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NWA Founders is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
'NWA Founders' is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
To recommend a guest or ask questions, reach out at nwafounders@gmail.com and follow us on YouTube and LinkedIn for video content.
Cameron Clark: [00:00:00] Morning, Brock morning. How do you stand out in the financial advisory space? How do you differentiate yourself in a real, I don't know, real clouded industry almost? There's so many others out there, especially in northwest Arkansas where there's so much moving money moving in. Yeah. Right now. Yeah. I'm not
Brock Gearhart: sure how I stand out personally, but I think how our firm stands out is, um, you know, we often, when we're interviewing people, we all, that's why they want to get into this business.
And if they say, 'cause I wanna make a lot of money, we kind of like, yeah. Kind 'em out right there. Um, the first answer really needs to be, I want to help people.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: And if you do really good at that and, um, have good outcomes for clients, everything else comes, including, including money if you do it well.
Um, but that can't be the first reason. And so I think our industry. There are people that get into it for the wrong [00:01:00] reasons. Um, they're pretty quickly exposed. Um, sometimes they're never exposed and it ends up being really bad for their clients. Um, but I think we've, you know, surrounded ourselves here at our firm with people that really, truly have this desire to want to help people.
And they, if they weren't in finance, they could be in other industries.
Sure. You
Brock Gearhart: know, where they would be helping people and do really well.
Mm.
Cameron Clark: Well talk about Greenwood Gerhardt. What do you, what do you do here? Give a 32nd overview of the business. Yeah.
Brock Gearhart: Our purpose is to cultivate trust and peace of mind that enriches lives.
So at the end of the day, that's what clients are buying from us is peace of mind. Um. They want to know that if they follow these steps, they're gonna be able to live a comfortable life in retirement. Whatever that life looks like, defined for them. Um, there's a variety of ways we deliver that, you know, through investment plans, financial plans, you know, we'll help [00:02:00] certain clients with really every aspect of their financial life.
Uh, but at the end of the day, you know, they, they want to click the easy button. Yeah. They want it to be easy to do business with our firm. Um, and they, they're buying peace of mind.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Brock Gearhart: Trust. That's what everybody, everybody wants, I
Cameron Clark: guess. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Brock Gearhart: Um, and where'd you grow up? So I grew up in, in State College, Pennsylvania.
Okay. Uh, which is where Penn State is. My dad was in higher education. Mm-hmm. I was born in Little Rock. My family's been in the, uh, northwest Arkansas since the forties.
Mm-hmm. Wow.
Brock Gearhart: Um, my grandfather and great-grandfather ran the newspaper here, the Northwest Arkansas Times. Um, and my dad was in higher education, uh, in his early thirties.
Got a, a big job at Penn State.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: Uh, being kind of the head development person and had some success there. Stayed there about, uh, 10 years and then, uh, worked for a global consulting firm outta Chicago, but we stayed in Pennsylvania.
Mm.
Brock Gearhart: I had a great [00:03:00] upbringing. Um. At, at 17, my parents picked me up and moved me to northwest Arkansas.
Wow. Which is kind of tough, but it formed a lot of who I am. I graduated from Fayetteville High, um, and, uh, went to the U of A and then, you know, kind of on from there. But Fayetteville's home, I mean, it's, this is where we'd come in the summer. Yeah. You know, to see grandparents, uh, or we go to Little Rock to see other set of grandparents have been coming here my whole life.
I mean, this is our family home. Mm-hmm. But I'm a little unique in that I grew up in Pennsylvania.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Es especially for how long, uh, your roots are here. Yeah. Well talk about finance. Is that always part of. Your life in some degree. Where did that really
Brock Gearhart: come in? Yeah, you know, I got, I got bit by the New York bug at a really early age.
New York was about four hours from State College Uhhuh. Um, my dad would have business there, there was reasons we would go as a family. And I just, you know, I knew pretty early on that I wanted to have some career that would [00:04:00] take me there. And the most obvious one was working in finance. Um, in college I started to understand a little bit about how, how it worked.
I, I did have that desire to help people. I thought I could sit across the table from someone and enjoy that process.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: And, uh, and then, you know, the economics of how it worked, it made sense to me, you know, that you, you can, you can grow a business, uh, that is gonna move kind of at the pace of the economy.
Mm-hmm. Um, and that seemed to really resonate with me and, you know, at that, at that age. And I thought if I could, you know, navigate. Towards that type of career. Um, that's what I would want to do. And, um, so I, I was unique in that way. I mean, I, I feel very fortunate that maybe a light bulb went off of what I wanted to do at a fairly young age.
And yeah. Um, I had to, you know, I, I had to navigate to that. I didn't, my first job wasn't doing that. Um, I had to take some career risk to, to do it, but, [00:05:00] um, but I had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted to ultimately do.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Talk about that journey, how you got there. Say career risk. What was the or the steps?
Brock Gearhart: Yeah. So I started my career, I, I, I went to U of a I, I graduated. I was fortunate to have a connection to Merrill Lynch, um, in New York. And I did a summer internship, kind of got my foot in the door. I was born on third base for sure. And I, my, my family had some great connections that helped me get my foot in the door.
But it was really just that at that point you then had to kind of keep yourself there, sink or swim. Yeah. Um, so I did a, I did a 10 week summer internship between my junior and senior year. I went into their two year program, you know, the proverbial two year program. I started in the marketing department, which is not, you know, helping people with their, uh, finances.
But it was a job like I was given. I think they were like, didn't know where to stick me, you know? Yeah. And, uh, it was great though. I learned a ton, actually learned about how to teach advisors on how to [00:06:00] market themselves and how to grow practices, which ultimately helped me in this job. Did that for two years and then went on and worked in a group, um, called the Private Banking and Investment Group at Merrill Lynch, which is their area that focuses on their largest relationships.
And I really worked for the leadership team there. And that was full-time after college? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Both the marketing gig and, uh, marketing department and that were, were about a four and a half, five year stint to start my career. Got ultimately in New York City. My wife and I got married, moved there.
Really fun time in our lives. Uh, you know, we, we go back quite a bit and, um, uh, you know, I just, I, it, that was, uh, that was 2008. Wow. It was September of oh eight. My last day at Merrill was September 1st. And if you're a student of history on the 12th, Merrill was sold to Bank of America. Lehman Brothers fell on the 15th.
Um, March 9th of oh nine, the Dow hit 6,400. Mm-hmm. Um, [00:07:00] our assets when I came, were at about 150 million. They got down to below a hundred. Wow. Um, I was freaking out calling all my friends in New York saying, Hey, you know, can I come back? And they're like, there's no jobs here, man. Have fun in Arkansas. Good luck.
Um, so just had to grind. And that's, that's really kind of where this started. I, I was a transition plan for the owner of our firm who's now deceased, but someone that was way ahead of her time in our industry. Wow.
Cameron Clark: And so you'd already planned on coming back to Fayetteville at that point before the GFC?
Yeah. I, yes, I did.
Brock Gearhart: Yeah. I mean, I kind of jetpack out of there. I, who knows if I would've had a job, I mean, I would assume my job would've been at risk, but I, you could see right on the wall, Merrill was writing down a lot of assets. We had gotten way too far into mortgage backed securities. Mm-hmm. Um.
Several write downs. And, um, but I had, I had decided, I'd reached a point in my career where either I was going to raise my kids, you know, in New Jersey, [00:08:00] Connecticut, um, somewhere in New York, commute in an hour and a half every day, um, leave before they left for school, come back at 7 30, 8 at night right before they go to bed and not see 'em, um, or, uh, you know, have a little bit more balance.
And, um, it just became clear to me that's not what I wanted to do. And, you know, my parents thought I was crazy, um, picking up and trading a job on Wall Street to come back here. But I, I could, I could see around the corners a little bit that maybe this was gonna be a great place to live, raise a family, all this growth, you know, happening.
Um, I. And, and maybe we could take an already established business that was a great company and, and take it even further down the road.
Cameron Clark: What'd
Brock Gearhart: your wife
Cameron Clark: think?
Brock Gearhart: She was a little, I mean, she, she, she's a, her family's very important to her, like mine is, and she loved the prospect of being back home, but at the same time she [00:09:00] loved New York City.
Yeah.
Brock Gearhart: Um, you know, and still does. I mean, we both just, you know, had a great experience there. And so she was a little disappointed in that. She worked, uh, she worked for a really cool Montessori school there and taught a bunch of celebrities kids. Yeah. You know, Debra Messing's kids and Kelly Rippers kids.
And she had just had a really cool job and I don't think she really wanted to trade that. But, um. At the same time, she understood that, that this was a real opportunity and that we should really think about it and do it. And she's always been extremely supportive, you know, of, of that. And, uh, you know, was, was, uh, totally supportive when we made that decision.
Hmm.
Cameron Clark: And so as you look back on that season, were, were there one or two things that you really think, oh, I'm so glad this prepared me to build the business?
Brock Gearhart: Yeah. Uh, you know, I mean, taking clients through a market where your portfolio drops by [00:10:00] 50% on, on your equity portfolio, on our portfolios didn't fall that much.
But from peak to trough, the markets were down 50% doing that at 27 years old. And, you know, having to talk with clients pretty immediately, um, and completely thrown to the fire. Um. I mean, it was hard, but I, but I definitely learned a lot and had to like, you know, grow up pretty quickly. Um, and, uh, and so I, yeah, I mean, I think that that was, looking back, um, I learned a lot about risk.
Um. Learned a lot about how to navigate through challenging times. Not to panic. We, we said a lot during that period, panic is not an investment strategy. You know, the whole world was kind of coming to an end. Wow. And I remember we were sitting here in one of our offices over here with Marion Greenwood, our founder, and it was in April of oh nine.
The markets had just started to come off the lows and [00:11:00] we looked at each other like, either this is the end of the world or this is maybe the best buying opportunity of our careers. And we started putting money to work. And those trades, you know, looking back now, were, um, really good investment decisions and our clients benefited.
And so learning how to do that and, and be rational. Keep your head when the rest of the world is losing theirs. Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. To quote Warren Buffett, um, I learned all that, you know, being just dropped into the fire. So, yeah.
Nick Beyer: How hard is that now?
Training that into people, right, because. There's only so much you can tell someone that until you've experienced it and you know, the last 10 years in our market have been unbelievable. Yeah. You have, and we've had, you had the Covid drop mm-hmm. You April the last month. Yep. Down 10%. Yep. You know, small caps down 20%, but that's a lot different than 50%.
No. How, how do you train that into people?
Brock Gearhart: That's a great question. I mean, I think, um, one is by example. You know, [00:12:00] if you walk in here on the day when the market's down 10%, it looks exactly the same as it does today. Um, you know, we're not running around. Crazed and, and I think, you know, I try to keep an even disposition during those periods.
I mean, that's challenging, especially with clients keeping an even disposition and, and you know, you've been through several of these before and, um, so, so one is by example. I think two is by numbers and, you know, this is irrational industry and numbers speak for themselves. One of the things I love about it, we keep score every day.
Like it's out there, uh, for, for client results first and foremost, but also for our firm results. And, uh, you know, we, um, I. You can look back at history and say, look, these were the best buying opportunities. Mm-hmm. And so, um, we, we've gotta practice, you know, that style of investment management. If we're gonna deliver good results over time, if we wanna deliver poor results, we do the opposite.
We panic and, [00:13:00] and, um, you know, fortunately, I think going through that early in, in my career, uh, I was like, it was ingrained so much that it's really kind of part of the DNA of our firm now. That's awesome.
Cameron Clark: So, and talk about, so Maryanne Greenwood, kind of the beginning of the firm, and, and then, so let's circle back to whenever you stepped in and the, and the, the plan, the succession plan there.
Brock Gearhart: Yeah. Miriam was a neat person. She was, she was a pioneer in our industry, um, we are a fully fiduciary investment shop That's rare, uh, or was rare at the time, mean what that mean. So what that means is, you know, legally we have to act in our client's best interest before our own. The industry has two standards of care.
Fiduciary duty suitability standard. Most people don't know this. Suitability standard says I can have two investments, similar results expected one pays me a 1% fee, the other pays me a 2% fee. I can sell you the more expensive 2% investment. Never disclose the existence of the cheaper 1% investment and is perfectly legal.
As long as both [00:14:00] investments are quote suitable for you. That's the hurdle that's not in the client's best interest first. That's in the advisor's best interest first. So that would be a violation of fiduciary duty. And those are advisors that are selling products. Mm-hmm. To their clients. That's right.
Yep. It doesn't have sell product.
Nick Beyer: It doesn't just have to be products. It could also be funds. Put them in a higher fee fund. That's exactly
Brock Gearhart: right. And so your fiduciary duty says you can't do that. And, and you're, we are a fee only shop. So, you know, we charge a, a, a asset based fee on an annual basis. We make more money when our client's assets go up and we make less when they go down.
And we can never call you when the markets are down and say, Hey, what do you think about this 5% upfront mutual fund, you know, to get our comp back up in value. So Maryanne was, was way ahead of her time on that. 1982 would be one of the first fi fully fiduciary advisors in Arkansas.
Cameron Clark: I'm sure one, uh, a woman founded firm at that time.
Was that, that extremely hard, you know, so,
Brock Gearhart: so she was a, she was a pioneer in that way. She's a pioneer. Uh, you know, in terms of what you just [00:15:00] described, a woman in the south, in a male dominated industry in 1982, and she started the business out of, I. Uh, our was now our waiting room in the same building. Um, she rented an office and the rest of the office were attorneys.
Um, pretty much all male attorneys and, uh, every time one of those attorneys would say, oh, I'm moving or I'm joining another firm, she'd say, I want the off that office. 'cause she knew she was gonna expand the company. Um, and over time she had the, the whole bottom floor. And then in the year 2000 or so, we, we took over upstairs as well.
And just, she just steadily grew the firm, you know, um, she was well thought of as a leader in the community. She was tough but fair, you know, and, um, demanded a lot. But, um, she had to be that way to, to grow, you know, an investment advisory business at that [00:16:00] time. So, um, you know, there's a lot of things that still endure.
Uh, uh, Marian's fingerprints are still on the organization, fanatical attention to detail. We talk about a lot, you know, how a room is set up when you walk in, how a report is printed, how the spacing looks, you know, how the formatting looks. Uh, that stuff is, is super important to us. And those are, those are things among many things that Marianne has continued to, you know, leave a legacy on.
So. Wow.
Nick Beyer: So do you know, can you give us a little bit of history about like, as she started to grow, why she was growing? Was she, was she teaching at the U of A at that point? She had taught
Brock Gearhart: some stuff, uh, before that, um, you know, she was very involved in the U of a, that's how I got to know her. Okay. Um, she, she had an intern program.
I mean, there are, there are. 60-year-old former interns around northwest Arkansas. There are many people that went on to really, um, impressive [00:17:00] financial careers. Some of them have firms here in northwest Arkansas that we're very friendly with. Yeah. Um, she, uh, so she wasn't, you know, she, she was a big, uh, and one of the first participants in the portfolio management class mm-hmm.
Which was, you know, a class student led investment portfolio class. Um, and she just hung around the university a lot. Wanted to mentor kids. I was one of those kids, you know, and she knew my parents certainly, um, to probably took me under her wing a little bit more. Um, when she would, she would come to New York a lot.
Her and her husband, Reid is a wonderful man. Uh, and they'd take my wife, Lindsay and I to restaurants we couldn't afford. And uh, you know, I think she was kind of, I. Developing a relationship to come back. But, you know, rewinding back to the eighties, yeah, it was slow and steady. I mean, it wasn't one client.
We have a very diversified client base. Um, it was, you know, being involved in the community, [00:18:00] really, truly caring about the community and seeing it grow that coming across as genuine, uh, and building a trustworthy. You know, persona, but also organization, I think is what drew a lot of people to her. And, um, it was just steady growth.
And this was really before northwest Arkansas was northwest Arkansas, you know, but there wasn't a lot of competitors doing what she was doing and, um, that really
Nick Beyer: gave, you know, a lot of wind to her sails. So at that time, were people just using big firms, kind of national firms or
Brock Gearhart: Yeah. You
Nick Beyer: know,
Brock Gearhart: there was, ag Edwards here had a big presence.
Uh, you know, Merrill had a presence. Mm-hmm. Uh, a lot of res really respectable people. Um, you know, that, that I would say are also pillars of the Northwest Arkansas financial services industry. Um. But there weren't, there weren't a lot of fiduciary advisors, and so she had something a little bit different to, to bring to the table.
The other thing is there wasn't just a tremendous amount [00:19:00] of money here.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: You know, I mean, what's unique about Arkansas or especially northwest Arkansas is a lot of this is first or second generation wealth. Um, you know, even the Walton family is just in the second generation still. Um, and so her, her client base was probably more like, she could have built it in any community.
A lot of doctors, professors at the U of A. Now what we're seeing is you're finding, you know, executives that have made a lot of money through the three major companies, Walmart, Tyson, and JB Hunt. And, uh, just by their stock prices and how well those companies have been led. And, uh, and, and that's different.
That's been a shift and a change, uh, from where Marianne started the company. And talk about
Nick Beyer: maybe her investment philosophy then, and, and maybe what Yeah. What your investment philosophy now is as a firm, how much that's changed.
Brock Gearhart: Sure, sure. Great. Great question. So, um, most people in the, the professional money [00:20:00] manage management industry at some point were bit by the Warren Buffett value investing bug.
Mm-hmm. Uh, and I was certainly one of those people that, that school of thought. Came outta Columbia University, a professor named Ben Graham. Graham wrote two seminal books, um, security Analysis and the Intelligent Investor. And those books really formed the foundation for value investing, which basically says, appraise the value of something and buy a discount just like you would do in real estate.
Yep. Right? And if you can buy something at a discount and hold it long enough for the market to understand what it's really worth, you're gonna make money in doing that. Maryanne, um, was mentored by a gentleman named Harold Dolan. Harold Dolan also mentored several of the other investment advisors in Arkansas, some in Little Rock.
Um, Lee Bodenham who just passed away, and some of his disciples, uh, all came from the Harold Dolan School of Thought, which subscribed to that, that approach. [00:21:00] I'd say Maryanne took that. What may be referred to as more deep value and became a little bit more Warren Buffet, great companies, uh, at a fair price.
And, and that was really the philosophy when I came and, uh, that resonated with me. I had read all those books. I was kind of a value investing nerd. Um, and it made a lot of sense. And that process really worked well for a long period of time. You could do really well in the markets. I think, you know, about 10 years ago the world shifted pretty dramatically.
Obviously, uh, we firmly believe we're in the next industrial revolution in the form of a digital revolution. I'm not sure that AI is the steam engine, but it's certainly a, um. Transformational technology. And so what's happened is a lot of the benefits of the digital revolution has accrued to the top companies.
And now you have trillion dollar, 2 trillion, $3 trillion [00:22:00] companies that didn't exist before. Part of that is antitrust doesn't apply in the same way those laws were written, you know, decades ago before we really had companies that, um, you know, had exponential technology. But those companies all sit in the Silicon Valley area, they can acquire the next technology and they get really, really, really big.
If you only buy cheap, you're never gonna own some of those really great companies. You may have never owned Apple if you only buy cheap. Apple's Buffet's largest holding.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: He's made a similar shift. Uh, and, and we have, you know, in some ways followed suit around a similar time as we did that. Um, you know, we, we also made a shift to owning more in ETFs as well.
So we, we, we were all individual securities, you know, pre 2012 or so and, uh, have, have shifted to a balanced ETF and individual [00:23:00] security model. And the reason there is that sometimes it's more efficient to own an ETF, you know, and talk about ETFs for people who don't know. Yeah. Exchange traded funds, exchange trade funds are like mutual funds, which are a basket of securities.
Um, with the difference being exchange traded funds are traded throughout the day. Mutual funds are traded at a net asset value. Um, and ETFs tend to be very low cost or no cost. Mm-hmm. Um, now, you know, uh, you know, there's many funds that are zero cost in the ETF space, um, that fits us. 'cause we want to keep fees low, we wanna keep taxes low and they can be very tax efficient.
Mm-hmm. Um, and then also sometimes it's just more efficient. Like if we wanna own solar, um. Going and finding the needle in the haystack solar company that's gonna benefit is, is a challenge. Yeah. You just wanna own the haystack.
Yeah.
Brock Gearhart: You know, um, or semiconductor space, you know, finding the company that's gonna get the next big, you know, apple [00:24:00] iPhone contract or whatever it is, is, is really challenging to do, but if semiconductors are going to be in everything, you, you want to own that.
And so that shifted, you know, around the same time. And today, um, you know, we, we probably inequities are. 60% ETFs, 40% individual securities and bonds were a hundred percent ETFs. All, you know, save some historical bonds that we own, and there's reasons for doing that as well. And so low cost, you know, understanding where we think we can add value and um, you know, uh, uh, being smart about the areas we wanna have exposure to as opposed to buy cheap and hold a long time.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: We just think that that cha, that that has had some challenges over the last decade and, um, you know, the results have proven to be really good for our clients. Hmm.
Cameron Clark: Talk about structuring the deal with Maryanne and like kind of how that, I mean, for someone who's. Maybe going in through, just in a [00:25:00] similar situation right now, like, how'd you, how'd you know this was the right fit?
How'd you know you wanted to really grow this business? Yeah. Was it her, was it the clients combination?
Brock Gearhart: Yeah. I, I, you know, back to the principle, if I wanted to help people, I wanted to sit across the table. Like I knew I could. I thought I would be okay at doing that. Um, and I knew this was the right market to do it in, where I had some inroads.
I mean, I'd only been here six years, but I knew some people my, mm-hmm. You know, my family knew people. Although, you know, I, I thought I'd go around and I'd be like, oh, that's the Gerhardt kid. Let's give him our life savings. And it turned out, you know, it's harder than that. That did not happen at all. Um, but, you know, the, the deal, I didn't have a lot of bargaining power.
You know, I was 27 years old. Um, Maryanne, uh, I was 26 years old. Miriam, uh, she also though, needed a transition plan, you know, and, um, she said, look, I don't wanna [00:26:00] get on the opposite side of the table where we each have lawyers and, you know, let's do this the country doctor way and let's make it. Where, uh, I receive value for what I've built.
That's important. 'cause I could go sell this to, you know, a competitive firm tomorrow and get value. And so I need, I need to see something for what I've built. But let's do it in a way that doesn't put such risk on you, that you have to take undue risks for our clients that we don't want to do, you know, that we don't, that aren't appropriate, uh, or that you're tempted to do that.
Hmm. Um. So we structured it as a long-term buyout. Um, that prevented me from having to go to a bank, which is tremendous. Um, but, you know, it was, it was real capital and I had to grow, you know, we had to grow the business mm-hmm. If we didn't grow.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: Mm-hmm. I was gonna be in a pickle. Um, but she, she gave me, you know, every advantage to, to be able to do that.
She was patient. [00:27:00] Um, she didn't prioritize herself all of the time. She prioritized really our clients first and what was best for them. And, um, so it worked well. I, I think, I know looking back, um, if I were to give advice to people, it would be focus on the long game. You know, don't try to get anywhere too fast.
Don't be overly ambitious. Um, know your role, you know, know the opportunity you're given and then make the most of the opportunity. Mm-hmm. And, uh. You know, it can be a wonderful thing to buy a business and be an entrepreneur and build upon it. Uh, but it doesn't come overnight. It's a, you know, 16 years into it now and, you know, we're still working
Nick Beyer: on it.
So, so the timeline, 2008, you moved back from New York, roughly? Yeah. Started here and from 2008 to 2013, I don't know, was that part of the buyout period? Yeah, so
Brock Gearhart: really I think you could think about our firm, and this is timely 'cause [00:28:00] we, we literally on Monday, um, three days, three days ago, or I'm sorry, Tuesday, we did a, uh, strategic planning session with our team.
And I think you can think about our timelines in, in three chunks. Uh, what I would call kind of 1.0, which is 82 to, to maybe oh 8, 0 9, that's Maryanne, um, building a great business. Mm-hmm. Kinda oh 8 0 9 to today, which is really taking it from around 150 million to somewhere around 1.7 billion in assets.
Building a team, uh, really that I would put up against anyone in the industry, hiring some really great people. Um, our president, Lisa Brown, joined us in 2016, so kind of midway through that period and really institutionalized us in lots of ways. Built lots of processes and systems and built, helped build our team to take us on that [00:29:00] next.
To that next place. We hired a really great investment guy from Goldman Sachs, uh, Johan Commander, who holds the title of the best name in our industry. Uh, and we, and we hired lots of other people. I mean, younger folks that have been, uh, tremendous. You know, we have people that have been with us 11, 12 years that are in their early thirties and started with us in college.
So that period, I would call kind of 2.0, you know, um, almost like a, it's almost like a startup period though, because we were totally changing the company and the culture and the way we did things while maintaining some of the foundation that Marianna built. What was hard in that? Um, you know, I, I think the analogy of, uh, working on an airplane while you're flying it, you know, uh, moving very fast, lots of change.
We're a big and innovative culture, you know, uh, we're big on innovation, I should say. We encourage our people to say. We're [00:30:00] gonna do it this way, as opposed to, we've always done it that way. We have to keep doing it that way. And, um, when you, when you promote innovation, that can lead to a lot of change that can feel like whiplash to people.
And so, I mean, that's, any startup feels that we, we were not really a startup. I shouldn't probably use that exact term, but we were in this next phase. It was a new phase of the business. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, um, that, that was a challenge. And then now I think we're in, we, we, we dubbed our, uh, strategic plan.
We made t-shirts, GG 3.0, which you might see 'em around town. Um, GG 3.0. Is where we go from here. And it's a classic case of what got us here won't get us there. And a, and a lot of new way of thinking. And so we introduced that concept on Tuesday. We've brought in some really impressive people to help us think about this next phase of the company as a company.
And, um, are, are excited to be kind of embarking on that next journey.
Cameron Clark: And it was that instilled kind of from, [00:31:00] I mean from whenever you came onto the business, acquired the business and started building the team, was that we're not gonna do this like it's been done before. Was that the beginning? I, we had a great, I mean,
Brock Gearhart: you know, again, it's like born on third base.
My, my career here was born on third base. I mean, Maryanne had set a really great foundation. Um, you can't buy these businesses and just keep and stay static. You, you have to grow. Mm-hmm. Yeah. 'cause people age.
Yeah.
Brock Gearhart: Um. You have to shift with the markets. And Miriam, you know, although she had exited the business, was super supportive of how we changed the philosophy.
She said, you know, you're doing the right things, which is really great. Um, but so it wasn't really, we gotta do things different. It was, we have to adapt and innovate to, to continue to, to do well. I think our industry has shifted to more services too. So during that, during that period, we added financial planning as a big [00:32:00] component of what we do to where we start every relationship.
Lisa Brown deserves a lot of credit in how we built that. Corbin Foster, Jetmore, Madison, Blaylock, others on our team that really have helped build that part of our business. Um. We added estate planning capabilities, we added accounting services capabilities. Mm-hmm. We added alternative investments, um, to, to the mix.
And all of that was an attempt to stay ahead of where the industry was going. Mm-hmm. And, um, I, I think we've done that well because of the team we have around us and promoting innovation, people raising their hand and saying, Hey, let's do this a little bit differently. Um, and we say, run with it. Great.
Yeah.
Nick Beyer: So, so kind of in all of that, it sounds like 2013 ish you became president and CEO 2015 is kind of when you took over. Mm-hmm. Maybe full ownership. That's right. And you kind of rolled all this out. Mm-hmm. As you started to build on those ancillary services, was it, was it out of need? Was it out [00:33:00] of a vision for like, Hey, this is what we need to do?
Were you just having clients say, Hey, you know, who should I use for our account? Like, how, how did, how did those services get? Yeah, a couple things. Um.
Brock Gearhart: I think we saw that the industry was demanding more, uh, in terms of clients were demanding more for, for, uh, you know, to, to be your client. They wanted you to be able to manage everything.
It's actually kind of was born out of my family a little bit. Um, my, my dad and mom had just been good savers, you know, and, um, my, uh, I have an uncle who was a senior executive at Walmart, was their general counsel, and they, they both had generated some wealth and, and over time had said, you know, Hey, can you help us with our tax return?
Who should we use for tax planning? And that became, can I drop the tax stuff off at your office? And that became, will you just like, facilitate my tax return or, Hey, we need a more comprehensive estate plan to [00:34:00] deal with this. Mm-hmm. Will you go with us to the estate planning mm-hmm. Discussion and just like play fly on the wall.
And that became, will you review it? You know, will you keep it on file at the office? Mm-hmm. We be the power of attorney, uh, we be the trustee, those sorts of things. And as that started happening, we, we had a, some other clients approach us and, you know, very senior people at Walmart say, I need, you know, a somebody that does it all.
Because if I'm not in the picture, I want my wife or husband to know where to call. And that all of this, you know, has continuity. Mm-hmm. Again, peace of mind, trust.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: We're selling. And was anybody doing that at the time? You know, there, so there's a, there's a buzzword in our industry called family Office.
Yeah. Right. We, we, you know, you, you can see that on everybody's website. Um, they're not, I don't think that a lot of firms are doing what they say they're doing. And we tried to really build a [00:35:00] credible. Family office. And so we, we have built it in a way where we actually do tax, we do estate plans. Um, a lot of times we're bringing in partners to help in that.
But, um, we are involved every step of the way. We have an alternative investments platform, which is a big part of family office. We have really good reporting, uh, and can report across somebody's balance sheet and maintain that. It's another family office thing. We can do bill pay if a client wants us to do bill pay.
We've done that in the past for clients. Um, we, that's not been a big, you know, thing that people have sought for us. So I, I, you know, as far as I know, um, there are not many firms doing that in our community or in Arkansas. There are firms that do that nationally. You know, that's a model for sure. And we've emulated some of that.
Mm-hmm. So we're, we're not pioneers by any means, but I think, uh, we've, through our team, has developed a very crisp offering. That, you know, [00:36:00] started outta my family, extended to a couple of very large clients and people that were friends too, you know, that I wanted to help and weren't getting that somewhere else.
And at the end of the day, you know, they say, look, we just trust the, the firm and, um, we wanna make this easy on us. So,
Cameron Clark: well, my dad's told me multiple times, Hey, if I get hit by a bus, if anything happens, get mom in the room with Brock and sit it down. Like, I appreciate that. Well, I mean, it's, that's just before you said this, he's told me that multiple, this is just make sure you do that.
I
Brock Gearhart: mean, at the end of the day, that's what we sell. Yeah. You know, is, uh, they, they can be in destined enjoying their life and not thinking about this other stuff.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. When, so building a team, I mean, you're talking about the team I've experienced. I mean, you, it's an amazing team. Um, I know a few of the, uh, individuals real well.
How did you do that as far as like recruiting, hiring, what were you looking for when you were building the team? The
Brock Gearhart: [00:37:00] person first and, and then we can teach everything else. Um, you know, you, we, we are unique in that we have a lot of young people. Um, I was given a lot of responsibility when I was in New York at a young age, like way more than I should have had.
Mm-hmm. It's very much, that's a culture of Wall Street, like, you know, give you enough rope to hang yourself, they say, um, and, and that happened to me and I appreciated that. And so, to me, age was just a number. Now there's, there's just certain maturity that comes with age and having reps that you have to be careful about not putting someone in a position to fail.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: But what we found was if, if we had identified a certain type of person, again, starting with do they want to help people? Do they have that DNA in them? Um, we could. We could teach the rest and, and, and then give them, you know, more responsibility than maybe they deserve at a young age and, and let them thrive.
And so, you know, a couple of hires we made, I [00:38:00] mean, Damon Aiken is fantastic guy on our team. I'm, I'm not gonna be able to mention everybody and I'm, and I'm apologize for that if any, if any of them actually listen to this or some of them will. But, uh, but you know, da Damon was, our photo was a photographer for our website.
And the way that he interacted with us during that period. He's a Parks and Rec major. Uh, we were like, this guy's really great. And he could come in and do our marketing, but actually he could do so much more. And he's been tremendous. Madison Blaylock I mentioned earlier, was a teacher and babysit, babysat for Lisa's kids, and Lisa would come home, you know, uh, and she would be there babysitting.
And like her Tupperware cabinet was rearranged, like that's what she was hired to do. She's hired to watch the kids. Mm-hmm. Um, and she's, you know, gone on to be, to have a really great career here. And, uh, we'll have lots of opportunities in the future. Corbin Foster has been with us 11 years. She was [00:39:00] working at a women's boutique and, you know, I happen to know her future brother-in-law.
Um, and he said, you know, we, we meet with her and we. She had the traits. Jet Moore, you know, was working at Verizon and Tulsa, um, had the traits. And so, uh, e every step of the way. I think those are people that have been here a long time. We've, we've then added people along the way that have really been great and had similar traits.
Um, it's always been about the person and not about as much the acumen now. They had to be smart. You gotta be smart to work here. Yeah. You, you have to be hardworking to work here. You have to be willing to, uh, accept change.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: And innovate. It's a demanding job. Not in a, we're mean people, but we just have high standards.
Yeah. So that's not for everybody. Yep. It's not, it's not a place to come dial it in. Um, but if you have those qualities, you know, sky's
Nick Beyer: the limit here. How do you [00:40:00] structure the team? Because I know different firms lay things out differently. Yeah. A lot of people. Like how big's your book as an individual, individual performance is Yeah.
Paramount at some firms. How, how do y'all structure it here? What's important to you guys?
Brock Gearhart: We were, we were lucky in the way that our firms evolved because we've never hired people with books and we've never told people they have to go build a book. Um, and so every client is a client of the firm and it's not, I've got my clients, you have your clients.
Now we've begun to segment that some, we've assigned relationship managers to certain relationships. Um, but our culture has never been overly competitive in terms of. Of that there are advisors. So we have six advisors who are people that have developed the acumen to give, to provide advice they're licensed to do so they've got lots of reps in it.
Mm-hmm. Um, and, uh, and those people are primarily tasked with delivering the resources of the [00:41:00] firm. Um, we have a great accounting services group led by Rachel Proctor. Rachel came to us from the Walton family, CPA. Her job is to, um. Manage, you know, tax, uh, and, and a variety of other aspects of, uh, accounting services audits that have to happen for some of our investments and those sorts of things.
Um, we've got an investment team. The investment team is led by Johann. We have an investment committee that certain members, certain advisors sit on the investment committee, um, uh, as well as myself. Uh, he's got a team, uh, uh, that also does portfolio management. So our investments are centralized, so the advisors aren't burdened with having to make the investment decisions.
It's all centralized and managed by that committee approach. Um, we have an ops team. Uh, it does client service helps with account opening. They're our first face to our clients. Extremely important job. So really a, a place, sort of an entry to our firm where we can see how people perform and then, you know, get them [00:42:00] onto other things over time.
Um, and then we have, you know, some, some administrative functions as well. Also, first face of our firm. Super important. Yvonne who greeted y'all this morning. All of that's very intentional about how, uh, a client is received when they enter, or, or anybody is received when they enter our space. And so, um, you know, we are gonna have to move to, and we are moving to, uh, a, a culture where business development is extended beyond just a few people.
Um, you know, fortunately the phone rings, but we, we need, we need it to be more that the phone is ringing to talk to, uh, lots of people within our firm. So we recently hired Doug Hudson that are known as K's dad, who was on your last podcast, uh, who's been tremendous. And his, his job is really to build that organization and apparatus and extend that culture.
It's never gonna become, though I got my book, you got your book, I can take my book somewhere else. It's going to [00:43:00] be how we as a, as a team continue to grow the organization so that it extends well beyond, you know, our current leadership team.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. And that feels very intentional and it feels like that's one thing y'all have captured and, and held onto really well from inception, which is, which is cool.
Brock Gearhart: Thanks. Yeah. I, I, um, it, you know, when you ask what makes us different, I think that was maybe the first question was that that would be another one of the things that's different is, um, we don't have lone wolfs. It's a very team-based atmosphere. We, we frown upon egos and there's a lot of egos in our industry.
I, I've got an ego, I'm not saying I don't, but we frown upon. Mm-hmm. You know, um, too much ego within our firm.
Nick Beyer: That's really good. So, kind of going back to the timeline, 2015, you purchased the firm 2019 talk business, and I don't remember kind of what figure it was around there. It was 200 million in, in assets [00:44:00] 2019 talk Business and Politics says around half a billion in assets.
Mm-hmm. Last year, at the end of the year, you were at. 1.7 or something. That's right. So that is in six years, you're almost tripling the size of your firm. I know there was an acquisition baked in there, which we can, we can talk about kind of later. But how do you handle that much growth? How do you handle it well?
Right. Being a fiduciary to your clients, like I think those are some very specific to your industry problems Yeah. That maybe not a lot of people have walked through. Yeah. So I think if, if you could highlight some of those, that'd be awesome.
Brock Gearhart: Sure. Um, yeah, when you put it that way, I haven't really thought about it being that, that, uh, tripling in that period of time.
But, um, you know, I'll say a couple things about that journey. Uh. One of the things I'm most proud of, um, we talked about this on Tuesday in our strategic planning session, is that we've gone from 150 million to 1.7 billion to 10 x the firm and our [00:45:00] services and our client experience has gotten better along the way.
Wow. And that's rare. And that's part of our DNA for our next, for GG 3.0 that we talked about, is to continue that has to be, that has to be the ticket to entry table stakes is that it has to get better for clients. Denise Anderson, the longest tenured person, been here almost 30 years. She's seen it all.
And you know, she's able to, to echo that sentiment and say what we're doing for clients now is more, better for the same price, better outcomes than what we were doing. 20 years ago. And that doesn't mean we were doing things wrong 20 years ago. It's just that the growth has allowed us to be better.
That's piece one, how, how we've handled it. I think we always saw getting to about 2 billion. We could do that with the team and the structure we had in place. Um, it's getting beyond that, as I said earlier, classic case of what got us here won't get us there, that was gonna have to change. And, um, and we're, [00:46:00] we're just now thinking through what that looks like.
That doesn't mean it was easy. Um, but, you know, we, we, Lisa deserves a lot of credit for getting, you know, systems in place, people in place, the right people on the bus, in the right seats for managing that process. I, there's no way I could have done that alone and, and managed the growth and she's really stepped in to do that, um, on that journey.
So, so in 16. We did a strategic plan and we set a goal to get to 500 million in five years with 500 clients. Kind of a cute little way of thinking about it. I think we were at 300 million at the time, and we did that in two and a half years, half the time. So we said, all right, let's up. Our goal. We celebrated, um, we said, let's get to seven 50 million on the same timeframe of what we were gonna do to get to [00:47:00] 500 million.
And we achieved that within the, within that period of time. So then we said, let's get to a billion. And we really wanted to rally behind that. And we gave ourselves two years to go from seven 50 to a billion, and we had to reach that on June 30th of 23. And we ticked over a billion on June 15th, you know, two weeks before.
That was fun. We had a big celebration. Uh, in doing that. And then, you know, it, it, it's been pretty rapid from there. We did do an acquisition of, of a firm 200 million, really a merger. Um, really great sharp guy, Scott Alana's, who had a lot of respect in our industry, a ton of respect from us. And Lindsey Charles is associate that came along.
He's been tremendous, both really good culture fit, um, took care of their clients first and foremost, really a lot of inroads into Walmart, which is a big part of our future growth strategy. [00:48:00] And, uh, so that, that sped it up. We, we had some large client relationships, some close friends sold businesses that, uh, we, we were fortunate to be a place that they could hire, um, that were, that was wonderful.
And then the markets have been good, you know, I mean, that, that stuff we can't control. Sure. It's been a good run, as you acknowledged earlier. And, uh, you know, so certainly not easy, but, but the, it's not been as complicated as I actually think our next version of a company is going to be. One last stat I'll mention.
When I came in oh eight, we had 17 people. I. We got to a billion with 17 people. Wow. Different 17 people. But with 17 people, we've now brought on another seven or so people. So our growth is gonna now be, you know, more proportion in terms of people. Mm-hmm. And 24 people, not a huge operation, but that's different than 17.
Wow. And 50 people is a lot different than 24. Mm-hmm. And so again, back to this startup mindset, we're a little bit in [00:49:00] that phase in terms of people, um, of, of where we're going next. Long way of answering your question, and I'll stop throwing it on, but that's, uh, generally what that journey's been like.
It's good.
Cameron Clark: And with all the, I mean, you kind of alluded to it earlier, all this new money that's coming in northwest Arkansas, you know, JB Hunt, Walmart, Tyson, with, besides the, those major players growing. Is a lot of this, like, you know, as far as people moving here that, that, that already had, that have already made the money of, of coming, coming in?
Or are these like, is this money that's been generated from here, where's, where are you seeing it mo predominantly outside of the, the major players? Yeah, definitely both. In,
Brock Gearhart: in, I think the Walton family has done a tremendous service for our community in making this a great place to live. They, they've used the cycling industry, the arts industry now, Ms.
Allison and what she's doing in the medical field. Um, you know, all of those [00:50:00] things have, have made it to where people wanna live here now. Mm-hmm. And so then Walmart announcing the headquarters total game changer. Um, and we're on the map, you know, we're on every one of those lists, top five places to live.
And, um, people are, are paying attention. Um, that led us strategically to say competitively we're gonna have a. Tougher road though over time because you're gonna start to see these larger companies locate here.
Mm.
Brock Gearhart: It's really the impetus behind natural capital, which I'm happy to talk about, where we said, let's elbow out outside capital.
We're Arkansas people, we're proud Arkansans, and we want to, uh, keep our investment opportunities here. That doesn't mean we don't welcome the capital. We just wanna have the best opportunity to invest in the best, uh, investments here. And, um, that's gonna keep shifting. I think you're gonna have more companies locating here, more outside people coming in, and we [00:51:00] certainly welcome it, but we set a foundation, a stage to be able to have really great opportunities ourselves too.
Nick Beyer: That's good. Um, so a big part of that growth was appreciation of markets. Tons of new clients, but then I imagine a barrier for you kind of in that period was you're located in downtown Fayetteville. Mm-hmm. And so talk a little bit about, I think 2021 is when you opened up the Rogers office. Yeah. The strategy behind that, how you guys have used that space to serve your clients.
Talk, talk some about that.
Brock Gearhart: Really impressed with you all's research, by the way, like you just did your homework. Um, which is great. Um, yeah. I mean, I, we, we are, we're, we are, um, very much invested in Fayetteville. You know, again, my family's been here since the forties. This is our home. Uh. Our clients, you know, had driven down here for 20 years and it was time to make that a little easier on them.
It's kinda like the [00:52:00] amp being in Rogers. I would've loved for the amp to be in Fayetteville, but people have been driving down to the Wal Center for 20 years. We can drive up there and so we strategically said we need to have a presence in, in Rogers or Bentonville. We picked Rogers because it was a little easier for us to commute up there and not a challenging commute for people that were in Bentonville to come down.
It's also, I think, you know, as Marshall Saviors, my close friend says the downtown of Fay of northwest Arkansas is there. Yeah. Um, and he was really instrumental in helping us find a space. So that, that, that is probably an area we expand over time, whether it's in that exact physical space or not, I don't know.
But I do think that we will have a bigger presence there. Uh, I I don't see us leaving Fayetteville either. Um, this building is very special to our firm. It's where the firm was founded. Our clients know we're here.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: Um, and, you know, it, it suits our needs. Ironically, a [00:53:00] building that was built in 1914 still suits our needs almost perfectly.
Um, but there'll be a time where we start out growing it and that's coming and we're gonna need, you know, more and more space. And I'm guessing, you know, strategically Benton County will be a bigger, it, it is a big focus for us when we have a large amount of our client bases there. I spend a lot of time up there.
We Natural capital as an office in the ledger building that we spend time in. Um, so we have, we have a, we have a presence there that will be expanded and, uh, you know, our clients shouldn't have to drive to see us. We should drive to see our clients. Awesome.
Nick Beyer: Well, let's talk a little bit about natural capital.
So it sounds like it was kind of out birthed through a lot of the work that y'all have done here. Obviously there's a different group of founders for natural capital, which you're part of.
Yeah.
Nick Beyer: Talk a little bit about when it was founded, how it was founded. You kind of gave us the heartbeat behind it, but Sure.
Brock Gearhart: Yeah. Um, so back, back to Marshall, you know, Marshall. Been a close friend a long time. We [00:54:00] would get together, usually at Maxine's, uh, to talk about our businesses, you know, challenges. I remember Marshall was one of the first person that said, you need a, you need a vision statement. You need a mission statement.
Here's ours. You know, and we just, we've, we've challenged each other. We think a lot of like, and when clients would come to me asking for advice on a real estate deal, that's not my first area of expertise. So I would call Marshall and, you know, his advice through the years was always really good. And, and I kind of said like, I'm not gonna do anything in real estate without Marshall Savers involved.
And so we started thinking about, so we should organize capital. I mean, he, he had a lot of people coming to him wanting to do deals. Um, he didn't have organization around capital. We had capital. And we kind of had the ability to think about organizations 'cause we're a regulated entity and. So we, we threw this idea around, we talked about calling it Ozark Capital Partners.
We had different names, um, and we [00:55:00] knew that we needed somebody to run it, and we knew that we needed somebody that had operating experience in large businesses. Uh, and maybe somebody that had, um, was a, was a part of really building northwest Arkansas would be nice to have as well. Um, around that time, we approached a, an old friend, Brad Henry, who was running the State's a hundred million dollar venture portfolio for the Arkansas Development Finance Authority.
You know, his ultimate boss was the governor. To, you know, to invest in Arkansas businesses that could come to Arkansas. Was he in here in Little Rock? He was in Little Rock. He still is in Little Rock, but he's, he's, he's here more than, I mean, he's here all the time now. Um, and so we approached him. He was actually kind of thinking about a career move and, and, and peaked his interest.
And then, uh, about that time too, you know, Marshall and I, um, were really, uh, de developing a fr a close friendship with Todd Simmons, uh, of the Simmons [00:56:00] family. Built Simmons, uh, foods, pet food ingredient, and, uh, poultry company in silo, one of the largest businesses in northwest Arkansas. Todd is about as good of a person you as you will ever meet.
Todd's the reason I met Doug Hudson, who's joined our firm. Uh, he, he's a real mentor of mine and, uh. Marshall approached dod and, and Melissa Simmons, uh, his wife, who's is also very close, who designed our office spaces and houses and all that. And, and Todd committed on the spot, said, I'm in, this is exactly the type of thing I wanted to do, uh, and I wanna do it with y'all.
And it was a really exciting time. We had to get $10 million raised for Brad to convince his wife to commit his, uh, to quit his job. And so we moved quickly to like, Annie up passed the hat a little bit and, um, we were able to do that. That was 2019 pandemic hit. We kind of paused fundraising, um, but you know, pretty quickly resumed because we said there's gonna be a lot of opportunities [00:57:00] coming out of this.
We raised 41 million in our first fund. Small, but, but that was, I think, I think that was the largest first private fund ever raised, maybe in Arkansas for a first fund. I think I.
Cameron Clark: Um, what was the goal of the first fund?
Brock Gearhart: You know, I think we, so we thought if we could get, um, above 25 million, we would have the resources to have to hire the people we would need to run a fund this complex.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: So, um, we could hire Brad at 10 million, but not much more, and we could really put together a team at 25 and, and 41 allowed us to do even more. Todd Marshall and I don't take compensation from natural capital. So we, we really invest behind the team to build that. We, we will make money if we do well for our, for our investors.
Um. But, you know, 25 million was a soft circle number that, that's been successful. Our goal is to, to have 80% of that [00:58:00] return to investors this year and still have a number of investments outstanding. Wow. Um, and I think we'll, we'll, we'll hopefully meet that. We've returned probably 30, 35% right now. Second fund was, uh, closer to 110 million.
So to double in a second fund, we were really pleased with that. I think if we could exceed a hundred, we were gonna be pleased and we did. And is
Cameron Clark: the idea
Brock Gearhart: to deploy
Cameron Clark: that in the state of Arkansas, in northwest Arkansas or where
Brock Gearhart: What we learned between fund one and two was that there's enough opportunity in northwest Arkansas to deploy not just a $41 million fund, but a hundred million dollars fund and beyond.
And so we, we narrowed our focus fund. One was kind of heartland, uh, real estate operating businesses and other funds. Fund two has been narrowed to real estate and operating businesses. I would say maybe a little more real estate focused and mostly northwest Arkansas. We will go outside of northwest Arkansas, but mm-hmm.
We want there to be a pretty strong connection to the reason we do that. And we added two people to our general partnership and fund two. Rob [00:59:00] Kimball, Rob. Owns, uh, the Na Nation's largest residential plumbing company right here out of northwest Arkansas. Another really, really impressive guy. Guy I consider a mentor and close friend.
He's really our multifamily guru and is a lot of success in investing in that space 'cause he knows it. Mm-hmm. Um, and uh, and also single family as well. And then, uh, uh, Ben Herberger, who, uh, is a full, full-time with natural capital. Uh, really sharp. Really? Yeah, really good guy. Really, um, smart. He really runs our investments.
You know, he is the main investment guy. So again, surround yourself with the right people. Mm-hmm. The right team. Um, I remember one of our investors said. We, we, someone asked him, why do you invest? And he's like, well, you look around the room, who they got involved. It's hard to see 'em screwing it up. Which I don't know if that was a compliment or a, you know, but, but we took it as a compliment.
And, um, the trust you're talking about from the very beginning, it was just, yeah. Yeah.
Cameron Clark: It's the same, uh, you know, core value. Yeah. You
Brock Gearhart: get Todd [01:00:00] Simmons, Marshall Savers, Rob Kimball, Brad Henry, Ben Hernberg in our room talking about investment opportunities. Good things are gonna come out of that room. Yeah.
So,
Nick Beyer: so has all of that capital been deployed from fund two? Uh,
Brock Gearhart: not yet. Um, you know, we're about 50% deployed. Um, we have investments soft circled that will deploy most of the fund. So, you know, that will occur, um, over the next. Several months year. Um, and if we can get fund one sufficiently returned, that, that's, you know, part of our, our strategic plan on the natural capital side was to do that again, client focused, LP focused, get their money back, then we will likely look to raise a third fund.
Um, you know, and, and we haven't put a timeline on exactly when that is. I would say it's probably as we move into 2026, we start to look at doing that.
Nick Beyer: Mm-hmm. Did y'all have Target IRRs when you launched Fund one? And how are y'all doing relative to
Brock Gearhart: Yeah. Yeah. So we, we, we, we did, um, you know, [01:01:00] if you think about, and, and this is where Green Mcg, Gerhard, I think comes in.
If you think about a, a person's balance sheet and their financial plan, you know, if you can get high single digit, low single digit in the public stock market, you're not getting much in bonds, haven't gotten much of the last 10 years, you ought to, you ought to get. You know, low to mid teens in, natural in, you know, in, in a private market investment.
Mm-hmm. Otherwise, it's not worth the illiquidity that you have to mm-hmm. Get to do it. It's not necessarily higher risk. We're not risky investors. Um, you know, rule number one, don't lose money. Rule number two, don't forget rule number one. Um, so we're not seeking to hit home runs in natural capital. We want to hit lots of singles, lots of doubles.
Mm-hmm. And every once in a while, you know, we'll get ahold of one. And, uh, and so yeah, we've, we've been successful. I can't disclose exactly what our terms have [01:02:00] been for regulatory reasons, but, um, we've been successful. Our LPs have been pleased. We have our personal capital invested that a lot of people don't know that.
And we're invested on the same terms as our LPs. Oh, wow. So we pay fees. Which is unique. Part of that was we had to, yeah, set up the fund. Um, and so we're real pleased with our personal results in it as well. It's, that's a hallmark of green, the Gearhart that we extended to natural capital, which is we eat our own cooking, you know, our portfolios look the same as our investors.
And so all, all boats rise together.
Cameron Clark: So what's a timeline horizon? Uh, you know, when you're raising money for one of these funds, what's a, is it 10 year, 10 year, five year? What do you, what's the expectation?
Brock Gearhart: Yeah, I think that's another thing we learned. We, we set out to build a really long term, you know, fund.
We, our, ours was 15 years with the ability to extend it two years after that in the industry, that would, that's very long, you know, and, [01:03:00] and most of the institutional market's gonna look at that and say, you know, that's not what we're in this for. The idea behind that was, you know. We, we were not in a financial need where we needed to flip assets to generate a, a GP carry.
Yeah. We could hold things that, that were truly in the client and the, and our LPs best interest long-term if we wanted to.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: Um, and so we wanted to set it as a very long-term fund. What we realized though, is that there continues to be great opportunities out there and if we wanna raise subsequent funds to be able to invest in those great opportunities, we really need to return the capital in the first fund.
Yeah.
Brock Gearhart: Um, and so, uh, you know, I think we probably have been more open to selling things when our return hurdles are reached. Um, we just went to market the other day with a $62 million multifamily portfolio. That is a really attractive asset and something that, you know, we might hold long term if it weren't for the [01:04:00] fact that it's been a really great investment for us.
Mm-hmm. And, you know, we worked really hard to get it to the point that it's at today, and we think it's an attractive investment for someone else too. Mm-hmm. But will allow us to, you know, deploy into other things over time. So, um, I think that was an evolution similar to the evolution of we can invest in northwest Arkansas and have great results.
Just, just focusing here, it's also let's get capital back to people.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: Paying a, a good, you know, what I'll call a dividend coming from the public market side, but a distribution was always a hallmark of what we wanted to do. So these need to be cash generating opportunities as opposed to venture.
Mm-hmm. We did that, but then it also became, let's, let's get the capital back as well. Um, not being a forced seller, not to do it, to generate gp. We will hold things forever if we, if we want to, but if a sale opportunity comes along and it's the right thing for everybody, you know, we're more willing to do that than we thought we would be.
Nick Beyer: I assume y'all wrestled with that [01:05:00] though, right? With the name being Natural Capital. I think I read online 80% of the fund was raised from Arkansans. Is that correct?
Brock Gearhart: Yeah. It may even be higher than that. And, and no institutional money. Yeah. So it, it was truly a family, you know, which is amazing. Yeah. I think we wanted it that way.
We, we we're batting around. Yeah. Do we look at institutional capital over time? But yeah, the nature of our LP base, you know, also, I. Um, requires us a little bit in terms of how we think about selling assets and, and you know, we've got some people that are multi-billion dollar families and we've got some people that, you know, have a few million dollars, um, uh, or less.
And, and they're all extremely important. They do have a little bit different motivation. Sure. So we have to balance that. Sure. That's part of being in a fund structure. There's advantages and disadvantages to it,
Nick Beyer: but I guess I'm asking from a fund three perspective, if you're selling assets at the price you're selling them at
mm-hmm.[01:06:00]
Nick Beyer: Y'all are probably the biggest fund in Arkansas. Right. So you're, you're likely selling those assets to people out outside the state. Yeah. So have y'all, have y'all talked any about like, which I know you have to return the capital, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that, but I'm, how, how are you balancing those things a bit?
Look towards
Brock Gearhart: fund three. Um, I, you know, on, on this multi-family portfolio, uh, I've contacted, uh. Large family office in the state to see if they're interested. So I mean, I think our, our preference would be to keep it as Arkansas money. You, you nailed it. That, you know, we are able to close with certainty on large assets at scale.
We bought a 35, 32, 30 $5 million portfolio in Pinnacle. Mm-hmm. For instance, that would've gone to an out-of-state buyer. The seller wanted to keep it in state. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Keep it in the family, so to speak. Mm-hmm. Which is a real advantage for us. So I think we think about it similarly, you know, our duty as, as you, me, you know, mentioned as first to our [01:07:00] investors and getting the return.
And so, um, but sometimes, you know, the, who the buyer is does matter and their reputation and ability to close. And, uh, keeping that to Arkansas, people that we know, uh, across the state has a lot of advantages to
Nick Beyer: it. That's good. Um, and I think what I don't want people to hear is it's not just like. You know, elbowing out.
Is it maybe a, a good or strong way to put it, but it's, it's like people who are from Arkansas, they care about Arkansas more than people who may, may not. Who, who are outside investors. Yes. So I think that
Brock Gearhart: you ought hear Todd Simmons talk about it. You wanna run through a brick wall after he is, you know, he is an inspiring guy, but you know, he, he says, I won't do my Todd impression, but he says, you know, our family made money here.
We worked really hard here. Um, you know, Todd has, has. Multiplied his business, his family business, and, and really been an incredible CEO. And he's, he cares about [01:08:00] it here and he's done it here. And this community's given him and his family those opportunities. And so we don't want, we want the best opportunities to stay with people that are in similar situations.
That's good. And, uh, and then also provide, you know, more for somebody that may not get exposure. Like, you can't go buy a $35 million. I couldn't buy a $35 million property, you know, piece of properties and pinnacle, but I'd like to have a sliver of it if I could. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so that's the beauty of, of natural capital and a, and a fund structure.
The, the name. Obviously we're the natural state outside of Northwest Arkansas. People think we're like a natural resources fund or something, which is a little bit of a problem. But we were batting around the name and I said earlier, you know, we are looking at Ozark Capital Partners, and oz's been used a lot.
Um, and uh, and we started thinking, you know, it's, it's the, the partners are a natural fit. The LPs being from Arkansas, that's natural. Mm-hmm. It's the natural state. And I remember, uh, when we were [01:09:00] talking to Todd, we, we really weren't sure on the name. Brad Marshall and I were like, I don't know if we like it or not.
And, but I think we had a draft deck that we showed him and it said, you know, working name Natural Capital. I'm like, the first thing he said was, I love the name. Like, well, I guess we have our name. Uh, and it suited us well, you know, because it, it, we really are an Arkansas based mm-hmm. An Arkansas focused investment company.
That's awesome.
Nick Beyer: And then last question for me as it relates to Natural Capital mm-hmm. Is, is that. Is that an exclusive thing to people who work with y'all here in this firm? Or can people who are using other investment firms?
Brock Gearhart: Yeah, no, it's not exclusive at all. Um, you know, uh, certainly it's been a, it's been a great vehicle for our client base.
Our client base does achieve, you know, receive some preferred economics because collectively we're the largest investors in both, you know, or, or some of the largest investors in the funds. So, um, you know, there is advantages, uh, plugging us to being a Greenwood Gerhardt [01:10:00] client in that way. But, um, you know, generally speaking, this is a, this is for our community, you know, as much as anything.
Mm-hmm. We, we want to do deals that are good for Northwest Arkansas and we want everybody to be able to participate if, if they meet qual, you know, there's some regulatory qualifications for how you can participate in opportunities like these, but not exclusive, just a agree with gerhart. Cool.
That's cool.
Nick Beyer: Well, let's take this kind of to current, um, Greenwood Your Heart. You can talk a little bit about 3.0 kind of what's coming down the pipe, but as it relates to, it sounds like roughly 1.7 billion in assets under management team of 25. You guys just finished a merger at the end of 2024. You guys got, have got a lot of like, exciting things ahead.
So if you'll just share a little bit about where you're at right now and, and what's coming.
Brock Gearhart: Sure. You know, we used to set numeric goals and I think we still will. Um, I think those can sometimes be for vanity and I think we've achieved some things that we really wanted to [01:11:00] achieve numerically that now our, our goals are really focused more on qualitative goals.
You know, building something truly great, uh, making sure our clients have great outcomes, um, you know, expanding the services while growing. Make the client feeling like they're getting a better, uh, experience than they did before as opposed to. Let's get to 10 billion. We might get to 10 billion, but we're not gonna get to 10 billion and sacrifice those things that matter.
Um, you know, providing great career opportunities for our team, allowing them to build, you know, wealth in the process. Um, one of our values is fulfillment. You know? Mm-hmm. We seek for our clients to live fulfilled lives, and we want the same for our team.
Mm.
Brock Gearhart: So what we're trying to do for clients, we want those types of outcomes for our team members too.
And so, GG 3.0 is going to be more a living, breathing organism and more, more people getting involved [01:12:00] in helping to build over time. We've got, we surrounded ourselves with some really impressive advisors, external advisors that are consulting with us. Um. You know, and that may, that can take a lot of turns that, you know, we could decide to expand into other markets through m and a.
Uh, that's gonna have to be really right. We have an m and a, we call it an m and a box, which is, if it doesn't fit in our box, we're not gonna waste anybody's time.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: And we're gonna be very front on that and out of respect to the potential seller. But if it fits in our box, you know, we've learned through our, our merger with Boston Mountain and Scott that it can be really great mm-hmm.
For both sides. And so we're not afraid of that. And that could be a, a, a part of, uh, of the journey. I don't think it's the tool our industry's filled with, filled with firms that say, I'm gonna go buy this firm at this multiple, and when they become part of my firm, the multiple's higher and we're gonna do this 20 times.
And they don't think about culture, they don't think about what it actually does for the client relationship. It's just [01:13:00] a numbers game. Mm-hmm. That's not, that's not GG 3.0 for us. Um. But we're ambitious. We're, we're fairly young, you know, used to be a lot younger, but we're fairly young. We got a long runway, you know, maybe to, to keep building this.
And we, we want to build something truly great that we can look back and say, wow, we're really proud of that.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Is that what drives you as a leader? What drives leader? You know, I've, I've learned
Brock Gearhart: more and more about what drives me as a leader, maybe in the last year or so. Uh, I think it's, um, it's outcomes for our team and outcomes for our clients.
And that's not just financial, but it's, you know, are they living fulfilled lives at home? Uh, is, you know, is their family bought into what we're doing? Mm-hmm. We're hosting an event for our team, you know, coming up with families and really looking forward to that. Um. [01:14:00] Certainly if, if, if they have an opportunity to do things they never thought they'd get to do because of, you know, their financial situation, that's great too.
Um, but I think at one point in my career it was, it was numbers and size and mm-hmm. All that. And don't, don't mistake, you know, there's people here that would say, come on Brock, that's still, that still drives you. And it does. But I think I've learned a lot about, um, what's really important, uh, and it's those other things, outcomes for our clients and for our team that really matter.
Nick Beyer: So we've talked a lot about that. Who is your ideal client? And, and maybe walk us through for someone listening who, who is working with the financial, but what is the quintessential, someone walks in here, they're 50, they've got two and a half million. Mm-hmm. Kind of saved up, whether it be through 4 0 1 Ks or IRAs or whatever.
What is the quintessential [01:15:00] client interaction look like with Greenwood Gearhart?
Brock Gearhart: Yeah, so I mean, in terms of ideal, someone that, that wants, wants someone they can trust, wants, needs some peace of mind because they've kind of been winging it, um, is going to be deferential in some ways. That doesn't mean not involved, it just means, um, they're going to, to trust what we do for a living.
Mm-hmm. Those are really good clients and we love working with those people because we get to see, we get to see them do things that they never thought they would do. We have a client out in Oregon who's gonna come in for the Notre Dame game, who have become just really good friends. We go out and see 'em once a year and, you know, they, they say all the time, like, we just happened upon your firm by chance in the early eighties, they lived in Arkansas for like.
Half a year and we just trusted and I, and I, and we think we've gotten to do a lot of things that we might not have gotten to do because of our relationship with your firm. It's like, that is [01:16:00] ideal. Mm-hmm. Wow. That's what we wanna replicate over and over and over again. And we love going out and seeing them and a big fly fishermen and love going and doing that with them.
And, uh, it's just a, a neat relationship and we've got lots of those and that's what fulfills me, I think, in terms of what a client feels, you know, that they come in, it's, I, we try to be very focused on them. Um, so it's a lot of questions about them. What are you trying to accomplish? What does this money mean to you?
What does it mean to your family? How do you want your kids to interact? Um, when do you wanna retire? What do you wanna do after retirement? We, we ask tons of questions. We take copious notes, take a two week period easily. Um, to build a financial plan that is really the first entree into our firm. We go back to them, we explain back to them and say, you told us this, this is what we heard.
99% of the time they say, you heard me?
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: Um, and we say, here's what you gotta do to do it under conservative assumptions, you know? [01:17:00] And, uh, if, if you do this thing, these things, we will, we'll accomplish this stuff. We've never had anybody in breadlines, you know, in our client base. And, uh, that usually then leads to, to them to hire us, you know, if they're going to, and we become their advisor.
And then it's a relationship. You know, you hope that in 20, 30 years you're going to Oregon to fly fish with them. Mm-hmm. Like, that's, that's when you, you know, really built a, um. You know, strong bond and strong relationship. And it's more than what they pay you. It's more than the numbers. It's, you know, back to the very beginning, it's you've helped someone.
Mm-hmm. And they appreciate that help
Nick Beyer: that you provided. And, and how do you, you talk a lot about client outcomes, like, is that different by client? Is it beating the s and p? Yeah. Is it a certain number? Talk. Talk about that and maybe then also how you look at asset allocations by client.
Brock Gearhart: Sure. It is different for every [01:18:00] client and, you know, we keep score performance is important.
We've been fortunate to have really strong performance over a long period of time. So that's the ticket to entry. That's not the only thing. And if somebody is only focused on, you know, weekly performance figures or, you know, the, the short term, they're just not gonna be happy here. And we've gotten better over time at saying like, Hey, th this just probably isn't a fit.
You know, normally they, they, they end up staying and adapting the way they think about the situation. Sometimes though, they, you know, it's just best to go in different directions. Um, usually it's focused around what the client wants to achieve. And so, you know, I want to have a house at, on Beaver Lake, I want to retire at 55, but I wanna go work at a bike shop because I like cycling.
Um, or I wanna go work at Lowe's 'cause I'm handy, or whatever it is. Or I wanna work till I'm 70 and I wanna maximize as much money as possible, or I wanna leave my kids a bunch of money, [01:19:00] or I wanna leave my kids no money, or I wanna pay for their college education but no more. I wanna pay for half of it.
And they gotta come up. Like it's, it runs the gamut. And our job is to really listen and then build a plan around that where they can achieve it. In terms of asset allocation, that's another area where I would say we're a little different. We are not what the industry refers to as rigid rebalances. So we've been mostly e, more equity focused than probably most of our competitors, most people in the industry over the last 15 years, which has been the place to be.
Yep. Bonds have returned, you know, maybe 2% a year, 3% a year. And equities have been really strong performer had we rigidly rebalanced to a 60 40 portfolio for our clients. Um. Some of 'em wouldn't be retiring at 55 when they thought they were gonna retire at 60. It didn't mean we're taking too much risk. It means we're, we're actually, I think, taking less risk.
Mm-hmm. Because there's risk in the bond market. Mm-hmm. Um, and if you're not keeping up with inflation, you know, you're, you're losing money over time. And [01:20:00] so. Tend to be a more skewed to equities in this environment. If we were in a different interest rate environment that would look different. There were times where we were much more fixed income focused.
Um, when you start to reach, reach a certain level of assets, um, I. And, and that depends on age. You know, if you're young and you've saved a few million dollars, uh, you can start to add alternative investments because you got a long runway. If you're older and you've only got a, a couple million dollars and, and you're in your, you know, retirement years, it's probably not appropriate for you.
But we do start to introduce all's natural capital as the first place for that. Um, because, you know, we can control it. We think we have an edge there. Um, I'm on the investment committee, you know, and, and we, we think it's the best first place for clients to go. Um, but if you, you know, if you've got a hundred million dollars.
You're not gonna put 20% or $20 million in, in natural capital, that wouldn't be prudent. And so we have a platform, um, an alts platform that extends [01:21:00] to other funds, um, that's constantly evolving. It's a big part of our practice. I think also a big differentiator for our firm. So asset allocation varies. Um, I would say it's focused on where, where the best opportunities are gonna be, but designed to accomplish the client's goals first and foremost.
Nick Beyer: That's good. And how are y'all thinking about is alternative investments as they capture real estate? It does separately as they capture crypto. Kind of.
Brock Gearhart: We do think about it as, as we put real estate in there, the industry sometimes puts real estate in its own asset class, but we think about it as real estate, private equity.
Um, and within private equity there's several different brands of private equity and then, uh, hedge funds would fall there. We, we've not really invested in hedge funds or returns, just haven't been there. Uh, over a long period of time, crypto, we would put, um, kind of as its own, you know, a little bit of its own asset class.
Um, we, we do not, uh, invest in crypto right now. That could change, uh, over time. It's not been, uh, a focus for us at, at this point, [01:22:00] right or wrong. Um, but, um, alts for us does include real estate and real estate's a big part of our ALT strategy.
Nick Beyer: And then talk about the different segments of the business, accounting, estate planning, you know, some family office stuff Y'all do.
Yeah. Philanthropic work, legacy planning, kind of all the stuff that's on your website. Yeah. Are those, those are all comprehensive. That's not, are you doing any of those one-off if I walk in there? Yeah.
Brock Gearhart: Really, really, it's a, that's a great distinction there. You know, really most of those services are appropriate when you have very high levels of wealth.
And so we think about it as a grid, you know, you probably saw on our website, um. Really, you know, for clients that have $10 million or more with our firm, they are eligible for family office services, which is really touching almost every one of those pieces of the grid. So financial planning, starting point.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: Legacy planning, uh, how I'm gonna gift money to [01:23:00] my kids or pass it on to charitable organizations and charitable planning associated with that. Related to that is estate planning, um, accounting services. What's my tax program look like? How's that talking to my financial plan. Mm-hmm. My legacy plan, my charitable plan, my estate plan.
Mm-hmm. Alternative investments, natural capital and our broader platform. Financial concierge. You know, this would be where if we, you know, if a client wanted bill pay, that would fall, but how we discharge financial obligations for people. I need to, you know, wire money for a boat, uh, or send me 5,000 a month for living expenses and manage that process.
Um. Certainly investment management, ticket entry, your, your stock and bond portfolio. And then we have a corporate retirement plans business that serves small businesses, uh, really makes sense for an owner operator of a company that wants to have a 401k plan for their team and wants it to be tied to what we're doing on the rest of the business.
So those eight areas, you know, there, there are clients that use some of those a la [01:24:00] carte, you know, usually those are long-term clients or people that, um, you know, have a certain complication to their situation and we wanna step in and be helpful. But really it's our largest clients. There's about 25 that, that are part of our family office offering.
Where we're doing, we're touching most of those buckets and those are complicated. Mm-hmm. And the whole theory is not even theory. The whole fact is that. If all of those things are talking to each other, you're picking up nickels and dimes along the way that turn into real dollars.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: If they're not talking to each other.
'cause you got an accountant not talking to the estate planner, not talking to, like, you can miss things and, and it can be real, especially when you get into the world of estate tax planning. Um, so, um, those comprehensive services, we, we don't wanna impose services upon people that may not be appropriate for them.
We want the services to be dosed according to the client need. That's good.
Cameron Clark: And [01:25:00] so, yeah, moving forward 3.0. Um, what can people expect, you know, with Green Greenwood Gerhardt?
Brock Gearhart: Yeah. We're gonna stay true to our purpose for sure. We're gonna stay true to our values. Uh, uh, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna maybe have a more, even more relentless focus on our clients and everything we do.
We're not gonna get big. Just to get big. We're gonna get big and be better along the way, which I think is ironically gonna make us bigger.
Mm-hmm.
Brock Gearhart: By being focused on the right things. Um, you know, we're gonna take care of our current relationships. We're, we're not going to shift our time focus away from the people that got us here.
Mm-hmm. So what got us here is not gonna get us there, but we appreciate what's got us here. Um,
Cameron Clark: and how do you stay so, you know, humble and focused in that? I mean, you've joked a couple times, like, I was born on third base, you know, but like for someone who Yeah. Maybe, you know, was in a similar situation, like [01:26:00] how do you stay dialed in?
Brock Gearhart: Yeah. You mean from a client standpoint
Cameron Clark: or from a No, just per personal development and what you're like and just, yeah. I don't
Brock Gearhart: know how dialed in I am. I can maybe look like I am on a podcast, but, uh, you know, I, um, I, I think I, I've got a great wife, uh, who keeps me grounded. Uh, you know, um, she might not always say I'm humble all the time.
Uh, Lindsey. Um, I, I've got a great, I've got great family and my parents, I've got, my kids are great. You know, I just got, I've got my in-laws, my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, uh, I've got a great group of people around me. I've, I've been fortunate enough to have some really good mentors. My, my uncle, uh, a really close friend, my dad that I, that I, that I don't make hardly any decision without taking, you know, their perspective into place.
Marshall's a part of that. Todd Rob, others Brad. Um, and so I, I would say it's that [01:27:00] I just sur I think you surround yourself with right, with the right people and good things are gonna happen. And, um, if I look back of. My career so far, that's been a common theme. Um, and, you know, I picked the right spouse.
Cameron Clark: Wow. What you've built is absolutely, absolutely exceptional. Um, it's awesome. Uh, so kind of getting towards wrapping up here, um, first question is how do you define success?
Brock Gearhart: You know, um, I dunno if you've ever done one of those like obit exercises, you know, obituary. It's like if you wrote or your epitaph, like what would it say?
And it's funny, if you look at like, some of the great people you want to emulate that have gone on and you read their obituary, it doesn't say like, they built a trillion dollar firm or they built a hundred billion dollar. It's like nobody really cares about that stuff. At the end of the day, it says built a [01:28:00] great family.
They were involved in the community. They, you know, may, maybe they did these three or four things of organizations they were a part of. Um, they lifted people up alongside them. Mm-hmm. You know, they, while they, while they grew, uh, and I've thought a lot about that. I'm not perfect on that. Like I have a lot of times defined success based on the traditional way the world looks at success.
But at the end of the day, that's, that's what it is. And so, um, I think as I'm getting older, I, I think more about that and try to disproportionately spend time on things where I'm gonna look back and be really proud. Whether that's charitable work, I'm very involved with new beginnings. An organization we're really proud of.
That's helped the homeless community in South Fayetteville involved with my church, uh, in different ways. I'm, you know, in the Washington Regional Hospital Board. I think that's a very important organization to our community. And those are the things I think that at the end of the day, I'm gonna look back and say, where, where was success?
It was nurturing those things. [01:29:00] And the firm did great too, and the people had success and our clients had success. And, uh, it's really not gonna be a numbers game, you know, in, in 20 years or God willing, hopefully 50 years.
Cameron Clark: Wow. Uh, so you've talked a lot about your vision, um, vision for the company, what y'all are doing, uh, vision for natural capital.
Um, what's your vision for Northwest Arkansas, like over the next 10, 15, 20 years?
Brock Gearhart: I'm pro-growth, you know, I think, um, I. It's easy to say we want things to stay as they are. And I, I, I do want that. I, you know, I don't, I, I get irritated driving up and the traffic's bad and, and all of that, but, um, you know, I, I think a, a, you know, moving forward and, um, uh, building a great community without getting too far ahead of ourselves is important.
Luckily, we've got. We are way ahead of thinking [01:30:00] about this stuff. So the Northwest Arkansas Council, Todd and Marshall have both really been in leadership positions of that for a long time. Um, the Walton family and how they're thinking about managing the growth. Nelson Peacock who leads the Northwest Arkansas Council, these are people that have done, uh, you know, a really good job of anticipating the problems that maybe have arisen in similar communities.
We all like to talk about Austin, right? Mm-hmm. How do we prevent the problems of Austin? So I, I've got faith that they're gonna figure it out and that our leadership's gonna figure out, and I, I certainly hope to be, continue to be a part of those discussions. Um, I think, you know, if, if I think in 20 years from now, I think we're going to be really proud.
Of where, uh, our community is. I think we're going to be really proud of the main corporations that employ people here and how they've treated their employees and the opportunities they've [01:31:00] had. And I think you're gonna have other corporations locate here.
Yeah.
Brock Gearhart: You know, why, why do we, why, why shouldn't another Fortune 500 company put their headquarters in northwest Arkansas?
True.
Brock Gearhart: Or should a Fortune 500 company be built outta northwest Arkansas? Mm-hmm. And, uh, we've done it three times. Um, you know, likely that's gonna happen too. So I'm pretty bullish. Uh, we're in the right community at the right time. Another reason being born on, you know, being on third base is we get to live here.
Mm-hmm. And, uh, um, just drive through the Walmart headquarters and you see the future. It's unbelievable, uh, you know, of what's coming for our community. Hmm. That's awesome.
Nick Beyer: Talk about running through a brick wall. Yeah, that's it right there. Exactly. Uh, well, one of the things we like to do at the end of e every episode is just kind of highlight the biggest things we learn from you.
We think our listeners will learn from you. And so I think the first thing that stuck out in our conversation was when you talked about hiring your team and you really, you really honed in on [01:32:00] like finding people with character and that being the first thing that you look for and people that you hire and whether they're a teacher, someone watching kids, it doesn't matter.
They can be great here and they can exceed if they have good character. Absolutely. And I think as, as a founder of any business, as a business owner, like if that's how you hire people, you're gonna have a successful business. So thanks for sharing that. You thank, and I think a lot of people will learn from that.
I think the second thing being customer-centric, and you talked a lot about that towards the end.
Mm-hmm.
Nick Beyer: All the founders that we've talked AB talked to have, have either been hyperfocused on their product. We're hyper-focused on their customer, and you cannot win without either of those things. And it sounds like you're really dialed in on, like, we want our clients to have the best experience.
We want them to have the most holistic experience, the most comprehensive experience. We want their outcomes to be the best. And so again, if, if you're a founder listening to this and, and that's what you're focused on, you're gonna have a successful business. And [01:33:00] then the last part, I think as, as we really wrap up here, like you're extremely focused.
You're extremely focused on your team, how you're gonna grow Greenwood, Gearhardt, but also natural capital and who, who is involved, the team that's involved, who you're taking money from, how you're getting out of deals, how you're returning money to your investors. Like all those things take a great deal of focus and it, and it doesn't sound like you take any of them lightly.
And so again, being, being focused as a founder, I think especially when you have a successful business. There are opportunities that come out of the woodworks and be able, being able to stay really focused on what you're trying to accomplish. I think I. Is, is paramount. So, yeah.
Brock Gearhart: Well, thank you that, that's, uh, it's always interesting to hear, you know, the perspective.
Uh, and you guys, you guys have talked to some hitters, some really impressive people, and this is tremendous what you guys are doing, and I'm honored you would ask. I still don't really know why you did, but, uh, it's been been a lot of fun and I [01:34:00] appreciate you having me on. So, yeah.
Cameron Clark: Thanks Brock.
Brock Gearhart: Yeah.
Cameron Clark: How can, uh, how can people get a hold of you, get a hold of the firm?
Where do they, where do they reach out?
Brock Gearhart: Yeah, anytime, uh, you know, uh, give us a call, uh, 5 2 1 5 3 5 3. That's probably the best way. Um, and, uh, you know, uh, we're here, we're gonna be here for a long time. Uh, we want to be helpful, especially to people that are thinking about find, you know, being founders of businesses.
Um, you know, we, we've worked with lots of 'em in our, uh, firm, so, um, yeah, look forward to connecting with people. Thanks. It's awesome. Thank you. Thanks.