Cameron Rogers: Investing With Impact | Next Gen

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Welcome to Barron's Advisor: The Way Forward Next Generation, a special series spotlighting the emerging leaders shaping the future of financial advice. Twice a month, we'll be digging into the strategies, insights, and game-changing moves that will help you take your practice to the next level. I'm your host, Allison Tucci, and today with me is Cameron Rogers, a financial advisor at Angelus Wealth Management Firm. A $2.3 billion RIA, and we're going to talk about how to invest with impact. Cameron, welcome to the podcast today.

Thank you for having me.

So we're just going to jump right into it. You have built a business focused on women investors. Tell me how.

Yeah, it's this kind of key idea of what women want. And throughout my 15-year investing career, first working with institutions and then individuals and families, you know, I found it fascinating how women relate to money. And it's not just as earners, it's as investors, decision makers, really stewards of their capital for communities and families. And there's sort of two big things that I think women want. First is relating things back to the big picture. And so I have a lot of investors, women and men, coming to me saying, What's the one question I should ask my financial advisor? And I think this is especially important for women. And, and that one question I always say is, how does this relate back to me? How does this relate back to me and my family and my goals and my aspirations? So I think it's connecting back to the big picture, and that could be creating sort of an ecosystem around money for that individual financial planning. So that's really number one. And then number two is making investments feel more tangible. So if you think about us as women in the US, 77% of us between 25 and 54 are working. We also probably take on 6 unpaid hours a day of care responsibilities, and care could mean a number of different things.

Very true.

You combine that with the fact that we are making 80% of purchasing power decisions for our families, for ourselves. Oh, by the way, consumption is 70% of the US economy. It's the, you know, the economic engine. And so that just goes back to we are literally touching, feeling, seeing things throughout our day. And so I think financial success for women, and success means building systems around money, continuing to do so, is relating a lot of what we see in our day-to-day back to investing because it just, it then becomes more natural in an environment that hasn't historically felt natural for women.

So what do you mean by building a system around women? Can you give me an example of what that is?

One, I always want to meet women where they're at and most comfortable, and that may not be a boardroom with a mahogany desk or, you know, in the evening over a steak dinner. You know, I'll provide you I'll tell you a side story. A few years ago, a peer of mine was very upset because her manager wouldn't allow her to take a woman client on a prospecting meeting to get their nails done. Oh, wow. You know, you're in New York. I'm in New York. It costs about $25 to $30. That manager, you know, who was a man, I have to say he was a man, I don't think would have balked at it. $200 or $200 steak dinner. Yeah, so you have to meet people where they are. Kind of that second piece, which I referenced, is relating everything back to why this matters to me. So distilling things to their core to also get back to the tangible nature of investments. Three, we need to help women build people around their money. So other advisors, other areas that they want to invest that may kind of extend beyond my direct investment purview, like if they want to angel invest, things like that. Like create that culture around money. You know, and then lastly, for women who do want their money to do double duty, we as women do double duty all the time, but who want their money to do double duty, providing opportunities to invest in a way for accountability impact, sustainability. There's, you know, there's so much terminology around it.

I think ESG or impact investing has been a topic that has had some ups and downs, especially lately in the market, and has been having some branding issues. But what is your perception with impact investing, especially given the state that you built a business for women? And women tend to want their money to do a little bit more.

Yeah, so there's been tremendous backlash around impact investing, sustainable investing, ESG investing, and I'm not surprised. And my not being surprised, I'm not surprised, and that's not political at all. I'm not surprised given sort of the political world we live in. I actually think the backlash is a response to how we as a financial services industry approach approached values-based investing. And so it's more about our approach and less the idea. And I'll go into it in a little bit more detail. So we saw an opportunity with sustainable investing, as we do, you know, with an opportunity that has, you know, a monetary value associated with it. And what we did is we constructed, we branded, we packaged, we sliced and we diced. And the sort of end product for investors was like me I'm serving you a single serving of a values pie, and don't worry, I chose the ingredients for you, and I know what's in there, and I hope you enjoy it. And it's no wonder why that didn't land well. You know, your values are different from my values, are different from anyone else's values, and that's because we have our individual lived experiences. So I think it's really a backlash to this one, one-size-fits-all nature of values. If you actually look at the data, 3 in 4 individuals in the U.S. would like to invest in a way that aligns with their values. So 3 in 4. 1 in 4 feel like they actually can do it. So it's more of like an implementation conundrum, and that's where I think our ability to customize, to distill values to their core as opposed to ascribing values to someone, is where we can make make a difference. And we're, you know, we're moving so fast in our industry where we can do that. You know, you have customized index strategies, values overlays, whatnot, but it's moving away from, you know, these prepackaged mutual funds and ETFs where if you look at 2024, $20 billion just moved out of that industry. And that's really investors voting with their feet.

So I walk into your office, I want to have a conversation. I want to put my money that matters to me. I want to, you know, I focus on, you know, humanitarian rights. Help me. How do you make it personalized to that?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we will then go through all of the, you know, kind of all of the areas that your specific focus touches. And, you know, I'm going to give you an example on the public equity side. You know, public stocks are tough because you could find fault with any public company. I actually have a funny example of a client who did, and she was just like paralyzed by it, but it's really going into a portfolio. What you want is you probably want a portfolio that is constructed in a way that is diversified, that can pretty cleanly follow a certain benchmark depending on your benchmark, and then expresses those values. The way those values find its way to the portfolio is really weeding out the different companies that do not pass muster from a human rights perspective, kind of in the left tail. So it's leaving those out. Interesting.

It's more exclusionary then.

It's exclusionary. You can take the approach of tracking companies who are making, making progress. You can take a couple of different perspectives here. You can say, I just want to, you know, exclude the ones who have a terrible track record and then they're not in your portfolio. But then you also don't have a seat at the table for shareholder activities, etc. Or you could say, you know, I really want to I would follow the positive trajectory of a company who's getting their act together because I think that their positive trajectory in this respect will create shareholder value. You can take a couple of different approaches. On the private market side, that's the public market side. On the private market side, that's where you can really get more specific because at the end of the day, these are tangible assets. It's real estate. It's power. It's companies. And so you can also implement it in the private markets. But, you know, when you're investing in the private markets from an investor qualification perspective, you just want to make sure you can take on that risk, liquidity risk, timeframe risk, all of those things.

Are there any other sort of ways if you're, you know, talking or educating an investor with how do I make a change with my money that they should really think through?

Yeah, well, I'll give you the example of the client that I referenced. So she had come into portfolio of stocks. And we were in her portfolio review, which many advisors know well, and I had kind of her top positions up on the screen. And we weren't even talking about the stocks. We were talking about something else. But I saw her focused on that. And she said, "Kam, like, I don't like any of these companies." All different industries. Tech, healthcare, like consumer, literally everything. And she's like, "I can find fault with all of these companies." And, you know, I said I said to her, and I'll use this example, I was like, you know, from her perspective, she had the financial capacity to sell or gift all of them and not be in stocks. So I told her, I was like, look, let's say you have $100. You could feel paralyzed, completely disengage, and put that $100 under your mattress. I don't think that mattress is going to pay interest, but you are, you know, you are then not invested in anything. You could also give that $100 away. And we know philanthropy has a tremendous impact, you know, but when you give that $100 away on the philanthropic side, it's, it's gone. It's being used as it should be, you know, and then I said to her, when you're investing, let's say that $100 in a pool of stocks that are intentionally picked, you are not just owning kind of the paper of that company. You are, one, increasing the valuation of that that company or those companies, you are lowering their cost of capital, and you are kind of giving them as an investor a green light to do what they need to do. Also invested that $100 growing at 7% a year, in 10 years, $200. So there's like the double-duty impact. And then I think really the last kicker is if you look at a lot of the industries that we think can be more impactful, so renewable energy, healthcare, or whatnot, when you look at what they're reinvesting into the business and innovation, you know this, those numbers are 15% to 30% of revenues going to research and development versus kind of the average of 5% to 10%. So you're also supporting these innovation economies. So we talked about that and kind of like distilled it back to this idea that perfection is the enemy of the good. So sure, like you can feel paralyzed and like hide in a dark room, or you can actually be thoughtful about, you know, what you're allocating to.

You're listening to Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward: Next Generation. We're going to take a short break. Stay with us.

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Welcome back to Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward: Next Generation. Let's get back into the conversation. In terms of the industries themselves, let's dive into some of them. So top 3 industries that you think are really making an impact and, and how are you really approaching them with your investors?

Yeah, I mean, healthcare. Healthcare is so important, especially for women. I mean, I know I'm bringing it back to women, but if you look at R&D dollars going to women's health, it's probably around 5%. You strip out oncology-related research and development, that number is probably 2%.

Wow.

I think energy, and especially the renewable energy space, and just power, you know, power in general. I do think a lot about climate. For our next-gen clients, climate is top of mind. So it's actually interesting when you talk to these older generations and talk about legacy, it's this idea of permanence, right? It's the name on the building. It's the endowment, whatnot. And then you talk to like Gen 2 or even younger generations, and they're kind of like, we don't even know if the building's going to be here tomorrow.

It might be a hurricane.

Yeah, it's more this resilience. I don't know. And it's kind of astounding. I mean, you probably know these numbers. If you look back, you know, I think to 1980, the average of $1 billion-plus natural disaster in any given year through kind of 2024, 2025 was 9. So kind of 9 of those types of natural disasters. If you look at the last 5 years, I think that average number is 23. So someone born around now will probably face 3 times the climate-related disasters of someone born in, in 1960. So it is, it is very top of mind, you know, relating back the investor and the younger investor. They want these solutions, but they're also like very skeptical. They're very skeptical. They've seen financial crises. They're getting a lot of information thrown at them. So it's actually an interesting intersection of, you know, both sustainability but investor skepticism and demanding something more customized.

Well, I think to your point, they've seen sort of these natural disasters. I mean, we were just talking right before the show. You were in California. I was in California. Just the disasters, the fires that really, you know, roared through that state. If you're a young investor and you're seeing sort of these institutional support systems that are no longer there, insurance is no longer there, just like insurance has really not been there in Florida in some places as well. You're obviously going to have a different viewpoint on where you want your dollars to go to have that impact. Are you seeing sort of that trend as well, especially in a geography, like different geographies have different sort of focus, or is it more of just a blanket, like across an age?

Yeah, I think it so relates back to lived experience, and this would be a piece of advice for advisors. You know, when you're having a conversation around impact, the conversation is not like, would you like the non-impact flavor or the impact flavor? Like that is not the way to approach it because even if I approached you right me now and said, are you interested in investing with impact in what areas? You obviously answered my question. I think a lot of people would be taken aback by that. And I think it relates to really needing to find sort of these experiences that then drive values, right? Maybe someone lived through, you know, the LA fires and lost a home. Maybe someone went through a personal health diagnosis or saw a family member go through a health diagnosis. So that's the kind of information you extract over time to better understand values. But it's not like a, you know, chocolate versus strawberry conversation. Yeah, it's not binary. Yeah, exactly.

And it also seems, at least when I've had these conversations with people, people just assume impact equals less results. So how would you sort of demystify the fact of, okay, I'm going to allocate now money towards impact, I guess I'm taking a hit in my overall portfolio performance. How would you demystify that?

Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of early impact investing was with philanthropic capital, so I think it's kind of like a blending of those two mindsets. And I'm not opposed to someone getting started, especially on the private side, with philanthropic. Philanthropic capital, so like certain capital at risk for innovation, early development of things. But I do think it needs to, to the extent that it's possible for the person, I do think that mindset needs to also move to kind of like the taxable side of their portfolio because you don't want to assume, to your point, that impact is concessionary or in the case of philanthropic capital, like money that is already out of my person, right? That's in an irrevocable structure. You know, from the point of view of performance, I think we're looking at sort of too truncated a timeline. I'll give you an example. So a couple of years ago, I was working with some women who, you know, similar to you where you wanted or you want to emphasize human rights, they were emphasizing women's rights in their public stock portfolio. And so as a part of that, we were really kind of not investing in companies that didn't have at least like industry standard of women in leadership roles, even in the workforce.

On the board, a certain percentage of that.

And this is industry standard, right? So there was this little-known company that got screened out during that process. You might have heard of it. It's called Nvidia.

Yeah. Never heard of that.

Never heard of it. This was, you know, like the 2023 timeframe. And that catalyzed very interesting conversations where there is no wrong answer because I felt beholden to go back to investors and say, you know, the AI revolution is kind of upon us. This right now is an integral piece in sort of this broader ecosystem. They don't pass muster at the time very well on these factors. Let's talk about it. You know, and for some clients, they said if they don't pass muster, I don't want to be invested in NVIDIA. And others said, well, if this company can catalyze my portfolio further and I feel more confident and I have more financial capital to do angel investing or gifting, like I see value there. So there's, there's no right or wrong. It's about approaching the conversation and then being flexible.

Now, taking this, you know, I'm going to pull on this thread a little bit. With AI, there's been a lot of conversations around semiconductor use, energy use. How do you really relate the whole AI wave to impact investing and the energy sources that are needed in that manner, in that industry to really propel it forward?

I mean, it's astounding. And, you know, I've done some investing personally and for clients in the renewable space. And if you look at solar and wind, those are some of the quickest ways, quickest and cheapest ways to get power online. That is a space, or partially a space, that has been politicized. But, you know, honestly, leading up to this year, if you look at a lot of these large tech companies, like, they cannot buy enough power. Like there is a head of renewable power at Amazon just trying to get as much as possible. So you have these forces of, you know, energy demand, whether it's for AI or whether it's for, you know, digital asset mining, you know, and then the climate piece and they're all coming together. But I do think power and the power investment opportunity with a renewable lens and without a renewable lens is kind of one of the biggest opportunities of our time right now. And if you think about AI, you know, so much has accrued to these early companies, almost like the rails, and then so much is happening in power. You know, we really need to see that dynamic broaden out where companies utilizing AI that activity has an impact on their bottom line. And I just don't think that's happening yet.

We covered a lot of different topics on ESG, on impact, on women in investing. Any sort of final thoughts you want to leave our listeners with?

You know, I'll relate back to your last point because I entirely agree. You know, it's interesting. I was on a plane recently. I know you've been traveling and I watched, I rewatched watch the movie Hitch. I don't know if you've watched it.

It's a great movie.

It's a great movie. It's 20 years old, Will Smith. And you don't have to have watched the movie Hitch to understand the scene I'm about to describe. But there is a character named Allegra Cole. She is in her 30s. I think she's in Manhattan. She's wealthy. We think— we don't get a lot of backstory on Allegra Cole, but we know that she's come into money. And there is a scene with her in her financial financial advisor's attorney's office. She is sitting there with what looks like a giant binder of financial information with about 8 to 10 advisors. You know the scene I'm talking about. She closes the binder and makes a joke like, "Haha, I think I'm still wealthy. That's good." All the men around the table laugh. She goes on to say, "Because I feel secure, I actually would like to explore investing in a friend's company. I've looked at the financials. I've looked at the business plan. You know, I want to, I want to do this. And that entire table of advisors leans in and talks her out of it. And she, you know, walks out of the meeting dejected. So, you know, when it comes to women and something like your question, it's not that I don't think the interest or ability isn't there. I think where it's really tough right now is that, you know, 7 in 10 financial advisors are men. 7 in 10 law firm partners are men. So we do, we do need to shift the culture and the system a little bit, you know? And so for that client who comes in, it's doing a lot, doing a lot of listening. It's understanding where this money came from, if it was from a family member, what the business was, what is the physical relation to the business, behavioral relation to the business, and then distilling these passions and interests and solving for it and sizing it in a way where you can earn a return, but also, especially in your case, because it sounds like this person has some capacity, you can you can take some financial risk, and you can take some risk on innovation. What was so shocking to me watching that movie is it was 20 years ago, and that scene could still—

It could be today. It could be today. It could be outside New York.

What is changing? And so I think we really need to move it forward. And by the way, men are very much a part of that. And I'll bring it back to my own personal experience. We've talked a lot about my clients. I think about my own investing, my best investment to date is with two guys. And I'm very aware of that. And we invested in a physical property. We ended up investing in an Airbnb property together, and they're specialists in the space, and I did that with them. And some money came out of that. We didn't sell the property, but some money came out of that. And after, you know, buffering up my high-yield savings account, account, putting money into stocks, putting money into bonds, I felt comfortable to do some angel investing and to do some investing in innovation through venture funds of women-led general partners. So there is a way to blend both. By the way, when those guys went on to acquire more properties, the first people I referred to them were my girlfriends. So they're now invested. You know, they're now investing. So there is a role. It's not men versus women. This is women, and we really have to acknowledge that. But we have to find, like, we have to find the entry points together. And I was very lucky to have these guys in my life and a lot of people supporting the money conversation in my life. So we just need more people doing it.

Well, Cameron, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me here today.

Thank you.

The production team for Barron's Advisor: The Way Forward: Next Generation is Ellie Ismaila Rebecca Bisdale, Paul LeBlanc, and Alexis Moore. Jenna Mathis is the Director of Programming for Barron's Advisor Programs. Greg Bertollis is the Editor-in-Chief of Barron's Wealth and Asset Management Group. Allison Tucci is a freelance host for Barron's Advisor and SVP at AssetMarkt. We'll see you next time.

This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.