Industry Insights Live with Robert F Smith, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Vista Equity Partners

Good afternoon and welcome to another edition of the NAIC Insight Series. I'm Bob Green, the Chief Executive Officer of the National Association of Investment and I am delighted to be joined today by none other than Robert F. Smith, founder of Vista Equity Partners. Welcome, Robert. Thank you, Bob. Good to see you, my friend. It's good to see you as well, my friend. Thank you for spending some time with me today. Always a pleasure. So folks, when I thought about who we'd like to bring on, we had a fabulous conversation with Melody Hobson and with Jim Lowry talking about the history of minority entrepreneurship. I always knew that I wanted to bring Robert into this format, but I wanted to make sure that we presented Robert's story in a way that's been different in the marketplace. So we're going to talk a little bit about his business success, but we're going to talk much more about his thoughts, particularly around race, around people of color, around wealth creation and the like. But before we do that, I just want to share a little bit of background. So the firm that Robert founded, Vista Equity Partners, is known widely as one of the very best private equity firms in the country. Today they manage $73 billion in assets. They have 450 employees. They have 70,000 employees worldwide, if you aggregate their portfolio companies. Robert, congratulations, man. Extraordinary work. Well, thank you, Bob. But like all things, it's teamwork and team effort, and I'm just proud to be the leader of the Vista family here. So thanks again for those compliments. That's awesome. So let's get into it. Robert, I'm amazed in the advocacy work that I do. As you know, I spend a lot of time talking about diverse managers, and I'll at some point in the conversation bring up Vista and some smart associate on the opposing side, usually a consulting firm, will say, well, what do you mean diverse manager Vista? What's diverse about Vista? And I kind of laugh because on some measure, it's a testament of the firm's success. But on the other hand, there's this notion that you cease to be an African American when you become very wealthy and very successful. Let me ask you the first question, and we're going to focus on being black in America, right? And the first question is, as a child growing up in your neighborhood, how did you define success? That's a great question. And Bob, again, I want to thank you for inviting me here, just for the audience, and thank you all for taking time to listen to our conversation. Bob said, Robert, I'd like to have a conversation as if we're in the airport and just two friends talking. Bob and I have known each other, I guess, two decades or so now, and I tease him, everybody has always thought that I'm his younger brother, but it turns out I'm a couple of years older than him. We want to, I think, have a very open conversation here. I grew up in Denver, Colorado, in essence, at a time of really in a segregated neighborhood, all black neighborhood, and we were going through the stages of desegregation. It was my kindergarten class that actually was the first ones to go through what they called forced busing to desegregate the school system in Colorado. And I just remember all the kids in my neighborhood, many of whom I'm very close to still, getting on this bus. Now, right before they started desegregating the schools, there were some racists that decided that that was just the wrong thing and burned about a third of the buses that were supposed to be used for this desegregation. And so rather than three buses coming to my neighborhood and carrying all the kids in my neighborhood to the school across town, only one came. And it was interesting that there, only a select number of students who just happened to be in this three block radius could actually get on that bus and then go to the other side of town to a much more resourced school. And so you were faced, you know, as a child, you don't really know the difference until later and you reflect on it. But you're faced with the reality of people who are, you know, economically haves and economically have-nots and how the discrimination plays out in, you know, the day-to-day existence. You know, it played out in things like, you know, in Denver, you know, when we used to have lots of snow in the wintertime, all of our parents typically had to go to work and catch a bus or drive or whatever it might be. And, you know, our neighborhood would be the last one where we would get snow plowed. And I remember my father taking that on as a challenge to ensure that, you know, the parents in our neighborhood had the ability to actually get to work. Because of course, you'd be, you know, you couldn't earn money or dock pay because you actually couldn't move because, you know, they'd come and plow our streets three days later. And so in growing up, you know, part of what, in answering your questions, you know, how I defined success was, you know, like all things, we wanted to make our parents proud. We wanted to be able to, you know, not be a disappointment in their minds. And that meant to excel at school. And that meant to do your best in, if you were members of the Boy Scouts or, you know, Catechism class or whatever it might be, or, you know, the Rocket Club that was, you know, hosted by a young man who wasn't getting paid at all to do it, to teach some of us about rocketry at the time, the age of rocketry in the United States when it was new. And, you know, that's what we focused on as kids. And we worked with each other. And I just remember coming home from on the bus and my parents weren't home. And our neighbor, she was a stay at home mother and she had three daughters and she would invite all of the kids into their home until our parents came back. And, you know, fed us, you know, nutritious snacks and the older kids would tutor the younger kids in math or English or science or whatever it might be. And I just remember that experience of what defined success was the way that they gave to other members of the community. And I always think about that, you know, frankly, daily as an important part. Don't be a disappointment to your parents or your community and society. It was those ages where, you know, if you're walking to the store and you threw a rock and it broke a window, you know, the neighbor would call your parents, first they'd yell at you and then they'd call your parents. And it was that sort of a community. And so being a part of the community and a contributor to the community was an important part of the success that one thought about as a child. So that's fascinating to me, because in so many ways, while the folks at Denver, I'm sure, consider you theirs, you belong to all of us now, right? That's that's a part of becoming whether you accept it or not, a national and a global leader. But this notion of community started in a small place in Denver. And the same lessons, the same responsibilities, the same ethos has now spread out globally. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I know that's going to be a piece that continues to go throughout this. So let's move forward now. You matriculated to Cornell University and obviously you had a lot of success to find yourself at an Ivy League school. But then how did you define success when you got into Cornell and you were in college? Sure. Again, the whole thought of being your best self, the thought of how to achieve and accomplish. Both of my parents were fortunate in that they earned doctorates in education. They were schoolteachers and principals and administrators. But the importance of the highest quality education, not only for them, but all the kids in our community was central and important. So when I had a chance to go to a place like Cornell and Ivy League school, it was critical that I go and I work hard and I do my best and do well. But doing my best and doing well there wasn't just in grades. It was also participate in the fabric of not only community life at Cornell, but also in the Ithaca community. And so, you know, and I think you know this, Bob, I joined the greatest fraternity on the planet that was Alpha Phi Alpha, which was founded at Cornell. And I know it's fortunate you're also a member of a great fraternity and, you know, which is exciting to see how the sons of Alpha have done well. I'm teasing Bob a bit, audience, but part of what we did at Cornell was to build out a number of community service programs, some of which still exist, you know, go to college programs. And we literally get a busload and bandload of Ithaca high school students and take them to HBCUs during our spring break. We weren't fortunate enough to have money to go to Florida, but we literally go and we call the fraternity brothers along the East Coast from Morgan State to Howard, you know, Cheney State, etc. And we take these kids down and let them meet with the admissions officers and, you know, we'd stay in the fraternity, you know, brothers rooms and angels rooms and those sort of things. And that was very much part of the college experience. We also created scholarship programs that still exist. And I think one is yielding $80,000 a year for Cornell's African-American students, something we created 30 years ago. So part of success there was, again, contributing and being part of the fabric of that community. And, you know, I still see my fraternity brothers, you know, contributing to that. And even in their locations, they call upon us to, you know, to support whatever the local activities are, even though we are in as a chapter are now spread out. That that was critical that we all worked hard, delivered what we thought was our best academic work. But what along went along with that was service and service of the community that we were part of. Well, you know, Robert, I'm really sorry for what the brothers at Kappa Alpha Psi did to you at Cornell. We have all discussed it and we have great regard for you. And we're happy that that that alternative choice of going and the honor of pledging that the Alpha chapter was was available to you. And look, man, we're sorry. You know, you only come around once, but not everybody can be a noob, so we'll leave it down. All right. So now we've gotten through college. Now, let's let's get into the career, Robert. So you did not start out as an investor. A lot of people believe that incorrectly. Robert Smith has spent his entire career as an event. You had an entirely different career and you were good at it and successful at it. You loved it. Talk to us about how you define success in your initial career. Sure. I mean, I was a chemical engineer, you know, and growing up and going through college, you know, I started to realize the importance of even something today was the importance of an idea, something different, something new. And I thought the greatest thing in the world that you could ever do was come up with an idea that that no one else had come up with. Right. In the history of mankind. And so in focusing, I like areas called applied research and development and earned a couple of U.S. and European patents and developing ideas and processes and things that no one else had come up with. And to me, I thought that was one of the greatest accolades, frankly, on the planet. And then one thing happened, a black media publication called Black Enterprise started to really produce materials about black business people. And me and a few of my fraternity brothers who were actually in in in Buffalo, New York and other places at the time would read these. And we sit down and we talk about, oh, who are these people on the covers of these magazines? People like by the name of John Utendall and Ray McGuire and, you know, and, you know, Stan O'Neill and these sort of folks and men and, you know, understanding what it is that they did and how they did it. And so we started to do our own research and trying to figure it out. And so the importance of seeing us, our images, who we were, you know, and guys like Reginald Lewis comes on the scene and what he's doing. And it started to show us to me in particular, you know, I thought about my life as contribution in an intellectual capacity in the work that I did as an engineer. But I started to understand the importance of capital. You know, I didn't understand what capital really meant because, you know, no one in my neighborhood had capital. Right. Right. And so I started to understand that. And so I went back to business school, got educated in that. And then, you know, John in particular and Ray in particular helped me understand that the importance of capital and how it shapes communities and how it shapes, you know, an opportunity set. And that's when I went off and joined Goldman Sachs in the M&A department. And I realized that mergers and acquisitions in particular think about it's a high levels of capital structure. It's when, you know, assets are exchanged between owners. It's board level discussions and CEO level discussions that occur. And it reshapes the way that capitalism is is is deployed and engaged across the planet. And I thought, man, that's that's a good place to really learn how this works. And go ahead. I'm so sorry. So so you again, successful in chemical engineering. You had great access to almost peer mentors in terms of Ray Maguire and John, you know, a little bit ahead of you. But but clearly guys that were in a different field that you respected and listened to, you get into the almighty Goldman Sachs, right, generally regarded as as, you know, the largest and most prestigious of the investment banks. You do extremely well there. I'm going to tell the story for you. You you get the opportunity to go out to the West Coast, Silicon Valley. You open that office. You become one of their most prolific bankers in the enterprise software space. You I know you made a lot of money there. I know you did well that I know you had a great lifestyle that I want to get to this notion of why it wasn't good enough to just stay there. Right. Where does the fire come to leave something so good? Yeah. And, you know, Bob, you know, I've talked about this dozens of times, you know, it's this whole idea of risk taking is free on the one hand. Right. You know, to first start off, one of the the the things that I always think John and Ray and others for is they made themselves available to me when I was asking kind of, you know, uninformed questions. Sure. And they would take the time, I'm sure, and chuckle a little bit about these questions from this engineer who's asking about capital capital structures, how does this actually work and why would they do that form of a deal to help me understand a little bit better? I was invited to go out, as you said, to San Francisco by Goldman to create what now became our tech group. I was our first kind of M&A person on the ground. And I had a chance to engage with companies like, you know, Apple Computer and Microsoft and, you know, Texas Instruments and Hewlett-Packard and little companies called Yahoo and eBay back in the early days of tech and really started to understand more and more about how capital is leveraged and used in technology. Yeah. And then I started to think about a couple of my experiences as a engineer. One of the experiences in the early days, I was in Buffalo, New York, and I was actually implementing a what was called a programmable logic controller into a production facility. So this is the introduction of computing technology into a plant. And done with that work, we, in essence, were able to increase the productivity of that plant by about 26 percent. And once you think about that, that's basically a whole shift. Right. Right. And just for people's explanation, you know, when you're controlling a plant in analog, it kind of operates like this. Right. You know, temperature goes up. You need to adjust it. Pressure goes down. You need to adjust it. But when you put a computer system in place, you know, you're actually able to adjust it thousands of times a second. And so everything that was under the curve is waste. And if you can eliminate all that waste, that gives you more productivity. So high level. Right. But what that shows you is the power of computing. And now computers are starting to be pushed, not just in the plant, but now being pushed into the offices. So that same sort of efficiency was being implemented by, you know, the McKinsey's and the Baines and those sort of folks in the world is now starting to hit the office. And the whole idea and the thought is, well, you know, to what extent if you actually now drive enterprise software, which is this case, into the environments of businesses, how efficient can those businesses become? Which created a massive uplift in earnings in the companies in the late 90s or in the early 90s. Believe it or not, that's part of what productivity and kept the interest rates down and inflation down. But even more importantly, you know, how do you now run these businesses more efficiently as an investor? So when I started thinking about what the opportunity set is, I actually talked to my grandfather, you know, rest his God rest his soul. And he was like, Robert, why would you ever leave Goldman Sachs? He said, you know, that's a great job. Why would you ever leave Goldman? And I said, Granddad, I said, there are very few African-American entrepreneurs, very few. You know, we knew about Reggie Lewis at the time, I said, but there's just very few. And I've learned some things that not a whole lot of people know how to do. And, you know, don't you think it makes sense for me to go try and to take this risk? Now, of course, my grandfather grew up, you know, born in 1915, Depression era, segregated life through most of his life, worked really hard. He said, but, you know, what about the certainty? And he and I spent a lot of time talking about this. And I said, Granddad, how, you know, how, you know, would I feel if I if I don't take this risk? And ultimately, you know, as a as a good, you know, family and grandfather, he was he said, you know, grandson, you know, I you should go try. And I think that's a big part of the lesson that we as African-Americans, so for so for so long, we have been discouraged to try to start our own businesses and to deal with the pain of that and the joy and the elation and the liberation of it. And that's what ultimately led me to say this is worth trying and worth doing and giving it all that I have in my best. And that's an important thing that I try to impart to, you know, I have a wonderful once a month session with the with the Morehouse class of twenty nineteen young men. And that's we talk about is, OK, you know, a whole range of things. The one is to to to try and to take some risk. They don't have didn't have the debt that, you know, fortunately that I had to graduate from college. But it's important that they go in and look to to see what they can do and how they can, you know, express their best selves in some cases, a business environment, some case, a medical environment, and then look to serve their community effectively from that from that dimension. So that's why I left Goldman to go give it a shot. So so, Robert, one of the things you and I talked about, you were you had a willingness to do in this interview. And I'm going to take you up on it. We're going to meet the people where they are. Right. The audience of folks that's out there, many of them are not in the financial services world. They're certainly not in the billionaire Davos circuit. So let's dive in on this notion of risk. Right. As African-Americans, we see constant imagery on why we're taking more passive risk than anybody. You know, the one of the most dangerous things to be on the planet is to be a black person, let alone be a black male in an automobile on the side of a road and a traffic stop. Please talk to us more about how black people, Latinx people, Asian people, how all people in in that want to strive and achieve more should think about, receive and process and experience risk. Man, how many hours do we have to go through this? And you and I get a chance to talk about this, you know, and it is it is important. That we really understand how we can advance our society and not to be too much of a preacher here. But part of the advancing of society is to not only accept risk, but to take risk with others. And, you know, everyone has a role in this ecosystem. You know, the role of of investors in some cases to take a risk and an investment that they're going to make, but also capital allocators who take a risk with these investors. You know, it is risk capital. And, you know, and Bob, your organization, NAIC, and the way you all have have done a masterful job, I think, in enabling, you know, you know, black and brown and African American and female run firms to be effective in engagement and engaging with the capital allocators. You know, you provide a critical role in that ecosystem. You know, we have to provide a critical role in that ecosystem for not only delivering capital back at the highest rate to return with the lowest loss ratio. So that's part of the risk thing that helps there. But it's also critical upon us to show how we contribute to the ecosystem of a better society. Part of that better society isn't just philanthropy. That's a part of it. But it's providing high quality jobs and experiences in each one of our portfolio companies. Many people don't talk about it, but one of the things we do, you know, on average, every one of our companies increases its employment by 20 percent between when we buy a company, when we sell a company. Not one of the things we talk about. We increase our diversity. OK, you know, I think about we've now got I think it's 62 external board members. 70 percent of our boards have a woman on it and 60 percent have a person of color. Actually, the other way around. 70 percent have a person of color and 60 percent have a OK. Those are all elements of our contract with the capital providers that we're going to drive changes in these organizations that not only are driving more efficient use of capital, i.e. returns, but are more efficient engagement with the community. OK, which means not only enabling a more diverse workforce, not just hiring, enabling a diverse workforce through how we're going to drive. We have a program, you know, Khalid Ali at our firm has developed a conscious inclusion that we're driving across all of our portfolio companies. But also, how do we ensure that every one of our portfolio companies, when it leaves, which is one of my one of my main goals, has become, you know, carbon neutral or carbon negative? So when you come to visit, great. We're going to work with you, your management team, you know, increase your revenue growth, your productivity, you know, your your earnings, your diversity. But when you leave, we want you to be carbon neutral or carbon negative. OK. And providing systems around that. So a critical part of what we have to do is assess all of that risk and deliver systems to de-risk those investments. And so part of it and this kind of gets to that real part of, OK, well, how do you de-risk your life? OK, how do you de-risk the decisions that you make? Part of it is, you know, decreasing the amount of debt that you have. OK, some of it, look, we got to, you know, we said go to college, take on a bunch of debt, go get a good job. Great. Now I've got 25 years ahead of me of debt to pay off. OK. Unless and until there's some other structure that can work. Right. And so that's some things we're focused on. We'll talk about that later. Right. And then you have to think about when I move into a business, how do I de-risk that business? And in my job, my job is to not only provide a platform for our investors and our senior managers of our companies to do well, but to give them, you know, solutions, quantifiable ways to de-risk their business and de-risk their opportunity to excel as a manager of our companies or CEOs of those companies or even within the Vista platform. And so that's what I have to think about. And so we as African-Americans, Latinx folks, yeah, you know, look, my grandfather's generation, my parents' generation, they didn't have the opportunities. They fought for civil rights to have the opportunities. And part of that opportunity was to give Bob, you and I and others of our generation and below us the chance to take more risk so that we can deliver more services and capital into our own communities. And so we need to honor them through taking that risk. Robert, it's an extraordinary parallel when you talk about in your own life, leaving that good job. Right. And all of our families have talked to us about the good job. You know, what's interesting is we'll talk about Martin Luther King later. He had a real good job as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church. He was he was able to make a living, afford a home for his family, provide safety and security. And he took on a whole bunch of risk. He took on the risk of dogs and water hoses and all of those all of those angry folk to make real change. And it seems slight in comparison that our taking of risk would simply be leaving a good job to start a great business. So I applaud you and congratulate you on it. Let's transition to something that's near and dear to both of our hearts. And that's this U.S. pension system, Robert. So let me let me frame it for you. You and I have held many conversations about the notion that while there were many extraordinary dividends of the civil rights movement, one of the biggest dividends was access. And in this particular case, access to great employment, federal jobs, state jobs, public sector jobs, corporate jobs that all promised a defined benefit pension. Let me stop there. We know that that was the dividend. But walk us through what happened with that dividend and where we are today surrounding that that. Well, right. You know, and, you know, I hearken back to Dr. Martin Luther King. And you think about what the march on Washington was about. It was an economic march. Period. OK, that's that gets lost. You know, he gave a beautiful speech from his heart and what he was expressing is the desire for a beloved community. And, you know, Sister Bernice King is focused on that element of how do we create this beloved community? Part of that beloved community is is is economic opportunity. And, you know, when they created and unfortunately, a lot of that came through the spilling of a lot of African-American blood, the opportunity for us to have participation into the economy, working for the federal, state governments, teachers unions, etc. It created a pinch, an opportunity for us to pay into these pension plans and give ourselves some security, de-risk a life that heretofore we we we we had the ultimate risk. We took, you know, you come out of, you know, coming out of, you know, Homestead Act, Southern Homestead Act, you know, G.I. Bill. We did not participate equitably in those programs that would create wealth and security for our families. But now we have access to be part of these pensions, these defined benefit plans, and we pay into them all our lives. And unfortunately, demographics show our lives are shorter. So the payouts typically aren't necessarily equal to what we paid in on an inflation adjusted and risk return basis. And you only ever achieve the income on it. You don't ever get the principal. Right. It's only the income and that income, great support, etc. But now we have to think about how do we solve the problems that we have in our communities today? You know, problems of access and opportunity and capital. Well, these pension systems are some of the, you know, of course, the repositories of a lot of that capital. And, you know, part of NAIC, what you all do is to drive an understanding into those pension systems of how effective we as diverse managers have been in managing this capital, not only in terms of the return, but but but again, the return back to the community beyond the dollars that go back to that pension plan. And so the thought and for many of folks in the audience, you know, Bob and I've been talking about is, you know, we should assess and understand what that wealth actually is that sits in those plans. And how do we direct that specifically into the communities that, quite frankly, have do not have access to it today? Some of us do the management, but some of it should be directly driven to solving some of the problems. And we've got some great pension fund managers out there who are thinking about it, who are thoughtful and make sure that, you know, there's diversity. And, you know, we are at Vista are great beneficiaries of a lot of that, but there are others who aren't thinking about that. And some of those actually have some of the highest contributions. You know, there's one plan I know, 36 percent of that that teachers union is African-American, but yet they give less than one percent of the assets under management to African-American managers. Robert, let me paint a picture of what we're talking about here. Right. So virtually every public school teacher, every public government employee, every policeman, every fireman and everyone of in that in probably a 50 year window that has worked, has both contributed to and had their employer contribute on their behalf to a pension plan. If you look at this notion of the wealth gap in America, the average person doesn't have the average African-American doesn't have four hundred dollars for an emergency bill. Much of our wealth and I would argue the greatest source of our wealth in the African-American and Asian community in the Latinx community is in these pension plans and it's crap. And you use the term and we delighted in in its in its irony of unsovereign wealth. Talk a little bit about unsovereign wealth. Right. And you and I, Bob, talked about this. You know, there should be some thought, some work, some action around how do you evaluate that and create an unsovereign wealth fund in the US and say, OK, here is the amount of capital that now is residing in this 19 trillion dollars. That's the number. All right. That should actually be thought about to be used to create the opportunity for those who have contributed to it. But their communities are not getting a proportionate amount of that delivered back to their community. And we need to do that work and then come forward with some proposals as to how we can go. We can go solve those problems. Yeah. And I think, you know, that is a worthy effort for the NAIC to take on. It's a worthy effort. I know that I will support with the NAIC to figure out, you know, how do we take advantage of the dividend of the civil rights movement that our grandparents and parents, you know, frankly shed blood, sweat, tears and time in contributing to. But they're not getting their proportionate amounts that are either being delivered back to money managers or frankly, more importantly, delivered back to the communities that they come from. You know, when you actually depress one of their biggest assets, which is housing through redlining, it decreases their ability to participate in that wealth. You know, African-Americans have one-tenth the wealth, one-tenth the wealth of white Americans. And that is something that that needs to change. If we do this right, it will increase our whole GDP by another one and a half to five, six percent. And there's no reason why we couldn't. So this gets back a little bit to the ecosystem part. Look, you know, Bob, you know, fund managers, you know, if you're running the big pension funds, I think they a lot of our are thoughtful, but need to be more thoughtful in ensuring that these asset managers get a fair share of allocation. Of course, performance matters. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you give it. But, you know, we have shown that we have the ability to not just perform, but outperform in many cases. You know, we've been taught to take less risk in those deals. So we have lower loss ratios on the one hand. Right. And in disproportionate upside. So we should, you know, everyone should do their part in leaning in, in continuing to ensure that these these these managers have the ability to go and not only exercise their trade and give money back to the community that is funding them, which are these African-American teachers and pensioners, you know, firefighters and police officers, et cetera, but also the ability for us to deliver, you know, the value creation in terms of jobs into our community. Those are all the important elements of this ecosystem that we we have to work together to do. So, Robert, you are you have grown very widely known for your philanthropy. You don't brag about it. Others usually are telling the story and you're off thinking about the next thing that you could go do. I personally applaud you for that. But one of the things that gets overlooked is the impact you're trying to have on the very systems you're talking about. Right. The ecosystem, the social network. How do you create how to how does somebody, even if it's one person with a lot of influence, create that sort of change? Right. And you you birthed a lot of solutions. The two percent solution, you hyper fund a lot of civic organizations. You can name them. I won't. But NAIC is certainly one of them. But talk to us a little bit about where where you draw influence on these ideas and then what you have to do to push them and to get them implemented. Yeah. And thank you for that. That that question. You know, there are two major influences on my life. Three, I need to give one, you know, one is, you know, my spiritual learnings and teachings and the opportunity to to think about that every morning, how I fill my cup. What is what is, you know, my purpose here? And I'm fortunate I have a group of people that I get to share those thoughts with around how we use, you know, God and in God's influence on our lives. The second is the community I came from in the community that I'm part of. You know, when you grow up in a community where you saw some people's only resources were that they could, you know, read to a child who didn't have someone to read to them because their parents were at home. But they did that. You know, some people, because they became you know, heads of our rocket clubs, didn't get paid. And I think it's five out of the eight people who were in that little rocket club became engineers in the black community. Yeah. They didn't get paid to do any of this, but they did it. And then I look and I see what my role and opportunity can be. If I can do things at scale, then that's what I should do. So that's one influence. Second and the third influence, Frankie, is, you know, being an engineer and, you know, engineers get notoriously frustrated by solving one problem one time as opposed to solving that one problem forever. And so when I think about how we approach these solutions, they need you know, when you have systemic racism, which is, Frankie, the worst thing that we have on this planet and particularly now in this country, then we need to find systemic solutions to solve it, not one off solutions. You know, those can help. But we need systemic solutions, systemic solutions to drive capital systemically into these unbanked and underbanked communities. 70 percent of African-American communities don't have a branch bank in them. Well, how will people get loans to buy houses or businesses to get loans to expand their business or business opportunities? If you don't have access to that capital and then you look at the capillary banking system, well, they don't have the modernization. So let's figure out how to modernize and technology is available. And then let's figure out how to capitalize on, you know, technology. And, you know, folks at Bank of America, et cetera, have, you know, come up with these equality, progress, sustainability bonds that actually can capitalize these businesses and these banks. And then how do we capitalize the supply chain of the small to medium African-American Latinx businesses? Well, there's there's ways to do that using some of those bonds, ways to do that. You know, leveraging some of the things that they're doing at Aerial Capital. You see what I mean? OK, so let's start to pull those together. And then we say, OK, well, how do we handle, you know, the broadband? That's right. Thirty six percent of African-American homes don't have broadband. And the kids we got, you know, had to go home for, you know, because of the pandemic don't have access to school systems. But we've got a company that can actually deliver some of those LMS systems. But we also need to talk to, which is what we're doing in partnering with, you know, the T-Mobiles and the Verizons and AT&T to say here are the communities that need that help. How are we going to help them? And then you push it through the infrastructure bill, you know, ladder and plan, et cetera. But, you know, having having using the platform of relationships that we have and that I have, I think that's part of what my job is. That's the calling that tells this is what you now have to do. Sure. My highest and best use in some days is sitting down and reading a book to my children. Yeah, sometimes my highest and best use is to call upon the White House to make some changes in the way that capital is getting distributed into our communities. And so I have to follow that calling with with due passion and use the resources and capacity that I have to try to make this place a little better than than how you and I found it. Brilliant, brilliant. I appreciate it so much. So on a hot summer day a couple of years ago, you received an honorary doctorate degree. You you're already a man of letters. You're already a man that has achieved a lot. And it would have been very easy for you to stand on that stage and give a speech about excellence, a speech about achievement, a speech about vision and dreaming big. But instead, you made the day about everybody else. The grandmothers out there, and I'm talking about the day of your honorary degree at Morehouse. I watched that video many, many times, and I took the opportunity to look at the reaction in the faces behind you. And some of those faces are extraordinary. There's one of the guys I'm told he's a dean. And I just you know, the one I'm talking about, he he was ebullient in terms and he didn't believe what he had just heard. Take us through not just the speech and what you did. And folks can read about that. I want to know when you came up with the idea, what you had to do to figure out how to implement it. And then that moment when you actually got to say it. Take us behind it, Robert. Sure. So about a year before that, I was invited to to visit Morehouse and participate in what they call a candle in the dark ceremony. And it is a a wonderful tradition of honoring African-American contributors to society. And I think, you know, we have some wonderful traditions in our in in our community and some in our HBCUs and certainly in Alpha Phi Alpha. I don't know about the other fraternities, but part of those traditions and honoring those traditions is to also stand back and reflect on where we have come and where we need to go. And when you walk the campus with these young men and hear their dreams and goals and aspirations, this was a year before all of this, you know, took place. And, you know, really take a look at who they are and what they can accomplish. And then you hear the flip side of the burdens. Of debt and the burdens of lack of opportunity. And so you think about this gets back to, you know, how do you live an inspired life? And I'd say one of the most important things that I can do or any of us can do is to liberate a human spirit, OK, and to liberate that spirit to become its best and its best self. And it can be in music or business or art or whatever it might be. And that's part of what was my calling and passion. And so before a year later, they asked me to become, you know, a, you know, the commencement speaker. And I did want it to be a surprise not only the students, but also the faculty. So I would ask pointed questions. They didn't know why I was asking, well, what's the average amount of debt that the Morehouse student carries? Tell me about the average amount that they make when they graduate. And, you know, I would do it in spots in time so they couldn't connect the dots. And I realize that the greatest gift I could give these students was the gift of freedom, financial freedom, and so that they could think about and then act upon what they believe is the right thing for them to do in their life. Look, I'm not like all things. I'm not imposing any condition on them to do anything right outside of be thoughtful African-American males who graduated from Morehouse. And that's what I thought about. And I didn't and again, I had no idea that it would honestly, you know, be so well known. And in all frankness. And so when I when I delivered the speech and I was on vacation with my wife and children and, you know, I delivered the speech and went off stage and then I literally left to go back on vacation. And, you know, I get back to the house and and my phone's just ringing and ringing and ringing. I turn it off because we're supposed to be on vacation. And finally, I turn over had like 80 text messages. And then my friend says, Robert, call me immediately. And he's like, oh, my God, we're just getting if you've seen this, I'm like, no, I've seen anything right. And then I realized, like all things, you know, everyone understands, you know, these burdens that these children have that are now released. And everybody also understood, you know, the act of doing that creates a multi-generation ripple for those for those families. And I now know these these young men because I get a chance to, you know, I think I told you once a month we talk, we chat. Well, we do more than talk and chat. But anyway, you understand what now they believe they are capable of on the one hand. And the thing I didn't realize until much, much later was that it was so important for that to be done by an African-American male at Morehouse. I didn't realize that. I didn't think about that as part of what I was doing. But I've now they have told me how important it was, just how it was important for me to see people like Reg Lewis go buy a company, a billion dollar company. And important for me to see people like Stan O'Neill become CFO of Merrill Lynch and John Utendall become, you know, vice chairman at Bank of America. All those things. And, you know, seeing Ray McGuire becoming vice chairman at Citi. Those are the things that ultimately you start to realize if you don't see if you don't see someone who looks like you in those roles, it's sometimes really hard for you to envision yourself doing those sorts of things. So that's why it's so critically important that we we we we portray ourselves in the media in a way that is inspirational to our young, young, young people. Appreciate you sharing that personal story. So in the last segment of our interview, Robert, you and I thought that we'd have an opportunity to talk about some things that everyone can relate to and get your impression of them. So some of these may be a little edgy and some of them may be at some point a little dark, but they're things that have happened in the world. We didn't create these. And as human beings, we have we have a relationship to them and an insight. And so as you and I sort of source the list, the first one on the list is as a young boy, you were able to look on TV and see the footage of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Can you talk about what that impact had on your life? Yeah. And you and I talked a bit about this, Bob, and I still get choked up when I think about that. You know, a six year old, you know, just started getting on this bus six months. Right. Going across town to this school as one of three African-American children in my classroom. And, you know, we'd go across this bus and, you know, six months into this, you realize that these kids in that classroom were just like you. Yeah. And, you know, you hear the words, what your parents tell you about, you know, all humans and the words you learn in church. And we're all, you know, created equal. And and you start to understand and feel that as a young a young person. And then they assassinate Dr. King. And, you know, the first time I had seen my mother and my father cry Krauss and my mother and a lot of the women in our neighborhood all made little black armbands for the children that we'd wear to school. And we wore them to school and none of the children at the school at armbands, except those who got off that bus. And I couldn't understand for so long, why not? Why don't you feel the same pain? Yeah, that we feel. And, you know, I'm young. And, you know, I know there's I saw a lot of heated arguments with the older kids, you know, the fifth and sixth graders. They know what that was about. But, you know, in reflecting on it, you know, we all felt this pain and didn't understand why there was no empathy for our community and what we were going through and frankly, what we as all Americans were going through with the murder of Dr. King. And when I think about that to this day, I'm a little heartbroken, because, you know, as a child, you know, these were your friends, but yet they didn't understand the grief that you felt. And you couldn't, you know, six, seven years, I couldn't express it. How could I express it? I didn't know how to express it, but I felt it. So let's contrast that with one of the brightest hopeful moments. Yes, we can. Right. The yes, we can campaign led by President Barack Obama. You there were many moments in that that we all marveled at. But the day you saw him on that inaugural stage, raise his hand on the Bible and take the oath of office as a president. What did you feel that day, Robert? Sure. Let let me give you one interim first, because I want to contrast the expression that I couldn't, you know, articulate as a young man, as a child with Dr. Martin Luther King, with what happened when they murdered George Floyd. What I saw was a community of Americans expressing empathy. OK. And that was a big contrast for me. And that's an important thing that I think about. And I communicate to my my my children now is this has changed from when I was a child. And, you know, we have now, unfortunately, you know, Daunte Wright's murder we now have to deal with. And we're tired of dealing with this. We have to deal with it until we end racism. That's what we have to do. And I recall getting to your question, you know, President Obama being inaugurated and my grandfather. And I said, Granddad, this this is just fantastic. And, you know, I called a friend, Senator Ted Kennedy. God rest his soul. And his wife, Vicki and Senator Kennedy and Vicki gave me their tickets to the inauguration because I wanted to take my grandfather. Yeah, I grabbed it was a freezing cold day. And grandfather was 93 and they made him walk. And he and I walk all the way there. And he didn't miss a step, didn't miss a stride. It was not cold. He sat down in and we sat next to each other. And he's, of course, pointing to all the celebrities in the, you know, where we were sitting by. And it's oh, that's something I said. That's that's terrific. And of course, you want to take pictures and talk to every guard and every person. And as we sat there, my grandfather looked up in the Capitol building and he said, hey, Rob, you see kind of a fourth flag over? I said, yeah, he says. I used to work there. I said, what do you mean? And I had no idea. He said, yeah, I worked in the Senate lounge when I was, you know, a teenager. Wow. I said, doing what? He said, I had no idea. He said, oh, I was you know, I used to check coats and serve coffee and tea to the senators. He said, I remember when FDR was getting inaugurated, I was looking out the window and I didn't see a black face in the crowd. He said, now I'm sitting here with my grandson watching the first African-American president get inaugurated. And he looked at me. He said, isn't it wonderful the capacity that Americans have to change? That's what I remember about that day. Wow. Poignant, poignant story. So I'm going to give you the last one and then we can wrap. Tell me what your dreams are for your children. Right. They will they they clearly will lead a different life than most African-American children will ever lead. But you're you have some philosophies that you share with me. You're not pointed in terms of what you need them to be. Tell us about what your aspirations are for your children and their lives. That's a great question. You know, I'm literally going back and forth today with my three older children who were just distraught in tears, in pain, you know, dealing with, you know, Daunte Wright's murder. Yeah. And literally before I got on this call, we're back and forth and texting and FaceTiming and literally dealing with literal tears. And I I tell them, you know, there's there's there's a couple of things that we have to remember. You know, people have the capacity to change. And part of what we have to do is drive forward the ideas that change is important and that we have to end racism in this country. And they have to do their part. And they may have a small platform or medium sized or large platform, but it matters in every interaction that they have in that context. You know, I tell them that there's three rules that I'm giving them in life and three gifts. You know, the first is you are enough. You are enough to make that difference, enough to make a change, change, help others change. The second rule I tell them is, you know, I hope they discover the joy of figuring things out. And the third thing is love that is all that matters and that they need to be part of, you know, the beloved community and to use love as the answer to solve the problems and to speak, you know, this truth with love and to speak and move with love in their hearts, irrespective of how challenging other people may be. So that's what I hope to leave for them. Indelible gifts that I hope that they can plow forward in their lives successfully. Wow. Thank you for sharing those three three nuggets with us. You are enough. The joy, discovering the joy of figuring things out and love is all that matters. I appreciate you, man. I thank you for always coming through for me, always coming through for your fellow members of this organization. And I thank you for always sticking by the people, the people in your Denver community and the people now in your global community. We love you and we appreciate and we're blessed to know you. You want to find a way? Now, thank you, good brother. Thank you for all you do and look like all things. We all got our part. So let's let's continue doing what we do. Awesome. Let's do it, man. Onward and upward, upward and upward. All the best to you, brother. Very best. Thank you.