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Dean Zayed, Founder and CEO of Brookstone Capital Management, has focused on developing a one-stop financial services shop as a Turnkey Asset Management Program with a human touch, which he calls a TAMP-plus. In a conversation with host Alex Cavalieri, CAIS Head of Marketing, Dean speaks about how Brookstone combines technology with personalized advisor support, which, according to Dean, aligns with the broader industry shift from transactional to fiduciary-based, relationship-driven practices.
Chapters
(00:00 - 01:23) Welcome & Introduction
Chapters
(00:00 - 01:23) Welcome & Introduction
(17:01 - End) Personal Insights & Closing Thoughts
Creators and Guests
What is CAIS Live Conversations, Building With Alts ?
CAIS Live Conversations: Building With Alts, tackles the often untapped potential of alternative investments by sitting down with the various players in the alts ecosystem. Listen in as we dive into alternative investments from the perspective of industry experts, RIA executives, IBD executives, alts manager leaders, and alts experts. Hear what other advisors are doing, learn about new technology, and join us as we turn investment complexities into real-life concepts that could potentially help diversify and drive growth in the independent space.
Welcome to the CAIS Live Conversations podcast. I'm your host, Alex Cavalieri, Chief Marketing Officer here at CAIS. We are the leading alternative investment platform for the independent wealth community.
In these conversations, I'll sit down with industry participants from asset management executives to RIA and IBD leaders to uncover their insights and stories that may be driving the growth in the world of alts. Each episode, we take a deep dive into the views of those who are breaking down the barriers and making alternative investments accessible to financial advisors. Today, we're joined by Dean Zayed, founder and CEO of Brookstone Capital Management, a turnkey asset management platform or TAMP, with $10.5 billion in asset center management.
Dean takes us through his journey from practicing law to building Brookstone and shares Brookstone's approach to combining technology with their personalized advisor approach. Dean also shares Brookstone's latest innovation. Let's jump into the episode.
The views and opinions expressed by the speakers herein are as of the date recorded and solely reflect the views and opinions of the speaker and not necessarily the views of CAIS or the broader financial industry. This podcast does not constitute an offer or solicitation to buy, sell or hold any securities, financial products or services on behalf of CAIS, its affiliates or any third party investment managers, their affiliates or strategies. This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is intended for an audience of investment professionals.
Welcome back to another episode of CAIS Live Conversations podcast. My name is Alex Cavalieri. I'm your host.
I'm here with Dean Zayed, founder and CEO of Brookstone Capital Management, a TAMP that has been growing extensively over the past few years. Dean, thanks so much for joining us.
Alex, it's a pleasure to be here.
Psyched to have you join us. So we are recording live at the Summit, our third annual. Have you been to all three?
I have.
OK. What do you think?
Well, first of all, it's permanently locked on my calendar. Yeah. I know it's going to be probably the second or third week of October.
Correct.
Those are blocked out for the next 10 years.
There you go.
This is among the best conferences I've ever attended. It gets better every year. I certainly hope we do not outgrow these hotels because it's such a perfect set up here, really.
Yeah.
And one of the things we're debating is, like, basically, the size of the conference is the perfect size. And I think when we think about, do we move, do we not move in years ahead, I think we just got to keep changing it up and get more selective. And, you know, I think that's the key, just keep it the same size, because you don't want to get too big.
It makes sense, but what you've done with the speakers and content...
It's huge.
It's huge. You know, the main stage has got obviously a lot of the, you know, the rock star speakers starting with Matt Brown, but then you've got these breakouts and the CAIS Lives, and there's really a lot going on and something for everybody, really. You can choose and really customize a great agenda.
Yeah, and you've been an incredible partner of CAIS for a long time now, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about your story. You know, why did you get into this space? What drove you to found Brookstone?
And let's start from there.
If we can give you the 25 plus year journey, and I'll make it brief because it does relate to Brookstone. I promise you. Deal.
Give me the journey.
I'm a recovering attorney.
Okay.
It starts with that. I'm an estate planning and tax attorney who saw a vision early on in my first job out of law school, working for a law firm to incorporate financial services in what I called at the time, a multi-disciplinary practice, which is really code for a one-stop shop.
Yeah.
I was the young associate and I saw that the firm that I was working for was referring our legal clients out to a couple of outside advisors or brokers when they were looking for more retirement and investment and wealth advice. And so my idea, my wacky idea at the time was, why don't we just internalize that? And I asked the partners, hey, here's an idea for you.
They took this meeting. I was young. They thought I was absolutely out of my mind crazy.
And so eight months later, I left with the idea that I would form two firms. And I convinced the partner of the firm that had hired me to come with me.
Got it.
Those two firms still exist today. They are an estate planning boutique law firm, side by side with a private client wealth practice. I got licensed in about a three week period.
I became a CFP within a year. And I began wearing the financial advisory hats side by side with my partner, who is now still doing the legal work for the law firm. The vision of this one-stop shop, having more uniform advice across these disciplines that are very related to state planning and financial planning, very related, right?
So we transcended both disciplines to provide more consistent and uniform advice that would be more sophisticated for the clients. It worked, right? So I became an advisor, which is why I say I'm a recovering attorney.
I haven't practiced law meaningfully in 25 years, even though I maintain my license. And so I was off to the races in building my private wealth practice. About seven or eight years later, we had great success.
My vision of having this one-stop shop that would be a win-win for both us as professionals and the clients came to fruition. And about six or seven years later, I had this other idea. I call this other lightbulb wacky moment.
And there's a story around that. But that idea was to build from scratch a tamp that would be more of this B2B idea, where other like-minded advisors who were now seeing me build my practice could plug into this startup idea that would be this turnkey platform that they could now use to help build their own individual private client practices. That, my friend, is Brookstone Capital Management.
Got it. That's incredible. So, three businesses, two of which sounds like they started simultaneously, one that started a few years later.
How does one go about running three businesses?
You know, it's a great question. Of course, I burned the midnight oil and I certainly wore a lot of hats over the years. And I have a lot of energy and passion for what I do.
But I could not have done it without the right people around me. You know, you could make all the right decisions and really be the visionary and do all those things right. I give all of the credit to both the people that have worked for me, most of which have been with me for a very long time.
It's a family-oriented culture and structure. And, you know, we take care of them like they take care of us and the company. So it's the people around me and it's the strategic partners on the outside, right?
You just realize you can't do it all. And that's where CAIS can come in. CAIS has been a phenomenal strategic partner on the structured product, structured investment side that we just couldn't do without them.
You know, we could try to dabble on our own. And so it's a combination, internal, external partners, people that have helped me along with this. It's been a great journey.
But I really take a lot less credit because there's so many people and it's so gratifying to see how so many people have contributed to the growth of these firms.”
Is there something about the folks that have been staying with you for that long that you attribute to in terms of the relationship? Is it kind of the family orientation of the firm? Is it the philosophy?
What is it where? Because nowadays, people are jumping companies every three or four years.
Right. Leadership always starts at the top. When you're the founder, I mean, there's an old line, it's lonely at the top and sometimes it is.
But I always wanted the culture of the firm to reflect the personality and the values of Dean Zayed. Not because I'm anybody special, but because it's my company. So I get to have the right, at least, to dictate the culture and the values.
And it is very much because I am a family-oriented person. It's family first. And so that, I believe, is the difference.
I treat people like family. It is a work hard, play hard environment. It is a rewarding environment.
You have the opportunity to move up in the company in any number of directions. If you're unhappy, I'm unhappy. So, it really has been kind of my own personal Dean Zayed values directly reflected from the top all the way down.
And as large as we've grown and we've got a hundred plus employees now, that one cultural issue, I refuse to change. Of course, you've got to get more corporate and there's got to be more rules and, you know, enter HR and all that stuff. But with all the corporate stuff we've had to do, I absolutely insist that the culture will never change.
That's important to me.
Let's talk about the growth of the TAM specifically, and I think you're up to 10 billion now when asked to be our manager.
About 10 and a half billion.
10 and a half billion. Congratulations.
Thank you.
Incredible. What was that journey to that 10 billion spot? I think a lot of advisors in this podcast is for advisors.
Their vision is to build a big firm, and their vision is to expand, and their vision is to partner and grow. How has that trajectory happened, and what are some of the steps along the way?
We started meeting advisors when I started Brookstone, and the word recruit or sales is kind of a crude word. But as we onboarded advisors to the platform, I would say the difference with Brookstone was, unlike other temps, and they could be a lot bigger than us, that are really more of this sort of technology-based solution where you can get access to an open architecture menu of investment choices and managers, and it integrates with your custodian. But you're not really dealing with a person, right?
It's large platforms that have built it out that you can access to build out these very unique managed money solutions in the accounts, but without really a human element to it. The Brookstone approach, starting with this quote-unquote recruiting or sales process, was always a human element. I literally, personally brought on board the first 500 advisors.
Of course, now we've got a team around me in the first 10 years. It was me personally, not just talking to them about Brookstone and the opportunity and onboarding them, but then personally coaching and training and educating them about Brookstone, about managed money, fiduciary duty, and what I believed was the right way to build this practice of the 21st century. So that is something that I'm very proud of.
It's a very personal touch. So I've often used the acronym TAMP Plus because we're not just another TAMP. The plus is really that personal human element, and it's heavy, heavy, heavy on education and coaching, practice management and training.
And you mentioned building a practice for the 21st century. Well, break that down for me in terms of, you know, an advisor building a practice for the 21st century. What does that look like?
It absolutely is not a transactional-based practice. It is fiduciary-based, fee-based practice that is obviously going to provide holistic advice. You transform that 20th century brokers model into the 21st century holistic planning model.
It's built around planning, fee-based, fiduciary-based. You always sit on the same side of the table as the client, and you do what's right for them. Full disclosure on what you're doing.
And that really is the 21st century model. So the 20th century was really all about the transactional way to conduct business in our industry. And that's okay.
It's nobody's fault. But the evolution, we believe, that I saw this early on in my career, was to evolve away from transactional and more of this relational type structure. And that really obviously has come to fruition as well.
You've seen the industry. You've seen a tremendous growth in the RIA space and a tremendous number of sort of the recovering brokers leaving those channels and really kind of finally committing to being more on the fiduciary FIBAE side.
And when you think about the client experience, so we're very big here at CAIS, as you know, about technology, client service and relationship side, and they have to work together in order to create a successful client experience. How does Brookstone approach that? How do the advisors that are affiliated with Brookstone approach that with their clients?
Between leveraging technology to scale advice and scale the practice, but also making sure that that human touch doesn't go away.
Absolutely. So first of all, we're fully in the office every day, and we just believe in that. So we're accessible in the office as a team.
You're in Chicago, right?
We're in Chicago, yes.
Are you from Chicago?
I am from Chicago.
Okay, I'm from Michigan, so.
Oh, you are?
Midwestern.
Good Midwestern values. Yeah, there you go. The land where there's no hurricanes or earthquakes.
But maybe some tough winters ahead. Exactly. What I would say is this, if you think about the end client experience, and we always talk about technology, I mean, CAIS has built some of the best technology.
You guys have spent millions upon millions of dollars because you had to. We've done the same at a smaller scale. So we build technology, not to replace the human element, of course, but to complement what we do as advisors.
And so I'm always focused on the client experience. We have two clients at Brookstone, right? We have the advisor who plugs in the platform to use us, and he's our strategic partner.
And so he's really, he or she is really our client. And so their experience has to be a seamless interaction with the Brookstone platform, from the people to the technology. But then remember, that advisor brings us their clients that they're managing, and they're now going to onboard on to the Brookstone platform.
So we also have an experience where the clients have very little noise in their day-to-day, week-to-week interaction with their financial statements, the access on an app that we built to their statements, access online, of course, direct access to their advisors as a human element, not some hybrid thing, not necessarily a Zoom call, even though that works just fine as well. And so it really is this, it's a thoughtful blend or combination between technology that works, but that human element really drives the whole thing.
And when you think about the human element, and you think about some of the challenges that I think investors are facing today, just generally and broadly, you know, what are some of the ways that advisors, whether they're advisors with Brookstone or advisors somewhere else, can help address a lot of those things that are happening? We have, you know, market volatility. You know, what are some of the ways that your group of advisors address a lot of those concerns up front, whether it's with a new client or an existing client?
You know, one way that we help advisors is to provide them very sophisticated but easy to understand, consistent educational materials that they can then resource for their clients. And so coming from the Brookstone, you know, the platform level, we have a CIO, we have a very sophisticated investment set of portfolios.So think about that.
We can now create that conversation. We can talk about the market, talk about the model portfolios, and allow those advisors to essentially white label our intelligence, because they're part of the firm, and then resource that or reuse that for their clients here. So we do that on a consistent basis, both in PDF format, in letter format, email format, and even in videos that we create, again, that are Brookstone videos, but their clients know that they are now affiliated with their advisors through Brookstone.
So it really has eased the pressure of 800 Brookstone advisors trying to create their own content and their own dialogue or narrative of what's going on in the world today, or why did VIX spike so high, right? We are trying to control that for their benefit from the top of the platform down, and really have a consistent message across 800 advisors in 50 states. It's really helped them communicate more effectively with their clients on a consistent basis.
And I think there's the other benefit to that is they're able to focus on having the conversation. They're able to focus if the content is coming from the top, or if the content is being, you know, if the message and a lot of the consistency is coming from the top, then they're able to do other things within the context of their business.
That's exactly right. You know, the whole concept of a TAMP, frankly, is you can try to do it all internally in your own firm, and it's going to be either hiring more people or having other partners that are scattered, or just spending money to do what we do. The whole idea of why we exist is to make their lives so much easier, use our intelligence, use our collective intelligence, use our technology, use our portfolios, our back office, front office, trading, all those tools that generate portfolio reports.
Take all of the noise away from the advisor to allow them to free them up. They're the rainmaker of their firm. They're the unique personality to allow them to do what they're best at, that that is irreplaceable for them, which is them communicating to either perspective clients to grow their firm or existing clients.
That's why we exist. We take all of that off their plate to allow them, free them up to be the true, true face, rainmaker personality and that advisor that can dedicate all of their time to their clients. That's the way the business ought to be.
And you mentioned making it as easy as for them. You just came off a panel talking about Interval Funds here at the Summit, and you all have been thinking very innovatively about Interval Funds and Structured Notes and how those can come together. Let's talk about that and talk about what are some other ways that you felt that have been like pivotal moments of innovation that have really elevated Brookstone's trajectory.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of it does come down to technology. Pivotal moments for us was building out our own proprietary tech portal that drives all of the business and interactions between an advisor and our office there. So you can open up new accounts online digitally and seamlessly.
Clients can docu-sign, of course, trade and rebalance and getting money in and out and so on, re-allocating portfolios. So those are big moves for us when you go from a start-up and then you realize I've spent some millions of dollars here, but now I've got this tech that really has streamlined the experience and the business and really made it more efficient. And it eliminated 99% of any errors or NGOs out there.
It was incredible. So that's a big moment. Another big moment for us is this asset management arm to the business, where some TAMPs have their own asset management, some do not.
Because of our partnership with CAIS and the success in building a billion dollar plus structured notes business within Brookstone in partnership with CAIS, another big moment for us now is entering this asset management side by having our own interval fund, which we can talk about, we believe, is the right structure. That interval fund, we think, is really taking this incredible theme of structured products, structured notes, coupled with the theme of the growth of interval funds as a very unique wrapper.
And it's the first of its kind, isn't it, that exists?
It is the first of its kind. You know, I'm on record of saying it's a category creator.
Creator.
Category killer.
Yeah. When you think about category creator, is there, and obviously there's a specific to the interval fund that you're launching, but do you think philosophically about category creators? And how do you think about that when you think of a new idea like this, or you think of a new idea of building your own app from the ground up versus outsourcing it to some third party?
What's your framework for thinking about category creation?
Well, you know, I've always been attracted to disruptors. You know, again, you can throw out the usual names. I mean, historically…
Elon's and…
Absolutely, Elon's and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. I mean, true disruptors and, you know, not that I'm putting myself in their category. Trust me, I'm not.
But there is a sexiness and an appeal to me as an entrepreneur and as a creative thinker to try to disrupt the industry in my own way. Disrupting the legal business is what I did early on. I mean, again, I didn't revolutionize it, but every lawyer that I talked to 25 plus years ago thought I was absolutely insane to add financial services side by side with estate planning and law, right?
And turns out it was a great idea.
How did you not get deterred by that, by the way?
Oh, I was focused and determined and, you know, and I just, I really knew I had confidence in the model. And that's a big part of it is, you know, confidence. And it's got to be the right idea, of course, and passion.
And so when it comes to interval funds, I've had people ask me, well, how could you be the first one? How could nobody else have done it before? I said, you know, look, I mean, somebody's always got to be first, right?
Structured notes have been out there, but the idea of putting them into an interval fund has just not been done by anybody for all the right and wrong reasons. So somebody has to be first. And we think we will blaze the trail here, be that disruptor.
We may not be the last fund that does this, but by all means, we're proud of the fact that we do have this first mover status right now.
That's amazing. And it's amazing to see the concept come to life. I saw that you launched at your conference.
I saw the video of, in general, in terms of you launching that. I think what's the feedback been from the 800 advisors and the advisor community in terms of that getting up and running?
Well, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, which is great, but we knew it would be because I've had so many one-on-one conversations for years. So, I knew that the demand and the interest was there. And so, the experience has been there for the advisors.
And so, if they can take that experience and make it even that much more accessible and scalable and easy to access, that's where the demand is, for sure. So, it's taken years to educate our advisors. Remember, we started Structured Notes with zero.
Yeah. They didn't know what a Structured Note was. And that's where, you know, Mark Premselar and CAIS have come in to really help.
And the entire team, it's been a homegrown, organic story for us to get to a billion plus of notes. And no doubt about it, the Interval Fund is this disruptive next level. So, it's an industry-wide feature that we see out there.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, you look at the Interval Fund adoption over the course of the last seven years, I think now the industry is really starting to understand.
Well, for sure, Alex. I mean, Interval Funds came to being in 1993, by the way. It was a rule of the SEC approved to the Investment Company Act of 1940.
But it stayed really under the radar for a long time. 2017, you mentioned, it's funny, that's the first year we had over 10 new Interval Funds come to market. We've averaged 12 a year since then.
This year, there's over 50 new Interval Funds, and it's over 100 billion of assets, and they're just getting started. There's no doubt, thematically, Interval Funds are finally coming into their own.
So, we're coming up to time, have a little fun here at the end. So, if you had to recommend, like get recommendations on the pod, because we want to make sure people are taking something away from outside of the finance world. So, one thing you're reading, one thing you're watching, and one thing you're listening to that you would recommend.
Well, let's start with listening. I am a product of the 80s, proudly. Anything 80s, whether it's pop, top 40, hard rock, heavy metal, anything in between here.
But, I'm still young enough to have known some of the 70s music. So, I've really, really been focusing on 70s playlists lately. The 70s was a great decade.
I was born in the 70s, but again, I came to being as a young adult in the 80s. So, that's what I'm listening to. I love the 70s music, by the way.
Love it.
Love disco. Love it all. The hard rock, the classic rock.
Good stuff there. I'm going back to watching, you won't believe this, but it's been years, to Breaking Bad.
Okay. Did you start over from scratch?
I started over because it's my all-time favorite series, by the way.
It's the best. It's in my top three. It's not my all-time.
Exactly. You go back, and it's been so many years, but just to see things that you didn't see the first time, it's really a great, great way for me to decompress, because I just love that series.
It's so good. It's so good. My number one is Game of Thrones.
That's my number one. I rewatch that. The whole series seven times, or not seven times, twice.
The whole seven seasons twice. But Breaking Bad, that was so good.
I got to give you my number two. Mad Men was just so good. I love those two.
Yeah, so good.
You're getting a glimpse into my personality. I love it. If I could be the Mad Men guy, I forget, in the 60s with the advertising.
That was awesome. Madison Street.
Yeah. How about reading?
You know, I'm a history buff. I love, love history. I can get caught up literally.
It's this simple on my phone or my laptop. If I get into Wikipedia and I'm just curious about, I'm taking a trip to Portugal and I'll just get caught up with all the history of, whether it's places, countries, that's really simple for me. It really does relax me when I, in Wikipedia and other online sources, I'm not really into books lately, but anything history related and then it just connects to itself.
You're learning about the history of XYZ and before you know it, you're just on this trail that can just lead you to an endless stream of information, probably a lot of useless information, but I love it.
Yeah, and it's good to build the knowledge. Well, Dean, we appreciate you coming on. We appreciate your partnership and everything you've done with us, and we look forward to seeing you continue to innovate in the industry.
Thank you, Alex. It's been a great partnership. I appreciate it.
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