so I have been almost my entire career. There was a brief start prior to that which I'm sure we'll get to later with one of the questions in the investment banking business. Azan investment banker not as a broker, so not sort of calling on people toe, manage their money or sell them a stock or things like that. But in one that helps arrange various types of transactions. Um, and one of the other distinguishing parts of my career on I've been at this now for a long time for more than two decades, more than three decades, all right, But one of the things that distinguishes my path is that it has been with smaller what's known as regional investment banking firms. And when people use the word regional, that doesn't mean, oh, there they only do transactions or only do business in Texas or Pennsylvania or the state of Washington or something. But it usually means that they're not headquartered in New York, Boston, where most people are, uh,one of the distinguishing features is the kinds of issuers or companies that have dealt with in the whole world of business tend to be smaller. So it's not IBM or Apple Computer or American Airlines or or in such, but it's companies that generally might have revenues off. You know, uh, well, sometimes no revenues if it's in certain industries, like medical devices or revenues up to maybe a couple of $100 million U. S. So that that's one way to sort of characterize it, Um, and such and most almost all not quite of my investment banking career has been, has been with firms that arm or institutionally oriented. And what that means is that to the extent that we raise money either in the public markets or in the private markets, it tends to be dunmore with institutional investors than with retail investors on. That's not a good or bad. That's just the sort of a business choice the large firms obviously do. Both right, if you do a transaction with Merrill Lynch and do a public offering or something, institutions and individuals and such, but that's kind of been my background, so that's kind of the size of the pool, if you will. And I had to start in a different profession, which we'll get to in a few minutes. But, um so I, um I grew up sort of all around the United States. That was what they call a government grap. So my dad didn't work for the Army or the military, but he worked for the U. S. Government. So I wound up living 89 places but found myself in for the first four years of college in California in Southern California. And I got a bachelor of science in accounting of all things from a what's now called Loyola Marymount University. And from that I spent a little less than three years with what was then one of the world's largest public accounting firms. Now it's part of KPMG was called Pete Mark Mitchell Beck. Um and, uh, those were very steep learning curves. It's a very specific skill set, but you learn a lot. Um, I like to say that I really hated that job, but I do it again if I had the chance to do it. Uh, from that, I wanted to do a little bit of a reset in terms of my trajectory and left Peat Marwick or KPMG now and went Thio graduate school. And I got a master's in business and finance and a specialty, uh, for what's now called the Anderson School of Management. Back then, it was just the U. C L. A, which is also in Los Angeles. U C L A Graduate School of Management. Andi. When I worked with KPMG, I was up north in the city of San Francisco. So Onda, from there after that, I got into this regional, if you will, investment banking business. And I've been with four different firms since then. Uh, actually, 4.5. It's a long story that isn't relevant for this recording, but, uh, that's that's kind of how we got from there, all the way to hear if you

you know, this is, I mean, much like public accounting. Okay, PNG. But especially in investment banking, it's It's one of the ultimate service businesses, and it's also distinguished compared to other professions like public accounting or auditing or like the law that you very, very seldom, if ever, earned revenue by building by the hour. So it's it's usually, um, milestone based, its success based, its completion based, I mean, there are There are certain retainers that air paid, but none of that's based on time. So your time is really unpredictable because it's filled up by whatever it takes to get the job done. And sometimes you get a little lucky and something goes pretty smoothly and easily. Usually it doesn't right because you're there to solve problems. I mean, if it was really easy, they wouldn't hire people like us right on, De So some of the stories, especially for younger people, that you read about the horrendous hours on Wall Street and everything that tends to be true. Uh, you know, so an 80 hour work week for the first number of years that you start is not unusual, but it's very uneven. It's it's It's very jagged because it just depends on the volume of business and such there. There is not a lot of recurring business. There's some in my field now. You might have an existing client, and anytime that they want to raise money because there's a good relationship, they come to us. Army do that, but there's no contractual obligation to do that. Sometimes they don't need anything for. I mean, it might be a couple of years, right, or they might need three things in the next six months. So it's very it's very uneven. And it makes time management, um, one of the really biggest issues in skills. And I don't think anybody does it perfectly because it could be very sometimes Machiavellian. I mean, I had untold mentor when I first started out First few years and this I'm gonna date myself. This, uh so barely predates personal er the ubiquitous use of personal computers. So you had stacks of files there on your desk, to the side on the credenza behind you, and he said, Well, you know, what you want to do is walk into the office every day and look at those stacks and stacks of different transaction, and you want to pick out the one that you think is closest to getting done, which also means getting paid and you work on that one first and then you work on the others. And so it could be a bit of a heartless, sometimes rank ordering of things. But that's how this business works. Let me. So what responsibilities and decisions does one handle? Well, that's that's a slightly different way. Uh, there are really three broad areas and, um, in any firm like mine and And this includes if there's a brokerage forest or if there's not a retail brokerage force or or, you know, public offering brokerage force. But you know, one is generating business, uh, the other is transacting the business. And then there's a third area, uh, which is usually segregated, and that's the one that nobody likes to talk about or which is compliance. It's a very it's a very and somewhat appropriately so heavily regulated business, right, and so everybody likes to sort of make fun and not get along with their compliance people. But that's a very important part. But the two parts that involved me or and It doesn't start day one, but it's generating business. And then it's putting the appropriate team together to transact the business in some larger firms. Sometimes those functions are somewhat segregated in smaller firms where I've been associated with and by the way, smaller, it's anywhere from maybe 30 or 40 to 150 bodies. Actual people, uh, it's much more integrated than that, right? But but But there's a transition that happens, and every firm like ours and by the way, every big consulting firm and every big law firm and every big public accounting firm a little less extent there, where there's a transition from working on somebody else's transactions and business, destroying the generate your own and leading in. You're the one that leads that team and put that team together, and that's usually not a sort of a stark, You know, one day you're doing this the next day you're doing that. But it's a transition that if you wanna be long lived in the business, everybody has to make eso is one of the top three priorities. I I mean, the first two were easy one. It's the ability to generate business. The second one is getting it done right, and then the third is getting it done. The appropriate fashion. It's a very regulated business, and there is liability. Um, you know, it's a very litigious field. Um, anytime somebody loses a lot of money, it's never their fault. It's always somebody else's fault. And one of the first people to point a finger at outside of the company that messed up is people like us, right? So care and what you're doing is also very important. But that's probably how an answer those questions.

So let's kind of break down the the A couple of major areas that we talked about a minute ago. So let's talk about business generation, which comes a little later on, obviously, in your career. Okay, Um and it really, uh, especially at the regional level. It really gets back to proper deal selection. I mean, so maybe just a quick and a bit of a sort of a global anecdote. Um, when I first got out of college and I worked for for Peat Marwick or KPMG, you're an auditor, right? And you have clients and you spend a lot of time out of the client site, you know, doing it. And it's a very computational, intense business and things you have to do with all the files and everything else. Um, and you need a lot of interaction with an information from your client from the companies it Nobody likes you, right, because nobody likes to have an auditor around. So it's always a bit of, you know, having the right personality, and, you know, not browbeating people because that never works. But, you know, being. But so when you get out of my business that I'm in now it's almost the opposite, because everybody, uh, everybody wants to raise money. Everybody wants to go by this or by that, or make their stock price higher or something. Right? So everybody wants to be your friend because they think you could do something for them, whereas auditing it's just the pain they have to endure. Um, but that gets back to the transaction selection, right? Because it's very important to select transactions because again, we don't bill by the hour, right? Nobody in this industry does. So you have to pick transactions that are going to get done and they're going to close. And it can be easy to fall in love with the particular company you've been nurturing a long, long and trying to get to sign is a client. And you Finally, something comes up and they do it and you're excited. Um, and it may or may not be the best ideas. So one of the ways that that is handled is even for smaller firms like ours. They have committees. They're called commitment committees or something similar to that. And so you have tow put together a presentation, sometimes maybe not so little presentation and go in front of them and say, Listen, here's what this company does here is that the people are like Here is the work we've done to date on. But this is this is either where we're gonna raise the money. We're raising money. So we think this is the urban to do it in. Uh, if it's a merger and acquisition transaction, you know that's it. If it's an academic transaction like a fairness opinion or solvency opinion, then you talk about the risks and rewards. So that's a really important tool, because it's very easy to fall in love with the people you've been nurturing and kind of helping along. Right? And you they're almost like your Children, right? You're very proud of them, and sometimes you get a little too emotionally involved. So that's one of the major challenges. Is that proper selection of transactions? Onda pain points are you know, somebody had a joke once they said, you know, it's I mean, investment banking is great because you're in a client business. Except for the clients. Ah,kinship with people. You deal with it at the company who are almost always the very senior people. It's the head of finance. It's the CEO. A lot of times is the chief operating officer. That's generally the level you deal that if your reason money for Apple Computer, you don't do that. But for middle market companies, it's the people that founded the company. You're running or do things, and it's usually a fairly intense environment because you're racing to get a transaction done. Originally, financing done so so making sure that flow of communication is right and everybody on the same page. Everybody is saying the same thing. You have to create a common narrative. All those things are very important. And, um, I, uh, I was asked back a few years after I graduated from U. C. L. A. Thio, given example of something I've done for for one of their classes, right? And the the and the professor, at some point during the course of it, said, You know, for most of these jobs, like what you do or consulting or a little less people think that, you know, if you so back then we at Hewlett Packard. 12 c calculators, which may be nothing to anybody that's watching this. But look it up on the Internet, right? You can see what everybody had one, all right? And there are financial calculators. And so we sort of left U c l a thinking, while we can compute the NPV of anything with this. And we're the smartest people around. Well, sure, but But what this professor said was most people don't realize in the end all these jobs or sales jobs, right to keep advancing through the organization and to be successful. And there are There are obviously some exceptions to this where you might have a really specific product specialist. But by and large, you have to make that transition from being technically expert to being able to sell and being able to convince people to come and work with you and to take them on. So I think that