September 26th, 2024 | Halladay Lecture Series - Bud Scruggs

[Music] All right, good morning everyone. You're stuck with me again today. Thanks for coming and welcome to the Reed and Christine Holiday Lecture Series. Um, today I'm actually really excited to introduce our Dean of the Woodbury School of Business, who will then introduce our awesome guest speaker for today. Um, so Dean Bob Allen, we're really grateful to have him here in the Woodbury School of Business. He's been here over a year now, I think, so still a little fresh. We, we stole him from downtown University of Utah, where, um, he was an esteemed academic for over 30 years. Um, and he's been doing some really great things here in the business school. So make sure you guys get your attendance code in. Um, I'll go ahead and pass it over to our Dean, Bob Allen.

Thanks, Alessandra. Thanks. Hey, I'm really excited to be here with you. I love coming to the the executive lecture series. It's so impactful. You are really fortunate to have this opportunity to learn from some really great leaders, and today is no exception. We have Bud Scruggs here with us today. Bud has had a really amazing career, um, and it's, it's kind of an eclectic career. He's done a variety of different things and has been had the courage to sort of change his path multiple times. So right now, Bud is the managing director and managing partner and founder of SinoSure Group. And SinoSure Group is, is a, I think I'd call it an alternative investment company. They invest in a lot of small and medium-sized businesses and help those businesses thrive. Um, and, uh, before being at, he's got some great partners there. They have a great team. Uh, they're in Salt Lake City, and I'm really impressed with the people that I meet there. Um, then prior to that, he was at Leucadia Corporation. It was a publicly traded company that, um, was involved in a lot of very interesting activities with some kind of Maverick owners, and he was in an ex- executive leadership role there and was, was really involved in the strategy of that publicly traded company. And then, you know, he has, he spent time as an academic. He was, he had, uh, some time as a professor at BYU, uh, not in business, and so pivoted away from more political science kinds of things into the business world. And so it's just, it's a really interesting career. One of the things that I have noted about it that I think is really special is that, like, you, you look at some leaders, and some leaders are really good at creating followers. I think Bud is the kind of leader who is good at helping develop leaders. And you look at the places that he's worked and where he's gone, and he seems to find a way that when he moves on to something else, he leaves the place he was before a lot better off than it was before he got there. And I think that's because he is so talented at developing people and helping them learn to grow. I think a lot of the people who work with him would say that they're privileged to work with him and learn from him. So with that, I will turn the floor to Bud Scruggs. Thanks for being with us. Oh, and by the way, one last thing, Bud is also a member of our newly constituted Woodbury School of Business board, and I'm delighted to have him as a member of our board team and appreciate his saying yes to that.

Thank you. That, uh, was a very nice introduction. Thank you. And, and, uh, I mean, it was just wonderfully understated. Um, the, uh, um, no, it's very flattering and thank you. Um, I just have, uh, a memory of being in your seats, actually. And I know that somebody once said that, uh, lust is the young man's sin, greed is the middle-aged man's sin, and nostalgia is the old man's sin. And seeing you makes me nostalgic. It also makes me a little, uh, nervous about wasting your time. And I, I, I hope you'll, uh, if, if something pops into your head, raise your hand. I'm going to try to be disciplined with, with the help of a, a Warner there to, uh, make sure there's lots of time for questions and, and, uh, but I really want you to get something out of this that's, that's worthwhile to you. Um, grateful to Dean Allen and Maddie. Thank you for being the stress joint and getting this all organized. My office, love working with you. And, um, our youngest daughter, Emma, uh, graduated from UVU just a couple years ago, and it was a life-changing experience for her. Um, and it's a, it's a, we're grateful for this unique university. Shirley Scruggs, Shirley and I, um, are, uh, she, it's kind of interesting as we get older, I get more filtered and Shirley gets less filtered. Um, we had dinner with a really senior, senior executive whose company had neglected to renew a lease, and they ended up having to fire sale their business. And he asked me to dinner with him, and Shirley was there, and he was just so clearly wounded about the mistake. And Shirley listened, and she said, uh, "That seems like a date you might have wanted to circle in red on your calendar." And I just wanted to crawl into the table. And I got out to the car and I said, "I couldn't believe you said that." And she said, "Bud, if I'd have known how much fun you had saying whatever popped into your head, I'd have started years ago." And, uh, and that's where she said, we at a, at a, at a dinner not too long ago, and I, I got my degree from BYU, a couple of our kids had and did, and, and I taught there for, uh, for five years. And, and somebody was saying to Shirley about BYU, and I was just being polite. And Shirley said, "Every time I get a fundraiser letter from BYU, I send a check to UVU." And I thought, "Oh, geez." And this other woman about our age said, "I do the same thing." And, and I, I think I, I think that's happening more and more. And, and I, I hope you, again, sometimes these names, and one of the signs of being old is I know the Woodburys, I know the Kellers, I, I knew Reed Holliday. I mean, these are legends. And the fact that they are in your corner, writing the kind of checks that they've written, ought to communicate to you what some very important, successful people. I mean, there's nobody that's done more to to build Utah with excellence and competence than Woodburys, and the Kellers are having an impact nationwide. And, and, and Reed Holliday changed the face of wealth advisory by making it intensely client-focused. These are legends, and they decided to put their money and their names here. And so when you see these names, you know, I, I know it's tempting just to say the Keller Building and not know that it represents somebody who's put their money where your minds are. And, and I just hope you'll ponder that once in a while. Um, and, and I, I feel the same way about Dean Allen. I, you know, I've been around long enough, I know the reputation he has at the University of Utah, and I know enough about the rest of your faculty, they could teach anywhere, and yet they chose here because of the mission and purpose. And you, and, and I, I misread the invitation. We ended up getting here about an hour early, and we'd spent time here for, we wandered around. But you, you're different, and you're different in a very compelling way. We bumped into some students. We were looking for the, our goofball legislature made, I guess you changed the name from The W from the Women's Success Center, that it's what's it called now? Anyway, so we saw the student, and he could tell we were lost, and we told him where, and he walked up two flights of stairs to show us where it was. And, and, and we, we've encountered that countless times here. And this institution plays an important and growing role, and UVU is getting better and better and stronger and stronger. And I mean no disrespect to you or the institution when I speak very candidly about some things, and you'll see what I mean in a minute. Now, the advertised title for my remarks was "Winning People Strategies," and I think that was an artifact from a previous year, and I was supposed to send in a title, and I didn't. And, uh, so I, I have a different title for my talk. Um, and to help frame it, I, I, I want to highlight that we often think about education, especially higher education, even kindergarten. We're seeing it with our grandkids. We think about it incorrectly. Learning stuff and memorizing facts is really important, but it's not as important as learning how to learn and why we learn, and learning how to think and imagine and to question. Um, those are skills, not not facts. And yet we test for facts typically. Um, and you've all seen the studies that college graduates make more money than those that didn't go to college, and they come out with them every year and reinforce them. And they always focus on the wrong reason. It, it's not because of what you learn as much as it is about the experience, first of all, of successfully navigating a very frustrating bureaucracy, and that turns out to be a really valuable skill set. If you can figure out how to get a parking pass at UVU, you can do almost anything. All right. And, and, and, and that, that's really valuable. And you learn to believe in the rewards of stubbornly pursuing a goal. And, and, and you develop somewhere along the line, and I can see it in your faces, you've developed the ability to look interested during a boring talk, and that is going to help you the rest of your life. I mean, I, a few years ago, I read this book, Radical Candor, and I loved it, and I, I resolved I was going to do better. And my business partner came to my office later in the day and said, um, "I know you read that book, Radical Candor, and really liked it and are trying to live it." I said, "Oh, I'm, thanks for noticing." He goes, "Yeah, but you, you can't just go from the Bud we know to the Radical Candor Bud overnight." And I, I said, "Why are you saying this to me?" And he says, "Bud, earlier you got up halfway through a meeting and said, 'I'm bored. I'm going to my office.'" And he said, "I said, 'Well, that's radical candor.'" He goes, "Yeah, we, yeah." So we, we, we, we practice things, and you're looking great, they're looking interesting. Um, there was a guy named Plutarch who said something I'd like to help frame my remarks. And some of you may not know who Plutarch was. He lived around 100 AD in, um, in Delphi, which is halfway between Delta and Nephi, I think. Um, and I saw a statue of him once, and, and he didn't have a nose, which I think is cool, that a guy could be this famous with no nose. And so if he can do it, you can do it. Um, and he did say this about education: "Rightly understood, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." And I want to forget about Kindle being an electronic reading device and think about it as a fire starter. Okay? I think the quote has more impact. I, I don't think Plutarch meant a tablet. Um, and in crafting my remarks, my goal, like a lot of your speakers, is to avoid clichés and platitudes such as "Follow Your Passion," or "Change the World," "Never Give Up," or "You Too Can Earn a Hundred Grand This Summer." Um, and to show you that some things don't change. Um, uh, I came to these classes or came to these series when I was your age. I, I came, came for the one credit, but I stayed in the hope I might just pick up a couple things. And I hope I, I won't disappoint. I, I'll do my best. Um, and, uh, so, well, that was a tedious prologue to get to the real title of my talk, which is: "The Chip on Your Shoulder is Kindling for Your Career." And I don't want to embarrass anybody. Um, you know, by asking you to raise hands, but mentally raise your hand if you've got a chip on your shoulder. Um, and sometimes it's referred to as an imposter syndrome, and it makes it seem more exotic. And the imposter syndrome is about as rare as the common cold. And in fact, if you don't feel like an imposter, you may want to contemplate getting therapy. And just remember that your therapist is also feeling like an imposter. Um, and we all, we all do, and it's part of life. But some of us have to deal with it more than others. And the chip on your shoulder is going to come from competing with graduates from universities with better brands, or who have worked at the blue-chip companies right out of school. Um, and I know some of you will work at the blue-chip, but, but a lot of you will compete with folks that went to McKenzie or Price Waterhouse or Bain right out of school, and, and you will have taken a different path. Um, you'll be going against applicants and co-workers with better advantages. It might be higher IQ, it could be interesting looks, better looks. Um, I've had that going for me, you know, and you make the most of it. Um, you will be competing with people who didn't have to work while they took classes. Um, the, uh, uh, I, I was lured into marriage really young. Um, and, uh, and I ended up working 20 to 40 hours a week all through undergraduate and all through law school. And, and I get a little tender thinking about this, but Shirley's grandmother died. I'm not going to tell about her, she was kind of an odd person, but, uh, Shirley loved her. And, uh, and she, she left all the grandkids a little bit of money, and it really upset Shirley's family that she didn't squirrel that way away for a down payment. She came home and said, "I want to see what you can do with a semester when you don't have to work." And we blew through the money in a semester, and I did much differently, much better. Uh, but that wasn't a choice we had for most of the education, and I had to compete with guys. I remember coming back into the law library at 10:00, and a guy who was a friend, he wasn't being an ass. I, some Anglo-Saxon words were invented for a reason. And when you think of a vulgar word for a jerk, and I used it a few times, and Shirley gave me that look and said, "Nobody wants to hear you say that." And I said, "Well, that person is a..." And she said, "Well, I don't want you to say it." And I said, "Well, what do I say when a person's a...?" And she said, "I want you to say 'a-hole'." All right? So everybody at my firm knows that when I call them an a-hole, it's not because they resemble an aromatic flower. Um, some people are jerks. Um, and this guy wasn't. And I came into law school at 10:00 at night to try to study for the next day, and he looked at me and he said, "You're not really serious about law school, are you?" And I was killing myself to do it. Um, and one of these days I'm going to learn enough Latin to figure out how to put "middle of my class" on my resume. And I'll never forget, the highest brow law firm that came to BYU the year I graduated in 1984 was Morrison & Foerster out of San Francisco. And there was no digital anything back then, they just put a list, they put a sign-up sheet on the wall, and then they put a list of who got the interview. And I was surprised that, given my mediocre academic performance, that I got an interview. And I go into this young lawyer who's doing interviews, and he takes the file down and looks at it and looks at me and says, "Oh, another case of unconfirmed genius." Um, and I wasn't surprised when I didn't get the offer. But again, you're going to be competing. If, and if, and if you don't have to work while you go to school, terrific. I hope you make the most of it. But some of us didn't have that, and we dig ourselves a hole, and we compete with people that did, and it's hard. And there's, you'll be competing with people that come from well-connected families, and yours may not be. And those are what I mean by the chip on your shoulder. And, and sadly, it remains the case, less and less every year. You may be required to prove yourself more than the next guy, um, because of your religion, your skin color, your accent, your gender identity, or your sexual orientation. And it's less and less every year. Um, the, uh, I remember I hired a guy once, and during the interview, he said, "I want you to know that in June, I'll be marrying my boyfriend, Nick." And I said, "How's that relevant to our interview?" I said, "If you're asking for me to commit to chipping on your toaster, I will." And he said, "Well, no." He said, "You've got a good reputation in town, and I didn't want to come in here on false pretenses." And I said, "It's not part of the interview. It doesn't matter here. And I want you to know this is a safe, comfortable place. And let's not talk about it anymore." And we hired him. And we always encourage our folks to be good leaders. And so he took him about three weeks to wrap up his last job. And always try to have lunch with people the week before they start. And I had lunch with him, and, and I said, "Do you have any questions before you start?" And he said, he said, "Yeah, how should I dress on Monday?" And I said, "Can I just treasure this for a minute?" And he said, "Treasure what?" And I said, "I never thought a gay man would ask me for fashion advice." And I, I just really want to do a good job. I didn't think it would happen. And he said, "Uh, tie or no tie? That's all I want to hear from you." And, and, and so part of having a chip on your shoulder is being patient with people from a different generation that are really trying to do their best. Um, the, uh, so you can either be weighed down by the chip on your shoulder, or you can be motivated by it. And I want you to be propelled by it. Another philosopher, Mike Tyson, said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." And that's true of life as well as boxing. And as a person that's been punched in the face a bunch in my career, you learn early on when that blood trickles down into your mouth, you can either get nauseated and quit, or you can go, "Ah, the fight's on. The fight is on." And that's what you need to do if you're going to achieve what you hope to achieve. To be really clear, there are many programs at UVU with an outstanding reputation. I get contacted by our portfolio companies regularly to say, "Hey, can you help me get accountants from UVU? Can you help me get financial planners?" And that's just two. Um, but you will need to educate and demonstrate that UVU produces quality graduates. Now, the, it's by your fruits that a lot of employers are going to learn about UVU. Now, you've got an advantage that there's a lot of first-rate UVU grads already out there that have that have paved, paved the way. And there's people like the Kellers and the Woodburys and the Holidays, Holidays, um, that are aware of it. But again, you're going to be competing with universities with bigger brands. And it's up to you. You can either shy away from it, or you can own it and, and, and prove yourself and prove those that back you, um, that they made the right call. Now, let me tell you about the chip on my shoulder. I was raised, uh, in a tough section of Seattle, called White Center, and right on the border of White Center and Burien. Um, and my mom was a nurse, my dad was a security guard. Neither had a college diploma. I remember when I took the ACT, and I was taking the test, and the proctor after the first section said, "Time." And I turned to the guy next to me, I said, "What's he mean?" I didn't know it was a timed test. I didn't do so good on that first section. Uh, and that was not part of my upbringing. And I, now, my folks did their best, and I had a huge advantage in that I came from a safe and mostly healthy, um, family. Um, when I was a, a senior in high school, my mom and dad sat me down for a talk. And it was only the second time they'd sat me down for a talk. The first time was when I was about 13 years old, and, uh, my dad said, [Music] "Bud, if you get a young woman pregnant, you'll have to support that baby till it's 21. Did I ever tell you about the guy I knew in the military that got venereal disease so bad?" And I won't finish what he said, and that was it. That was the talk. And now I'm a senior in high school, and they're sitting me down for another talk. And my mom, who's from New Jersey, asked me what my plans were that year for the next year. And I said, "I'm going to go to university." And she said, "You know, we're not going to support you." And we didn't have any extra money. I never thought they were, you know, I didn't even know what that meant. And I said, "Yeah, that's fine." And, and being from New Jersey, she says, "Do you want to know why?" And I said, "Sure." And she said, "Because you're a quitter, and we don't want to throw good money after bad." And I'd lived with my mom for a long time. And I decided when I was about 12 not to be bugged by things like that. My dad, who's a nicer man, said, with he was from Georgia, with a beautiful Southern drawl, he never called Shirley, Shirley. He called her "a young lady." And he said, "Bud, your mother and I would feel better if you learn a trade." So out of high school, I went and earned my journeyman sheet right, sheet ship right, and sheet metal union license, and worked in the shipyards in Seattle until I'd saved enough money to go to school. Again, to give you a comparison, this is what one of the things that's wrong with America now. In 1975, I was paid the equivalent of 2024, $55 an hour. All right? And that gives you kind of a boost back when tuition was what, $1,200 a semester, or was even maybe cheaper then. And, and so, you know, my, my dad and mom said, "Would you please learn a trade?" So I learned a trade. But I had a little bit of chip on my shoulder. Right. Reminds me of a favorite fuzzy memory. Mom always told me I could be whatever I wanted to be when I grew up, within reason. When I asked her what she meant by "within reason," she said, "You sure ask a lot of questions for a garbage man." Uh, and, uh, and I was raised with the freedom of low expectations professionally. I, I could never disappoint my parents, um, because they didn't expect anything. Now, to be fair, they had high expectations in terms of working hard and honesty. But on honesty, I remember my mom as a little boy saying to me, "Bud, liars have to be really smart. They have to remember everything they've said. Now, you're not very smart, and I suggest you just tell the truth." How's that for a motivational, you know, Chicken Soup for the Soul? Um, so I grew up with a chip on my shoulder, but standing on a solid foundation. Now, my dad cared a lot about government, but since his first career, 24 years, was in the US Army, he was prohibited from political activity. And as a young boy, um, he would take me up in Seattle to campaign offices for candidates he liked. And he walked me in and he'd say, "My son wants to volunteer here." So as a 12-year-old, I remember, again, talk about how times have changed, as a 12-year-old, I remember my first campaign, handing out in a grocery store parking lot matchbooks with the name of the candidate on it. And, and I got active in politics. Um, the, uh, um, at, at a young age. And politics is a great social ladder. If you're willing to go door-to-door for a couple of weeks, you can be a block captain. And if you work a little harder, you can actually be in charge of block captains. Well, my dad was in the Army for 24 years, he never got to be a captain. And I, I saw early on that politics gave fantastic ego rewards for very marginal performance. And I knew it was the place for me. And, and, and so I started getting involved in campaigns early on. And my, um, U, and my first job out of law school was working in the United States Senate Judiciary Committee as a young lawyer. And then after a year, I, I didn't do great at that. And after a year, I, um, came out and started a, a campaign management, political consulting, and advertising firm with a guy named Mike Leavitt. And, and we built that up. And I, after four years, I couldn't see any political consultants that I wanted to be like. So I went and I was at, at 30 years old, I was Chief of Staff to the Governor of Utah. And did that as long as it was safe. It, it turns out as a staff guy, you only want to get so prominent, and then your days are numbered. And I stayed ahead of that. And I taught one course a year at BYU for 5 years. And they were exotic enough to let me come teach full-time on a tenure track there at BYU. And, um, then I was asked to be a visiting, uh, professor at, at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. And I came home one evening, and, and, and you're about to see the very dark side of this woman who looks nice, um, but, uh, I came home, and she said, uh, I threw myself dramatically on the couch. She sat on the couch and she said, "What's wrong?" And I said, "I had no idea how isolating the academic life is. I spend most of my time by myself reading and writing. Secondly, in order to get published, um, I have to write in a voice that is barely mine. I said, I used to be one of my favorite authors, and I can barely stand to read my own stuff. And thirdly, I said, there's such a discount in, in university against my practical experience. They actually hold it against me." Now, most of you, you would just kind of flood your spouse with sympathy. And she said, "I think you need to remember our deal." And I said, "What's our deal?" And she said, "At your age, a lot of people are actually increasing their earning capacity. You've taken two pay cuts in a row to become a teacher." And I said, "Well, I'm a professor." Um, and she said, "Okay, a professor." And she said, "I've never complained about money." And I said, "Until now." Now, and she said, "Here's the deal. You can come home isolated, alienated, and underappreciated, and well-compensated, or you can be the happiest teacher, I'm sorry, professor in America. But listen very carefully, Bud. I will not be married to an unhappy, poorly compensated man." And I opened my eyes and I said, said, "You're serious?" She said, "I'm really serious. If you're not going to be happy doing this, you got to go make some money." So I got off the couch. I, I'd consulted for a few years for a New York-based company called Leucadia. I called the chairman. He said, "Fly out next Wednesday." I finished my teaching obligation at BYU, which took a year, and went to work for Leucadia. And, and, and I'd never had a business class. I'd never had an accounting class. And one day the chairman called me in his office and said, "I don't like sneaking around behind people's backs. I want you to know I've called your wife." I said, "And they loved Shirley." And he, I said, "Well, what did you say to her?" And he said, "I told her that if you don't hire an accounting tutor, I'm going to reduce your year-end bonus by $25,000." And I got home that night, and it wasn't "Welcome home, dear." It was, "Did you get that accounting tutor yet?" And so I didn't know the business parlance. I had to work. And I remember I came home again, and after a couple of years of working there, and I knew better than to throw myself on the couch, but I said to Shirley, I said, "I, I, I've never had any business background. I, I don't know the right words. I can't keep up with Ian and Joe Steinberg." Which later I would find out are two of the most legendary people in American deal business who kept a very low profile. If you read, if you read Warren Buffett's letters in Berkshire Hathaway, he talks about them. And I said to her, I said, "I will never keep up with these guys." And she said, "My wife's a die-hard jazz fan." And she said, "Okay, so you're Brian Russell." And I said, "What do you [Music] mean?" Screens across Malone to the post-Malone, stripped by Michael, stolen by by MJ, Bulls down one, 17 seconds from game seven or from championship number six. Michael against Russell, 12 seconds, 11, 10. Jordan a drive, hangs, fires, he scores! The Bulls lead 87-86 with five and two tenths left. Oh my goodness, he's unbelievable. Oh my goodness. See, so she said, "You're Brian Russell. You can't guard Michael Jordan. You'll never be able to guard Michael Jordan. And if you're going to measure yourself against Ian Cumming and Joe Steinberg, you're going to come home miserable." And she said, "At some point, Brian Russell learned to come home and say, 'I am on the same court as Michael Jordan. I've earned my right to try to guard Michael Jordan.'" And if that didn't give you satisfaction, and then she stopped herself and said, "You've just got to figure that out because you're making really good money." Um, so I, uh, um, I work for the SinoSure Group. We have four business lines: private equity and credit, which I head up with Keith Taylor. We have comprehensive portfolio management for foundations and endowments, what's called an outsourced, um, uh, Chief Investment Office. We do high net worth wealth advisory, and we have a co-variant hedge fund. Um, and we have heading towards $7 billion of assets under management. Um, SinoSure's purpose is pretty simple: we help good people do great things. Um, most of the people that invest with us, we only accept people that have at least $5 million of investable net worth, and they're tend to be the smaller ones. Almost, I'd say 80% of our investors invest with us because they want to be able to give more money away. Um, and on the, on the one side, it makes me feel better that we're not investing people's retirement funds. On the other hand, when you see what the people that invest with us do, it, it puts added pressure. And that's fine. We have core principles. They're mine. I could never get the firm to adopt them, um, but we talk about them all the time at the firm: honesty, always, client comes first, insist on respect for colleagues. We don't, we don't, I've fired investors because they were a-holes. All right? If you miss again, Dave Barry once said, "If a person is nice to you and not nice to the server in the restaurant, they're not a nice person." And if a person isn't nice to our receptionist, we don't take their money. Um, and, and, and that's an important ethic. And then, but the fourth, and the reason everybody gets queasy when you talk about your core principles, to make money, our people work really, really hard, and they make sacrifices, and they got to do what people like Shirley demand. They make money. And if we're not making money, and the nice thing about private equity is we only make really good money if our clients make really good money. And you can talk about that more if you want. Um, the, well, I, I've got some other things I want to, uh, um, just conclude with this. Hit it again. Just learn how to get stuff done. And what I mean by that is, I, I've seen at every level, people who are very good at describing problems, people who are very sophisticated in explaining why something went wrong, or, uh, why something can't get fixed. But what I'm always looking for is, no matter how small the problem or how big it is, somebody who says, "Let me take care of that." If you project an attitude of, "Whatever it is that's needed, I can handle it, and I can do it," whoever's running that organization will notice, I promise. Um, and, and which is why I think with young people, you don't always need to be so impatient asking for the plum assignment. A lot of times, the best way to get attention is whatever is assigned to you, you are just nailing it. You're, you're killing it because people will notice, "Oh, that, that's somebody who can get something done." Um, and that's what I did. I have spent my whole career outperforming expectations, whether it was my mom's, or my first, or every single employer I've ever had, including my current partners. I've often felt I didn't belong in politics. I'd switched parties, and I wasn't from one of the right families. In government, I was young. Um, the, uh, in academia, I didn't have a PhD in business, my background was political science. In church, they tend not to like people that occasionally call someone an a-hole. And even at SinoSure, we hire these high-powered people, and I learned early on not to be embarrassed when I don't know an acronym or jargon. You, you, you know about the imposter syndrome. You know, one of the ways you can tell an imposter is they hide behind jargon. So there's plenty of folks out there that will smirk at you, and when you stumble, and every step is going to feel against the grade. I stumbled, and I stumbled often. At nights, and Shirley can attest to this, some nights I'd curl up in the fetal position, and I could just feel the hot breath of failure on me. And sometimes the risk getting too personal, you slide onto your knees and you say, "Heaven, I'm not going to ask you to solve this problem, but I just need to sleep. Please help me get to sleep." I know that feeling. I fed the, I, I fed that chip on my shoulder into the furnace of my ambition, and it didn't always burn clean, but it burned hot. So if you feel that being from UVU, or just being you, means you have something a little extra to prove, prove it. So I'll take questions. Thanks.

All right, thank you so much, Bud. Yeah, we've got about 10 minutes to do some questions. Um, Maddie's got the mic on this side, and I'll be over here. So just raise your hand, and we'll run over to you. No questions? Yes. Could you just talk a little bit more about the high net worth advising you guys do and how your processes work?

Sure. So the question is how we do the high net worth, um, advising and, and I'm kind of used as somebody that they meet to make sure that they get a sense that we're a good firm, but that's not my skillset. And what we do is we focus that. And, and in wealth advising, there's all these arbitrary, um, divisions. So a, what they call mass affluent is for a person that has about a million and a half dollars to invest. A lot of times that's a retiree. And then when you get up above $5 million, you're talking about high net worth. And then when, and nobody knows where the next line is. I think it's around $50 million, you get to ultra-high net worth. But, um, but so our, our team, and we hired a team away when Silicon Valley Bank went under, a team of theirs came to us. And so we have that built in. We got about a billion and a half of assets there. And what, what they are, they're problem solvers. And what's interesting is people do not fire wealth advisors because of performance. They fire wealth advisors because their calls don't get returned, their check gets misplaced, the capital call's wrong. And so we have a team. So there's these two young people that work not far from my office. Whenever I see them, I say, "Have we lost any accounts because of you two today?" And they say, "No, no." And, but, but, but they provide service. They understand the needs and they really stay within the declared needs and the declared risk. So at my age, and again, I don't have a choice because I got to put money into our firm, but at my age, I should not be having a high-risk portfolio. At your age, you should not be having a safe portfolio.

Okay, next question. Um, what were some of the struggles and challenges you faced, um, cuz you're the founder of this group, correct?

Right, co-founder. Yeah, co-founder. So what were some of those struggles or challenges you and your partner faced with starting this group?

Well, my, my main partner was Randy Quarles. And so I tell people that Randy and I were on parallel tracks. We've been friends since we were 19, but haven't lived in the same city since. And I went to BYU, he went to Columbia. I went to BYU Law School, he went to Yale. I worked for the governor, he was Undersecretary of the Treasury. Okay? And I worked for Leucadia, he worked for the Carlyle Group. So I tell people those are parallel, they're just a big gap. But he and I have been friends, and, and we wanted to do something together. And he had the good sense to marry into the Eccles family. Um, the, uh, but I married for looks. The, so did Randy, but the, uh, uh, um, but so we had them as an anchor client. So we had a big head start because the Eccles foundations were our anchored client. They've been horribly underserved. Um, the challenge we had was recruiting people to a new firm. I mean, if you want to hire really top talent, they, they're taking a big gamble on you. We had to convince them. The other challenge I face personally, so one, we have a New York office, I guess, with about 12 people in it now, and it's run by a brilliant guy. I mean, my two main partners in private equity, I'm 67 and a half. The next one under me, alongside me, is Keith, and he's 47, and then Andrew's 37. All right? Good. Um, because I just love my voice. Uh, the, uh, uh, but we, but I called Andrew just Friday, and I said, "Andrew, some of our, we call our core services our finance, compliance, customer, client experience." I said, "I know we're trying to close this big deal next week. I'm getting feelings, I, I'm picking up from some of our core services that they're under a lot of pressure, and mistakes happen when people are..." I said, "We, we, one of the things we don't do at this firm is to say, 'Just get this done.'" All right? And, and he talked through a couple issues and convinced me he was handling it correctly. And then he said, he said, "Now, Bud," he said, "I'm really working hard to be more collaborative." And I said, "Andrew, I'm really working hard to learn how to do complex models on Excel, but it's not in my nature, and it's not in yours. Uh, it's being collaborative. So let's keep coaching each other." So, but part of it, I had to put up with snobbery. I mean, I, I run all the operating companies at Leucadia, and I hire somebody that'd been at, I won't name it, but one of the big firms on Wall Street to come to work for me as an analyst, and he treats me like an idiot until he wasn't there anymore. But, and, and so the, so the challenges were, for example, convincing companies to let us invest in them because we don't do control buyouts. We, well, we do control buyouts. We prefer to do minority investments in founder-led companies, and you got to convince them, first of all, that you can write the check, and secondly, that you're going to be the most valuable player in the capital stack. And since I'd worked with distressed companies, we, we were able to live up to that. So does that answer anything else? Yeah, go. Just blurt it out, or we wait.

Um, I was curious about what advice you might have, especially coming from, like, a school like UVU, how to pitch ourselves out of college, specifically, you know, in the finance space where we have so much competition.

Sure. So first of all, and again, and you have this great Green Center here, so you, you got an institution that understands a lot about brand building, and you have great leaders here that are building the brand. And, and you're better off because of what people in the past, and, and, and I know this is hard to imagine, but when your kids and grandkids hear it, it won't be an issue, okay? And now, when somebody has your resume, unless they're special, unless they've had that experience like the Woodburys and the Kellers, um, and Brandon Fugal, I just wish I could tell you how great these people were, and they're out there pitching you, but unless they've had that connection, you've got to own it. All right? And, and, and own it. Don't wait till the interview. Okay? When you're submitting your resume, use, you know, and, and, and I, I apologize if this is beneath you or if it's diminishing to me. Um, there, there was a time in my, my, my first love was, I wanted to get a PhD in political science. That's what I wanted to do. But we had a couple of kids. It took seven years to get a PhD, and I decided if I could, I wouldn't seek a PhD unless I could get into one of the top 10 schools. And I got into a number of, I got into Chicago and North Carolina and some other really good schools, but it had to be one that, that I knew I could get a job. And I got an interview at Stanford. And back then, you can't Google somebody, did you? I mean, you don't even have the list until you get there. And, and, and I didn't, if there was a way to find out who was on the faculty there, I wasn't sure how you do it at the library. And so I showed up for the first interview, and the first interview was a Marxist. I mean, I mean, he was a self-declared. He's not like Trump calling Vice President Harris this. This guy was a, I mean, back then there was only two places you found Marxists: was Cuba and on college campuses. Okay? And, and he just raked me over the coals. You can imagine every trap I walked into on that. So the second one, I'm, I'm, I'm really wary and sophisticated. And the next one, it turns out the guy's this constitution-loving guy that at the end of the interview, he says, "The Constitution is a living, breathing document." I'm sorry, you don't share my enthusiasm for him. Geez. And the third guy was a guy that I knew who he was. His name was David Danelski. He was a legend in public law, which I was interested in. And he interviewed me, and I just got confused on a couple of names, and I hadn't read anything in the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, because I did, didn't know there was an Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, of which he was the editor. And he was a nice man. And as he walked me out of his office, he waved at his, can you imagine a senior, senior professor at Stanford's office, you know, with the, with the beautiful oak bookshelves and the little ladder by the bookshelves? And as he walked me out of his office, he waved to his books and he said, "This young man is the literature with which you were so painfully ill-acquainted." I wasn't surprised when I didn't get accepted. And at the time, and, and he literally looked at, he asked me a couple of personal questions, and when I told him we had two children, he just shook his head and said, "Oh, burden so young." And if I had it to do over again, I would have owned who I was. I would have, said, "I worked my butt off to provide for my family." And, and when kids were doing their study groups, I wasn't, and this is why I love this field. This is what I want to accomplish, and this is the skills I picked up on the way. People care about skills. I didn't get to the, that sheet, but people care about skills and experience. And, and one of the things that we learned, and Shirley and I made a commitment when we lived, and it doesn't even exist anymore, the corner of 1600 North and State Street in Orem, where there's a McDonald's now, used to be a trailer park. And we lived in a 30-year-old Great Lakes trailer that was 8 by 48 feet, which happens to be the exact size of the deck outside our bedroom right now. But it's where we had two children, and it, and it was old and it was decrepit. And, and I read an article about a painter that wanted to be a great painter, and he went to Paris to get trained, and he saw people selling artwork along the Seine. And he needed the money, so he started painting for tourists along the Seine. And he made good money. And then he'd forgotten why he went there. He never became a great artist because he was painting for tourists along the Seine. And I went to Shirley and I said, "Let's commit right now that I will not paint for money too soon." And so we made the decision. And in all fairness to Shirley, we made the decision that for the first almost 20 years of our marriage, I took a job based on who I was working for, not how much they paid. Um, and so sometimes you're going to have to get the experience, and what they want to hear is your experience and your skill set. I mean, we, we, we stood outside the window this morning and watched what was going on in the statistics class. Then we stood outside of an entrepreneurial class and looked at the PowerPoint presentation, and we love this place. Our daughter went here. We've written checks. I was impressed. And, and you got to own it. You got to declare it. This is what I know how to do. And you give me the chance. Me, the only way I got a clerkship my second year, between my second and third year, is I went to a very good law firm. I went to an older man there and I said, "I will work for free if you'll give me a chance here." And that, I think, got them across the edge. And they paid me, and then they didn't make me an offer anyway.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Can we give it up for Bud?

All right, thank you so much, Bud, for for coming to campus with us today. All right, um, if you're signed up for the lunch, or if you're on the waitlist, please come meet Sam right up here. Um, we might have a minute or two if you have any additional questions for Bud. So thank you so much.