WSO Podcast | E106: Non-target - Morgan Stanley Asset Management - Building a Consulting Firm
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In this episode, Jeffrey shares his eclectic path from two non-target schools, shifting to night classes so he could earn money in real estate his junior year and how he ended up at several Boiler Rooms. He also covers his eventual pivot to break into Morgan Stanley and why that didn't end up being a long term stay, how he added value at HSBC and his rough transition out of a family office that was dabbling in venture capital. Learn how he made each transition and advice he would give to his younger self.
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WSO Podcast (Episode 106) Transcript:
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis, your host and chief monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me as I talk to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it.
Jeffrey: [00:00:25] In this episode, Jeffrey shares
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:27] His eclectic path from two non-target schools shifting to night classes so he could earn money in real estate, his junior year and how he ended up at several boiler rooms. He also covers his eventual pivot to break into Morgan Stanley and why that didn't end up being a long term stay. How he added value at HSBC and his rough transition out of a family office that was dabbling in venture capital. Learn how he made each transition and advice he would give his younger self enjoy. Jeffrey, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Voices podcast. Thanks so much for having me. It's a bit great if you could just start by giving the listeners a short summary of your bio.
Jeffrey: [00:01:10] Sure. So my background is probably a little bit more eclectic than most in two thousand eight nine. I started a real estate company. It was a buyer's only brokerage. We were able to take advantage of the displacement in 08 to grow a business. Shortly thereafter, I went into banking. I spent the next five years in banking between Morgan Stanley and HSBC. While at HSBC, I was asked by a family office to help them set up a venture capital fund in New York. So I left banking. I spent the next two years of my life as a partner in VC, coupled with a crowdfunding platform. And once we had completed the first fund of investments, the family decided not to invest anymore. So I left and started a consulting firm in twenty fifteen. So that's kind of a broad strokes of my background.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:04] Awesome. So let's start all the way back in college. Where was finance always on the radar? And for clarity,
Jeffrey: [00:02:10] You started right out of school
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:13] 2010. You graduated from Toro. Is that correct, right? Yes. And so what was the kind of the first gig out of school and how what led you to that? Sure. So even going one step beyond that or before that, after high school, I graduated in Great Neck Long Island. After high school, I went to Baruch College for two years and finance was really never top of mine. I actually wanted to go into law at first, so I took a lot of law classes and certainly at this point in time, after all the contracts I've seen, I can I can say I'm dangerous enough to
Jeffrey: [00:02:50] Know a little bit. So I started Baruch, worked there for two years that went to school there for two years and then started working in real estate. So I sat to get my my real Estate Brokers license, and in two thousand and eight, I actually switched from Baruch to Toro ended up taking night classes there while I was working full time in real estate. I'd worked for a buyers only brokerage, first called Elkind Associates, which is still around today. I learned a lot from the principal there on honestly just on how to communicate professionally with people. Again, this was my first meeting that
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:34] Was at a small brokerage. Like how many? How many was small. I think when I got there, I was maybe one of three. By the time I left, I was maybe one of five or six something along those lines and this was in 08 09.
Jeffrey: [00:03:45] So like was, there are a lot of
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:47] Deal volume then or was it is it just like opportunistic buyers or jumping in? Yeah. So the principal actually had a really interesting system. As I mentioned before, kind of this, this notion of a buyer's brokerage is one where we carry no inventory. We had no showings per
Jeffrey: [00:04:05] Say, but rather we were finding the buyers and acting as agents and listens to those buyers and really helping them find the ideal piece of property for them. Got it. So that was that was kind of the genesis of the idea to grow this into a kind of a larger concept. So when I had left L.A. and by the way, I was born here, but my parents are Russian speaking, so I speak the language fluently, and I was able to kind of capitalize on having that language and kind of finding a niche market where there were a lot of people from Eastern Europe coming over to the U.S., specifically to New York to buy both residential and commercial properties.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:50] So can I. Before you continue on that, this is kind of like right after your sophomore year in college, you did two years of baruch and then all of a sudden you switch to night classes. Where is Toro, by the way? New York Area New York? Yeah, it's right on 23rd between 5th and 6th.So you switched to night classes so you could work full time in real estate. Why? Why do that is you felt like there was a good opportunity. You felt like you needed to pay bills. Like what was the main motivation? Yeah, it was a little bit of both. Paying bills was definitely top of mind. And there certainly there are a lot of people that can say that wealth is relative and they're
Jeffrey: [00:05:22] Comfortable at varying degrees of earning potential or income. I saw real estate firstly as not being too frankly difficult to break into as far as barriers of entry into getting into a business. You really just need a license and a good attitude in order to kind of get into the market. Yeah. Again, it was kind of a I don't believe in luck. I believe in opportunity meeting
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:47] Preparedness, but like, talk to me a little bit about your approach and then all of a sudden you're like, I'm going to go. It was something where you kind of started talking
Jeffrey: [00:05:54] And real estate was on your
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:56] Mind where you meet. I don't know. Like what? Was there a mentor that was like, Hey, you should do this real estate thing? And you're like, Actually, I'm going to do that and I'm going to switch. Colleges and I'm going to still go at night. What was what was the. Look, I'm a big believer in anything is possible and even I'll talk about it later, kind of how I apply to consulting and building a consulting firm. I noticed that when I started out in real estate, Wednesdays and Sundays are the biggest days for just mass showings, and I could always schedule my classes and my own personal life schedule around those dates. But as you get more and more involved in real estate, as you become more busy, more in demand, more customers are looking for different properties and you have to spend a significant amount of time on work. I decided that I really wanted to do that more than not necessarily then go to school. I knew that it was important, but I was more focused on making money and kind of snowball effect. It was working, so I wanted to spend more time on what was working. Totally. That makes a lot of sense, especially when you start kind of
Jeffrey: [00:07:01] Getting these checks,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:03] Right? Like these big checks that at a young age. So tell me a little bit about like what a normal transaction looked like and how the what was the commission structure like for this buyer's brokerage? Sure. So I was fortunate enough again. It was a small firm initially, so I think our split was something like 50 50, maybe was 60 40 to me.
Jeffrey: [00:07:20] I think it was 50 50.Yeah, I he generated all the leads. So I was really just I saw myself as a warm body and just wanted to be a sponge and learn from from him. Yeah, so a typical transaction initially was probably a residential apartment in Manhattan at the time, an average apartment was a little over a million dollars. So that was kind of what we were working on. I or rather I was working on, whereas the principal was taking transactions of three to five million or higher. Right. I never I never went through like the normal route of a real estate broker. You go through rentals and then you go into sales. I kind of skip the rental part and went straight into sales and especially being kind of not right after high school, but not enough after college to have been a full blown professional at the time, I was very green, especially in the way that I was communicating with people. So that again, kind of going back to that, I
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:17] Still look around the edges in terms of your clients like what do you mean? How are you green? You just weren't professional. So, so I'll say this. I'll never forget. I showed up to his office for an interview
Jeffrey: [00:08:28] With the firm, and I showed up in, I don't know, a button down and jeans. And before he even says hello, he goes, Are you seriously not wearing a suit? So that should give some semblance of how green I was in terms of coming to real estate. Right, exactly.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:46] It's like all about like how looking, you know, looking the part exactly right. And that was kind of my introduction, let's say, to the professional world
Jeffrey: [00:08:55] Of of New York City.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:57] Awesome. Ok, so you so you learn quickly, let's put it that way and very quickly you started doing well. And so he started giving you more and more deals, even if they're, you know, at the million dollar range.
Jeffrey: [00:09:07] You're still the commissions.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:08] What like two and a half, three percent your side, right? Yep. Yep, that's about one and a half percent. So typically in a real estate transaction, let's say there's anywhere between five to six percent of the total transaction paid out in commissions. There's typically a buy and a sell side, whereas each of those would get about 50 50, so let's say three points to each firm. And then beyond that, there's a further split. Again, as I mentioned between me and him, it was again 50 50.So you're looking at like, say, fifteen thousand to the firm, right in the million dollar transaction, you get half of that about seven thousand. No, no, I would get half that is half right. Three points of the firm and then I would get half of that right.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:49] So three points, oh, three points. I'm right. So 30 and then 15 to you, which is a nice little check at 20 years old or whatever you were back then. Yeah, it was not bad. It was not bad. And doing those once a month wasn't too bad either. Yeah. So it's tough to say, Hey, what? I want to go to school full time. I get it. Ok, so you're doing well there. Tell me. Yeah, so you end up finishing with tell me, why
Jeffrey: [00:10:13] Not continue doing this
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:14] And growing with the firm? Are you kind of split out on your own? Is that so? So I one of my best friends to this day, whose father is deeply involved in real estate and had a development firm, developed a few projects in the city. We decided that kind of taking my salesmanship, I suppose, and his contacts, both of us again similar backgrounds had the opportunity to essentially capitalize on this influx of capital coming from overseas. And we were just honestly able to speak the language. Look again, I was twenty one, maybe. So there's no doubt that every single person who is who is dealing with myself or my partner looked at us as
Jeffrey: [00:10:59] Kids, but they knew that we were an essential part of the transaction. You are hustling as hard as anybody else out there was running around and
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:11] Was a lot of your work like looking was a lot of your work looking for the properties. It was a lot of your work just in the actual negotiations with the sellers once the property was that, both because of the nature of a lot of these transactions. We really represented them on their behalf here stateside because oftentimes they would really only come here once or twice, maybe once for a final tour and once for the closing. These are a lot of these are high net worth individuals from Russia, basically, or Ukraine or Eastern Europe. Mm hmm. Ok. Very cool. So you're basically. Doing this for several years, it sounds like only about two years in developed really, really quickly. Yeah. And what changed what suddenly? What changed? So two thousand? Maybe 10, maybe 11, something like that. I really had this pull to Wall Street. I think I think we mentioned that I was I was a member of Wall Street Oasis. I went to the conferences trying to break into the business. I ultimately landed a job at a I mean, looking back on it now, knowing about the business was totally a chop shop. If you've watched the boiler room or if you watch the Wolf of Wall Street, I've gotten my seat kicked. I had my hand duct taped to a headset told that if I wanted to go to a bathroom, I had to disconnect it. We did. That's how I got licensed. That's how I got my Series seven training under kind of senior advisers or financial advisers, opening up accounts for them and then ultimately being able to open up my own accounts. I total boiler room. It sounds like you don't want to share the name of it right now, but so so the name I use, I mean, it's all public information because Series seven, I mean, anybody can look me up on FINRA. I have no disclosures, so I can disclose that, and I'm happy to prove that. The first firm I worked with was a firm called
Jeffrey: [00:13:07] Hfp.I don't think they're around anymore, and that's where I got licensed. The team that I had worked with was focused on equities. And I think kind of noted what was going on and wanted to break out of there. So we ended up leading to a firm called Maxim Group, which is actually now certainly a sizeable institution work there for about a year or two, just gaining more knowledge, understanding about markets truly being a financial advisor there, cold calling people getting turned down left and right. Right after right after Madoff, I've been called Madoff a million and a half times on cold calls that we would be making.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:49] So I think it's interesting, actually, that people started using that as an insult. My constitution of being turned down. It is one hundred percent of that job. I've never been turned down more in my life. And that was and that was all for a whopping salary
Jeffrey: [00:14:05] Of maybe, maybe two hundred dollars a week, maybe.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:08] So why go to this? I mean, once you saw the writing on the wall, how long were you doing these boiler room type cold call? I think between HFP and Maxim, where ultimately I got my sixty five and sixty three licenses, I think that entire tenure was maybe a year and a half in total, which was a lot of time spent studying and getting licensed. Were you second guessing yourself or are you thinking this is just
Jeffrey: [00:14:33] Just what I have to
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:34] Put up with at the beginning to get? Yes and yes. Second guessing myself there is you when you were making between around an average of fifteen thousand twenty five thirty thousand. Thankfully, I had capital to live on. I wasn't out there blowing money on clubs and bottles and grills and all of that
expensive car or anything like that. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, nothing like that. I bought myself an apartment basically to keep my living costs down, and that's what I spent the money on. Got it. So I was able to survive on that two 250 weeks salary for quite some time went through that again. Like I said, maybe a year, 18 months, and once I had all of my licenses, I decided to upgrade, so to speak, and I left and joined, which was at the time, Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney. Mm hmm. And I was there through the merger and final acquisition of Smith Barney by Morgan Stanley. Got it. And I can say that they didn't. They didn't duct tape your hand to the phone and tell you, No, no, that's a totally different story. But when I walked in there, I'll never forget that I I thought I was pretty smart. I thought I made some money in my life. I walked in there and honestly buy everything people were saying. I felt like I knew nothing. Just everything was totally wiped out. They were talking about yield curves and compressions and derivatives trading. And I was I can only imagine when I was a deer in headlights. So I think to this day, institutionally speaking again, from my personal experience, Morgan Stanley probably has some of the smartest people
Jeffrey: [00:16:19] Out there, period. Again, just from my intimate knowledge of people that I've personally worked with, so.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:27] So you start at your title was your title was a portfolio manager or whatnot. But my starting title was. Financial adviser, associate, maybe something like that, and so you started, what was the salary there? Pretty low still, right, 40 50.
Jeffrey: [00:16:41] I think starting salary was about 60
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:44] 60. Ok. Yeah, not bad. And the bonus? Tell me about the bonus structure. Was there any was it like just based on the people you brought? A bonus structure was tiered. It really depends. There is kind of like three buckets. And if you hit two out of three, depending on the tiers that you got in, you got different bonuses. I think max bonus per quarter was about three thousand five hundred. If I'm remembering correctly. And that really depended on how much assets you brought in and what was your revenue? What was the bottom line revenue? There was a third one, but I don't remember. I don't remember what it was.
Ok, so that's helpful, though, like a maximum around an additional 14 k a year. Yeah. You said you said seventy five hundred a quarter. Um, thousand five hundred thirty five hundred quarter. Yeah, so about that's about fourteen k, okay. If you if you hit all the
targets, got it. Ok, so you were making maybe an extra seven, 10 year, potentially on top of the 60 or not. So are they were hard to hit? Kelly story was really interesting, too. Yeah, tell me I when I went into Morgan Stanley the way that I got in there again, kind of using my Russian connection, if I can call it that. I worked with a senior adviser there who had a significant amount of assets under management, and I went to go work for the branch on Fifty Seventh and Madison, which is again, you know, take everything I say with a grain of salt because it certainly changed by this point. But at the time was the largest international branch in the Morgan Stanley network, meaning they had the most international clients. Right? Yeah. Yeah, there are two floors. I think one floor was dedicated to South America altogether, and then the other floor was just a mixture of both U.S. base and international. And again, kind of going back to what I said using my second language, I teamed up with another Russian speaking advisor who is quite senior and knew a lot of
Jeffrey: [00:18:40] The senior people in Morgan Stanley smith Barney and essentially began working with him, helping him manage the portfolio. But how did you even
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:49] Get in touch with this guy? I'm sure there's a lot of other Russians
Jeffrey: [00:18:51] In New York contacting him,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:53] Trying to get an internship, trying to get in the door. Why? What made you stand out? Probably because of my, my access to those families that were buying real estate. And I was actually put in touch with him by one of those families. He was one of their
Jeffrey: [00:19:10] Advisors swarming Trump.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:14] I'm sorry. So warm intro. Basically, this is a warm intro. Yeah, yeah, OK. It was a warm intro
Jeffrey: [00:19:18] From somebody who again was a client of mine. Several years before that, I was speaking with them just on an unrelated matter, and I told them how much I was getting paid. And they asked me to repeat it a few times over the phone and then say it in English because I was speaking in Russian just to make sure it was 200 dollars. So they're like, what are you doing? My guy works at Morgan Stanley, and why don't you talk with him? So I spoke with him. There was a lot of overlap.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:50] Have you graduated here at this point? You had graduated way like the night classes you finished. It graduated. Ok. Got it. So you're still. So now you're just like, you're going from making good money. You buy yourself a little
Jeffrey: [00:20:02] Apartment so you don't spend money on
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:04] Stupid things and force yourself to save. So that's good. Smart at a young age
Jeffrey: [00:20:11] And
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:12] You're just working, working, working.
Jeffrey: [00:20:13] You eventually get into Morgan Stanley
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:15] As a working for this guy. What was it like working for? Honestly. So. If. I'm trying to find the words to say it, because working with a original Russian, so to speak, fob style Russian is and can be very difficult from a
cultural and simply translation perspective. They may come off very rude or coarse or direct, but they don't like that. Culturally, they like, oh, like, you're an idiot. Like, why are you doing this without meaning to, like, harm you emotionally but culturally,
Jeffrey: [00:21:05] But culturally,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:05] Didn't you know that already, since this is where you're? So, so that's all you see right here is fine. There are, I mean, literally like I had, I don't know what you call them. Executive assistants come up to me sometimes because he would be like yelling through his door at me something and they'd be like, Are you really like, you should tell me you're going to take that? And I'm looking at it like, Yeah, what else am I going to do?
Jeffrey: [00:21:26] Leave. And again, like I, I've been turned down many times in my life again because of cold calling and investors and deals and all that stuff. So to me, I had a job. I was working, I was learning. So OK, there's a guy yelling at me once in a while like, I'm just going to learn from my mistakes and just move on with my life. I'm not going to take it personally.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:46] That's a great attitude, and it's hard to do
Jeffrey: [00:21:48] When you're young. But I think you had
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:50] Had enough rejection and screaming from you kind of probably got numb to it, I guess a little bit. Yeah. So and you understood the comedy out there, everyone kind of going into it don't ever take anything personally that's take emotion out of things. If you feel emotional about something, just take a breath, walk away, go to the
Jeffrey: [00:22:08] Bathroom, go for a walk, whatever, and think about the reality of the situation. You know
Jeffrey: [00:22:13] I can now in coronavirus times, I can say now more than ever before. It's just be thankful for what you have. You have a job, you have an education, you're learning, you're getting paid. Just keep doing it until something better comes up. Yeah, so.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:28] The whole the whole fortuitous introduction here to this, to this tough manager, but at Morgan Stanley, was this because you are actively looking because you're getting paid so little? Were you talking with people like, how did this even come up? I know they didn't go there like they were shocked and they just injured you. But were you
Jeffrey: [00:22:46] Doing other interviews? Yeah, yeah, I can say that up until. So I started my consulting firm in 2015. So up until twenty sixteen, I can tell you that I've been constantly on the job hunt, and that's a year after I started consulting firm.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:06] Why is I never been happy where you are? Because you feel like that's never. I've always had this urge to grow and to learn and to kind of build. I think that I've only really been able to define that more recently in my own life, like Twenty Sixteen Twenty Seventeen as the consulting firm guru and as things
Jeffrey: [00:23:25] Became to kind of make sense and fall in line. I was able to define kind of what I want to do and how I want to do it. But the reason I was always looking for it, yeah, I mean, I was not satisfied with my income. I was not satisfied with the corporate bureaucracy that I was
Jeffrey: [00:23:42] Constantly finding myself in. I was finding way more efficient ways to do certain tasks. That is not some like subjectively, if it more efficient, but objectively more efficient to do something. And because I was working at large institutions with bureaucracy, whether shorter or long, I was unable to do these and things and kind of unable to resolve inefficiencies. And that always really, really bothered me. So so that's kind of why I've always been looking to jump around and to move around. If you look at my resume, my linkedin, you'll probably see I spent no more than two years in any one position. And it's because of that kind of change I would. Looking back on it, absorb as much information as I could and just move on to the next thing.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:30] Ok, so that kind of is a good dovetail into your move out of Morgan Stanley. So you were there, right? Eight months. And then, yeah, I mean, you had eventually you were. You're obviously looking as you're getting screamed at.
Jeffrey: [00:24:43] Yeah. So, so always kind of looking yes and no. Morgan Stanley ended up buying out the rest of Smith Barney, and through that transition, two things happened several months apart. The first is that Morgan Stanley closed down the private wealth management groups in London, which represented all of Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, all of that stuff. And when they did that because of probably a my language, but more importantly, my partner's contacts in Morgan Stanley, we were able to begin to manage pretty much all Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakh speaking accounts overnight. Um, which was fantastic for several months until Morgan Stanley started implementing and redoing enhanced due diligence on every single client account. And again, going again, maybe I have a little bit deeper of insight because I have the cultural insight as well. When you're asking somebody and I think given my experience, this applies to just as much Russians as it does people from China or Asia or India or anywhere international. When you start asking, you know, prove your funds, show us your receipt, show us your contract shows, this shows that you know, just to hold my money. I'm not interested in giving you this information, especially when there's other resources in the world that would. So that would
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:12] Let you hold the money without asking you for all this additional backup, right? And by the way, like totally kosher money, big businesses, international businesses that are being run by a lot of these people, a lot of them are already U.S. based, and they just needed to prove 10 years ago where the money came from or something like that. So it was really just more of a headache for people than anything else. Yeah. And rankly, they started closing accounts, let alone people withdrawing. So that was kind of the genesis of my start at looking at international banks and why ultimately, I ended up at HSBC. Ok. And so tell me about that transition. So. Much like any bank, it's kind of a day or there the next day or not, there is no like two week notice. There's no anything like that. You're there, then you're not. So one day I was working at Morgan Stanley and I think I timed it. So I had about a few weeks off in between and I can kind of get my head right and I don't think I travelled, but I just kind of took time off and read a book and got ready for the next adventure. Hsbc was really interesting.
Jeffrey: [00:27:24] It gave me a really, really interesting perspective of the difference between a Morgan Stanley style institution versus an HSBC style institution where you really have a more client facing retail bank as opposed to. I don't want to call it institutional because HSBC is also institutional, but
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:46] More so less the retail, right? Exactly more, right? Again, I don't want to call it more sophisticated or not. They're both highly sophisticated, but there's just there's kind of a clear difference. There's no retail banking in Morgan
Jeffrey: [00:27:57] Stanley, so that is obviously a huge, huge component of HSBC. Great. So I was initially brought in again, kind of. I have a book of business. I'm going to bring it in. Yada yada yada. Ultimately, I was I was able to kind of manage a number of different branches from the perspective of them dropping me in and me figuring out a way to generate additional revenue. So whether it
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:21] Was, that sounds very different from what you were doing before. It sounds like you were doing client relationships and helping manage money. You're doing trades for these Russian clients basically, right? And so then you moved into HSBC and you're almost more like an internal consultant there. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that's and that's certainly not what it felt like while there. But looking back on it, yes, that's how I would describe it. Did you go over there knowing that or was it something that you kind of fell into something that that we just fell into? There was at the time, weren't you super busy managing the book of business you brought over and bringing them over? Yeah. So so my the partner that I'd worked with at Morgan Stanley, I think, ended up leaving, possibly to UBS or something like that. And I told him, I don't want any of the business. I'm never going to go after your business. I'm never going to go after these clients. Like, I wanted to have a good relationship with him and frankly, I wanted to get I wanted to. So, so taking a quick step back, yeah, I wanted to ultimately get out of a role or a business
Jeffrey: [00:29:25] Where my compensation was tied to commission or production. And obviously, it's different now, but I had been working in a commission based compensation structure for so long that. You know what, I just wanted to stop selling, I just wanted to stop calling people and asking for introductions and just I just wanted to sit in a role where the only interaction I'd really have is with captive audience or internal
company people, basically. Got it. And that that is definitely what HSBC provided. They provided the books of businesses because again, these were clients or customers of the bank at each branch on an individual basis. And I had the opportunity to work with all of the bankers. The and I forget kind of the individual names of the roles, but there are bankers, wealth managers, advisors, managers like managers of the branches, tellers of the branches. I got to work with kind of all those positions. And the idea was
to take a look at each branch's book, basically and figure out a way to increase revenue. So whether it's a wealth management product, retail banking, insurance lending, those are kind of the four main products that frankly any bank has to offer. When you're talking about what can I go to a bank? What can I buy? What can they do for me?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:48] Did you feel like you had the experience to roll out this revenue or to set up this plan for all of the retail branches of HSBC in Manhattan?
Jeffrey: [00:30:57] I mean, that's what you were you were tasked
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:58] To do or was this that they were like, you did it for one and they're like, Do it for all of them. So I so yeah, so the latter. So I did it for one. I, you know, I didn't even know to do that. How did you know, even say, Hey, these insurance products are good, we should be pushing these to our clients? How did you? That's a good question. And actually, I didn't. I had I had a good base of knowledge for lending because of my experience, both in real estate and at Morgan Stanley. We did a lot of like portfolio loans and loans in general, and obviously I had a good understanding of of wealth management and the different types of products that wealth management can offer, whether it's mutual funds, ETFs, SMAS or kind of anything in between. Ok. What I didn't really have a good grasp on was the retail banking or the insurance side. And what I can tell you is that the bank more so in those two areas than the two that I already had knowledge
Jeffrey: [00:31:57] In, but especially in retail banking and in insurance, they're very. They offer a lot of resources to the people who work there to increase their knowledge in those products, whether it's retail banking or insurance, and they did really provide a lot of resources that if you took advantage, you could learn a lot. Yeah, but to kind of give you an idea of how I was able to be successful on the front end, I think this is two thousand thirteen through 15. I just I had to double check myself. Yeah. If we look back 20, 13, 15 between that time period, I can't exactly remember what time, but mortgage rates were dropping drastically during that period of time. And it was kind of really simple to have bank rate open or just get the mortgage rates from your from your branch mortgage associate. Understand what the rates were for, I don't know, a 10 year arm in a 30 year fixed. And when you think about just access to data and this is kind of one of the inefficiencies that that bothered me, you know, this bank has incredible access to data that. You know, that, in my opinion, isn't utilized necessarily correctly. But essentially what we did was going to every single client file, essentially take a look at what their mortgage rates were and when they close their mortgage. And ninety nine percent of them were two to three hundred basis points above where HSBC was lending at the time. So it's a very easy conversation to say, Hey, you know, my name is so and so introduce yourself, tell them that you can help them refinance for minimal or any cost. And that was
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:47] There was a big enough gap in where rates were and where a lot of these mortgages were. So it's like, why aren't we actively calling these people and exactly collecting the points? Exactly, exactly. And that was also a really great way to start building rapport
Jeffrey: [00:34:01] With, frankly, with your clients. Because if their branch client, they hold money at the branch, they're your client. Whether you're a banker or a manager or a teller or whoever you call, just call these people and start having conversations. Hmm.
So again, kind of taking my lending knowledge, combined with my cold calling knowledge and saying, don't email, pick up the phone, call them, talk them through this, introduce yourself and what you're going to get, at least the call out of it, a touchpoint or at the very best, you get a new mortgage out of it. Mm hmm. So we very quickly I mean, the mortgage business ramped up significantly very quickly thereafter. And from there, we learned a lot more about insurance products, help people put together insurance types of products, so on and so forth, and kind of just ran that worked. I think I think I ended up working at every single bank branch in HSBC in Manhattan for at least at least a little while, at least a month or so.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:59] So I hope they started paying you really well for this work. Yeah, it was OK. It was OK. Do you mind sharing a range of what your comp was there for those couple of years? Were you making six figures at this point? Six figures? Yes, very low. Six figures.
Jeffrey: [00:35:13] Yeah. Let's just put it at just barely crossing.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:16] It's surprising because you're you're driving a lot of revenue. Surprise. I mean, you got off, you got out of the commission structure. But I guess,
Jeffrey: [00:35:24] Yeah, it was. It was interesting. But again, I think that, you know.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:31] You're more like internal training. Again, I'm trying to be political about it, but I think there are a lot of inefficiencies
Jeffrey: [00:35:36] That or rather I'll call them frictional costs. Of course,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:41] That you did in these
Jeffrey: [00:35:43] Bureaucratic style banks where
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:48] So I see a pattern here, you're getting frustrated by the large institutions, so it's time to break out on your own. Yes. Yes. Let's leave it at that. Yeah. So, yeah, tell me about the next step. So you know you're doing a year and a half almost at HSBC after your almost two years at Morgan Stanley. Tell me what was the next step for you? What were you? Were you still interviewing? Kind of pretty heavily here? Tell me what was going on? Sure. So at this point, you've owned your apartment now for four years? Yeah, it was nice.
Jeffrey: [00:36:17] Ok.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:18] You still own that apartment, by the way. Is it a Manhattan? I do. Yeah. Very nice. Yes. So. So working at HSBC started, you know, started trying to put some feelers out there, what I wanted to do. And honestly, I
Jeffrey: [00:36:34] Got two calls, let's say or two. I whittled it down to two options I could either a become a consultant at twc or B. I can kind of go into this venture opportunity that was super uncertain and I really wanted to be a consultant. But at the time, the only reason I did not end up taking the consulting job is that they were not flexible on the salary I had been working already for at that point, a considerable amount of time. Hmm. And it would be back. I think it would be back to 60. But it would also be all the way down to like a like an entry level consultant in the firm.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:27] And why do you think that was? Do you think it was just because you had no consulting experience? Yeah, you're in wealth management for so long and kind of internal consulting at HSBC. So you weren't you had nothing truly like no true relevance there trying to push you all the way back there. Exactly. So they wouldn't they wouldn't budge there. So tell me what pushed you towards this more entrepreneurial venture? So, so the V.C. or let's say, entrepreneurial venture, we'll call it that because we kind of tell you what we did there. But they at the very least matched my base from HSBC and. I mean, people around a hut, which is around a hundred. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's say it was one hundred. I think it might have been a smidge over that, but what's this for? Yeah. So they were able to match it as a kind of as a starting point, obviously, with incentives and bonuses and all that stuff structured into to later in the company. Yeah. And ownership in the actual in the company.
Jeffrey: [00:38:30] So I said that, you know what? I've also always wanted to be in VC and may as well take this opportunity. I'm not I'm not losing anything economically. And at the very least, it'll give me this this base of knowledge as opposed to the consulting base of knowledge. And who knows, maybe I'll end up raising my own VC fund and becoming the next Andreessen Horowitz or something like that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:52] Okay. So this was this was kind of a when you say VC, it's really inside a family office. They were looking to start investing in early stage startups.
Jeffrey: [00:39:01] Is that the idea?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:02] Yes, it was. It was a typical VC fund where there's LPs and they're raised. So just to be clear for the people. How did you even come across this? Tell me? Was this something you were looking for or just kind of fell in your lap? So they reached out to me while I was at HSBC? So, yeah, I guess it kind of fell into my lap. How did they find you? Linkedin, LinkedIn? Yeah. And I took a call with them, understood what they were trying to do. Principles were well capitalized.
Jeffrey: [00:39:37] Had built kind of one company before sold it kind of having to do with crowdfunding, but not really. And then their idea was to create this massive crowdfunding portal where they would also be participating in companies. Mm hmm. So I thought it seemed like a really cool idea at the time. I was also, I would say, not needy, but about ankle deep in my own startup that I was fooling around with called Ko Gift. And I'll kind of I'll weave that story in through this. So I was like, you know what? I'm kind of trying to build something on my own. This could help bolster that startup in and of itself. This will keep me afloat with what they're paying me. And also, I'm really curious of how V.C works, how everything happens, how things are funded, how companies are everything from origination to diligence investment to portfolio management. Sure. And I really got a chance to learn all of those steps in regards to kind of a venture portfolio, how companies are originated.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:45] Was there somebody that I could teach you a little bit that had the VC background that had been doing this or kind of on your own?I don't want to say that they were. Experts in venture capital, yeah. They had maybe a year to 18 months head start on me in terms of like a learning curve. I learn really, really quickly just again because of the eclectic background, and it only gets more eclectic from there.
So how much money did you have to put to, like how much money was available for you to put to work and how what was the mandate? I think it was about $50 million. Don't quote me on that. It might have been more. There might have been. We definitely see you allocated 80 million to early stage. Was that? Ok, so it's 80 million is about 50 with probably maybe 30 for following rounds and rights afterwards. Ok, and this is all from this one family office?
Jeffrey: [00:41:37] Or is it
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:38] Through this platform that they were building?
Jeffrey: [00:41:40] Both. Yeah, both. Ok. And the idea was tech enabled seed stage companies that that maybe needed some help with presentations or models or operating strategy or something along those lines that we would then help kind of get
established. And then ultimately they would go and syndicate the rest of their rounds of capital through the crowdfunding portal. So is there with them for about 18 months? And that might be no. Eight months because they're with them for about eight months or under a year. Yeah, the first kind of fund I'll call it, I'll put that in quotes was allocated and they decided to pivot away from that model that we were running into. I suppose what would be called a kind of an exclusive Angel Investment Group or a membership by Member Investment Group, which essentially means that I'm an angel investor. I'm going to pay this company x amount of dollars per year. And for that, I will
be receiving pre vetted startups or something along those lines. Ok. And and the position that they wanted to put me in was like a membership advisor, which, you know, I'll never forget sitting in the boardroom thinking like, Oh my god, these guys want like the person I signed up with at Equinox as a membership advisor. They basically want me running around and having people sign up for a thousand or two thousand dollars to basically get rights to these investments. And I'm thinking to myself, like, there's no way I can call a single person I know and say that number one, this is what I'm doing after all the time that they know me. And number two, even like pay for access to something like this just didn't make sense. Yeah. So I left. I left the week after I got back from my honeymoon.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:42] And with nothing lined up, with nothing lined up. I can tell you that as blissful as the honeymoon was, the next couple of weeks, even the year was really hard. Yes, I left, I left with no plans. I left because I could not be there anymore, and I left because I was finally in a small firm that again could not. You couldn't be there anymore because it was just not. They wanted to do this. They were pushing you to do this, and you really just didn't want to. Right? Yeah. You didn't. You didn't. You couldn't pretend. Right, exactly. Ok. So so you're confident enough. You have enough in the bank where you feel like you can get somewhere else, get on your feet. Yes, at the time, I can say now with absolute certainty, there is no amount of confidence and no amount of money in the bank that will prepare you for doing something like that. I'm super glad that I did it, but I'm saying that from the perspective of now running a proper firm that is that is
Jeffrey: [00:44:48] Growing pretty quickly and making money. But I can say that for the first year after that. So pretty much all of 2015 and I think 2016 I made $3000. Wow for the year, which is that you are searching, maybe because I didn't know what I wanted to do. Did I want to raise company for startups and get paid on commission only? I wasn't. I had my licence. I hung it somewhere. Then I wanted to do consulting work, but I didn't really have a consulting background.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:25] So how did you find your way? What? Eventually, so I. It's tough because you have such an eclectic background you've done so many things is
Jeffrey: [00:45:34] You're probably asking
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:34] Yourself like, Well, what do I like best? What was most interesting? So, so first year it was super hard. First year was hard, I think only because I didn't know what my own value proposition was. When people would ask me what I did, I can. I can spend
Jeffrey: [00:45:50] 20 minutes telling them, but I couldn't really like, Look, here's what I do. This is what you need. Hire me. This is how much it's going to cost. Like, I didn't even have an understanding of putting that together, let alone what that was. So people who were calling me or who wanted to hire me, I would basically say yes and then ask them what the question was, right? And you know that slowly kind of developed into, OK, here are the two or three things I'm doing that are working here. The 17 things I'm doing that just aren't working and I'm not making any money on.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:46:23] What were those and how did you come across them? So when you say people would hire me, like at this point, are you working as a consultant like a part time? So, so a lot of times I'd be hired by very early stage startups to help them raise capital and put together some of their fundraising materials. Yeah. So about six, maybe six months into it, or more, probably nine months into it. And that's where I got my first client and kind of how I started building the business. I started breaking those two things to engagement, so to speak, into different deliverables where I would charge money as a consultant for putting together their fundraising materials. And then I would take a commission on any fundraise that that I would help them with great. And what I quickly learned is maybe because of my
Jeffrey: [00:47:10] I don't know, I'm not going to say my Rolodex, my limited contacts in the industry. I noticed that, not that I was burning bridges, but it didn't really make sense for me to continuously make these introductions to people that either weren't investing or had to or were turning these deals down. So purely from, I don't know, saving my own face perspective, I took that out of the business model entirely. And even more so, we
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:42] Raised the commission, meaning the commission you start up, stop doing the we don't raise capital. It was it was purely it was purely a just we're going to just do the actual prep materials for it. Yeah. So, so pretty much after the first year, you know, I changed the business model of the company. And again, the company has just me to. I do not raise capital. I won't solicit investors on your behalf. I'll do. I will help prepare, do your financial modeling your deck. All that good stuff. Exactly. Ok, so so second year, twenty sixteen. That's kind of what what started doing. And I also sync up with a company called Toptal. Toptal is kind of a marketing operations platform for consultants. So I slowly started to started.They actually started with developers, I believe. Yeah, so they started with developers. Yeah, in twenty, fifteen or sixteen, they bought a company called Skill Bridge. Yeah, I knew the founder of that company, and that was a financial consulting platform. His name was Raj, and he actually brought me in as one of the first financial consultants on Patel. Cool. That's kind of an aside. Yeah. So, so basically started the business that way of this consulting firm. I'll help you put together a presentation deck. I'll talk you through the narrative and kind of prepare you for the pitch. I'll ask you all the questions that I would have asked you as a VC to to give you better prep. I'll build you a financial model that will make sense for you. For the investors, you can adjust it. It's not going to be a 40 tab model, it's going to be a three tab model with one tab of assumptions. And one type of summary once had broken out month by month,
Jeffrey: [00:49:27] And I would do the valuation analysis. And slowly, slowly, the business started growing, and I noticed kind of this whole now looking back on everything I've said in in this recording frictional cost and efficiency of companies. So so I notice that a lot of frictional costs that was being offset to my clients early on in the business was around research and analysis and design work. So I was separately, I mean, for a market, for market research or valuation analysis, I was sitting behind a computer. I was spending hours upon hours, first gathering the data and compiling
the data, then reporting on that data on design. I wasn't a designer. I'm not a designer. So what I would do is complete all the content of a project of a piece of collateral. Then I would have to either find a designer or work with a design firm. Explain to them everything about the company. Send them the debt, get the price. Have them do it, have them redo it in ninety nine percent of the time because they didn't understand where it was, whatever. So I recognize this frictional costs kind of in the second to third year of the business. And those are the
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:40] Even though you're a consultant for Toptal, you're calling it the business because you're now building up clients on the side as well. Right. So I'm building up clients in my company. You had founded your company, which you called settlement in company. Right. So the company was originally called Capital Advisors. Okay. And I'll kind of get to that in just a moment.
Jeffrey: [00:50:59] So. Yes, consulting through total, they're introducing me to clients. I'm doing work for them, slowly building my own consulting firm, offering essentially the same services, both sides. You can happy to go through Toptal. Yeah. In fact, I often push people to go through Toptal even today on the smaller engagements because I very much believe, and you don't you don't bite the hand that feeds you. And I'm a big fan of their platform in general. Yeah. So slowly kind of building both sides of the business. The research and analysis piece, the design piece are actually the two functions that I hired for internally first full time and really just purely to support me in my engagements.Mm hmm. And slowly, over time, I started kind of building enough of of engagements where I was working or or not working, but let's say billing and working probably one hundred two hundred and twenty hours per week. Mm hmm.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:58] But doing it in your two teammates between the two, right? Well, between the two between Toptal and my own consulting work. Yeah. So I was sitting I was sitting with one of my best friends. He is manager or senior manager or something at Deloitte, and he said something to be really interesting, which was Jeff. You could either be a consultant or you can run a consulting business, but you can't do both, right? And this is years ago, he said it. I can remember it as clear as it was like ten minutes ago that he said that to me, and it really struck a chord where he was right. I mean, there's 24 hours in a day, so the maximum I could bill was twenty four hours per day. Just that is pure maximum. I can't build twenty five. Right? Yeah, sure. I can build 10, 10, 10 and 10 to different clients, but I'm not going to do that right? So, so in my mind, how do I grow this? How do I go beyond just myself? It's by bringing on other people that can essentially do the task that either help me with some of my tasks
Jeffrey: [00:52:54] That I'm doing, like modeling or presentation building or something else or purely bringing on other management consultants. Right? So, so about a year or probably two years ago now, so three years into the business started bringing on management consultants. All of our consultants are currently 10 nine. And again, we have a core team that now consists of a director of operations, analysts and designers and also content manager.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:53:19] So how big is the team now? It's 20 people. It's great.
Jeffrey: [00:53:24] So, so essentially the reason for that kind of going back to answer your question. The business started expanding from just presentation and fundraising collateral presentation as we worked closer and closer with companies as they became successful in raising their capital or negotiating their capital. Investors were giving these companies due diligence lists. Show us your operating manual, show us your policies and procedures. Show us your underwriting manual for specialty finance companies. And oftentimes these companies either didn't have them or didn't have them in a formal document to present to investors. Right. So as we were working with companies, we also, as a firm, began growing with companies in terms of what we're able to offer our clients. So, so whereas we first started with, you know, simple fundraised collateral preparation without actually raising capital. Today we continue to do all of that. We will help companies go through the diligence with investors. We will often act as interim CEO for the business, helping them formalize and. Document their operations, yep,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:54:32] And just went through this exact exercise with the Wall Street Oasis, it's very time. It's interesting. The whole master procedure document is a lifesaver. Yeah, and funny enough, so so we were doing that. I found myself as an interim CFO for four different companies at once. And that's why we started bringing on more management consultants, for sure. So it's really interesting to kind of. So that's about, like I said two years ago, three years into the business and finally, maybe six months ago, I, you know, I hit the pause button and I said, Guys, wait. We need to consult on ourselves. Let's literally take our playbook, let's take what we do for every other company, and let's just look internally and let's look at ourselves. I mean, it's it's grown great and we're at this stage of time sharing like the revenue or profit or any of that stuff. I mean, with 20 people, you can kind of get a sense, but it's probably for sure. So, so this year, we're on track to hit over a million dollars in revenue gross revenue. Great. That's actually that's a 300 percent increase from last year.
Jeffrey: [00:55:37] Not bad that
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:55:38] Bad growth, which is not bad. So and that's kind of the numbers that we've seen we've seen every year over year growth so far. So hopefully that'll keep going regardless of the million. Yeah. So, so so looked at us internally did our own kind of consulting on our own firm. And that was the reason for the rebrand. Also, the firm was called Capital Advisors. Initially, it stood for Alternative Investment Capital Advisors. We're getting calls every other day. Are you and I company with artificial intelligence? All your capital advisors. I have this great investment for you. Will you invest in our company? Will you show your, your clients or your wealth management clients or branding was a problem? Yeah, yeah. So so branding was a huge issue. You know, I did a bunch of research, both kind of from our own research analyst perspective, what are most management consulting company named? How are they named? I really actually. Founders? Yeah. The last name. You know what? Personally, I didn't want to name it after myself. I had all these different domains picked out and cool names that I wanted to use. And nine out of 10 both people I spoke to in reports I spoke to said that if you're building a management consulting company, you may as well use your name that way. When you communicate with clients,
Jeffrey: [00:57:00] It's not just a name on the door, it's your name on the door. Right? So, so again, I I took that to heart. I still do all the QA that comes out of our firm. I'm still closely in contact with every client that ever comes through our firm. It's never just sent to a management consultant and they don't hear from me. So I I very
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:57:19] Much eventually you may have to let go of that.
Jeffrey: [00:57:23] Yeah, well, look, here's and I know you have to go soon, but here's how I'll position us in the world of consulting 30 40 years ago, you had McKinsey Bain. Vcg Or rather, I guess Bain came out of BCG, but you had the big consulting firms in management style and they were consulting the usual characters Coca-Cola, Disney, IBM and so on. And those companies at the time maybe had $300 million market caps, and that was like, wow, $300 million market cap. Fast forward 30 years. These companies have market caps well over a billion dollars. In Amazon's case, it's well over a billion dollars, but they still retain and work with the same types of consulting firms. So what I've noticed is a huge gap in the kind of what I'll call late stage startup and lower middle market realm of not having a proper management consulting firm within that realm. Yeah, there's a lot of smaller ones. I personally never aim for Finland and company to be a 40000 person firm. Right? But by the same token, I absolutely do expect that within the next two to three years, having our name be in the same sentence as a McKinsey, as a Bain, as a BCG.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:58:46] Great. That's awesome. It's exciting. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about like looking back on your story now that you just kind of recap before we call the pod, is there anything,
Jeffrey: [00:58:56] Any takeaways,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:58:57] Any kind of words of wisdom you would have given your younger self kind of now that you've found yourself here? Oh, man. Look, grass is always greener on the other side. You know, I look at some of my friends who've worked in one job for the past 15 years have absolute job security getting paid really well, whether it's banking or otherwise. And you know, I can definitely
Jeffrey: [00:59:23] Say that like, It must be nice. You know, you, you got vacation days, you work nine to five, you don't iave to work on the weekend, you know? I'll say, If you work for somebody, you work for one person. If you work for yourself, every client is a different boss. Mm hmm. You know, I can say that I'm able to do today. I'm able to have the conversations that I do have with such a wide variety of companies because of my eclectic background so I can talk about CPG companies. I built an insurance company that ended up selling to a private equity firm. I worked in real estate. I worked in SAS and B to B, B to C direct to consumer marketplace, you name it. And I probably touch the business in one way, shape or form. So I'm extremely fortunate to have done that, and even more so having been able to do to build a business based on what I love and I love learning and I look at consulting as just that every client is kind of a new point of learning that I'm able to use all of my collective experience and knowledge to benefit that client. But I'm also learning something new and working on that client, you know, move fast, especially when you're young. When you are the older you get, the harder it is to move and to come up with a reason for a move. Mm hmm. I I did all of this or I most of it. Like I said, I made my first big leap right after getting married. We had some money saved away. We didn't have high living expenses. We were able to survive basically for that first year with no income. But then it got really hard until until I was able to do some hard work and not.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:01:06] Now you have a kid and now I have a kid and I'm still growing and building this business. But you know, if that happened today, I don't know if I'd be able to do that. Yeah. So move fast, move young. More and more companies are finding that acceptable. But at the same time, you know what, I what? I give recommendations to my younger
Jeffrey: [01:01:27] Sister to what I will say to my son when he's kind of going into the professional world is working as many different places as you can. It's easy to say I want to do so many different things. It's much easier to work in a place and say, I don't want to do that. So if you think you want to be in VC, go work in VC and figure out if you want to do it or if you don't. So the best thing that can happen is you learn something and you say, you know what? This is not for me. I don't want to do it, then go into banking, go into publishing, go into retail. I mean, go into whatever you want to go into as long as you can come out of it and saying either, Yes, I want to do this, or no, absolutely never again in my life do I want it fair.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:02:10] I love that. Some great wisdom. Jeffrey, thanks so much for taking the time to share your story. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me and looking forward to catching up again soon. And thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis. And till next time.
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