Kurt Dupuis:
Welcome to The Whole Truth, where two wholesalers help financial professionals build great practices and thrive in a rapidly changing industry. We'll bring you the stories and voices from those on the front lines of this change, and we'll have some fun along the way.
Steve Seid:
This is more than a podcast. We're building a community of financial professionals who are growing, forward thinking, and want to get better. Thanks for listening and contributing to the discussion.
Disclosure:
The views expressed herein are those of the participants and not those of Touchstone Investments.
Steve Seid:
Hi, and welcome everybody to The Whole Truth from the Bay Area, California. I am Steve Seid.
Kurt Dupuis:
And from the reigning World Champion Atlanta Braves, I'm Kurt Dupuis from Atlanta.
Steve Seid:
Hey, dude.
Kurt Dupuis:
Hey buddy.
Steve Seid:
What's happening? You ever sat next to somebody at dinner? Sometimes that could be a bad thing. You get stuck with someone at dinner and you're just like, "Oh man, I've got to communicate with this person for a couple of hours." I had the exact opposite situation with our guest today, Dan Catone. I fly down to attend a dinner, my Southern California guy, Jake Willis, was hosting a meeting with this LPL team. They're an RIA under LPL called Golden State Wealth Management. It's a big group. We're hosting their dinner. I sat next to this guy, Dan Catone, who’s the CEO, and just like one of the most fascinating people. Two hours went by, snap, just listening to this guy talk.
Kurt Dupuis:
Well, you billed him perfectly. Because when you told me about that interaction, it was like, "Oh yeah, I'd like to have this guy on the podcast." You could have not talked about financial advisory work at all and he would've been an infinitely interesting person.
Steve Seid:
As I mentioned he’s the CEO of Golden State Wealth Management. He started his career actually in Geneva, Switzerland. He was a part of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. Just that alone, just asking him about that would be amazing. He got out of that business, started in wealth management in 2001. As you'll hear in the interview, really didn't have any background in it, he didn't know what he was going to do. He was just like, "Okay, this is an interesting career." Built a great business, and now, again, launched Golden State, which you'll hear him talk about. He's been nominated for Top 40 Under 40. He runs in addition to Golden State a variety of different businesses.
Kurt Dupuis:
He's Indiana Jones.
Steve Seid:
Yeah, seriously.
Kurt Dupuis:
He's real life Indiana Jones.
Steve Seid:
I know. He goes and he collects artifacts. He's a pilot, he's got a master's degree in Theology. A genius level guy. He's one of those guys. I felt the same way when we were talking to Dr. Winston. Just one of these guys whose brain is just on an entirely different level.
Kurt Dupuis:
What was that Seinfeld episode with Kramer, just decides he's going to sleep for 15 minutes every three hours, so he'd get more done? I feel like that is Dan Catone in a nutshell. I don't know how the guy sleeps.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. It was just an incredible dinner. I invited him on the show and he was kind to come on the show. And now he's launching his own podcast as well, which you'll hear him talk about. But this is going to be a good episode because they really are doing some interesting things over at Golden State Wealth Management. We want to talk to folks that are on the cutting edge of where this business is going, and I do think that they fit that bill.
Kurt Dupuis:
Exactly. The stories and the voices of people on the edge of that change. I think that's what we talk about. Strap in for an awesome chat with Dan Catone. And as always, make sure you hit that subscribe button. Tell a friend. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback for Seid, not me, because I don't want to hear about it, you can reach us at thewholetruth@touchstonefunds.com. Here is our interview with Dan Catone.
Steve Seid:
We are thrilled, thrilled to be joined by our friend, Dan Catone. Dan, thanks so much for joining us today.
Daniel Catone:
Oh, you're welcome. It's a pleasure to be with you gentlemen.
Steve Seid:
Absolutely. Let's get right into it. Provide an overview of your background.
Daniel Catone:
Sure. I am the CEO of Golden State, the Golden State Family of Companies, and I'm also the founder and CEO of Redwood Investment Group. I've been a financial advisor since basically 9/11. That's when I got started in the industry. I think like a lot of folks that started it at that time, we've seen nothing but trouble, whether it be 9/11 or multiple wars and the crash of '08, and then COVID, and now World War 3. It's been an interesting time to grow up in the industry, but it's the only industry really I've ever known as a professional, as an adult. That's a little bit about my background. If you want to know the educational stuff, I can do that too.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. I was fortunate to have dinner with you and your group. Just an amazing organization. What struck me about…
Daniel Catone:
Thank you.
Steve Seid:
…is, which we'll get into. What struck me about you is how does someone who was working at the United Nations get into wealth management?
Daniel Catone:
Accidentally, really. I worked for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and helped draft both speeches and rules and regulations to protect people from being kidnapped. I worked in Geneva, Switzerland for a man named David Husain under the auspices of... Who was the head of the UNHCR. Her name was Sadako Ogata at the time. This was shortly after the Rwanda-Uganda crisis, the Great Lakes crisis, and the slaughter that happened there. And then Kosovo and everything in Yugoslavia, which now is apropos of our current situation with Russia and the Ukraine. Came back to the United States realizing I did not want to work outside the country in Kazakhstan or something like that, even though my wife and I were both hired to go work there and teach English and work for the government. We decided that was not the place we wanted to raise our children in a post 9/11 environment. I went to work in finance because I thought stocks are interesting. I did not know anything about stocks.
Steve Seid:
Wow.
Daniel Catone:
I was 21 years old. I don't know if you know anything about anything at 21 years old, but I thought at least they are interesting. I remember my first time sitting down with a wholesaler and the wholesaler said that they were a value shop. It was Lord Abbett actually. We became dear friends. I said, "Oh, yeah, value shop." I said, "I'm going to be honest with you, I don't even know what that means." I didn't. But I had gone from international relations, background in studies in the Cold War, that was my BA, and then going to working with Edward Jones actually early on. Just needed a job, needed to pay the bills.
Steve Seid:
And got into finance. How about that?
Daniel Catone:
It all works out though.
Kurt Dupuis:
Seid and I have talked numerous times, just asking people how they got in into this. It's the greatest conversation starter you have because there's few... there's not one archetype for it. Everyone's got their own journey and path. It's interesting.
Daniel Catone:
Well, for me, it's super accidental, and I think a lot of folks are a lot more deliberate than I am. They got their degree in finance, and then they got their MBA, and then they're like, "I'm going to be a financial advisor." No, I was just a dummy. I was just a kid.
Steve Seid:
Clearly not.
Daniel Catone:
I needed to make sure my apartment rent was paid. It just so happens, it worked out really well. It's funny because I didn't know if I'd be good at it or not, but I'm a hard worker. I had a trainer at Ed Jones. At the end of the week of training, which didn't go great for me, we were doing this interview, exit interview of sorts. She said, "Dan, I don't think financial services is the right industry for you.
Steve Seid:
Is that right? Oh, my goodness.
Daniel Catone:
Yeah. But the funny thing is I told her, I said, "I'm going to be honest with you, Linda." I said, "I have no other choice here. So I'm in for a penny, in for a pound." I said, "I might not be very good at it, but I will work very, very hard and harder than anybody maybe." She said, "I hope it works out for you." Two years later, I was teaching a class with her in finance. It did work out and we became dear friends. But, you don't always know what you're going to be good at until you try it.
Kurt Dupuis:
Sure. Can we talk about those first few years at Jones? What strategies did you utilize? In our brief time talking, you seem like an intentional person. I don't think you probably went about that haphazardly. But what was your strategy for growth the first few years?
Daniel Catone:
It's a good question, Kurt, but I may think you may be giving me too much credit. I suppose I can be an intentional person. I don't know how intentional I was at 21, 22 years old. Maybe you were much more intentional than I was.
Kurt Dupuis:
Heck no!
Daniel Catone:
But I remember I was motivated to make sure that we could stay in our apartment and I would go door to door. I did the door knocking thing, like Edward Jones teaches and I was pretty good at it. I called it treasure hunting. And every time I'd knock on someone's door, I felt like I was pulling one more shovel of dirt off the ground to see what was down there. And most of the time there was nothing there.
I also pretended I was running for mayor. And so I would go door to door and I'd knock on the door and I'd say, "Hey, my name's Dan Catone. I just started a business here in town. And I thought I'd get out here and introduce myself to my neighbors." And I'd extend my hand and they'd open the door and we'd shake and we'd go from there.
Steve Seid:
Wow.
Daniel Catone:
I'll tell you real quick on intentionality. I thought, I need to get some clients that have money. I didn't have any money. And I thought, who's rich? Lawyers are rich. I need to get some lawyer clients. I went to a law office out of the phone book and it was an estate attorney, an estate state attorney. Who has more money than an estate attorney? I went to the receptionist and she wasn't really giving me the time of the day. I said, "I'm not looking for new client." I said, "I'm just looking for somebody who I might be able to refer a client to who needs estate work." I had one client when I knocked on their door, literally one client. So, I was honest. I needed to send someone to him. And she said, "Oh, okay, I'll sit you down with him." And so we sat down. Howard is his name. We sit across the desk from each other and we start talking about his practice and whatnot. And I said, "I would be uncomfortable ever receiving a referral from you unless you knew exactly what I put my clients through. What their experience is like." I said, "Would you permit me to take you through my process?" And he said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, just know I'll never become your client. I've already got my guy." And I said, "That's fine." And he reached behind him and he grabbed a huge binder. It's like three inches thick and handed it to me. When you're a new financial advisor and somebody hands you a three inch binder, it's really good news because it's full of money. And two weeks later he did become a client. And to this day he and his entire family, all kids and everybody are all clients of mine and we've all become dear friends.
Kurt Dupuis:
What was the angle there? Because you had a process and you could explain it. That was it?
Daniel Catone:
It was after 9/11. People were hiding under their desks. It was a strange time to be an investor. I think it was a strange time to be an American and financial advisors had grown up in this environment where markets just went up. We were just coming after the.com, crash was really in full force. And '01 really kicked everyone in the teeth. Being a young, hungry financial advisor who was actually talking to people was my only advantage. It's easy to win a client when their financial advisor isn’t even calling them.
Kurt Dupuis:
But there's a ton of money in motion back then.
Daniel Catone:
Yeah, no doubt.
Kurt Dupuis:
Okay. Be present, actually knock on doors. What other lessons did you learn from those first few years?
Daniel Catone:
Just never stopping, constant momentum. I think that's a rule for life in general. It's like General Washington. It didn't matter. You just kept fighting, fighting, and fighting and fighting to win. It may not be the industry for me, but I will work harder than anybody. And I did.
Steve Seid:
You built this great business. Talk us through the decision to launch an RIA Golden State. How did that come about? Why did you think you wanted to do it, all that?
Daniel Catone:
Now we're getting into real intentionality. I think the biggest differentiator between our firm and a lot of other firms is every single thing we've done is purpose built. Golden State Wealth Management is the first RIA that I founded alongside Redwood Investment Group. And we built it literally with zero assets, zero financial advisors, zero clients, which is very different than a typical RIA. The typical RIA that I run into that might be a theoretical competitor. We like to say we don't have competitors. Generally speaking, a 55 or 60 year old guy, who's made a couple million bucks a year, being a financial advisor, he's got a nice office, some corner office and he's got an extra spot. And so he finds a financial advisor to put in that spot. He's like, "Well, now I've got a firm." And then he finds another and then another, and now he's got an RIA. That is not a purpose built RIA. That's an accidental RIA. That's how I got into finance. Golden State is the exact opposite of that. We thought, what can we create that would be something that would be attractive to me as a financial advisor? And we built that. And that's Golden State Wealth Management. And then we thought, "Okay, let's do it again, but even better in a different way." And we built Golden State Equity Partners, which is not a hybrid, it's pure RIA. And we thought, "Well, gosh, we need asset management." So we built an asset management company and we built an insurance brokerage and we built a mortgage company. And now we're building a digital advice platform. But each of these institutions is purpose built. It's built to solve a set of problems for financial advisors and it's worked really well. People seem to like it.
Kurt Dupuis:
What are those problems for the incoming financial professional were you looking to solve? What kind of world were you trying to create there?
Daniel Catone:
That's a great question, Kurt.
Kurt Dupuis:
Thank you.
Daniel Catone:
First of all, it might not be what you think. First and foremost is human dignity. Every single person that we interact with is treated with dignity and respect. Our basic ethos is very simple. We leave everyone better off for having met us, whether they be an industry ally, or a friend, a potential customer, a client of one of our financial advisors, that's the rule. And you know what's shocking about that?
Kurt Dupuis:
It's The Golden Rule isn’t it.
Daniel Catone:
It's The Golden Rule. But that's not shocking. That's not how most financial services treat employees and customers. Most financial services companies treat financial advisors as revenue sources. And that's why they adjust their comp every year, and they tinker here and there. I thought, what if we could create a place where a financial advisor always owns their work product all the time and are honored and respected all the time? What will that attract? What kind of person will that attract? Well, we started seeing that, we started attracting those types of people and you know what? We don't lose financial advisors. Very, very few. I've let a couple go because they didn't fit that ethos.
Steve Seid:
Interesting.
Daniel Catone:
In terms of problems, human dignity, that's the first one. Human beings are not machines. We are not cogs to be plugged into an industrial machine to make money for someone else. And that's what Golden State's all about.
Steve Seid:
How did you build out your team? Talk about the team that run Golden State right now.
Daniel Catone:
Basically, I think like minds group together, and I like to say we collect amazing human beings. Each of our partners, each of our employees. First of all, every single employee after one year is an owner.
Steve Seid:
Oh wow!
Daniel Catone:
That's one of our foundational values, is ownership period. But the types of folks that we work with, whether it be my partners, John Nahas and Patrick Catone and Kyle Fairall. These are exceptional human beings in their own right. Often from completely different industries. For example, my brother, Matt Catone, he was that top guy at the LA Times, the Tribune company. And he would go to the Oscars and produce all the movie ads and all that type of stuff. Just a remarkable human being or Jen Nahas, who's John Nahas's wife, she's our chief marketing officer. She's an accomplished artist. She ran the marketing for one of the largest real estate trusts in the world. That's the type of human being that we look for.
Steve Seid:
So. how many FAs are under the umbrella right now at Golden State?
Daniel Catone:
I think we're about 70.
Kurt Dupuis:
Wow!
Daniel Catone:
We run just about $4 billion. They're a pretty good size organization. Not bad from zero. We generally try to bring on one or so financial advisor a month. We don't want to bite off more than we can consume in a sense. There's only so much work we can do to make sure it's of the highest possible quality.
Steve Seid:
Excellent. People are clearly gravitating towards the story. So, you're getting all these FAs on board. Talk about some of the things you're working with your folks right now. What are the key topics? Where are you spending your time?
Daniel Catone:
I have a really cool job. Basically, my job is to come up with ideas and then to find people to do the ideas. I do a little bit of work…
Kurt Dupuis:
Quick Start…Kolbe term
Steve Seid:
You’re a Quick Start.
Daniel Catone:
Right, exactly. Right now I am focused like a laser on emergent investor classes. It's my position that the industry is largely broken. I say this to my financial advisor friends and our partners, there's a timer on your business. And the reality is, every single client that a financial advisor has, is going to leave them. It's just a matter of time either they're going to fire them or they're going to quite frankly, pass away, or you're going to sell that book to someone else who's going to manage that client. That's the future for every single client. And that means that we have to find replacements for those clients. And if you're not engaging, the largest percentage of the US workforce right now is millennials. If you're not engaging millennials, you don't have longevity in your practice.
You have an 10 to 20 year timeframe until it's worthless. With the majority of the workforce being a millennial and most people don’t even know that. And what percentage of your book is under the age of 40. Most people it's 2%, 3%, but these are folks that want to invest. These are people that have money. This is an emergent investor class. And the entire industry says, "We don't care, because I want 58 year olds with $2 million." That's what the industry says. My focus is helping financial advisors create value in their practice. And the way you create value in that practice is sustainability. Sustainability is not just recurring revenue. It's the type of client. It's the age of client. It's the way in which you engage your client. And another mantra that we have is we want to create products and services that not only are great for customers and clients, but are delivered in the way the client prefers. Look at Amazon. What is the Amazon's product? Is Amazon product books in the Kindle? Kind of, but not really. Their product is the delivery method because they've created a way in which people wish to consume. And now everyone uses them. And my question to you might be, has financial services created a delivery method that people under 40 want?
Steve Seid:
That's a good question. That's a good point.
Kurt Dupuis:
None that are, that are Amazon like. Like this is what everyone is trying to figure out.
Daniel Catone:
Right. And they're all onto something. Betterment and all these different firms like that, or even Robinhood to some degree, not a big fan of theirs, but Personal Capital. These are great institutions that are changing the way in which people consume financial services. And I think we can even take that further. And we are working on that. We are going to beta testing in June, on our digital device platform. There are features that we are currently under patent review on. I can't discuss those things because everybody listening to this would have to sign an NDA. So we can't do that, but we are going to be doing this because we want to solve that problem.
Kurt Dupuis:
I want to ask a thousand questions. And if I need to sign the NDA to get these answers out, that's fine.
Daniel Catone:
One at a time.
Kurt Dupuis:
For the digital platform, who's the target audience? Who's the target client?
Daniel Catone:
Really the target for the digital advice platform is going to be investors who wish to have instantaneous delivery and execution of professional portfolio management. That can really be at any age group. It could be someone who's 60 years old, it could be someone who's 25 years old, because quite frankly, both those groups of people consume products in an Amazon type of way.
Kurt Dupuis:
Correct.
Daniel Catone:
The second type of criteria is going to be customization. People who want tailored, customized portfolios, that are a fit to them. When I say a fit to them, I don't mean risk and reward. I think that's the way financial advisors talk. We say, "Okay, the client wants X risk, they want Y reward, and we match those two things. But that's not a human person. It's not a true fit for them. It's an untailored suit.
It's like, what do you wear to a wedding? A suit. Okay. But you have to tailor the suit. Yeah, there we go. Okay. What does that mean? For example, when I look for an investment manager, I want to choose investments that don't force me to violate my conscience, to achieve my retirement goals. And why is it that we ask people to do that? I think a lot of it is based on a lie that if you tailor a portfolio based upon personal values, you lose return. The evidence just isn't there for that. It's just not, but why do we keep saying that? And also one size does not fit all. An ESG portfolio that fits me is different than an ESG portfolio that fits one of you. And that's okay. If we can create a product and a delivery method that is instantaneous digital, and high quality, that actually does portfolio management in an effective and efficient manner while matching the person's values, who doesn't want that?
Kurt Dupuis:
I had a recent ride share experience. I'm chatty. Where the lady was in her 50s, she was only doing ride share to build up enough capital to buy a home. Then she was going to quit her W2 job, do ride share, and started talking about finances. I am clearly not a financial advisor. That's not what I do, but her level of questions, like she had left a previous job and just thought she had to take her 401k with her. How does a digital platform, yours or another, solve the problem for simply undereducated, folks that are just not financially literate. Can technology solve both of those problems? And are we talking about the same platforms or are we talking different platforms? Sorry. That's really a long question.
Daniel Catone:
That's a fascinating idea. You ask questions in paragraph form. I answer them in book form. I apologize.
Kurt Dupuis:
Perfect. We'll see you in three hours.
Daniel Catone:
So Kurt, it's a funny question in a way, because imagine you were having a conversation with the same person about medical issues. Do we expect people to have a deep knowledge of the surgery in which they need?
Kurt Dupuis:
No, but we do. My wife and I, who works in healthcare.
Daniel Catone:
Oh cool.
Kurt Dupuis:
We talk about this finance, healthcare, legal. All of those professions, you have to be your own advocate. That's why you get a second opinion because it's like, "Oh, guy number one told me something. I'm not sure if I agree with all that." Or, "Maybe he just didn't talk to my level, so I'm going to go to person number two." I think there's some crossover between industries there.
Daniel Catone:
There is. But I think what we're doing is we're conflating two types of knowledge. There's really two types of knowledge, both in medicine and finance and general professions. There's technical knowledge and behavioral knowledge. On the technical side, you have portfolio construction, Roth versus traditional, all that kind of stuff. And that's my job. On the other side is behavioral knowledge. How do I respond? How do I interact? What question types should I ask? That type of stuff. Finance is largely dominated by math folks. And we're really good at the technical side, but we aren't so good…
Kurt Dupuis:
Ain’t so good.
Danieal Catone:
…on the behavioral finance side. I can't remember who did the study, but the study about the Vanguard funds, where you look at the index actual performance versus the experience of the actual client and they're night and day. The index performance did 11.2% a year for 30 years, and the average client got 3.1%. What's the differential there? Is it a technical knowledge question? No, it's a behavioral finance question.
Kurt Dupuis:
Prenatal cortex. That's what it is.
Daniel Catone:
Yeah. That's that's right. And so in a digital advice experience, you have to deliver whatever you need to deliver in order to help the person walk down the knowledge of behavioral finance to make the right decisions. And just to be able to raise their hand and have someone with the technical knowledge step in and help them. Our platform, which I can’t get into the details on actually has that hand raising concept built into it. A person can choose as always, should be the case, consumer choice, consumer choice, consumer choice. Alvin Toffler wrote about this in Future Shift and all of his books in the 1990s, where he predicted the rise of customization of cars and stuff like that.
But it's true in finance. We want to push that choice back to the consumer. They do not have to have the technical knowledge. They just have to be able to raise their hand and have access to the technical knowledge. And it comes from general questions. For example, if someone gets married and they buy a new house, a system should be able to prompt them to say, "You might need life insurance, and here's why."
Kurt Dupuis:
So I can pick my own path and start at a certain level, or you could have no foundation and you can start from scratch and accelerate or decelerate as you see fit. That's what you're describing?
Daniel Catone:
Yeah. One, you pick the language based upon your own preference. You pick the learning style that you're going to choose to walk down. You're going to choose how often you engage with the platform, but it's the opposite in financial services right now. We set the meeting schedule. We tell them how many times they're going to meet with us before we open an account. We tell them which accounts they're going to open, and then which investments they're going to use and why. That prescriptive process is not modern, it's 1975, everywhere in finance right now, it's a pre-internet financial system. The most advanced financial system that we're using, that's internet based, that's commonly used is just online account access. That is 1999 stuff. That's crazy to me.
Kurt Dupuis:
That's AOL dial-up right there.
Daniel Catone:
It's AOL dial-up. We're Prodigy. Remember Prodigy? We're waiting for the mail to come with the CD-ROM to install the upgrade on Prodigy with this stuff. That's nutty. So a digital advice platform-
Kurt Dupuis:
Some nice elder millennial jokes in there. I love it.
Daniel Catone:
Well, that's my joke. I'm one year older than the oldest millennial, and one year younger than a Gen Xer. I'm like sandwiched between these two generations that see money radically different and see engagement in consumption radically different. And the financial services industry just has no clue.
Steve Seid:
Do you see Kurt, why I wanted to have him on the show? We haven't even gotten into the non-financial topics yet.
Daniel Catone:
Yeah the really good stuff.
Kurt Dupuis:
And I keep hijacking it, so I’ll stop.
Steve Seid:
No, no, no. It's a wonderful, wonderful back and forth, which makes the best interviews. But for people who are going to want to hear more of you, which there will be, you're launching a podcast. Talk to us about that.
Daniel Catone:
We actually launched last week. It's called Money Forward. And the idea is pretty simple. I want to engage with people that are interesting, that have ideas that are unusual and avant-garde. I want to discuss topics of the emergent classes of investors, whether it be the rise of the millennial investor, their millennial financial advisor, and the things that are changing in financial services. But I also want to go off script a little bit in this and talk with people about things that are only tangentially related to finance.
For example, people talk about structural racism, and it's a hot topic right now, CRT and things like that. And examining structures that exist within society that have positive and negative effects on the way in which we think about and engage money, that's a fascinating topic to me. My podcast is going to go to that place. I don't want to dominate those conversations. I really just want to bring people on, that have these ideas and concepts, whether I agree with them or disagree with them, I don't care. I just want to hear what people think because I find people to be fascinating.
Steve Seid:
Make sure you check out that podcast. I'll certainly be subscribing.
Daniel Catone:
Thanks, Steve.
Steve Seid:
One other topic we wanted to bring up is you landed on the 40 Under 40 list. Talk a little bit about that.
Daniel Catone:
I hardly remember it. I'm 42
Kurt Dupuis:
It's a lifetime ago.
Daniel Catone:
Yeah. A lifetime ago. I don't know. That was really cool. I'm not one who like goes after awards or anything like that, and somebody nominated me. I didn't know. And I won it, I mean I got on the list or whatever. And I think probably the coolest thing about it, is I went to New York to meet with the other 40 Under 40 people. And holy smokes, did it give me like hope for the future.
Steve Seid:
Oh, is that right?
Kurt Dupuis:
Really?
Daniel Catone:
Yeah. The other 39 people with basically no exception were interesting and engaged and were talking about value orientation and it wasn't a discussion about what our favorite stock was or which mutual fund manager we like. It was a totally different way of looking at finance. And I'm really, really glad I had the opportunity to do so.
Kurt Dupuis:
A guest we had on the podcast pretty early on, Dr. Daniel Crosby, he talked about how hiring for financial professionals has changed drastically. There used to be an MBA out of Booth School of Business, but then they'd burn out in five years because they don't have the skills to now, and it's probably almost fully, the fulcrum has corrected hiring higher EQ type people. In a sense, is that what you're describing? It's not the nuts and bolts technical stuff. It's the people who understand people that are successful, especially in the Under 40 cohort.
Daniel Catone:
Yeah. You're 100% correct Kurt.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yes!
Daniel Catone:
It is like I was talking about it's. It's like the two types of knowledge I just said, I mean it's technical knowledge versus behavioral finance and you can have... a computer has technical knowledge. That's the easy part. Anybody, anything can do that. It's finding someone who can look someone else in the eye, relate to them, engage them where they are, help them figure out where they are, where they want to go and then build the bridge to get there. And that's a different skill set.
Steve Seid:
We'll transition maybe to the last question. I will say since you and I sat down for dinner, I think I bought four books that you recommended to me, which are…
Daniel Catone:
Oh cool. That’s great!
Steve Seid:
…and so despite all this stuff, starting his own RIA, the private businesses, I think one of the most interesting things about you is your archeology passion. Maybe we can close with that. Talk about that a little bit.
Daniel Catone:
It's interesting to me.
Steve Seid:
Interesting to me!
Daniel Catone:
It's actually funny the way I came to fall in love with archeology and specific Egyptology. I say I'm an amateur Egyptologist because I have no academic background whatsoever. I'm competent in reading heiroglyphs. And I know a lot about Egyptology and generally archeology, but it was an accident because every year I try to find a topic that I both have no interest in and know nothing about, and then I just start learning.
Steve Seid:
Nice.
Daniel Catone:
Because what I found is I may have no interest in it because I know nothing about it. And so I did that. I thought, I know literally nothing about Egypt, nothing. I know there's a city called Cairo and there's pyramids. I did a class, Bob Brier, who's a world renowned Egyptologist, and an expert on mummification, has a class you could take off of audible. It's 25 hours or something like that. And it's basically 20 bucks or free or something... It's amazing. And I listened to that and I thought, where have you been my whole life? It's like I fell in love and I just got deeper and deeper and deeper. And then I thought, how cool would it be if I could have an artifact? Something that someone crafted with their hands with loving care 3000 years ago. And it somehow got lost somewhere. And now we found it. That's a fascinating thing to me and unfortunately, the audience can't see it, but behind me are some of my artifacts. I have a piece of pottery. It's a full pot, actually unbroken with a handle design on it. That might be the first of its kind. It was found in Cyprus, it's a Cypriot piece, it's Egyptian made. Somehow it was transported there. So it has a story and then it has a type of handle and you can see it over my ear here, that I've never seen older than it. It might be the potter who invented that type of pottery handle, that's pretty cool.
Kurt Dupuis:
What do you date that to?
Daniel Catone:
This particular piece behind me is this pot that they found in Cyprus, that's about 1500 BC, call it 3,500 years old…
Kurt Dupuis:
Wow. Are you serious?
Daniel Catone:
…and it's perfectly intact. And there's lots of ways you date it. You look for incrustations. The way in which minerals grow on the pottery, pottery design and style, the place it's found, the comparison of other things found around it. It's more of an art than a science. And I think archeologists go too far in their certainty on a lot of different subjects. I am kind of a conspiracy theorist on the subject. People like Graham Hancock. I love his books. It's speculative silly archeology, but I think it's really cool.
Steve Seid:
How do you get your hands on these? Where do you go to acquire them? I picture a trade show or something, I don't even know.
Kurt Dupuis:
Ebay.
Daniel Catone:
I don't want to incriminate myself, but I have been to other countries and obtained items. Then I do have dealers across the country that are reputable high quality dealers. There's different associations you have to belong to, I've self trained myself to identify fraudulent pieces, which is probably half the pieces that you'll ever find…
Steve Seid:
Oh is that right?
Daniel Catone:
…in archeology, especially Egyptology. Egyptology got tons and tons of fakes. For me, they're really obvious now, but I bought a fake when I was first starting. I paid thousands of dollars for a fake, but he was arrested by the FBI. Amex gave me a refund on that, which was really nice. I learned my lesson though.
Steve Seid:
What did we cover? We covered the start in business. We covered his RIA and we ended with artifacts and Egyptology. That's a podcast interview. Dan, we really appreciate you coming on. This was fantastic, which I knew it would be. Plug the podcast again and give out the Golden State website.
Daniel Catone:
Sure. My podcast is called Money Forward and we're going to be discussing emergent and interesting ideas in the industry, in the emergent investor class. I think it's going to be really interesting for folks. I'm going to do interviews of people that are not ordinarily interviewed on financial podcasts. Our website for our RIA is teamgoldenstate.com and there's lots of good information there. And one thing I can make a commitment for anybody who talks to us is we will leave you better off for having met us. Thank you very much, gentlemen.
Steve Seid:
Thank you to Dan Catone. This is The Whole Truth. Stick with us.
Kurt Dupuis:
And welcome back to the Costanza corner where we like to end the show on a high note. Take it away, Steve. I don't know. I feel like I have an announcer voice today. I think maybe I’ll keep using this false voice.
Steve Seid:
I like it. Can we keep it?
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah, I'm here for it.
Steve Seid:
I think it's a keeper. I've got a bold statement to make. Breathing turns out is very important. Were you aware that breathing was important ?
Kurt Dupuis:
Shocker?
Steve Seid:
I was reading this positive article, which is what the Costanza corner is all about. And essentially the title of the article was, “How Humans Can Fight Viruses by Breathing Deeply”. And it gets into the science of if you focus on breathing and actually really focus on deep breaths, it forces the body to create this immune response that's better in fighting viruses. It was a Wyss Institute at Harvard University that did this study on breathing.
The reason that I bring this up is beyond the fact that this article was there, that shows that it triggers immune responses. And besides the fact, we know the benefits and the science around meditation. There's a couple of other books that I've read recently that were about the importance of breathing. And I want to share this with both you and the audience. One is called Breath by James Nestor, N-E-S-T-O-R. And the second one is a guy by the name of Wim Hoff, W-I-M H-O-F-F. The Wim Hoff method. And he goes into not only the deep breathing patterns, he also does some other cool stuff like swims in ice and claims that cold water emerging…
Kurt Dupuis:
That's the thing.
Steve Seid:
I'm no expert on this. And this is a short segment, so I'm not going to get in too deep, but I've just been more and more interested on, and there's more and more science around the fact that the focus on breathing technique, there's really powerful potential benefits.
Kurt Dupuis:
Do you do this in your life? Do you practice breathing?
Steve Seid:
I've started to do some of the Wim Hoff method. It's about like…
Kurt Dupuis:
Short burst thing Short burst in, short burst out out thing?
Steve Seid:
No, it is really, really deep breaths, but do it 30 times. Imagine going like really big, deep, but do it 30 times in a row and it relaxes you, because you're hyper oxygenating your brain. But it also creates this sense of tranquility, which, I don't know if you know this about me, Kurt, but I am an anxious dude. I can be an anxious dude sometimes.
Kurt Dupuis:
You’re a nervous Nellie sometimes.
Steve Seid:
It's like my wife says, "You got bad nerves." But it totally, totally chills me out. Anyways, I won't go further than that. Just a couple of books for you and an article for you on the importance of breathing.
Kurt Dupuis:
At my gym, when we have a particularly difficult workout, we do box breathing, which is breathe in for four seconds, hold for four seconds, out for four seconds, hold for four seconds. That's the box, the size of the box. It's hard, especially after a good workout, but I think it calms your breathing. It's supposed to have really strong, stress reduction characteristics as well. We've talked about this several times. Maybe this should be a show. Maybe we should have somebody on that actually knows what they're talking about.
Steve Seid:
Anyways. I'll leave it there. Thanks everyone for listening. We'll see you next time.
Kurt Dupuis:
You can find The Whole Truth and subscribe for free on Apple podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. We'd love it if you took the time to rate and review the show on Apple podcast. It helps others find the show. And for more episodes of The Whole Truth, go to www.touchstoneinvestments.com/thewholetruth. That's touchstoninvestments.com/thewholetruth. All one word.
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Please note that this content was created as of the specific date indicated and reflects views as of that date. It will be kept solely for historical purposes and opinions may change without notice in reacting to shifting economic, market, business and other conditions. Touchstone funds are distributed by Touchstone Securities Inc., a registered broker dealer and member FINRA and SIPC.
