How 2 Black Advisors Are Working to Change the 'Complexion of Wealth'

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The wealth management industry has long struggled with diversity. Now, it talks a good game and it has made progress, but it's far from where it wants to be and it's far from where it should be. Welcome to Barron's The Way Forward. I'm Greg Bartlett. Financial advisors Desarte Yarnway and Emlyn Miles Mattingly were profoundly discouraged by what they experienced working in financial services. But instead of waiting and hoping that things would improve, They took action and recently launched the Onyx Advisor Network, a support platform designed to help underrepresented advisors. Today they'll tell us about their firm and describe what advisors are getting right and more importantly, what they're getting wrong when it comes to inclusivity. As we celebrate Black History Month, I'm incredibly pleased to have with us DeSarte and Emlyn. Welcome gentlemen.

Thank you so much for having us.

Thanks for having us on.

My pleasure. Very much appreciate it. So I have a lot of questions guys, but before we talk about your background, Brown. Let's talk big picture about where we are now in America in terms of wealth, race, opportunity, access. Take it away.

Where are we now as it pertains to wealth in America? As you know, the wealth gap seems like it's widening every day. Millions of Americans aren't served because they are not quote unquote wealthy by the metrics of what we consider wealthy. But I don't think that that means that they shouldn't have access to sound financial advice. When we think about it, how else are these people supposed to get out of their current situation to create generational wealth for themselves and for their family, whether born or unborn? This is one of the pivotal questions that Emlyn and I asked ourselves as we matriculated to the financial services industry. Largely, when you're at some of the larger firms, you find that your service is reserved to those who, let's face it, have upwards of $1 million in investable assets before you can really take them seriously and really build a viable business. But I often think, and I won't speak for Emlen, but I often think that the people that need it the most aren't in that category, right? So wealth in our country today looks like it's one-sided. Right? There is a 1%. 99% of folks are running the rat race, trying to catch up, right? And trying to do the best that they can for their families. And this is something that hopefully with the help of, you know, organizations like Onyx, with the help of champions in certain institutions, right? And just a general concerted effort to change it, we can really experience some needed change in our industry and beyond. It's funny that you answer asked the question about wealth and you, you mentioned Onyx. I was looking through some stats, uh, earlier today as I was on another call and 1,493 Black CFPs exist currently. That's less than 2% of the total number of CFPs. When we think about doctors, right? 2.6% of medical doctors are African American or identify as Black. Of the total number of people in med schools, you only have 7.6% of those students currently enrolled, uh, identify as African American or Latino. When we talk about teachers, 7.6% of teachers identify as African American, Latinx, or Asian American. That's less than 1 out of every 10 teachers. And then I was looking at the stats for tech professionals. Right under 1% of tech professionals are executives, Black executives or middle management. So when you see these numbers across the board, I think one thing It's true. There's not enough representation. Obviously, there's not enough diversity. I feel like if I was a young underrepresented professional, I would think that I don't belong and there might not be space for me, right? So again, how can you strive for wealth when you're not seeing it right in front of your face? But I'll let Emlyn chime in.

No, no, I agree with 100% of what you're saying. And I think like when you think about Onyx and you think about the mission of what we're trying to do to change that, right? The mission is changing the complexion of wealth. And I think when, if you said, the question was, what's the state of our, what's the current state? And I said, I think it's changing, right? I think that things are going to change. DeSarté gave some incredible stats about how much change needs to come. And I think it's on the cusp of those needs is why we created what we're creating. Because we know that it's, you know, we not only have to create something that can, you know, we need more messengers. There's a lot of people that need to get this message. There's a lot of people that need to have the advice because we know that income is one of the, you know, one of the lead indicators to create wealth. And we know that education is, there is more minorities graduating from college right now than ever before. And we know that they're going to get into this, into the workforce, and they're going to create wealth. And they may have some windfalls. They may end up at, you know, a company that has, you know, that has a liquidity event that, you know, so they're going to need advice. They're going to need sound advice from people that are qualified to give it to them. So when you ask me what the state of the country is, I say it's changing.

Okay. And how, I mean, what you guys did is, you know, again, what I find quite interesting is you didn't just wait and hope. You said, you know what, let's, let's make this happen. What was the pivotal point where you actually didn't just talk about it but decided to roll up your sleeves and go for it?

I think it happened, you know, this art, well, it started happening because of our relationship. You know, we, we met in 2018. We actually met, we went back, remember this, we went back and checked the date of our first conversation and how fitting it was on Independence Day that him and I talking and then we launched something that's gonna give advisors some independence. But it started from there, you know, and the accountability that him and I created with each other.

I think that, you know, one of the moments that I remember and I did mention Independence Day, but I remember in the thick of the pandemic, there were so many advisors and so many— 25 million new investors entered the market for the first time at that time. In that same kind of season, we experienced a lot of traumatic events with the justice system, and there was a murder of George Floyd. And then I was thinking about like, how can we be activists in our own way and create real lasting change? And I think from our position as financial advisors, we decided to impact the community around us through the work that we do in financial services, right? And we went back to our genesis, and what we did for each other was create a community, right, that we could depend on. So we would share ideas, we would share struggles, pain points, right, dreams and everything in between, fears. We helped each other grow our business. We shared technology ideas. We started using the same custodian. We talked about compliance, right? And we just continued to grow. Now we asked ourselves a pivotal question. What if we were able to duplicate this blueprint for other advisors just like us? Would that change the room? Would that change the industry? Would that change us? And I think as we began to lean into those questions, Onyx Advisor Network kind of birthed itself, right? So we rolled the dice and here we are.

You guys have a lot of, noteworthy partners, including you got Vanguard, Altruist, Investnet Money Guide. Tell me a little more about the services you offer in terms of the support, the platform, and whatnot.

So, so one of the things that we had in common was when you're trying to start your firm, right, how do you start that? And, you know, compliance was one of those big hurdles. And so when we were thinking about how you start your firm, you got to get registered, you got to go, you got to go through all that hoops. And as soon as you say compliance, you know, every, every RIA here just kind of tightened up a little bit when they hear that, right? So we, we wanted to be able to take care of that. So that was why one of our partners had to be a compliance partner, and we partnered with Synergy Compliance because we wanted to be able to have the advisor do what they were good at, and that's take care of the clients. And then the other thing is we needed to have software to be able to do that and a custodian to do that. So, you know, when we reached out to Altris and to do that, they were, you know, Jason Wank and team were on board immediately. And so what we were trying to think is, is what would— if we're really trying to get advisors to get their businesses up and started, what would they need? What core tech would they need? And so we thought, you know, you need to have some compliance, you need to have, you know, custodian, you need to have financial planning software, you need to have, you know, data archiving. And so this is how this tech stack started to happen, because Desarce and I were bouncing ideas off each other. And I'll, you know, I mean, what else would you say there, Desarte?

I would say a lot. Let's just lean into that because you said a lot of things. So I talk a lot in my work with Altruist right now with Onyx about going independent with confidence. As you know, going independent is one of the most scary things for an advisor. When you're— let's look at the period that we were in right now when we had a pullback, or some people will say a correction, and imagine being on your own and not being able to circulate, um, you know, the wirehouse's content that they're generating that's compliance approved and just regurgitating that information to the clients that might be ringing your phone because they want to know if they'll be okay. You're on your own. You have to generate everything for yourself. These are your thoughts, these are your opinions, this is your portfolio construction, right? And you have to defend it, you have to uplift it, and you have to keep your clients on track.

You're taking the risk too because you don't have that— those boundaries handed to you either. You have to figure that and be cognizant of it.

Exactly. So you're assuming a lot of risk. So So as it pertained to just our experience with building this, we wanted to make sure that the advisor had everything that they need to go independent with the confidence that they would have if they were standing behind the desk at a wirehouse, right? So like Emlyn said, everything from the inception to the day-to-day operations of your firm, we've thought about in detail to make sure that that advisor has that confidence. So he mentioned compliance, he mentioned custodian. Actually, a lot of underrepresented advisors don't even manage investments because to get a rep code at some of the biggest or well-known custodians, you need over $10 to $20 million in AUM to be able to do so, right? So we've been able to get around that through our partnership with Altruist. We got the two financial planning partners. Vanguard is making our portfolio. So you can feel like I can do this, right? So, and save money along the way because it's not cheap to go independent, but we think that we've built an initial tech stack, which is going to be followed by what we call a supplemental tech stack. So advisors can really go independent with confidence and build their best practices.

Yeah, and it seems like— I mean, Desarte, I know that earlier in your career, my understanding is you didn't have a large enough book when you started in your early 20s, and so there were these kind of barriers to entry, if you will, right? Some structural hurdles, and it takes money to make money, right, in a way? So by lowering the bar, I mean, a lot of that is based on AUM, so the ticket entry is quite high, but you guys are making it a little more democratizing the, the wealth, or at least access to wealth.

No, for sure. And I, I think that, see, uh, I don't believe that you have to finish where you start. Like, just because you start with $5 million in AUM doesn't mean you can't have a book of business of, um, $50 million in a few years, right? And I think that for a lot of folks, they don't understand that the advisor of tomorrow is growing right now. So when you look at the wirehouses that are neglecting this demographic of advisors, they're almost doing a disservice to their business. These are going to be the same advisors that they're going to come and try to fish over to their brokerage or their, their house in 5 years, 3 to 5 years, right? So we thought that it made sense to give our advisors access to do that because it does one of two things. It increases, it makes their business more viable and stable because they now have multiple income streams if they're charging on financial advice or financial planning, right? Plus investment management. And it allows their clients to build long-term multigenerational wealth. They have an advisor that can help them with this now, right? So we think that on both ends, we're, we're making deep impact with the advisor and with the communities that they serve.

Right. And that should engender more loyalty, which will help build that generational wealth, presumably. So, for sure. So I wanted to, um, ask you guys, you know, for people listening, um, what, what are some big picture things that the tangible steps that need to be done to help. And, you know, it's not a secret, the industry is, I think, what, 70% of advisors are men, 80% are white. The industry is pretty darn white. What do you guys say? Like, what's being done right? And I know we're generalizing, but what are some big picture, low-hanging fruit, if you will, of things that you think like, you know, you guys can do this, it's not impossible and you can actually make a positive change?

Yeah. So in terms of what the industry is doing right, I think that the industry is really aware that there is a diversity and inclusion problem, right? And I think the first step of, you know, correcting any, anything, I call them development opportunities, is just being aware that it does exist. So the industry is now more than ever aware that this is a true problem. I don't know if you saw the CFP Board's latest announcement, right?

I did.

In terms of just the number of African Americans and underrepresented advisors now entering the space, although that was marginal growth, they're super aware about what is going to occur. And they're even opening up the books and being transparent and saying that we will report these numbers more frequently so you can know where we are in terms of progress in our industry. That's big. We, we know that this is a problem. So I think the industry is doing the right thing by now being intentional about diversity, inclusion, and belonging.

Yeah. I can actually, if you don't mind, this is a good entry point to rattle off a few numbers for listeners.

For sure.

So, um, the CFP board members in the last year, that rose overall 3.8% from 2020. Black CFP holders rose 10%, Hispanic rose 15%, Black and Hispanic growth grew at a quadruple relative to the overall rate. Women, certified women, 4.2%, that was above 3.1% growth from the previous year, also outpacing. So on that level, That's all encouraging. Granted, the numbers though are coming off, you know, those are off small bases though, right? So female CFPs are 23% and that's 51% of the population and 83% of CFPs are white. So it's kind of what it looks like is there is progress, but it also is not, it's going somewhat slowly, I guess. But I don't know what your take is. That was just kind of my high-level take on at least these numbers. I know that's only part of the puzzle.

Yeah. I think that progress does not have to mean perfection, right? And we are making progress. It's going to take a while before those numbers get to where we want to see them. But I do think that one of the purposes of Onyx is to just have our, our industry look more like our country, right? And if we, if we are able and working towards that, I think we'll be okay. And then go ahead.

Yeah, I was thinking about this and I, and I think it's a representation thing. I think that, you know, I think that people in the industry, um, are seeing representation as something that needs to happen. And the more that we have more representation in the industry, like our country, as DeSarté alluded to, I think we'll see these numbers change, right? I think the CFP Board did something that was pretty phenomenal, what they have, you know, with the incoming chair. I think now you see someone like that sitting in that position as a person of color, as a woman, you can look at look at that person and say, okay, yeah, you know what, they are— maybe this is something that I can do. Because I think that, you know, for the industry to change, this has to become a viable career path for people, right? They have to be able to look at this and say, I see people in this industry that look like me, I see a space for me. And this is one of the things that Onyx wanted to do. But I think that it's a collective thing with the industry. There's a lot of people in the industry that are trying to make this change. And that's, That's encouraging.

Yeah, and that's Camilla Elliott who you're speaking about.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, yeah. And no, that's— totally agree. And one of you guys mentioned in an interview that you can't be what you can't see, right? And I think that's— it's especially interesting because, I mean, you see that manifest itself not just in terms of identity, race. Think about niches, right? You have niche practices that'll cater to doctors or pilots or what have you, and clients That's a little bit niche, but people like to see themselves. I mean, women often like to work with female advisors, et cetera. So it also just seems inevitable, if not logical, also on a business level, aside from being just and the right thing to do.

Can I tell you a story just on that bit and then I'll get out your way? I tell a story a lot about, often about John Rogers and Ariel Investments. And I remember I was 24 years old at the time of starting my firm or filing the paper, at least back in 2015, opened our doors January 4th, 2016.

I was 16.

And to find somebody that I looked up to and I was inspired by, I had to go back over 20 years to 1983 when John Rogers was on the COVID of an investment magazine. I forget which one. He had an Afro at the time. He had like these bell-bottoms, a suit, and he had his logo of a tortoise on that magazine cover. He was 24 at the time and he started what we know now as Ariel Investments, which is a multi-billion dollar mutual fund firm. That meant that this problem of representation has always existed in our space, right? And I think that we all now can touch and agree and know that it's an issue. And that's why I'm excited about change, because I think we've been saying it for so long as the minority, but when the minority and majority get together and agree that this is something that needs to change, I think you begin to see real growth.

And you guys are seeing it? I mean, is it palpable? Are you feeling that? I mean, how would you characterize that?

I mean, I think that like when I, I would say by like the number of emails that we get and the number of inboxes, you know, DMs that we're getting from people telling us that they now want to come into the industry. I've had, we've had more calls with people that are wanting to come into the industry now because they feel like there's a space being created for them. Right. And it goes back to the representation and, and, and representation for, you know, exactly what Sartre was talking about. But it— so I always bring up my kids in this because it really hit me when I seen this. And it was, it's a, you know, just for my son loves Spider-Man and Spider-Man, you know, the Into the Universe is new Spider-Man and it's a little kid and he's half Black and half Latino. And my son looks at him and he says, that's me. That's me. And I sat there and I looked at him and I was like, yeah, that— I mean, you know, my wife is Latina and I was like, yeah, that, that, yeah, that— I mean, yeah, you nailed that one. You know, he's 2 years old and he said, that's me. And now all he wants to wear is Spider-Man everything, right? He's all into this. And I thought at this young age, at 2 years old, this child is seeing someone that he considers that looks like him, that he can be. And for the entire existence of the financial services industry, there's been no one that looks like me and DeSarte and the people that we're trying to get into the industry to be able to say at that young age that I want to be like that.

Yeah.

But we're about to change that. We're changing that now. That, that's gonna change now. They're gonna have someone to where when they're younger, they'll begin to look at this as a career option. You know, DeSarte is an anomaly at 24 to start his own firm, but what happens when that's the the norm.

I mean, I think it's so interesting just how— I mean, the profession is very much obviously thriving right now and it's very of the moment, I think, and incredibly important. But most people, certainly up until somewhat recently, when they think about a career, it's like, oh, might be a doctor or a lawyer or go into entertainment or whatever. But it's like wealth management was kind of just not even something like on the menu of career choices. It wasn't really something that people would think about, and I think it's very much more on the radar and starting to trickle down to more and more into younger and younger people. And I think that's— it's really important too for the industry. You know, we know how much there are succession issues, people are older, so they need young blood anyway, but it's encouraging and nice to see.

It is.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

So what, DeSarte, I know in terms of— I read in our story where you talked about the push-pull mentality in terms of helping others. Can you elaborate on that?

It's my favorite. That's That's my favorite metaphor, man. And I think that if we live like this, we have an opportunity to see change in our society, in our industry, in our communities. And basically what the push-pull mentality means to me is that like where you sit from your current seat, you have a responsibility, almost an obligation to continue to cheer those that are doing great things that are excellent in their craft to be their best and to support them. Right? So you got to push them ahead. I have to make sure that Imlan is his best self. And he'll tell you sometimes it's annoying. Um, and for everybody that's coming after me, right, it's so many young advisors that are hungry for knowledge, hungry to serve their clients. I have to do my part in pulling them through the same doors and opportunities that I was privileged to have, right? So once that door is kicked down, it's like, come on, you could do it too, right? You can do more. So Push Pull is an effort to make sure that everybody succeeds. I strongly believe in collaboration over competition and And that kind of mentality was really birthed from my engagement with Imlen early in our friendship. Because it was never like, hey, there's only enough for me. There's only space for me here. It was more so like, hey, pull up a chair so we can have a meal together. We can break bread and figure out how we can both win. So I believe if you lead with that, if you lead with helping one another, if you continually support each other and make space and room for people to have opportunities, it's a win-win for everyone. And I think that's one of one of the things that our partners do really well, right? They know that by diversifying the room, our industry is better off. They know that. So when they come out and they extend in gratitude us to use their technology or their platform, they're doing that as a bet on the future of our industry, right? And Onyx is just the vehicle in which we'll be able to do that. But I think everybody wins long term.

And what else are any other goals, um, beyond what we discussed about what you guys are hoping to accomplish? I mean, I know obviously make money, build wealth, have more representation, any, anything else?

I mean, that's, those are, that's, those are the goals. I would say that, like, you know, in, in, we'd want to see, you know, we want to, we want to teach advisors how to, how to, how to manage their assets, how to get to that first, you know, that first $10 million milestone. Desarte and I talk about that. Once you hit that number, like, you know, things change for your business, you know. And, and, and maybe one of these, one, maybe one of the, one of the other custodians would let you on their platform at that point. But once we get to that first $10 million, I think that that if we can get 100 advisors to their first $10 million, that's going to be one of the first milestones we can get. And we want to see 100 advisors get to their first $10 million, uh, starting from scratch. And, and we, and we always say that, that they're starting from scratch. DeSarte and I talk about that all the time. It's different when you start from nothing. And if we can get them there, and then, you know, um, getting 250 advisors to make that, that $250,000 number, uh, in revenue, like, we want those, those are some of the goals, right? We want to be able to see, uh, that change change for these advisors. And because we know what happens at that income level, we know what happens, you know, when you get there and, you know, they're bringing on, they're going to actually employ someone else. They've impacted, you know, at least 75 households in their, in their respective community, giving them the financial advice that they need and building a profitable business, you know. So we're teaching, you know, entrepreneurs how to run their practices. And so, yeah, it's exciting. That's the vision. That's the vision. One of the many.

I would love to see Onyx be responsible for over a billion dollars of AUM, and I think it's going to be with all of the support and all the advisors waiting, chomping at the bit to get on the platform. I see that it's more possible every day. I would love to do like a web of how Onyx has impacted the financial landscape through partnerships with, say, BLX, right, that we're working on, partnerships with some of our custodians, partnership with other groups to say like, hey, these many kids are interns at some of the biggest minority-owned firms because they're part of Onyx, right? And really seeing how that's impacted, uh, how that'll impact our space.

Also, can you guys— you guys put out a press release a day or two ago, uh, about what you're doing with Future Proof. Um, can you guys speak briefly about that?

The good folks over at Advisor Circle and, uh, Josh Brown, Rit Holtz, right? They're having the Future Proof Festival, which is going to be the biggest wealth festival ever. It's going to be in September down Huntington Beach. And initially when we started the Onyx Advisor Network, we wanted to do a few different things. We wanted to have compliance solutions for our advisors. We all know that that's one of the biggest pain points for advisors, independent advisors anywhere. Number 2, we wanted to make sure that they had a custodian. Number 3, we wanted to make sure that they had community and coaching, and we wanted to do our own conference, um, at the time that we thought about the idea. Number 4, the technology to drive their businesses on a day-to-day basis. Now, the community and coaching aspect, we have part of Onyx as a backend kind of site. Think of it as like a social media profile exclusive for Onyx members, and when they can, in which they can engage, go to our town halls, have our guests on the backend talking to them, live streams, webinars from our product partners, right? That's one part of the community, but we want to do an annual conference that allows these advisors to get together in one room, fellowship, share struggles, ambitions, So they're seen, they're heard, they're known, and they don't feel like they're an anomaly anymore. And Advisor Circle is like, we have a microphone and we want to share it with you to be sure that these advisors are in spaces that they probably would never go. So the press release that you saw is that partnership. And with everyone that uses the Onyx Advisor code, which is going to come out in a couple of weeks here, they'll be able to buy one ticket and gift one to an underrepresented advisor to attend that conference. And I think that is going to be powerful because, you know, Emlyn and I were just at a conference in Las Vegas and we were one of 5 Black men there. Right? So as we look around the room, it wasn't surprising to us because we've done it before, but it doesn't have to remain that way. And I think that this is one step in the right direction of, again, changing the complexion of wealth, diversifying the room and everybody winning.

Excellent. And also as a longstanding tradition, of asking our guests an actionable idea. Is there anything you guys can recommend that our listeners can take away?

One thing that I always, always say is, like, I've learned more probably in my career when I was being mentored and when I was mentoring someone. And so, like, mentorship is like a formal relationship. You can't have a mentor that doesn't know you're their mentor or doesn't know that you're mentored. So establishing that mentor relationship, if I was gonna say like something for advisors to do, I think that something happens to us as advisors when we are teaching someone what we think they should do and when someone's teaching us what they've done. Like, it's such a— it's almost exactly like the push-pull thing that de Sartre's talking about. It's in the same vein as that. But when I look back over you know, my career and the most growth that I've had, it's when, it's when I've been able to be poured into by an advisor and then being able to give that immediately to someone else because the best way to learn something is to teach it.

Excellent.

Yeah, I would agree with that. That's an excellent answer. I'll say two things, one easy answer and one hard answer. So the easy answer and the low-hanging fruit is to keep an eye out for talent, right, that's doing well. Some of the best people that I'm now connected with— Jason Wenk, James Werner— these people are white men, and they came up to me and said, I love when you do this. If there's any way that I can support you, let me know, right? Keep an eye out for talent and make it known that they're doing good work within our space. That's encouraging. That's the push that they need, right, to take whatever, you know, they're doing to the next level. And I think that affirmation helps anybody, right? So keep an eye out for talent. Let them know that they doing well, encourage them to continue to go forward. The hard thing to me is this is the big decision, like stand up and speak out against or for diversity, inclusion, inclusion and belonging, right? Once you, especially if you're a CEO at a company or you run a firm with more than 10, you know, 20 employees, make it a point to say like, here we are inclusive, here we are challenging the status quo, here everybody is welcome, right? And I think once you begin to do that, The expectation is set that we don't— just because the industry is one way, we don't have to follow suit. So that's the hard thing to come out and say like, hey, this is how we operate. And I think a lot of the times some founders, some employees might feel that way, but it's never said. There's never like a stake in the ground in terms of like inclusivity, right? It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. And again, everybody can prosper. So that's one easy thing, one very hard thing that I challenge everybody to do as they walk away from this podcast.

And in terms of the spotting talent, right? What does talent look like today? I mean, at different times in the cycle or where the business is, different skills will be more valuable, right? So what, what, what, um, are there any common traits? I don't know, or things that you guys really value and look for today in people?

For sure. I mean, you're looking at two individuals that, uh, dare to dream, you know. So somebody who is talented is going to dare to dream. They're going to amplify their own voice. They're going to figure out ways to talk to their demographic. They're going to risk embarrassment a lot of the time, whether they're showing themselves in the public sphere on video or via their blog that they're writing or their tweets that they're circulating around, because they want to do better for themselves and for their clients, right? Talent is working both quietly and loudly because they understand that these actions not only will carry them to the next level, but they'll inspire somebody that's coming behind them.

I got something to say about talent. I'll say talent is, is if you build a space for the talent, it No. And what I mean by that is this. We built the BLX program, I co-founded the BLX program with 4 other co-founders, 3 other co-founders. We built this space where we could have underrepresented, I'm sorry, Black and Latinx advisors come into the space and come into our internship. We had 38 interns in our first year. 20 of them got hired. Only reason the other 10 didn't get hired is because they had to go back to school. So what we heard overwhelmingly was how talented, how rich the talent pool was, how rich it was. These are people that they normally wouldn't even get looked at, but because they came through this program, because we made a space for them, the talent will come. Like the talent is there. It's not, it's there. It's not, it's not a talent issue. It's a space problem. It's a representation problem. It's a where can I fit in place? You know, we, the other day I talked to, you know, a mechanical engineer woman that said she wanted to get into this, this field. Like they want to come into this field. People want to get into this industry. People want to do what we do. We just have to create the space for them to do it.

Tell me, and tell me how technology plays a role. I mean, the internet's got to change so much, if not everything on this level, right? It's like this great leveler where everyone can communicate. There's this hyper-awareness and it's just, I mean, can you speak to that a little in terms of how this turbocharges the process?

Absolutely. The world is flattened. Right? So you can be working in California but employ somebody in Austin that specializes in equity compensation because they're around a lot of the tech companies that are moving that way, right? So the world is flat. So when it comes to talent, there's really no excuse to find some of the best in the business that can help prepare or propel your business to the next level. The world is flat. You can find people. I've been blessed enough to, you know, talk to some people that I never thought that I was gonna meet because of this thing called the internet and social media. So I think that that changes the game. And if you, uh, add a layer on top of that, what, what's happened with the pandemic is we've seen that you can really be location independent and still do well. Um, so I think the time is changing. I think the opportunity now is greater than ever to create impact, to diversify the room, and to, to work with some of the best in the business.

Excellent. Well, thank you guys. Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Well, my guests have been Desarte Yarnway and Emlyn Miles Mattingly. For more advisor-specific podcasts, please check out barons.com/podcast. Podcasts for The Way Forward. I'm Greg Bartolis.

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