industry first, which ended up being unexpectedly valuable. My employers there pushed me to think like an entrepreneur and within our territories. And honestly, that mindset never left me. It shaped how I built everything that came after. Eventually, an opportunity presented itself in Loudoun County, Virginia in Northern Virginia, and I became an FA trainee with A.G. Edwards, absolutely fantastic firm to start my career. Now, what drew me to this career was pretty simple. I felt like it was one of the professions that we had an opportunity to do so much good for others while simultaneously also doing well for yourself, and those two things aren’t in conflict. I also really loved the idea that in this profession there was no hiding. You don’t get paid to show up. You get paid for what you actually do. And perhaps for me, what was most important, I loved the weight of responsibility. I loved earning people’s trust. I loved the idea of deserving, being deserving of their trust, and being a steward of what they’ve worked a lifetime to build. I never took that lightly, and I still don’t. Louis Diamond: That’s amazing. Yeah, I mean, the number of people I’ve heard, you talked so fondly about A.G. Edwards and there’s a bunch of other firms that have since been absorbed or emerged that are like the regional firms of old. So not surprised to hear you loved it. A.G. Edwards, obviously, became Wells Fargo Advisors or was acquired or merged with Wells Fargo. So I know you’re at Wells and A.G. Edwards until 2022. So give us a quick version. How’d you build your practice from the pharma world into being in FA? Patrick Larkin: Yeah, so as I started with A.G. Edwards, I came in at really just the perfect time. It was towards the end of the financial crisis. And I built the business the old-fashioned way with a lot of cold calling and eventually did some dinner seminars, which I can tell you is a very expensive way to learn how to speak in front of a room. But I made some progress, and I was also in a great office, small enough that some of the advisors there would hand off some of the smaller accounts that they weren’t interested in working with, and got an opportunity to get a lot of reps in working with real life clients and individuals. I knew early on I didn’t have enough talent to win on talent alone, so I made up for it and compensated for that with really hard work. The real turning point came for me when A.G. Edwards was first acquired by Wachovia Securities, and that was about five years into my career. And at that point, my branch manager, who was eyeing retirement, asked me to step in as her partner, and that changed everything. We eventually moved over to a Wachovia Securities office, another really great local office in Loudoun County, Virginia. And from that office, I worked on and became a CIMA, a CFP, worked with the clients, built a business through referrals. And I found at that point in my career when I would go to a meeting with Wachovia, eventually Wells Fargo, as a young 30-year-old, I would look around the room often and realize that I was the youngest person in the room. The funny thing was 10 years later, I would go into that same room and I’d look around and I still was the youngest guy in that room. And those demographics in our industry, and when I came into our industry, ultimately led that office that I worked in with Wells Fargo Advisors, I eventually was the recipient and party to five different succession plans- Louis Diamond: Wow. Patrick Larkin: … at Wells Fargo Advisors. I hoped that I had built a reputation as somebody that these other advisors would entrust with their clients. And over that time period, really, I would say professionally, one of my accomplishments I’m most proud of is all five of those retired advisors that I used to work with, who had an opportunity to see me work with clients, all became clients of mine, I still continue to work with. And it’s professionally just one of the greatest honors that I’ve ever had. Louis Diamond: I mean, that’s a large number of advisors you helped sunset, but I would agree it’s the ultimate proof of concept that they not only trusted you with their clients and their life’s work, but now also with their family’s wealth. So I like that, kind of the full life cycle there. So I’m curious, though, you stayed at Wells through a really turbulent time through the fake bank scandal. There’s a lot of attrition. I mean, obviously, they’re still a powerhouse to this day, but what kept you at Wells for as long as it did before you left in 2022? Patrick Larkin: You described it as a turbulent time. Pretty turbulent might be an understatement. Even before Wells, the transition to Wells, Wachovia Bank had been the first company that we transitioned to from A.G. Edwards. And we, of course, went through the financial crisis during that time period and handholding our clients and helping them get through that time period and dealing with concerns that we shouldn’t really have to be prepared with. “Is my money safe? It’s not what’s happening to the market, but is my money safe in your institution?” But once things stabilized, I found real purpose in partnering with some of the retiring advisors and opportunities that came up. It was a really wonderful climate and atmosphere in our local office. It was really a family-like atmosphere, and I still had a lot to learn. And all those advisors that I partnered with, I’ve joked I’ve never had an original idea in my entire life. I stole all my good ideas from them. And some of them were really ahead of their time, and I learned, adopted, and built my own philosophies by working closely with them. Ultimately, by the time I left Wells Fargo, I was finishing up the fifth sunset program and had only made my way halfway through the sunset before the opportunity presented itself to create my own practice. Louis Diamond: So I’m curious, when did you first seriously start thinking about leaving and what really tipped the scales for you? What was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back? Patrick Larkin: Yeah, it really was a number of small items and ultimately one big one. But for a long time, I’d been content, but as I tried to grow the business beyond what I could do individually, I felt like I kept running into walls. There were it felt like limitations on how I could build out my team and structure the practice the way I envisioned it. Additionally, there were some new policies that also started to bother me. One of them was the platform advisory fee, which in my eyes was less about client transparency and more about replacing a declining revenue source on the firm’s balance sheet. And after dealing with clients and helping them through the bank scandal at the firm, I was concerned that this would come back and hurt me and the relationships that I had with my clients. Incidentally, I just recently onboarded a new client that transferred to us. And for them, looking at their statement, identifying this platform advisory fee- Louis Diamond: Oh boy. Patrick Larkin: … was the last straw for them before they moved about 15 million of assets to us. Also, I thought I would be I would be a better allocator of resources than Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo retained about half of the revenue that I earned for the business. They seemed to think that the best allocation of that money was additional middle management. Whereas, I thought investment in technology, investment in additional personnel, and an investment in marketing were best places to continue to build out my vision. The final straw, and really a thing that crystallized everything for me was when I read a book in 2021 called The Infinite Game, a book written by Simon Sinek. Chapter eight, the title is Ethical Fading. And it uses the Wells Fargo bank scandal as a case study in what happens when a firm loses its moral compass. I read the chapter and thought, “There it is, I have to do something.” That was really the final push I needed. I mentioned earlier I was very fortunate to start my career with a company called A.G. Edwards, a regional brokerage firm. And while I was at A.G. Edwards, there was a research report that came out on A.G. Edwards as a company. And I’m going to paraphrase a little bit on what was said in that report, but ultimately there was a line in there, and it was a criticism, but I took it as a huge positive as being an employee there. The line said, “While management does not necessarily say it, we believe the client is put ahead of the shareholder.” And that was something I was very proud of. And I just, upon reflecting on it, felt confident those were words that I never was going to see go to print about Wells Fargo. Louis Diamond: So you left Wells in 2022 and founded Oak Hill Wealth Partners in Lansdowne, Virginia. Walk us through that decision. Why go independent rather than going to another firm? Patrick Larkin: I really thought moving to another firm, the things that I had grown frustrated with at Wells Fargo Advisors, I would also find at another wirehouse firm. I was ready, and honestly, the simple answer is I thought I could do better. And I wanted control after having what I felt like was very little control. I had grown frustrated with others making important decisions, and I wanted an opportunity to grab the reins and make decisions on my own. I believe at that time, the future of wealth management was going to be built around fiduciary advice, and I didn’t want to watch that from the sidelines anymore. I was watching what was happening in the industry. And as we were trying to hire new advisors, reaching out to college graduates who were studying CFP programs, identified that they were more inclined to want to start employment with an RIA than a wirehouse. What made the timing work really well was Wells Fargo had actually introduced a program to help advisors in the private client group spin off and establish their own RIAs. Now, whenever I tell this to another advisor, particularly ones that are wirehouses, they can’t understand it. And quite frankly, I don’t understand why they helped us do it, but we were about the 30th practice that they helped us through this process and they provided real support. They hired consultants, made vendor recommendations, even referrals to financing so I could pay off my last succession plan before I left. The only really upside for Wells Fargo was that the ask was that we continue to use First Clearing as the custodian. And one of the downsides for me was I was going to leave all of my deferred comp behind with Wells Fargo. Now, all clients had to do to join me was sign a positive consent. And on May 9th, 2020, we turned on our computers in our new office and our clients were already there. That same day, we launched and started a relationship with Charles Schwab. And it was so exciting to be able to start shopping for what I thought was the best FinTech, really feeling like I was stuck with proprietary tools that Wells Fargo advisors had offered. I felt like I was a kid in a candy store. And if there was a cool tool that I identified that would help us serve our clients better, I was all in and I was buying it. I really feel that some of the technology that Oak Hill eventually bought into and some of the tools we’re using now are going to take years and years before they eventually trickle down to where the wirehouses are, if ever. Louis Diamond: Interesting. So it was really it was for the most part an internal move from one- Patrick Larkin: It was- Louis Diamond: … channel to the other. Patrick Larkin: … it was an internal move, but there was no requirement to stay at First Clearing. As a fiduciary, they couldn’t make those demands. And again, they helped us with the financing, which is really unusual that they helped us secure a loan so I could pay off the last retiring advisor. It’s really unusual that a bank will loan money where there is no business at the time, but because of previous experience that financial institution had working with Wells, they helped us facilitate the transaction. And the program is still in place at Wells Fargo, which is absolutely amazing to me after the experience that I’ve just had myself. Louis Diamond: Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, does it cannibalize a more profitable revenue source? Sure. But if the alternative was all the assets go to Schwab or Fidelity, to me, honestly, it’s smart. I think they played the long game by not being adversarial on it. Patrick Larkin: I think they played a long game and they took the philosophy, and I think they use it as a recruiting tool that if you love them, set them free. And that’s exactly what they did. Louis Diamond: So for the rest of the episode, I want to talk about your eventual, and not that long period of time, transaction or decision to merge Oak Hill with Cerity Partners. This is our Build, Grow, Transact subseries. And I was really struck by your story because you were three years or so into running Oak Hill, and then your merger with Cerity Partners, an amazing RIA closed. That’s a fairly short runway. Usually when I see folks go independent for the first time, it’s 10, 15, 20 years, maybe never, that they decide to merge or sell. I’m curious to understand your thinking about the transaction. Were you looking to do something? Or was it just like right place, right time and the opportunity presented itself? Patrick Larkin: I had started Oak Hill with the intent of eventually down the road, much closer to retirement, looking for a partner. The opportunity and what I learned early on helped change that idea and philosophy, and I adapted and made modifications to take advantage of it. Louis Diamond: Interesting. So you weren’t necessarily planning on selling or merging the business, it just kind of circumstances happened the way they did? Patrick Larkin: Yeah. When we started Oak Hill Wealth Advisors, it was a really pretty short period of time before we started getting calls from larger national RIAs about potential acquisition, much sooner than I expected. Early on, I just brushed them off, but about a year in, I took one of those calls and it really just opened my eyes up. I realized for the first time this small firm, this little practice actually had some real value, way more than I’d given it credit for. That first call, that first exploration didn’t go anywhere. It wasn’t a good fit. But what it gave me was a much clearer picture of what the serious acquirers were actually looking for. And that changed decisions I made at Oak Hill going forward. I really at that point stopped trying to optimize for near-term profit and really thought of my business as a business and started building towards enterprise value, sometimes at the cost of short-term income. And that turned out to be exactly the right call. Louis Diamond: That’s such an interesting perspective. Let’s double-click into that concept. So it sounds almost counterintuitive that if you kind of had this light bulb moment that like, “Okay, maybe I want to transact my business sooner than I initially thought.” I think most people would say, “Let’s become lean and mean. Let’s become as profitable as possible so my EBITDA’s higher.” But you took the different approach. What were the decisions you did to invest more in enterprise value rather than current cash flow? Patrick Larkin: A true business is one that doesn’t need me to be here every day to operate. And when we left Wells Fargo Advisors, it was myself and one other advisor that created Oak Hill Wealth Advisors. I was responsible for about 95% of the assets and revenue. And one of the more significant investments we made is in additional advisors. I recruited three new advisors, all CFPs, to join Oak Hill Wealth Advisors. Whereas, before I had been largely managing all the relationships myself. For someone that kind of grew up in the regional wirehouse space, it’s pretty counterintuitive to start moving relationships away from you onto other advisors. You’re trained and built to create a moat around your relationships, and realized that the potential acquirers are not interested, at least the ones I was interested in, weren’t interested in buying a book. They were interested in buying a business. And that just meant every decision we made going forward was not profit-driven, but how can I increase the value of the business? So after that first call, I knew I probably would be looking to move forward with a transaction sooner as opposed to the end of retirement. That information that I got on that first call helped me realize that when Oak Hill Wealth Advisors opened its doors on May 9th, 2022, we effectively had an IPO. I had great familiarity with how the succession plans at Wells Fargo Advisors worked. And on that day that we opened our practice, the value of my business jumped to be four to five times the value of it in a succession plan at Wells Fargo Advisors. Now, I knew going forward that I was going to be able to increase revenue. I was going to be able to increase EBITDA. I was going to potentially have some benefits from a market tailwind. I knew the multiples of EBITDA that the firms use may fluctuate, but the biggest change by far occurred leaving the wirehouse and having the value of my business grow four to fivefold in that same day. So what I really focused on was making sure that I was going to, when I was ready to start looking again after I had worked on improving the practice, really was going to look for a firm that was going to be a good cultural fit for both my clients, my team, and myself. Louis Diamond: That’s such a cool perspective. I’ve never heard anyone say that the day we launched your independent business was like an IPO. But honestly, it’s so true. You’re planting a flag in the ground that like, “Here is real value. This is value that we’ve created that we own rather than it being a book of business and a W-2 paycheck.” And it’s a fascinating perspective. Patrick Larkin: Yep. It really is amazing that the value changed that much on one day and the future value changes. Looking at the equity that I owned in Oak Hill Wealth Advisors, it made sense to consider is there a better way to take some risk off the table for myself and my family and diversify some of the equity that I had in Oak Hill Wealth Advisors with a larger enterprise? Louis Diamond: It makes complete sense. Obviously, everyone would sign up for 4 to 5X increase in value. Patrick Larkin: Sure. Louis Diamond: That’s not the reason most people go independent, but it’s important to know. And also, what I really liked about what you shared is I think a really valuable learning for anyone is those calls come in, whether it’s from annoying people like me or from an acquirer, from a firm, they’re not all noise. You took it as an opportunity to learn. Even though that first person who called wasn’t the right fit, it crystallized something in your mind and it let you make proactive decisions that ultimately paid off in spades when it came time to sign the dotted line for your transaction with Cerity. So I think it’s brilliant. And it’s very big picture, big-business-owner-type stuff that I think a lot of people will just filter out because it’s annoying and I’m young, I’m not looking to sell, but that was the journey. Patrick Larkin: Yeah, that first call changed my opinion about timing of when to move forward with a partnership. Originally, I thought this would be something at the end of retirement. The timing of doing so sooner seemed a lot more appealing after having that conversation and realizing what we had actually built. Louis Diamond: Amazing. So ultimately you decided to merge with Cerity Partners. We’ve had Kurt Miscinski from Cerity Partners on the show. They’re a real heavyweight within the RIA world. Most recently, they were valued at $8 billion in a recap, and it’s a very impressive firm. What specifically drew you to Cerity versus other potential buyers? Like you said, you got a lot of calls. Patrick Larkin: After that first call, I just got to work and focused on continuing to take care of our clients, building a team, adding new advisors, being a mentor to those advisors. But at the same time, we were being approached fairly regularly by that point. And I had a pretty good system for quickly deciding whether something was worth a second look, and most weren’t. But about a year ago, one of the national RIAs caught my attention and I started having conversations with them. And once I had progressed with them, I though, “You know what? If I’m giving this consideration, I really need to cast a wider net.” So I reached out to other RIAs that I had looked at and admired and been keeping an eye on. And ultimately, my longtime business coach, Barbara Kay, suggested I talk with Cerity Partners, a company that one of her other clients had just recently joined. And from the very first call, I could tell something was different. And I talked to many different companies. Cerity Partners, and an individual I spoke with, Geoff Newman, they weren’t leading with valuation formulas or deal structure. They were asking questions about my clients, my team, and how I actually ran the practice. They had a very defined process for identifying partners who were genuinely compatible, not just advisors with books that were transferable. And that distinction mattered greatly to me. They also offered really, in my opinion, the right balance of support and still having some autonomy. And their aspiration to deliver consistent standard of care to clients, whether they be in California or Virginia, so that those individuals get the same quality of experience, resonated with how I was already running things within my practice. That combination of support and autonomy, I really liked the idea of continuing to have oversight over my local practice, over our practice, which included the budget, salaries, and bonuses. It more than anybody else felt like a partnership and not a buyout. And I really appreciate it during that first call, Cerity was the only company that talked about a hundred-year plan. It was amazing to me to hear what their thoughts were. Most of the other firms I spoke with talked about valuations. And very quickly in the process, I found myself on a Zoom call with a Patagonia fleece vest-wearing private equity rep walking me through a valuation. And it was efficient, but it was not a cultural fit for me. And the infrastructure behind us and the combination of autonomy is really harder to find than most people think. As I progressed with Cerity, I remember early on in the process thinking to myself, “My God, I hope they want me, I hope they want me,” because I could tell I’m a very process-driven person They had a process with the way they brought me on board. And ultimately, we had a due diligence trip set up to go to one of their larger offices where I met with one of their leaders, Claire O’Keefe, part of their practice development, and had an opportunity to meet with different leaders within the firm and really get my arms wrapped around the potential that they had. Just the quality of the people I encountered through the whole process just kept reinforcing the decision. And by the time we got to the finish line, it didn’t feel like a transaction. It felt like I was joining something that I was excited to be part of. So just a little bit more about what attracted me to Cerity, their culture is just phenomenal. Cerity Partners uses the word “meritocracy” and they actually mean it. Ownership and influence here track your contribution, not your tenure or how well you play the politics. I just attended my first partner meeting in April, and without exaggeration, it was the most extraordinary professional meeting I’ve attended in my 25-year career. During the meeting, there was open debate about the direction of the firm, and every voice in the room carried weight. You could feel the culture. And that type of culture is built over years. You can’t fake it. Everyone in the room it felt like was rowing in the same direction. And by the time the meeting was over, I was so excited to get back to my team and tell them about what I had just witnessed, I wasn’t looking for the exit. I was looking for the brick wall to run through. I was so excited. And every once in a while I wonder having spent so much time in the wirehouse spaces, the bar just set really low for me when I talked to some of my other colleagues that have been independent for a long time. But it was just an absolutely amazing experience. And I do want to just add, one of the last really important things to me about Cerity Partners is I’ve been very fortunate with my career and in this profession. And part of my goal over the rest of my career is to have a legacy. And my legacy currently exists with the families I’ve advised and the team that I’ve built and have served and led. But Cerity Partners is helping me achieve even a greater legacy in our industry with our shared long-term goals. During my first meeting, they talked about their hundred-year vision of being a worldwide employee-owned professional services firm. And currently, and this is very exciting, the employees are the largest shareholder of the firm. No one else I talked to talked about their long-term goals like this, and it’s a vision I believe in. I want to contribute to help to see it accomplished. And one day when I do retire, I want to look back and see how I contribute it to a company that I believe is going to change the direction of professional wealth management. Louis Diamond: Wow. Patrick Larkin: My partnership with Cerity Partners is going to make that a reality. It’s just an amazing place. Yeah, very happy. Louis Diamond: Honestly, you can’t fake that type of enthusiasm. It sounds like- Patrick Larkin: It’s not- Louis Diamond: … you entered into a transaction, which is it’s like jumping into the deep end. How do you sort through what’s the sales process versus what’s real? How much of this is actually going to translate to my life? But hearing you not that long after the transaction, you still feel that and it’s very cool. In the press release I read, you cited estate planning, private markets access, and cross-border planning as key reasons for the merger. Can you talk about what it was about those? Maybe- Patrick Larkin: Yeah. Louis Diamond: … anything else that was missed? Patrick Larkin: Yeah. Louis Diamond: And were those not things that you felt like you could have delivered yourself as a standalone? Patrick Larkin: I thought that they were going to help me be able to be more effective in delivering those, but they weren’t the complete picture. The capabilities that we cited in the release were genuine gaps I wanted to fill and have available for clients and be able to prospect and go after new additional clients. But being fully honest, there were also deeper drivers. One was my team. Sometimes we get emotional about this. Being someone who’s trusted is really important to me, and that’s something I hold in high priority. There are people that followed me out of Wells Fargo to join me. One of my client associates had delayed her retirement so that she could join me and help us launch for the first three months. One of my other client associates has been with me close to 15 years. These are people that trusted me to do the right thing and to make sure that I wasn’t walking them off the plank. Being able to join Cerity Partners and give them a future that didn’t hinge entirely on my personal longevity was a huge relief. And Cerity Partners is an ownership culture. I’m so happy to say today that every single individual on my team in our practice in Lansdowne is now either an equity owner in Cerity Partners or very shortly will be an equity- Louis Diamond: So cool. Patrick Larkin: … equity owner. So they have a stake as well in what they’re building. It matters. My youngest client associate noticed how much it costs to send to FedEx. And he goes, “Now that I’m an owner, maybe we should rethink about sending regular mail.” Another driver was my family. And I’ve always had the philosophy of trying to prioritize and clients first, team and colleagues, and then my family. And I’ve always made decisions that if I put those others before myself, eventually I’ll be taken care of. And going through this transaction, it was so generous to my family and provided such security. There was a little bit of guilt that, “Am I doing this for all the right reasons?” But being able to secure my family’s future, converting equity in a three-year-old RIA into a stake of a $8 billion-plus valuation with institutional backing, that was a meaningful moment and I’d be less than honest if I glossed over that. I also really wanted to be part of something larger than myself. And the opportunity to help build a legacy in this business with Cerity Partners really gives me the platform to do that. Louis Diamond: Very cool. I can tell that you’re genuine, not just because of the way you sound, the way you’re speaking, but in the very beginning of the episode, you talked about the reason you got into this business was because you thought it gave you the dual purpose of being able to help people, but also being able to enrich yourself or your family. So this answer, it comes full circle. You’re able to accomplish all these goals, which made it the right decision. And I think, look, I say to advisors all the time, “You’re allowed to be greedy, you’re allowed to be selfish as long as the clients are still in the front of your mind as the most important thing.” There’s nothing wrong with doing better for clients, building a legacy in your case, but also reaping the rewards of all your hard work and labor and also all the risks that you’ve taken over your career. I got to ask you, though, from being an employee of Wells, where you were running your team, for the most part, you can run the business within their guardrails the way you want, to then running an RIA, which is really like you’re fully in control of everything, to now being a partner, but you’re not the one who has the name on the door anymore. Patrick Larkin: Right, right. Louis Diamond: Well, how do you think about the giving up control and full ownership of your practice versus owning a very small amount of a much larger entity? Patrick Larkin: There was such continuity. Oak Hill Wealth Advisors and Cerity Partners were so philosophically aligned that I genuinely never felt like I was giving up anything that I wasn’t glad to let go. My wife joined the business shortly before I left Wells Fargo Advisors. And still to this day, on my drive home from work, I call her up and say, “You’re not going to believe this.” And it’s all a positive, good thing. So Cerity has struck the perfect balance of that autonomy and support combination that I was looking for. So I still have control and a say over the way our practice is managed. Very shortly after the merger, my supervisor came down and met me for the first time, and we went out together after the day had ended. And early in the conversation I said to him, “What can I do to make your life easier?” And he said, “Pat, what can I do to make your life easier?” And that set the tone that still exists to this day. I almost cried when he said that because that was so different than what I had experienced up to that point. So the collaboration, the way we work together, it’s just absolutely amazing. And not once for a single moment have I second-guessed my decision. And it’s really weird because I’ve now been part of this organization for nearly nine months, and there just has not been one thing that’s occurred where I said, “That’s a disappointment.” It’s just been absolutely amazing every single day. Louis Diamond: Very cool. To me, there’s different arcs of when you want to ask people the question of, “Hey, any regrets?” And usually you don’t want to ask them too soon because they’re still going through the transition and integration and growing pains. And you don’t want to ask them too far in the future because you forget about what was life before. To be this short of a duration into this new partnership and to have these feelings, that’s absolutely pretty special. I got two more questions for you, Pat, if you don’t mind. Patrick Larkin: Sure. Louis Diamond: First one, economically, to me, one of the hardest things for really any advisor to really grapple with or to fully comprehend or make their own is, “I own 100% of the equity in my business. I get to decide when I want to sell in the future. My business is growing 10% per year. I wait to sell until 10 years from now, my business is going to be much bigger and I get to keep all the cash flow. I get to make all the decisions.” That compared to the path that you took, which was take cash off the table, which everyone understands, to, “Now, I own a much smaller piece of a much larger pie.” How would you talk to someone about the financial trade-off between a hundred percent ownership in their business, full control, full discretion over everything, versus becoming a minority equity partner in a larger entity? Patrick Larkin: You have to look at the valuation of my business, again, the day that we opened our doors as Oak Hill Wealth Advisors. There was such a massive jump in the value of the business. There was not going to be an opportunity for an appreciation at that level. So then, you have to compare what the growth rate is of Oak Hill Wealth Advisors versus a Cerity Partners. And I’m not embarrassed to say that Cerity Partners is and has been growing at a much faster rate of return. The value of the equity that I have retained in Cerity Partners, my ownership stake, I fully expect by the time I transact that business as I get closer to retirement, that’s going to be worth many times more than whatever opportunity I would have had at Wells Fargo with the valuation they would have provided me. Nevermind, very important, the tax consequences of a structure like this is all the retiring advisors that I worked with were taxed at their highest marginal rate. I owned a business and we were taxed at long-term capital gains rates. A significant difference in savings in what as the owner we actually realize. So yeah, I feel very comfortable with the ownership that I have and the control and continued opportunity with the meritocracy culture to increase my share of ownership in the company. Louis Diamond: Okay, and let’s do one more question here. I’ll pick it back up. So Pat, I think it’s a really cool perspective. It’s almost do your homework, and if you find the right horse and the right jockey that can run faster than you can on your own, that the equity value will compound and grow and appreciate in a faster, more efficient way than what you’re doing on your own, which makes complete sense. It’s the ultimate trade-off. And again, it’s like jumping into the deep end. On the one hand, Oak Hill was all you, right? You control the growth, for better or worse, for the good days, the bad days, the good years, the bad years, versus now your growth is diversified amongst hundreds of partners across M&A, across different lead flow channels, et cetera. It makes complete sense. But honestly, if I were an advisor, I don’t know how I would think about it. I think it’s all just fact-and-circumstance-based on where I am in my life and who the firm is and what I’m trying to accomplish. But it’s such a cool perspective because usually the playbook that we see, which is why we did this series, is go independent and there’s a long pause until there is a realization of all the value that’s been created. So seeing you do this in a much quicker timeframe, it seems like it was the absolutely right decision. To me, it just is another path, another way that an advisor or a firm is able to think about their future. Any final advice or parting words for someone who is sitting right where you were in 2021 or 2022 thinking about making the leap? And we’ll say a transition in general, or really anything you want to share to wrap our episode here. Patrick Larkin: Thank you for having me, and this is a great question. Happy to give a thoughtful answer to it. Before I’d left Wells Fargo Advisors through the program and started Oak Hill Wealth Advisors, I had an opportunity to go through a due diligence process and make sure that this was going to be a right move for me. There was no carrot out there that was obvious. I learned after that first conversation that I had built a practice that had some value to it. I was leaving behind the security of something I knew, leaving behind a significant amount in deferred compensation, and I wanted to make sure I was making the right decision. And through that due diligence process, talked to about five other firms that had recently left Wells Fargo to join this RIA program. I asked them a lot of different questions about what their experience was. And at every point during those conversations, they all said the same thing at different points. And it sounded like this. They said, “I’m working harder than I ever have before, but I wish I had done this sooner.” So my advice to those people, do it. I know that sounds simple, but I mean it. The fear of leaving is almost always worse than the actual experience of leaving. And I understand the inertia of not leaving and the real apprehension of what was on the other side. But what I found was a version of this profession I genuinely didn’t know was possible. One where I could do things the right way on my terms for the people I care most about serving. And not every path is going to look like mine. Some advisors should go fully independent and stay there, and that can be an incredible life. But when it comes time to look for a partner, quite frankly, if Cerity Partners is not on your shortlist, you’re making a significant mistake. And I say that not to sell anything, but because I’ve lived the comparison firsthand and there’s simply nothing else like it. Louis Diamond: So Pat, it’s been really fun, but I don’t think we’ve had anyone on the eight years or so we’ve been doing this show that’s gone through this type of arc or journey that you have. One of my big takeaways or sticking points that this episode brought for me is by going independent and taking control over your future, you created complete optionality for yourself to do exactly what you wanted to do with your business, even if that was different than what you initially planned. So in your case, it was selling within three years of going independent, but by taking action, being proactive, playing some offense, you made the opportunity happen on your terms and your timeline. So this has been fun in so many different ways. I loved your comment about how when you went independent, it’s basically like the day of your IPO, the four-to-five-times increase in value versus an internal succession deal, and even just the way to think about getting equity in a larger entity versus running your own plays only. So thank you so much for doing this. This has been fun. Mindy Diamond: As a financial advisor, you hold yourself to the highest standards of integrity, honesty, and credibility. You are successful because you take your professional responsibility seriously and are dedicated to your clients. But are you living your best business life? Are your goals aligned with your firm’s or could a better option exist? Should I Stay or Should I Go? Is a book written with you in mind? It’s a self-guided journey that walks you through the key steps that we take with our advisor clients. This strategic thought process and roadmap to professional self-discovery is designed to help you ask the right questions and think critically and objectively, whether you’re considering change or not. Learn how to get your copy at diamond-consultants.com/thebook.   Build, Grow & Transact: From Breakaway to Transaction in 3 Years A conversation with Louis Diamond and Patrick Larkin, Partner & Practice Leader at Cerity Partners.      Louis Diamond: Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is Build, Grow & Transact: From Breakaway to Transaction in 3 Years. It’s a conversation with Patrick Larkin, Partner and Practice Leader at Cerity Partners. I’m Louis Diamond, and this is The Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wirehouse, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned. And each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education-driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at 908-879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual Advisor Transition Report. It’s the award-winning, data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Louis Diamond: Ownership as a way of creating opportunities you can’t always predict. That’s exactly why we created our Build, Grow, and Transact series. Independence isn’t the end of the story. It’s often the beginning of thinking differently about enterprise value, optionality, and what comes next. Today’s guest is Patrick Larkin, Partner and Practice Leader at Cerity Partners, and formerly the founder of Oak Hill Wealth Advisors. Patrick spent nearly 15 years building a successful practice at A.G. Edwards, Wachovia, and eventually Wells Fargo before launching his own independent firm in 2022. Just three years later, he merged that firm into Cerity. At first glance, that timeline might seem surprisingly short, but as you’ll hear, the merger wasn’t a change in direction. It was the result of seeing his business differently once he owned it. Yet, it’s this perspective that really brings that thought home. Patrick said the day Oak Hill launched felt like the business had gone public because overnight, what had been viewed as a book of business became an enterprise with substantially greater value, some four to five times the value of what it was worth at Wells. And that realization changed the way he invested, the way he hired, and ultimately the way he thought about the future. Pat and I also talk about something advisors don’t often discuss candidly, what life actually looks like after a merger. How much control do you give up? What changes day to day? How do you know whether you’re joining a partner or simply selling a business? Whether your long-term plan is to remain independent forever or eventually join a larger organization, Patrick’s experience is a reminder that ownership isn’t simply about control. It’s about creating optionality and putting yourself in a position where the next decision is yours to make. So let’s get to it. Patrick, thanks for coming on our show today. Patrick Larkin: Oh, my pleasure. Nice to meet you, Louis. Louis Diamond: You too. So let’s start off basically how we start every interview. Tell us about yourself, your background, and how you found your way into our industry in the first place. Patrick Larkin: Yeah, thank you for asking. I knew I always wanted to be a financial advisor. That part really wasn’t in question, but upon graduating college and being a 22-year-old, I knew that it was probably not practical to walk in and start advising people my parents’ age with their life savings. Probably wasn’t going to be a recipe for success. So I took a quick tour through the pharmaceutical industry first, which ended up being unexpectedly valuable. My employers there pushed me to think like an entrepreneur and within our territories. And honestly, that mindset never left me. It shaped how I built everything that came after. Eventually, an opportunity presented itself in Loudoun County, Virginia in Northern Virginia, and I became an FA trainee with A.G. Edwards, absolutely fantastic firm to start my career. Now, what drew me to this career was pretty simple. I felt like it was one of the professions that we had an opportunity to do so much good for others while simultaneously also doing well for yourself, and those two things aren’t in conflict. I also really loved the idea that in this profession there was no hiding. You don’t get paid to show up. You get paid for what you actually do. And perhaps for me, what was most important, I loved the weight of responsibility. I loved earning people’s trust. I loved the idea of deserving, being deserving of their trust, and being a steward of what they’ve worked a lifetime to build. I never took that lightly, and I still don’t. Louis Diamond: That’s amazing. Yeah, I mean, the number of people I’ve heard, you talked so fondly about A.G. Edwards and there’s a bunch of other firms that have since been absorbed or emerged that are like the regional firms of old. So not surprised to hear you loved it. A.G. Edwards, obviously, became Wells Fargo Advisors or was acquired or merged with Wells Fargo. So I know you’re at Wells and A.G. Edwards until 2022. So give us a quick version. How’d you build your practice from the pharma world into being in FA? Patrick Larkin: Yeah, so as I started with A.G. Edwards, I came in at really just the perfect time. It was towards the end of the financial crisis. And I built the business the old-fashioned way with a lot of cold calling and eventually did some dinner seminars, which I can tell you is a very expensive way to learn how to speak in front of a room. But I made some progress, and I was also in a great office, small enough that some of the advisors there would hand off some of the smaller accounts that they weren’t interested in working with, and got an opportunity to get a lot of reps in working with real life clients and individuals. I knew early on I didn’t have enough talent to win on talent alone, so I made up for it and compensated for that with really hard work. The real turning point came for me when A.G. Edwards was first acquired by Wachovia Securities, and that was about five years into my career. And at that point, my branch manager, who was eyeing retirement, asked me to step in as her partner, and that changed everything. We eventually moved over to a Wachovia Securities office, another really great local office in Loudoun County, Virginia. And from that office, I worked on and became a CIMA, a CFP, worked with the clients, built a business through referrals. And I found at that point in my career when I would go to a meeting with Wachovia, eventually Wells Fargo, as a young 30-year-old, I would look around the room often and realize that I was the youngest person in the room. The funny thing was 10 years later, I would go into that same room and I’d look around and I still was the youngest guy in that room. And those demographics in our industry, and when I came into our industry, ultimately led that office that I worked in with Wells Fargo Advisors, I eventually was the recipient and party to five different succession plans- Louis Diamond: Wow. Patrick Larkin: … at Wells Fargo Advisors. I hoped that I had built a reputation as somebody that these other advisors would entrust with their clients. And over that time period, really, I would say professionally, one of my accomplishments I’m most proud of is all five of those retired advisors that I used to work with, who had an opportunity to see me work with clients, all became clients of mine, I still continue to work with. And it’s professionally just one of the greatest honors that I’ve ever had. Louis Diamond: I mean, that’s a large number of advisors you helped sunset, but I would agree it’s the ultimate p

In this episode, panelists provide timely insights into emerging SALT developments impacting financial services, real estate, and asset management transactions. They discuss recent legislative developments and emerging transaction trends across the SALT landscape, with an emphasis on how evolving policy is shaping deal approaches, diligence, and execution. The session concludes with a targeted discussion on SALT considerations affecting data center investments.

The following article of the AI Cloud & Data industry is: 'The Invisible Asset Behind Every Luxury Car Transaction' by Javier Morales Guzman, Founder & CEO, CAYMAN MOTORS. 

Send us Fan MailWe walk through the weirdly powerful math that makes a stable $10,000 profit stream worth $50,000 in one world and $1,000,000 in another. Then we apply the same present value logic to politics and show how unpredictable rules raise transaction costs, inflate the effective discount rate, and freeze long-term investment. • the discount rate as the hidden driver of valuation • why the consol bond makes present value intuitive • P = X / R as a shortcut for long-lived assets • how low interest rates mechanically boost asset prices • discount rates as opportunity cost plus inflation plus risk • regime uncertainty as political risk priced into investment • how New Deal “experimentation” can prolong a downturn • modern examples through tariffs tax policy and regulation • a listener puzzle on why Coke concentrate costs more Tell me what the answer is. If anybody knows of a recording of the George M. Cohan play, Broadway musical, I would certainly like to be able to find it. Michael Munger, "How Interest Rates Set Asset Prices: One Weird Trick," The Daily Economy, May 28, 2025 Robert Higgs, "Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War," The Independent Review, Spring 1997 Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (HarperCollins, 2007)Franklin D. Roosevelt, Oglethorpe University commencement address, May 22, 1932 Book o-da-week:  Robert Higgs, Depresssion, War, and Cold War, (reprint) Independent Institute. If you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com !You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz 

What if the real secret to longevity in real estate isn't selling more homes—but building relationships people remember long after the transaction is over? On this episode of The CJ Moneyway Show, CJ Moneyway sits down with Debbi DiMaggio, a top 1.5% Realtor nationwide, four-time author, podcast host, coach, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, for a conversation about real estate, relationships, reinvention, and the mindset required to build a career that lasts. With more than 30 years of experience, Debbi has guided people through some of life's biggest transitions—from buying a first home and preparing a property for market to relocating, downsizing, and stepping into an entirely new chapter. But this conversation is about much more than buying and selling property. Debbi and CJ explore why real estate is ultimately a people business and why trust, communication, collaboration, accountability, and service can matter just as much as market knowledge. Debbi shares her perspective on building referral relationships between agents across different markets, helping first-time buyers become better prepared, and understanding the difference between simply listing a home and intentionally positioning it for the market. The conversation also goes into an often-overlooked part of real estate: the emotions attached to transition. For seniors, families, and individuals leaving a longtime home, a move can represent far more than a change of address. It can mean letting go of memories, adjusting to a new stage of life, and making difficult decisions during an already emotional season. That requires more than a real estate professional. It requires someone who understands people. CJ and Debbi also discuss mindset, resilience, accountability, reinvention, and legacy—and what decades in business can teach us about staying relevant without losing the relationships and values that built our success in the first place. IN THIS CONVERSATION Why relationships should outlast the transaction How collaboration and referrals can expand opportunities across markets What first-time homebuyers should understand before entering the market Preparing and positioning a home to sell Why mindset and accountability matter in real estate The emotional realities of downsizing and major life transitions Supporting seniors and families with empathy Reinventing yourself throughout a long career Building a reputation rooted in service, trust, and consistency Why long-term success and legacy are ultimately about people Debbi DiMaggio's journey is a reminder that a successful career isn't measured only by what you sell. It's also measured by the relationships you build, the people you serve, and the reputation you leave behind. Listen to this conversation on The CJ Moneyway Show, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and major podcast platforms. EPISODE KEY TAKEAWAYS Relationships create longevity. A transaction may introduce two people, but genuine relationship-building can create opportunities for years. Collaboration expands the table. Real estate professionals don't always have to compete. Strong referral networks can serve clients while creating opportunities across cities, states, and even international markets. Preparation matters for buyers. First-time homebuyers benefit from understanding their finances, expectations, and the process before they begin seriously shopping. Selling requires positioning. Preparing a home for the market means learning to see the property through the eyes of the next buyer. Mindset affects performance. Accountability, resilience, and the ability to adapt are essential when markets, clients, and circumstances change. Transitions are emotional. Downsizing, relocating, or leaving a longtime family home can carry significant emotional weight, particularly for seniors and their families. Reinvention is part of longevity. A long career requires the willingness to evolve while protecting the principles and relationships that established your reputation. Legacy extends beyond the sale. The deeper measurement of success is often found in how people remember being treated. CONNECT WITH DEBBI DIMAGGIO Debbi DiMaggio Official Website⁠ DiMaggio Betta Group⁠ Debbi DiMaggio on Instagram⁠ Debbi DiMaggio on LinkedIn⁠ Debbi DiMaggio on Amazon⁠ ️ THE CJ MONEYWAY SHOW Listen & Follow The CJ Moneyway Show⁠   Rate The CJ Moneyway Show⁠ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Despite all of our best efforts, not everything in a transaction flows smoothly.  Today, as part one, the Siblings discuss how things can be Wrong - Wrong, between clients and agents and Right - Wrong.  There are many ways this can go, and the hosts talk about events with the both Clients and Agents are wrong and then how the Clients may be right and the agent is wrong.  Neither outcome or behavior in the relationship is beneficial, but still we all move together (after some resolution) to a common goal. Donna Reed and Eric Seemann are both professional real estate agents. Donna lives and works in Tucson Arizona with Keller Williams Southern Arizona while Eric lives and works in San Antonio Texas with Keller Williams Heritage. They are also siblings, and they grew up in a small Northwest Ohio village of Lindsey. Their idyllic small-town childhood laid the foundation for what would become the structure of their lives and careers in real estate. We hope you will join us as we reminisce, reflect, and correlate how our childhood and life in rural Ohio still impacts our dealings with our clients today. Website:  www.realsiblings.com Watch Episodes on YouTube at:  REAL Siblings, It Ain't Easy   To Connect with Eric: Email:  eric@victorsgrouptx.com Phone: (210) 389-6324 Facebook: (2) Eric V. Seemann | Facebook Texas Real Estate Commission - Information About Brokerage Services Texas Real Estate Commission - Consumer Protection Notice   To reach out to Donna: Email:  donna@reedtucson.com Phone: (520) 631-4638 Facebook: (2) Donna Seemann Reed | Facebook Watch Episodes on YouTube at:  REAL Siblings, It Ain't Easy  

The sale can change your bank account in a day. It cannot tell you who to become on Monday morning. Allan Crockett joins Jerome Myers to examine the void that appears when a business, title, team, and daily structure disappear. Drawing from two painful exits of his own, Allan explains why that empty ground rarely stays empty. Without an intentional purpose, it fills with busyness, unwanted obligations, and other people's priorities. The conversation moves from retirement fatigue and founder identity to marriage, health, and Allan's five pillars of quality of life: time, money, purpose, relationships, and health. Allan also offers a practical test for evaluating post-exit commitments: if something consistently gives you energy, it may be a flower; if it continually drains you, it may be a weed. The central lesson is one every founder should hear before signing the papers: the transaction does not equal transformation. Selling the company may create freedom, but building a life worthy of that freedom requires a separate decision. Learn more about Allan at AllanCrockett.com. Thank you,Jerome Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When your doctor gives you 3 months to live, what do you do with the company you spent 23 years building? What do you do with your life?What would crash most people resulted in another successful business venture for Yaron.What kind of person can do that?Let's find out!Yaron Assabi built 1 of South Africa's first e-commerce businesses in 1998 — before most of the country had ever been online. He rode the dot-com wave to a FTSE listing, watched it crash, bought his own company back, and spent the next 2 decades quietly building Digital Solutions Group into 7 specialist businesses serving brands like Nando's, KFC, DStv and Coca-Cola across Africa, the Middle East and the UK.Then, in April 2021, everything stopped. 3 cancers, diagnosed at once. A family history that had already taken his mother at 39 and his father twenty years later. Doctors gave him 3 months without chemo. He chose to fight it his own way instead — and rebuilt his health, his mindset, and eventually a whole other business, from the ground up.This episode is the rare kind of conversation that moves fluidly between "how do you scale 7 companies" and "how do you sit with your own mortality and choose to do your own thing" that only Yaron could pull off so well it feels.In this episode, you'll learn:How Yaron decides what to say yes to The shared-services model that lets DSG launch new startups faster every time, without founders having to be good at everythingWhy he believes a business that depends on its founder is a business that hasn't really been built yet — and how to design yours so it can run without youThe exact morning system Yaron credits with his recovery and the energy that carries him through his dayWhat changed in his mind the day he was diagnosed — and why he says fear is just "a false experience appearing real"How losing both parents to cancer shaped his relationship with risk, intuition, and not postponing his lifeYaron's take on AI in the business Why Yaron believes you don't have to sacrifice your wellbeing to build something great — and what changed his mindsetWhether you're building a company, rebuilding your health, or trying to figure out how to do everything - this episode will be your inspiration, breaking many limiting beliefs and fears that are stopping you from Doing Something Great with every day of your life.Tune in, get inspired - Do Something Great!About Yaron AssabiYaron Assabi is the Founder and Group CEO of Digital Solutions Group (DSG), a South African-founded, globally active group of seven specialist digital businesses spanning customer experience, digital marketing, telecoms, cybersecurity, data and AI, and digital commerce. Since founding the company in 1998 as one of South Africa's first e-commerce ventures, Yaron has grown DSG into a 600+ person group serving 60+ enterprise brands across Africa, the Middle East and the UK, with clients including Nando's, KFC, DStv, Coca-Cola and Unilever. He built and launched one of the world's first mobile commerce transactions in 2000, served as ICT strategist for the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and designed the 46664 global HIV/AIDS awareness campaign technology. A 3-time cancer survivor who chose to heal through lifestyle transformation rather than chemotherapy, Yaron also founded Chilled, a plant-based wellness and lifestyle brand born from his own recovery journey. He holds a degree in Economics from the University of the Witwatersrand.Links mentioned in this episode:DSG: www.dsg.co.zaChilled: chilled.mobiText Me Your Thoughts and IdeasSupport the showBrought to you by Angela Shurina  Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

Grant, John Browner and Beav open with the worst-kept secret in football getting one step less secret: a defensive tackle named Aaron Donald, out of Pittsburgh, officially appeared on the NFL's workout transaction wire for the Los Angeles Rams. John torches the Adam Schefter drip campaign — tweet by tweet, "he just wanted to feel a helmet on" — while Beav shares what he's been saying all along: Donald's been in that facility more than anyone realizes, he won't play Week 1, and the Rams will save him from himself with a plan built for January. Add Sean McVay's all-time terrible poker face ("best workout I've ever seen — I hope the kid makes the team") and the crew agrees on the Calvin Johnson-Barry Sanders theory of why he left, and why he stayed ready. Then the rounds: Stefon Diggs to the Commanders and why it doesn't move the needle for Jayden Daniels, real concern for Brandon Aiyuk — Beav says take his mental health seriously — the Odell-Malik Nabers workout video that should terrify Giants fans, and the Giants as "the most unbuttoned organization" in football. The show turns serious on Tua in Atlanta: John makes the full case that the commissioner should step in, guarantee the money, and end it, and Beav backs it with his own concussion story. Then it swings all the way back: Justin Herbert got engaged, and the great LOVE debate erupts — Beav wants no-love, hate-home Tom Brady; John defends work-life balance with a full roster of romance rules. And in the post-show, John absolutely snaps on the Detroit Pistons' G League affiliate charging $250 for open tryouts — the shorts, the socks, jersey number 182 — before Beav declares for the Windy City Bulls and drops the note Clippers fans have been waiting on: the Kawhi train is stopping everybody, and Peyton Watson is still coming. New episodes drop nightly. Follow the crew on X. Directed & Produced by: Grant Mona Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nakatomi Tony is back to Own the Transaction and wrap the first month of his experiment. Then , Questing Scholar has a new wagering system he is testing. TRG explains it, and then tests it in the War Room. In a travel segment, TRG recaps the results for a month that started badly in AC. Finally, in the Virtual VIP Lounge, TRG has a great Gabriel story that shows is you don't demand you don't get.

Recorded live at Identiverse 2026 in Las Vegas, Jeff sits down with Decoded co-host Sean O'Dell for a wide-ranging state of the union on continuous identity, shared signals, and the identity questions AI keeps raising. Sean shares what he is hearing on the ground about the upcoming transaction tokens spec, why continuous identity has moved from concept to mainstream adoption, and how shared signals are expanding into commerce. The conversation shifts to AI: the real cost of securing it, why model provenance matters, and the murky question of who is on the hook when an AI agent makes an expensive or harmful decision on your behalf. They debate companion agents, consent versus power of attorney, and whether the identity industry even owns this problem. Sean closes with a simple piece of advice for anyone feeling overwhelmed by AI right now.Connect with Sean: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanodentity/Connect with us on LinkedIn:Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/Visit the show on the web at http://idacpodcast.comTimestamps:00:00 Intro and a Decoded update00:44 Transaction tokens spec preview01:51 State of the union on continuous identity03:39 The questions organizations are asking04:34 Is it still all about the data05:07 Shared signals framework moving into commerce06:40 Is AI a fad at Identiverse this year07:11 The real cost of securing AI08:00 Model provenance and indemnity09:39 IAM for AI versus AI for IAM10:18 Trusting agents to act without oversight14:51 Assigning authority to the who and the what16:13 The cruise booking example and who is on the hook20:16 Companion agents, consent, and power of attorney23:00 Does the identity industry own this problem25:00 Relationship and intent as the real issue28:03 Could an insurance market emerge for agentic AI29:18 An access review scenario gone wrong30:41 Small specialized language models for identity tasks32:11 Favorite hallway conversations at Identiverse36:05 Wrap up and words of wisdom on AI FOMOKeywords: IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Sean O'Dell, Decoded, Identiverse 2026, continuous identity, transaction tokens, shared signals framework, agentic AI, AI security, model provenance, IAM, digital identity, identity and access management

In this episode of The Diplomat's Asia Geopolitics Podcast hosts Ankit Panda and Katie Putz examine the status of the Russia-North Korea partnership. Since the signing of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty in 2024, the two have held three strategic dialogues, the most recent in late July in Moscow. How transactional is the massive shift in their relations and how sensitive is it to the Ukraine war? And what does China -- which has its own nuanced relations with North Korea and Russia -- think about the growing closeness between Moscow and Pyongyang?You can subscribe to The Diplomat's Asia Geopolitics podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify; and watch the episode on YouTube.

Matt Faircloth talks to Justin White, Managing Director of Centennial Advisers. They specialize in guiding investors through overlooked opportunities like niche opportunity zone developments, strategic lease negotiations, and unconventional acquisitions that outperform typical assets. This episode unveils how savvy investors leverage off-market deals, pre-construction projects, and tenant upgrades to create massive gains often without lifting a shovel or managing tenants directly. Justin White Managing Director of Centennial Advisers Based in: Long Beach, California Where to find them: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-white-79a1175 https://centennialadvisers.com/ Phone: (714) 231-2537 Book your free demo today at bill.com/bestever and get a $100 Amazon gift card. Visit https://malabarhillcapital.com/ for more info. Podcast production done by⁠ ⁠Outlier Audio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New segment, Owning the Transaction with Nakatomi Tony! Then, TRG looks at how much a $15 comp is really worth at the blackjack table. After that TRG explains how is is doing not a one chip exit, but a one shooter exit. Finally, in the virtual VIP Lounge, TRG's take on NT's experiment.

In this episode, Matt & Lauren continue the conversation they started in Episode #128 and dig into the cost involved in selling direct. Learn more about what expenses you should account for as you launch, maintain, and grow your ecommerce store, including:

Send us Fan MailWe start with a simple mystery: how the same person can make a proud plan at night and break it in the morning, even while still believing the plan is good. We connect akrasia, free will, and moral responsibility to transaction costs, treating self-control as a contracting problem between competing versions of ourselves. • Jordan I and Jordan II as a model of divided preferences over time • Hard determinism, libertarian free will, and compatibilism as the main philosophical map • Responsibility and punishment as social conventions that reduce coordination costs • Aristotle on voluntary intoxication and why blame can attach upstream • Akrasia defined as wanting to want the right thing • Plato's knowledge-based denial of akrasia versus Aristotle's acceptance of weakness of will • Paul and Augustine on the internal conflict of the will • Time-inconsistent preferences and hyperbolic discounting as a behavioral explanation • Commitment devices as credible commitments and transaction cost engineering • Odysseus and the sirens as the classic precommitment story • Listener letter on military punctuality as costly signaling and institutional discipline • Listener letter on recycling labels as regulation creating new transaction costs Links and Sources1. Ainslie, G. (1992). Picoeconomics: The strategic interaction of successive motivational states within the person. Cambridge University Press.  Link: Cambridge University Press — Picoeconomics 2. Aristotle. (1999). Nicomachean ethics (W. D. Ross, Trans.). Batoche Books. (Original work published ca. 350 B.C.E.)  Passage: Book VII (on incontinence/akrasia). Link: Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross (free PDF)3. Augustine. (1838). The confessions of Saint Augustine (E. B. Pusey, Trans.). John Henry Parker. (Original work written ca. 397–400 C.E.)  Passage: Book VIII, Chapters 8–9 (§§20–21). Link: Confessions, Book VIII, Pusey translation (free full text)4. Davidson, D. (1970). How is weakness of the will possible? In J. Feinberg (Ed.), Moral concepts (pp. 93–113). Oxford University Press. Link: Oxford Academic — "How Is Weakness of the Will Possible?" (in Essays on Actions and Events) (gated — subscription/institutional access)5. Dennett, D. C. (1984). Elbow room: The varieties of free will worth wanting. MIT Press. Link: MIT Press — Elbow Room (gated — purchase; excerpts free)6. Dennett, D. C. (2003). Freedom evolves. Viking.  Link: Internet Archive — Freedom Evolves (gated — free with Internet Archive lending account)7. Hume, D. (1999). An enquiry concerning human understanding (T. L. Beauchamp, Ed.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1748) Passage: Section VIII, "Of Liberty and Necessity." Link: Hume Texts Online — Section 8 (free full text)8. King James Bible. (2017). King James Bible Online. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ (Original work published 1769) Passage: Romans 7. Link: Romans, Chapter 7 (KJV) (free full text)9. Plato. (1967). Protagoras (W. R. M. Lamb, Trans.). Harvard University Press. (Original work published ca. 380 B.C.E.)  Link: Perseus Digital Library — Protagoras (Lamb trans.) (free full text)10. Schelling, T. C. (1984). The intimate contest for self-command. In Choice and consequence: Perspectives of an errant economist. Harvard University Press.  Link: National Affairs — "The Intimate Contest for Self-Command" (original 1980 essay, free full text) · Harvard University Press — Choice and Consequence (book page, gated)11. Strawson, P. F. (1962). Freedom and resentment. Proceedings of the British Academy, 48, 1–25. Link: The British Academy — Freedom and Resentment (official publisher page, may be gated)12. Vaihinger, H. (1925). The philosophy of 'as if': A system of the theoretical, practical and religious fictions of mankind (C. K. Ogden, Trans.). Harcourt, Brace. (Original work published 1911)Link: Internet Archive — The Philosophy of 'As If' (free full text)Book-o-da-Week:  Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's THE ODYSSEY, 2018, WW Norton. If you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com !You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz 

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Jesus Diaz est l'invité de ce nouvel épisode de Mon Podcast Immo. Au micro d'Ariane Artinian, le directeur général de Septeo PropTech explique comment l'intelligence artificielle va transformer le quotidien des professionnels de l'immobilier.Transaction, syndic, gestion locative, location saisonnière : Septeo veut réunir ces quatre métiers dans une seule solution. L'objectif est clair : automatiser les tâches répétitives pour permettre aux agents, administrateurs de biens et gestionnaires de consacrer plus de temps à leurs clients. « Le professionnel de l'immobilier sera beaucoup plus proche de ses clients. »Valorisé entre 3 et 4 milliards, le groupe veut aussi accélérer son développement international dans les trois prochaines années. En parallèle, Septeo mise sur une IA souveraine, hébergée sur ses propres serveurs et développée depuis trois ans par son Lab Brain. Pour Jesus Diaz, le simple assistant conversationnel appartient déjà au passé : « On n'est pas dans l'intelligence artificielle, mais dans l'agentique. »Un épisode à écouter pour comprendre comment l'IA, les logiciels immobiliers et la proptech vont changer concrètement les métiers, les services et la relation client dans l'immobilier en France.Animé par Ariane Artinian, journaliste et fondatrice du média MySweetImmo

Send us Fan MailWe trace a straight line from a 1697 blasphemy execution to modern cancel culture by focusing on one variable: the cost of turning speech into coordinated punishment. We break down how social media creates common knowledge at near-zero cost, making outrage faster, bigger, and harder to control. • Thomas Aikenhead's case as a story about information and enforcement costs • Transaction costs as the hidden limiter on persecution and social punishment • The First Amendment limiting state coercion while leaving private sanctions intact • Social media as a collapse in the cost of broadcasting accusations • Common knowledge as the trigger for coordinated action by strangers • Justine Sacco as the early template for modern cancellation dynamics • Brendan Eich, Emmanuel Cafferty, James Damore, and PyCon “donglegate” as repeating patterns • John Cleese on offense and the urge to control others' behavior • Listener letters on healthcare markets, consolidation, and transaction costs • Certificate of need laws and price systems that shape competitionAmy Poehler's super bowl ad (Dongle!):John Cleese on cancel cultureLetters:Dr. Anthony Digiorgio, UCSF, Graphic Novel Claim Denied, Off Label IdeasSurgery Center of OklahomaBook-o-da-week:Steven Pinker's When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life  Scribner, 2025. If you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com !You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz 

On January 1st a new EU law switched on across 27 countries — and it reports exactly how much Bitcoin you own.Europe's DAC8 turned "Know Your Customer" into what Bull Bitcoin calls "Kill Your Customer" — so the Canadian exchange just filed the first legal challenge to strike it down. We get into all of it: Tennessee becoming the 2nd US state to ban Bitcoin ATMs, Trump's disclosure showing $1.4B in crypto income while his own team writes the rules, Kraken reportedly chasing a full EU bank license — and the feel-good one, a single $150 home miner that beat billion-dollar farms to win an entire block worth ~$200,000. Then north of the border: KPMG says nearly half of Canadian manufacturers have moved or are eyeing a move to the US, Ottawa tells the UAE it has no "shovel-ready" projects for C$70B, and more.Canadian Bitcoiners PodcastWebsite: https://canadianbitcoiners.comX: @CanadianBTCPodSubscribe & turn on notifications so you never miss an episode. ————————————————————————————————SPONSORS

Part 2 of 2. In Part 1 we walked the road from 2011 — three companies, an investor ultimatum, and the capital it took to build. Part 2 is the mind. Saahil Goel starts with what, given hindsight, he'd do differently, then the first principles he runs Shiprocket on (distribution beats product), the two or three metrics he genuinely obsesses over, his bet on applied AI, why he believes you can't actually manage people, who does and doesn't survive at the company, the guitar he still plays, his dog, and the question Rohin closes every episode with, which Saahil answers with a single number.Chapters1:02  With hindsight, what he'd do differently2:10  “A paisa of every transaction in India”5:23  First principles: distribution beats product11:32  The metrics he obsesses over17:22  Betting on applied AI29:33  “You can't manage people”31:45  Who doesn't survive at Shiprocket42:05  The guitar, Pink Floyd, and Bruno the CHO58:28  The book he forgets — and how he reflects1:00:50  Rating his life an 8This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at fp@the-ken.com with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

Dr. Beckett discusses advice for a collector flying to this weekend's West Coast Burbank card show who wants to buy an expensive card and is considering bringing $30,000 in cash. He weighs show buying versus auctions, explains why cash is often preferred at shows, and reviews alternatives like wires, credit cards (often with a 3% fee), checks (requiring strong trust/vouching), and digital payments with limits. Beckett emphasizes security and discretion, planning ahead with the bank, understanding cash-withdrawal documentation over $10,000, and being prepared for airport screening. He recommends documenting any big deal (seller identity, card/grade details, photos) to reduce risk, warns about brokered transactions and a high-profile Tom Brady deal that went wrong, and concludes that cash can be reasonable for $30,000 if handled carefully.   01:16 Payment Options Overview 02:24 Cash Logistics and Risks 03:47 Trust and Verification 05:43 Show Deal Mechanics 06:51 Wires Cards and Checks 08:47 Getting Cash and Flying 11:54 Documentation and Safety Tips 13:33 Broker Deal Gone Wrong 15:25 Best Plan for 30K      

This week, we journey across the pond for 2025's british sitcom Transaction! It's a workplace comedy about a transgender egomaniac, her flatmate, and their coworkers... does it get to the heart of what makes sitcoms work across the history of television? Or will this be a cringe-worthy misfire of epic proportions? Jordan Gray just got an award for her stand-up, so let's see if it works in a show! (Spoilers - It does. This was pretty cute.)  Plus - all our desserts, and Nick watched Avatar live action season 2, and some X-Men '97 season 2! Next week - EPISODE 600 with Grant, Randy, and Kyle! Let's GOOOOOO #TransactionUK #CapeFear #MyAdventuresWithSuperman #TheVampireLestat  

Each touchpoint creates an opportunity for a customer impression. However, very few owners, or executives, have ever counted the number of touchpoints in an average transaction. With that said, it's hard to manage customer satisfaction if you can't identify and measure satisfaction. Impressions are good and bad, and research shows it takes about 10-12 positive impressions to erase one bad impression. Maybe it's time to start charting, training and managing touchpoints? If not, then buckle up, because your are on a road that will take you anywhere it wants to go!Support the show

In this episode of Wash Talk: The Carwash Podcast, host Meagan Kusek sits down with Harry Caruso, founder of Car Wash Advisory, for a candid assessment of where carwash mergers and acquisitions stand heading into the back half of 2026. Recorded live at The Car Wash Show™, the conversation opens with Caruso's frank take on the current deal environment: Transaction counts are on pace to be the lowest in about a decade, not because the industry is less attractive, but because it has matured past the frenzied growth phase of recent years.  Caruso explains that many of the most active buyers from the last decade are now approaching the end of their investment horizons and pulling back. At the same time, a large share of the best-performing carwashes have already been acquired, and newer sites haven't yet built the track record needed to be acquirable at scale. He notes that for operators with five to 15 sites considering a sale, the message is straightforward: The window is open now and conditions are unlikely to improve over the next two years.  The episode also covers the significance of Mister Car Wash's return to private ownership. Caruso closes with a reminder that declining transaction volume is not the same as a declining industry and that carwash mergers and acquisitions remain active for operators positioned to move.

Where is commercial real estate headed in 2026? Is the market crashing, recovering, or simply resetting? In this episode, Gino Barbaro breaks down the latest multifamily market data and explains why the answer depends entirely on where you're investing. Using current market trends, rent growth statistics, supply and demand dynamics, construction data, and transaction volume, Gino explains what investors should be paying attention to right now. In this episode, you'll learn: • Why national rent growth remains historically weak • Which markets are outperforming due to low supply • Why high-supply markets continue to struggle • What falling construction starts mean for future investors • Why transaction volume remains muted • The importance of understanding market cycles • How to analyze occupancy and concessions • Why "no deal is better than a bad deal" Some of the markets discussed include: ✔ New York ✔ Chicago ✔ Detroit ✔ Kansas City ✔ Phoenix ✔ Denver ✔ Austin ✔ Orlando ✔ Dallas ✔ East Tennessee One of the biggest mistakes investors make is assuming every market behaves the same way. As Gino explains, understanding your market's supply, demand, occupancy, concessions, and development pipeline can mean the difference between buying a great deal and buying a disaster. Key takeaways from this episode:

Send us Fan MailWe try to make sense of a real problem many of us feel: paying a lot for U.S. healthcare while still waiting months to see a doctor. We trace how engineered transaction costs, from the Flexner Report to modern residency caps, restrict physician supply and protect price power while leaving clinicians overworked and patients stuck. • getting “fired” by a health system and what it reveals about access • why shortages don't clear when prices rise, and how transaction costs block entry • the Flexner Report as quality reform and supply restriction • evidence of conflicts of interest and rushed methods behind the Flexner narrative • Ruben Kessel's puzzle on persistent price discrimination in medicine • hospital privileges and county medical societies as cartel discipline • why advertising bans and professional norms can function as anti-competition tools • how residency caps and accreditation keep the bottleneck in place today • a listener letter on data center payments as compensation versus bribes • book of the week recommendation and a few parting thoughts **************************************As I note in the episode, thanks to Dr. Lance Stell, Davidson College Department of Philosophy (emeritus).  Lance offered this note about the epidsode:There's a footnote to the Flexner report. It killed the Davidson medical college - NC"s first. The school was founded by a DC faculty as a proprietary school. After 10 years operating on campus, it moved to Charlotte where it had a clinical relationship w/ the Good Samaritan Hospital - a black hospital, becoming the first medical school in the country to have such a relationship. I can send you an article about it written by Dr. Eddie Hoover, MD, a surgeon and Editor of NC"s black medical journal. Flexner execrated proprietary medical schools and it was his goal to "close them." His damning review of the Davidson medical School, renamed The NC Medical College, was successful.Thanks, Lance, I did not know that!  I added that link, below. ****************************************Links:The infamous Flexner Report:  http://archive.carnegiefoundation.org/publications/pdfs/elibrary/Carnegie_Flexner_Report.pdfHiatt and Stockton on the Flexner Report:  "The Impact of the Flexner Report on the Fate of Medical Schools in North America After 1909"Hiatt: "Around the Continent in 180 Days." Hiatt: "The Amazing Logistics of Flexner's Fieldwork."Kessell, Journal of Law and Economics, 1958:  "Price Discrimination in Medicine." Eddie L Hoover, Catherine R Lewis.  2006.  Journal of the National Medical Association. "Good Samaritan Hospital and the North Carolina Medical College circa early 1900: the first major affiliation between a black hospital and a white medical college." Ernest Jones, "The God complex" in Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis. Earliest source I could find for the TWEJ:  https://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/old89/godplay.840.htmlPA data center story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/pennsylvania/article_3b615fd8-5d36-45c4-bfb6-4a3162104f0b.htmlBook-o-da-week:  Daniel Hannan, Inventing Freedom, Broadside Press. https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Freedom-English-Speaking-Peoples-Modern/dp/006223174X/If you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com !You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz 

Today, we're joined by Toyin Ajayi, co-founder and CEO of Cityblock Health and a former doctor who trained in the NHS before taking on the US healthcare.Toyin built Cityblock to serve people on Medicaid. The company is now around $1.5bn in annual revenue, with 150,000 members across 11 states. Tommy Stadlen talks to her about her giant idea, value-based care: why she thinks paying doctors for procedures instead of real outcomes is the root of America's healthcare crisis, why the patients who need care most are the least likely to walk into a clinic, and why she believes AI poured onto the wrong business model will do real damage.She speaks about:Why "value-based care" is the worst brand for one of the biggest ideas in healthcareThe first Cityblock patient, an elderly, partially blind man living in a Brooklyn basementWhy fee-for-service ends up paying more for the amputation than for keeping someone safe at homeThe ~140 million Americans on Medicaid and Medicare, and the market everyone missedHow AI is pushing the marginal cost of a patient interaction close to zeroWhy most healthcare AI dollars are making the system more expensive, not betterGrowing up in Nairobi during the AIDS epidemic, and the UN moment that outraged her and still drives herNHS vs US healthcare - and the one-line answer to which she'd choose...Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc.Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Ben Ennis and Brent Gunning kick of the second hour with thoughts on Mike Babcock's introduction in Edmonton. The guys discuss their takeaways from yesterday's press conference, his fit with the Oilers, and if anything's changed since his last appearance behind the bench. They also touch on the wave of recent NHL transactions including Bowen Byram's trade to Chicago, along with Brady Tkachuk's comments about his decision to chose Florida. Should Senators fans feel slighted by what was said? Later, Jason Bukala of Sportsnet and the Pro Hockey Group, shares his NHL mock draft and breaks down the talent available in the first round, before weighing in on the latest Maple Leafs rumours. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Sports & Media or any affiliates.

In this episode, we discuss how financial due diligence is different from your regular compliance bookkeeping and how to clean up your books to secure the highest possible purchase price. You'll discover how simple accounting mistakes can destroy trust with buyers, lead to sudden price reductions, and even kill a deal. View the complete show notes for this episode. Want To Learn More?  The Role of Accountants When Selling Your Business M&A Due Diligence Preparation Quality of Earnings in M&A – The Ultimate Guide Additional Resources Selling your business? Schedule a free consultation today. Sign up for an Assessment and Valuation of Your Business. Courses: The Art & Science of Selling a Business Download The Art of The Exit: The Complete Guide to Selling Your Business Download Acquired: The Art of Selling a Business With $10 Million to $100 Million in Revenue If you have any topic or guest suggestions, please email them to podcast@morganandwestfield.com.

Tether's USDT has been delisted by major crypto exchanges (including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Crypto.com) specifically for users in the European Economic Area. This occurred because Tether chose not to pursue registration under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation. Meanwhile, WalletConnect is empowering the stablecoin ecosystem for millions of merchant around the world. ~This episode is sponsored by Tangem~ Tangem ➜ https://bit.ly/TangemPBN Use Code: "PBN" for Additional Discounts! GUEST: Jess Houlgrave - CEO WalletConnect Follow Wallet Connect on X ➜ https://x.com/WalletConnect 00:10 Sponsor Tangem 01:10 WalletConnect growth: Ingenico rollout progress 03:00 When Verifone or PAX? 05:00 Is Toast Toast? 07:30 Tether Delisted 09:45 Would WalletConnect take over non-compliant use cases of Tether? 11:00 Innovation in the EU 12:45 Saving USDT Utility? 14:15 Business model 17:00 Merchant fees 19:00 Tap-to-pay 21:20 Private transactions impossible? 23:30 CLARITY odds 25:40 WalletConnect fail? 26:15 User-friendy? 26:45 Transaction fees 27:00 Stablecoin threat 29:00 Credit card rewards 29:45 Stablecoin growth vs self-custody growth 30:40 $WCT utility 31:30 Agentic payments 32:30 Netflix login soon? #Crypto #XRP #Ethereum ~Tether Mass Delistings? + Stablecoin Catalysts Coming!

Commercial real estate just hit an all-time high at $129 per square foot median price, however the pricing records mask stark divergences in property transaction patterns; Multifamily buildings are 23% smaller than 2019 yet selling for record prices. Older stock is outpricing newer product. Deal sizes are hitting all-time highs while building sizes shrink. The team breaks down the Q1 2026 Investment and Transactions Quarterly report to surface these inversions, and why CRE pricing showed surprising resilience through Q1's macro shocks.Key moments01:31 What is the US CRE Investment and Transactions Quarterly report?03:05 National activity trends04:58 Deal size and property age07:01 Pricing headlines by sector12:05 Subtype pricing winners and losers17:14 Pricing by property vintage22:09 Building size and deal size records26:34 Large deal share by sector32:34 Key surprises and takeaways35:35 Inflation-adjusted deal analysis38:57 Where to find the reportResources mentionedUS CRE Investment and Transactions Quarterly Report – Q1 2026 -https://www.altusgroup.com/featured-insights/cre-transactions/

Send us Fan MailHereditary monarchy seems like a ridiculous way to pick a leader, yet it dominates most of human political history. We argue the reason is transaction costs: succession systems survive when they settle “who rules next” cheaply enough to prevent recurring civil war. • Why hereditary monarchy is historically prevalent compared with democracy and universal suffrage • Why “divine right” stories often rationalize a choice people already find tolerable • Thomas Paine's critique of hereditary succession and what it misses • Hobbes on the state of nature as what happens when sovereignty is contested • Succession as the master coordination problem of political order • Transaction costs applied to elections, enforcement, legitimacy, and rent seeking • Why elective monarchy can become an armed auction for total power • Bright line rules versus discretionary selection and why speed can beat “better” • How constitutional design lowers the cost of leadership transition when it works • The legitimacy problem and why dynasties converge on endogamy • The genetic consequences of endogamy and the Habsburg cautionary tale • Twedges, book recommendation, and a listener letter on board game “math trades” LINKS:Thomas Paine, Common Sense, February 1776Michael Munger, The Ugly Pig, 20224A.P. Martinich, Thomas Hobbes:  A Biography, 1999.Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651.Neal Schultz, Suicide Kings: Hereditary Monarchy, 2025Tbadel Barter AppCosmos Institute, Coasian Bargaining at Scale, 2025 UPDATE: An interesting, and more clearly articulated, application of the reasoning here.... https://aminga.substack.com/p/how-transaction-cost-economics-explainsIf you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com !You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz 

https://castimonia.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Episode-137-Transformation-Not-Transaction_-Romans-12-and-the-Recovery-Matrix.mp3 In this episode, Chris explores the Bible through the lens of addiction recovery and the Transformational Recovery Matrix. Drawing on themes from The Transformational Recovery Matrix, this conversation unpacks the differences between sobriety and transformation, performance and surrender, and behavior management and heart renewal. Chris explains: The post Castimonia Purity Podcast Episode 137: Transformation, Not Transaction | Romans 12 and the Recovery Matrix appeared first on CASTIMONIA.

In this episode, Kenya Henderson shares how her company, Blueprint Virtual Assistant Services, helps real estate agents streamline their businesses through transaction coordination, administrative support, and marketing services. She discusses the importance of organization, communication, and attention to detail in ensuring successful closings. Kenya also talks about networking, her plans to expand into real estate investing, and her long-term goal of obtaining a real estate license and building a team.   Professional Real Estate Investors - How we can help you: Investor Fuel Mastermind:  Learn more about the Investor Fuel Mastermind, including 100% deal financing, massive discounts from vendors and sponsors you're already using, our world class community of over 150 members, and SO much more here: http://www.investorfuel.com/apply   Investor Machine Marketing Partnership:  Are you looking for consistent, high quality lead generation? Investor Machine is America's #1 lead generation service professional investors. Investor Machine provides true 'white glove' support to help you build the perfect marketing plan, then we'll execute it for you…talking and working together on an ongoing basis to help you hit YOUR goals! Learn more here: http://www.investormachine.com   Coaching with Mike Hambright:  Interested in 1 on 1 coaching with Mike Hambright? Mike coaches entrepreneurs looking to level up, build coaching or service based businesses (Mike runs multiple 7 and 8 figure a year businesses), building a coaching program and more. Learn more here: https://investorfuel.com/coachingwithmike   Attend a Vacation/Mastermind Retreat with Mike Hambright: Interested in joining a "mini-mastermind" with Mike and his private clients on an upcoming "Retreat", either at locations like Cabo San Lucas, Napa, Park City ski trip, Yellowstone, or even at Mike's East Texas "Big H Ranch"? Learn more here: http://www.investorfuel.com/retreat   Property Insurance: Join the largest and most investor friendly property insurance provider in 2 minutes. Free to join, and insure all your flips and rentals within minutes! There is NO easier insurance provider on the planet (turn insurance on or off in 1 minute without talking to anyone!), and there's no 15-30% agent mark up through this platform!  Register here: https://myinvestorinsurance.com/   New Real Estate Investors - How we can work together: Investor Fuel Club (Coaching and Deal Partner Community): Looking to kickstart your real estate investing career? Join our one of a kind Coaching Community, Investor Fuel Club, where you'll get trained by some of the best real estate investors in America, and partner with them on deals! You don't need $ for deals…we'll partner with you and hold your hand along the way! Learn More here: http://www.investorfuel.com/club   —--------------------

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A Kitchen With a Mission; Waioli Kitchen and Bake Shop Ross Anderson — Co-founderRestaurant veteran of 30+ years (formerly ran Hawaii's largest restaurant company). Now leads a mission-driven cafe on the Salvation Army property in Manoa that hires women coming out of the prison system. Co-founded with his wife Stephanie, a pastor who served at the women's prison.The One-Sentence StoryA seasoned hospitality leader thought he could fix lives with checklists and tight supervision — then discovered that the real transformation only began when he stopped trying to give the women jobs and started helping them become who they were created to be.The Big IdeaRelationship over Transaction. Waioli's entire model is built on the premise that human beings heal in community, not in process. Ross and Stephanie set out to open a restaurant on a mission — and discovered that mission only worked when they put the person before the program.Story → Insight → ApplicationThe StoryStephanie volunteered at the women's prison and watched the same painful loop repeat itself: women who thrived inside the walls would walk out the gate, fall back into broken relationships, and return. Recidivism was staggering. She told Ross, "We can do better."In 2018 they opened Waioli Kitchen and Bake Shop on Salvation Army property — alcohol-free by design ("My restaurant friends said don't do it, you're losing your big profit driver"). They expected to do what Ross had always done: hire, train, supervise, repeat. The first three years their recidivism rate was nearly 80%.Then COVID hit. The neighborhood rallied around them. They stayed open. And on the other side of it, Ross changed the entire approach — from teaching women a trade to helping them discover their identity. For the last three years, recidivism has been zero.The InsightMost well-meaning programs try to fix people with systems. What actually changes a life is being seen — by a boss, a coworker, a customer, a community. Ross stopped running a restaurant that helped women and started running a community that happened to serve breakfast.The ApplicationLead with why, not with process. Ross opened by saying, "We're a restaurant on a mission." The mission is the product; the food is the proof.Replace checklists with conversation. The pre-shift huddle is now 15–20 minutes of reading and discussing scripture together — not because every business should do that, but because the principle holds: invest in the person before you deploy the worker.Make people visible to one another. Customers now know the staff by name, ask about their kids, celebrate their milestones. Visibility is the antidote to invisibility.Be willing to throw out what worked before. Ross's 30 years of restaurant expertise didn't change these women's lives. Letting go of "what I know" was the unlock.Memorable Quotes "We're a restaurant on a mission.""Anybody can — you give me a dollar, I give you a donut, and we're on our way. But now we're starting to have relationship. And that's what it is.""It takes a community to heal the community.""It's harder than getting something to go viral. It's harder than getting a bunch of clicks — but it matters, and it's gonna last when the next shiny penny shows up.""We started focusing on helping them be who they were meant to be, rather than trying to get them to go into their next career.""Our first three years our recidivism rate was almost 80%. For the last three years it's been zero."Connection to HumanalityRoss is a living case study for humanality — making people feel cared for, valued, and seen in a world that defaults to transactional. He named it without using the word:"Most of the girls that come out of prison are invisible to this neighborhood. They would walk right by them, not even see them. But now they've become visible to each other."Instagram: @waiolikitchenFacebook: Waioli Kitchen & Bake Shop#waiolikitchenandbakeshopWebsite: waiolikitchen.com

Today on The Gist, the upcoming Enhanced Games are analyzed not as an ethical crisis, but as a weak, corporate-sponsored satire of athletic boundaries. Then, Nobel Prize-winning economist Alvin Roth joins the show to discuss his book Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work. He maps out the baseline difference between evolutionary disgust and social repugnance, diving into historic natural experiments, including Rhode Island's accidental legalization of indoor prostitution and the downstream legalities of international surrogacy, to reveal the real-world trade-offs of market bans. Finally, in the spiel, the latest legislative chaos out of Washington is unpacked, showing how the constant breaking of institutional norms has simply become par for the course. Produced by Corey Wara Video and Social Media by Geoff Craig Do you have questions or comments, or just want to say hello? Email us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠thegist@mikepesca.com For full Pesca content and updates, check out our website at https://www.mikepesca.com/⁠ For ad-free content or to become a Pesca Plus subscriber, check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://subscribe.mikepesca.com/ For Mike's daily takes on Substack, subscribe to The Gist List https://mikepesca.substack.com/ Follow us on Social Media:⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4_bh0wHgk2YfpKf4rg40_g⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/pescagist/ X https://x.com/pescami TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@pescagist To advertise on the show, contact ⁠⁠⁠⁠sales@amplitudemediapartners.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Markets strengthened this week following the U.S.-China trade truce, but rising fuel costs continue to pressure renter affordability, an important dynamic heading into the peak of leasing season.Energy and Inflation: AAA reports the national gas average at $4.56/gal as of May 21, up roughly 44% from a year ago. At those levels, fuel costs are becoming a meaningful pressure point for renter budgets during peak leasing season. The Fed has also signaled little urgency to cut rates given persistent inflation, keeping pressure on both consumers and operators with floating rate debt.Capital Markets: The S&P 500 closed at 7,433 on May 20, up sharply from the 6,944 level recorded in mid January. Investor sentiment has improved meaningfully since April as markets continue responding positively to easing trade tensions and broader economic stabilization.Mortgage Rates: The 30 year fixed mortgage rate sits near 6.58% according to Bankrate and the WSJ as of May 20. While below earlier 2026 highs, rates remain elevated relative to levels needed to meaningfully reopen the for sale housing market. Transaction activity remains subdued, continuing to support renter demand across many multifamily markets.The broader macro environment remains mixed for multifamily operators. Improving market sentiment and stable renter demand are supportive, but elevated consumer costs continue limiting affordability flexibility in more price sensitive segments of the market.Explore our webpage for more insights and resources:https://bit.ly/Radix_Website

For episode 731 of the BlockHash Podcast, host Brandon Zemp is joined by Sumsub at Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas. Tailored to your risk appetite, market demands, and use cases, Sumsub is powered by adaptive AI intelligence to support global scale while keeping your business compliant and future-ready.

In this episode, Peter breaks down the updated Cardano DApp Explorer and explains why curated ecosystem directories matter for newcomers, builders, and researchers. He walks through how the Cardano.org apps directory helps people discover live applications, compare activity, and understand what is already available across the ecosystem.The episode also looks at two complementary discovery platforms, Cardano Cube and AdaStack, before shifting into an interview with AdaStack founder Tucker. They discuss ecosystem coverage, multilingual resources, project listing workflows, AI-assisted maintenance, plans for richer project metadata, smart contract audit tracking, and how structured ecosystem data could power future APIs and developer tools.If you want a practical overview of where to discover Cardano applications, how projects can improve visibility, and why better ecosystem data matters, this episode offers a grounded tour without hype or speculation.Key Takeaways:- The updated Cardano.org DApp Explorer gives newcomers a clearer way to discover live applications by category and activity.- Transaction and activity indicators can help users identify which applications appear active, but they should be used as context rather than a guarantee of quality.- Projects can submit their applications to the Cardano.org directory through a documented workflow, improving visibility across the ecosystem.- Cardano Cube and AdaStack provide additional perspectives on the ecosystem and can complement the official directory.- AdaStack is tracking nearly one thousand projects across more than one hundred categories, along with resources in multiple languages.- AdaStack plans to expand its structured data with project history, team details, on-chain references, and smart contract audit information.- AI-assisted monitoring may help ecosystem directories keep links, listings, and project status more up to date over time.- Accessible ecosystem data and APIs can make research, discovery, and builder tooling easier across Cardano.Links & References:- Cardano Apps Directory https://link.learncardano.io/JIJdb3- Add your Application https://link.learncardano.io/W52NlV- CardanoCube https://link.learncardano.io/k9zcxs- Adastack https://link.learncardano.io/gdYxSdWebsite: https://learncardano.ioX/Twitter: https://x.com/astroboysoupDisclaimer: This content is for educational purposes only. Nothing constitutes financial advice.DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational and educational purposes only and is not financial, investment, or legal advice. I am not affiliated with, nor compensated by, the project discussed—no tokens, payments, or incentives received. I do not hold a stake in the project, including private or future allocations. All views are my own, based on public information. Always do your own research and consult a licensed advisor before investing. Crypto investments carry high risk, and past performance is no guarantee of future results. I am not responsible for any decisions you make based on this content.

Brent Daniels sits down with David Olds, owner of EZREI Closings, to discuss the system behind consistent wholesale deals and how to protect them from falling apart at the last minute. David reveals why 50% of all real estate deals fail to close and shares the exact strategies top-tier investors use to navigate title issues, foreclosures, and bad locations.He shares an unfiltered truth on why focusing on assignments before building a rental portfolio is the ultimate cheat code to getting rich. Be a part of the TTP training program now.---------Show notes:(0:00) Beginning of today's episode (1:59) Commonalities of the most successful investors(6:39) Protecting your deals from last-minute "mayhem" and why 50% of deals fail to close(10:20) The three biggest reasons deals die because of Location, Acquisitions, and Title Issues(15:13) Transaction coordination saved a $38,000 assignment deal 72 hours before auction(27:10) Breaking down the true cost of PPC and intent-based marketing(31:48) Why Brent shifted away from cold calling to build a scalable, A-level team(38:06) Where to find highly motivated seller lists during your hustle season(40:34) Brent's story about surviving a huge financial collapse and a million-dollar judgment(43:33) Why buying rental properties while you have consumer debt is a scam----------Resources:EZREI Closings PropStream, PropWireBatchLeadsReal SupermarketDealMachineTo speak with Brent or one of our other expert coaches call (281) 835-4201 or schedule your free discovery call here to learn about our mentorship programs and become part of the TribeGo to Wholesalingincgroup.com to become part of one of the fastest growing Facebook communities in the Wholesaling space. Get all of your burning Wholesaling questions answered, gain access to JV partnerships, and connect with other "success minded" Rhinos in the community.It's 100% free to join. The opportunities in this community  are endless, what are you waiting for?