By: Jody Lowe; Mike LaMena; Andy Azinger
Duration: 27:30
Jody Lowe, Lowe Group president and managing director, recently sat down with Wealthspire Advisors CEO Mike LaMena to discuss how the RIA’s success starts with client results but is also about employee development, added services/technology and a culture where everyone can grow and effective communications.
Transcript
MUSIC
[“Brighter Day”]
Jody Lowe
I’ve been looking forward to my conversation today for weeks. I’m eager to talk with Mike LaMena, CEO of Wealthspire and a passionate believer in his firm’s fiduciary model of serving investors. Mike is a rising leader in the wealth management industry. I’m excited to talk to Mike about his career and what he’s trying to accomplish at Wealthspire. Mike’s thoughtful focus on communicating Wealthspire’s strategy, both inside his company and externally provides a lot of lessons for communicators in the financial services space. Let me quickly summarize Mike’s resume. Mike joined what was then Bronfman, Rothschild in 2017 and led a merger with Sontag Advisors, and a revamped rebranding of the combined firm to become what we know today as Wealthspire Advisors. Before that, he worked at two blue chip financial services companies. He was president and COO of Hightower, the widely followed Chicago based wealth management firm. He started his career at Morgan Stanley and spent 14 years there in a variety of operations and global roles. He’s a Domer, graduating from Notre Dame, with an English major, a topic we’ll talk more about shortly. Welcome, Mike. It’s so great to have you,
Mike LaMena
Jody. Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be with you today.
Jody Lowe
A lot of people already know your origin story. And for our listeners who haven’t read it, Real Assets Adviser has an excellent interview with you, that goes into a lot of detail about your unlikely path to financial services. But we’re a bunch of liberal arts majors here at the Lowe Group and love that you are an English major. Indulge me a bit, what is your favorite book or your favorite author?
Mike LaMena
You know, it’s tough for me to single out a specific author. You know, I found that different authors kind of intersect, you intersect with their work at various points in your life in impactful ways. And you know, when I was at college at Notre Dame, I had a couple of great professors that taught a class called Shakespeare and Performance. And the idea was, if you’re going to get up on your feet and actually act out Shakespeare’s verse in words, you’d really understand it, and it impacted me in a way that I never would have anticipated that led me to actually participate in a number of plays. So I’ve always got a special place in my heart for Shakespeare. But there’s a number of others. You know, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Melville. I think lately my reading time is more deployed towards leadership and other things. So, Simon Sinek, Malcolm Gladwell, I’m an avid reader. So I kind of run the range.
Jody Lowe
I am a huge Gladwell fan, too, and Simon Sinek. Those are great authors as well. I actually kind of toggle between fiction and nonfiction too. And sometimes it’s fun how they parallel. So I’ve read in more than one place that there probably are as many CEOs who were liberal arts majors as business majors. For rising students who see themselves as future CEOs, what should they be thinking about their education?
Mike LaMena
When I was young, I was always jealous of the individuals who had their career path clearly identified, the folks who knew they were always going to be a doctor or always going to be a lawyer. I always saw a multiplicity of opportunities. I think that’s informed my perspective that says, follow what you’re passionate about. If you really enjoy something, study it. Learn as much as you can. I think college is as much about figuring out how to become a lifelong learner. I will say unequivocally that I think the learning that I achieved, the experience I had, as an English major, has helped me with communication, which has been a true differentiator for me. Throughout my career, when you look at the roles I’ve played, early on, even now, I’ve always been in that fertile ground between people process and technology. And I think having a skill set to communicate in writing, to communicate verbally, has enabled me to build bridges, and as a result, drive progress, whether it be on a project or an initiative within an organization. So my guidance is follow your heart. If you’re passionate about something, learn about it. Once you get into an organization, you’re going to learn a lot of technical skills and knowledge. So I don’t get too caught up. I think liberal arts is a great foundation that enables you to work in in broad leadership roles.
Jody Lowe
Mike You have three daughters, one of whom was making a college choice and will be away before you know it. What is your advice to them about their education? And might you encourage them to consider financial services?
Mike LaMena
I mean, I think it goes back to what we just talked about following your passion, right? I think if you’re interested in something, you’re going to pour yourself into it and your growth as a learner, as a leader, will come through that. I think the other thing that I’ve really learned as we’ve started to explore the process with our oldest daughter is to find the right fit. I think we all get a little enamored with chasing the name schools, the ones that we all know about. And the more I’ve looked at the process with my wife and daughter, you got to find the right fit. I think I’m going to encourage them to follow their passions. Would I love to see them be in or explore financial services? Absolutely. I think this is a great profession, that often gets kind of lumped into this bucket that gets negative connotations from Wall Street Wall. When I look at financial planning, financial services, wealth management, what we do, we’re having a huge impact on people’s lives every day, we’re helping people understand their dreams, their hopes, their fears, their concerns, and then creating paths that allow them to live the lives they want and achieve what they want. Not just financially, but in living a life of purpose. I think the narrative around financial planning and wealth management really has to pivot. We’re having huge impact on people’s lives. I would be proud if any of my kids wanted to get into this industry. But most importantly, I want them to do whatever makes them happy and what they’re truly passionate about.
Jody Lowe
If you could go back and redo your own education and your own formative years? What are the skills that you use most now where you could have most used a tutor? What are things that maybe you didn’t learn that you should have?
Mike LaMena
I think a couple of things. One, I think probably the skill I’ve developed that I utilize the most is communication. I see a ton of people that are incredibly smart, have unbelievable ideas. But when they’re put in a situation, and they need to articulate that, they struggle. I think communication is a great skill set that I explored, developed, both written and verbal. As for a tutor, I wish I had an ongoing tutor to constantly keep me up to date in the area of technology. There’s just so much velocity of change, it’s hard to stay a pace with all the change that’s occurring. And it’s across everything. You can look at one little sliver like social media, and you feel like you got your arms around the platform. Then I talked to my 12-year-old daughter, and she tells me I’m not using right application anymore. I wish I had somebody who constantly helped me understand how technology is evolving and helped me interpret how it’s going to impact our business and our lives.
Jody Lowe
It’s so true, and it’s only going to accelerate. You lead 14 offices in eight states. And there’s some challenges with leading a team. You have to spend a lot of time on the road, though maybe not so much in the last 12 months. When we start getting back to normal. I know you’re probably going to be on the road quite a bit. In your prior role at Hightower, you were commuting from New York to Chicago each week. Can you talk a little bit about that commuting life and connecting across various geographies? How do you use that time and stay productive and maintain some semblance of family life?
Mike LaMena
I think one thing that I’ve definitely not been good at prioritizing is my commute. I’ve had some long ones, and some difficult ones. You know, early on in my career, I would say that I was relentlessly trying to optimize every minute I would get on a plane, I would immediately connect to Wi Fi so I could stay connected and check email. As I’ve kind of experienced more travel and commuting over the last decade especially, I’ve pivoted completely. I look now at getting on a two or three hour flight as an unbelievable opportunity to disconnect, to pull back the lens and focus on big picture strategic topics that I’m not able to do on a day to day basis when I’m constantly interrupted. If I’m on a train or on a plane going to visit some of our offices in different areas of the country, I use that time to reflect on what I want to accomplish with this visit, because it’s so easy to get trapped in the tactical day to day activities. Because once you do get in an office, you’re pulled in in 1000 different directions, you bump into people, and it’s an important conversation you want to have, but it’s not one that was planned. So your day becomes less yours. I really look for those times where I can truly disconnect and just focus on the bigger picture.
Jody Lowe
I love flying for that reason to have the ability to sort of focus on something or read something and not be interrupted,
Mike LaMena
It was liberating to actually say, I’m not going to get on WiFi and I’m going to disconnect for the next two hours and use that time for the things that I need to get to. The other thing you asked about was work life balance. I’ve traveled a ton — every week for more than a decade, away more nights than I was probably home during the week. What’s enabled me to do that is, one, my passion for this businesses that I’ve been a part of building. Right? If you don’t have that, you can’t sustain it. And the second thing is that I’ve been fiercely protective of my weekends. I’m at every soccer game, every lacrosse game, every track meet. For a period of time while I was traveling, I was still coaching my daughters’ teams. That’s a huge source of energy. For me, it reenergizes me. It gives me a completely different perspective that allows me to come back on Monday fully recharged and focused on what I do. Now, you know, you always have stuff that pops up over the weekend. But I’ve really learned that balance is about when I’m at that soccer game, I’m fully present. I’m engaged. I’m not looking at my phone or looking at email. If somebody truly needs to get me, they’ll get me. But I need that to be able to recharge my batteries.
Jody Lowe
You mentioned a little earlier, the role of communications. You know, as a firm, we’ve been really grateful for the time that you’ve spent sharing your vision. It helps us do a better job and understand what it is you’re trying to accomplish. But can you talk about how you view your efforts to stay connected with your people and make yourself available at townhall meetings. You’ve also addressed industry issues by writing some thought leadership. Communications is a key part of your strategy. What are your objectives there?
Mike LaMena
For me, it’s fundamental. When I look at the role of a CEO, my job is to assemble an amazingly talented group of people, provide them clarity on our vision. And that includes what values are we going to live with, operate with and embody on a day-to-day basis. What are the goals that we’re trying to achieve as an organization? This approach works whether it’s a corporate enterprise, a philanthropic organization, my kid’s soccer team, in a religious organization. I’m a big believer that a leader’s job is to bring really talented people together, give them clarity on what we’re trying to accomplish and how we’re going to go about doing that in terms of our cultural beliefs and values. So communication is essential. It’s constant. It’s communicating to large groups. It is communicating one on one. I’ve learned over time that it doesn’t matter how many times you think you’ve delivered a message with clarity, you need to do it more. And you need to do it in a personal way. It’s not enough just to say, this is what we’re trying to accomplish at 50,000 feet as an organization. It’s how do you make that come alive for the new hire in operations? How do you make that come alive for the experienced leader of your marketing function? How do you get everybody in the organization connected to a shared vision for why we do what we do, the impact that has, what our goals and objectives are, and how we as a team are committed to operating together on a day to day basis? So we’ve done a lot of work to be very purposeful about our goals and objectives and our cultural beliefs and values. And I think I view that as a big part of my job.
Jody Lowe
We always talk about the value of repeat, repeat, repeat when you’re trying to get a message across. You can’t just say it once. You need to say it in multiple ways, and you need to say it in a way that is salient. And certainly we’ve seen that with you, Mike, the way you’ve revisited many of the things that are important, especially about the fiduciary approach that your firm takes and the values that you’re trying to translate to your clients. So let’s take a quick break here now and then we’ll come back and explore some more questions about Wealthspire and that vision for your company. Again, we’ve got Michael Mena, CEO of Wealthspire Advisors.
Jody Lowe
We’re back and we’re talking with Mike Lamena, CEO of Wealthspire Advisors, an RIA that now manages more than $12 billion for clients across the country in 14 different offices. Mike, you’ve shared the very touching tributes that you’ve heard from retiring advisors, about what they hear from their clients after their career ends or as they’re approaching retirement. Many veteran advisors have talked about the genuine impact they feel they have had on multiple people’s lives. You’ve talked about the broader value people can find in financial services, and specifically, from being a financial advisor. How do you recruit and develop advisors who, at the end of their career, get this kind of touching tribute?
Mike LaMena
I think it starts with what is our business about. We’re in the business of understanding the unique needs of every one of our clients, what are their hopes, their dreams, their fears, their concerns, and then helping them define a plan to achieve those goals, realize their dreams, mitigate their fears and concerns, and really just live a better life. So in doing that, you can’t fake passion. So when we think about recruiting, you have to genuinely find people that really want to do that work. You can have all the technical skills in the world, relative to cash flows and planning and investments. But if you really don’t want to build that trusted relationship with an individual, be there in their time of greatest need, be there when they’re celebrating success, then you’re really not wired for this industry. And I think because that’s our approach, because we become that deep, trusted quarterback, that person that a client relies on in their time of greatest need and in their greatest happiness and success, it’s not surprising then when you get to the end of a career, people are telling an advisor, you had a huge impact on our lives and that could be helping somebody be comfortable and ready for retirement, it could be helping somebody who’s worried about, can I fund college education for my kids? It could be somebody with significant means or a ultra-high net worth individual understand what it’s all about, like, was my life worth it and how do I transition not only wealth to the next generation, but the values that shaped my life. So, you know, I think we hire people that are genuinely passionate and interested in in getting to know people and building that trust and being that resource. I’ve learned over time, you just can’t fake it. If somebody gets into this business because of the money if somebody gets into the business, because they want the visibility, it’s not sustainable. If they truly like working in a service business that’s all about building trust with people, then you can have amazing careers and have a huge impact. We actually had an advisor named Mark Schwartz recently retire. And I talked to Mark on the day of his retirement. And he was he was overwhelmed, almost emotional with the number of people who communicated the impact he had on their lives. And this is a guy that every day lived service passionately for his clients. And still, you know, it had an impact on him to see how much people articulated the impact that he had had at various points in their lives. To me, I don’t think that narrative gets told enough about our business. Again, I think we get lumped into this idea that we’re big financial services Wall Street. The reality is, every day, we’re having intimate impact, real life impact on individuals. And that gets me motivated every day to come to work.
Jody Lowe
You talk with great passionate about this team of yours and cultivating these folks and developing their careers. How did you learn to lead people and who was your best example or mentor in that regard in learning how to be a cultivator of others?
Mike LaMena
I think the thing that gets me most excited, is cultivating and developing teams. And that gets down to the excitement, I have to take an individual or group of people and help them achieve more than they thought they could originally accomplish. And that’s when you push them out of their comfort zone and they realize they have a whole new ability to lead. It’s an individual performer who for the first time starts to manage people, and realizes they can have an amplified effect on the business, not through their own actions, but by guiding and leading others. I’m passionate about leadership in all aspects of my life. When I think about why have I chosen to go down that path. It’s partly that I love to see people achieve more than they believe they’re capable of. That’s probably why I coach my kids in sports as well. But when I look back at how I ended up on this path, when I was 15 years old, my first job was working in a grocery store in upstate New York. I was a bagger of groceries. As the cashiers would scan the items, I put them in the bags and wheel them out to peoples’ cars. I worked there all through high school, and I quickly became a front-end manager. I became responsible for other people. And in some instances, as a 16, or 17 year old, I was managing people that might be 35, 40, or 45 years old. When I look back, what that allowed me to understand was, it was about the energy, the passion, the values I was bringing to that role. It wasn’t about, we’re the oldest person here, so you’re going to manage the function. And I think that just emboldened me throughout the rest of my life to embrace opportunities to lead. I’ve been fortunate to work in a number of different places with amazing, amazing people that were there counseling me and coaching me. I’m still evolving. I don’t think anybody’s figured out exactly what leadership is. But if you’re passionate about it, and you’re willing to be humble and learn, it’s a lifelong learning opportunity. I make mistakes every day. But I know I come back and try to learn from those and apply it in being better. When I think about some of the mentors, when I was at Morgan Stanley, one gentleman sticks out. He was a managing director that I worked for. Jerry Kamara. The thing that sticks with me about what Jerry did was he saw more in me that I saw myself. And he recognized that I was playing it safe and he wanted to get me to go outside of my comfort zone. I knew the functional area and was the deepest subject matter expert. And he actually pulled me out of a role and dropped me in a role managing Morgan Stanley’s National cashiering function. And I was the least knowledgeable person in every meeting that I was in. But it forced me to recognize that what I brought to the table wasn’t technical expertise, it was my ability to lead, my ability to understand the objective, communicate it to people, to mobilize and motivate people, to help people make decisions that they have the technical ability to do but didn’t feel the confidence to do it. And it changed the trajectory of my career because it allowed me to embrace being surrounded by people that were the subject matter experts and the technical expertise, so much better than me, and embrace the fact that my job was to be a leader and…
Jody Lowe
…enable them to do their jobs.
Mike LaMena
Exactly. When I look at my career, if I hadn’t gotten outside my comfort zone and taking that job, when the opportunity to work in Hong Kong came up, I would have never done that. So every time I’ve gotten pushed out of my comfort zone by leaders that encouraged me to do that, it emboldened me to take bigger risks and be more open to change. And I think that just opens up the opportunity set. I see a lot of people, young people, that get too narrowly focused and on a linear path. And when you put those blinders on, it’s incredibly limiting. And to have people that at various points in your life, push you into that space where you’re outside of your comfort zone, that’s where growth really occurs. And when I look at those formative stages in my career, it was always when you get outside of your comfort zone, you’re forced to grow in ways that you didn’t imagine. I tried to do that, as a leader, I try to look at somebody who is getting a little comfortable in their role and say, alright, how do we change it up? How do I push you in a different way? How do we explore a new aspect? It’s probably also, one of the things that has attracted me to financial services, and specifically wealth management, every day is different.
Jody Lowe
It’s so true.
Mike LaMena
I mentioned in the in the beginning of this podcast that I was always envious of people who knew exactly what they wanted to be. I saw multiplicity. What I’ve found in wealth management is that I can embrace roles where it is all about breath. It’s about diversity, every day is different. I go from having a conversation about compliance to a conversation about our investment philosophy, to a conversation about technology to, a client service issue, to a marketing issue. I love breadth, and I’ve found a platform where you can navigate that. I’ve encouraged a lot of younger people to do this. Even if you think you’ve figured it out, you probably haven’t. So embrace opportunities to be exposed to new things. I’ve actually been reading a book called Range by David Epstein about why generalists triumph in a specialized world. There are so many things in our lives that push us into a very narrow space, and you feel the pressure to be such a deep expert in a specializing world. The book is great because it talks about people that can bring cross functional ideas. You get a whole bunch of technical experts in a room, and they oftentimes can’t come up with a solution. But somebody with a completely different skill set from a completely different area comes in and has a unique perspective that reframes the problems and you and you create a different solution. I mean, I think about it with my daughters. There’s so much pressure. I’m a basketball player, so I need to do basketball. 24/7, every month of the year. When I was a kid, you had seasons, you played basketball, and then you played soccer. Every coach wants you 100% dedicated to their sport. Some of the best athletes have success because they’ve worked on multiple disciplines.
Jody Lowe
You know, we’re readers here at the Lowe Group, and we’re all generalists. And I do think the markets and investing is a complex system, right. So to be a generalist and be able to sort across disciplines is required. If you’re too narrowly focused, you can’t possibly deal with this complex world. That makes a ton of sense to me. Let’s shift a little bit to talking about the team in terms of diversity. You’ve talked about diversity on your team, on many levels, in terms of gender, and race, obviously, those are the topics that people often think of when we say diversity. But you also talk about diversity of experience. And again, it kind of gets back to that you don’t need just business majors who studied finance. You’ve recruited people from various backgrounds, a psych major, attorneys, lots of different folks are on your team. Can you talk a little bit about not only that diversity of experience, and again, talk a little bit about the success you’ve had with gender diversity in sort of a male dominated industry.
Mike LaMena
Our industry has pivoted. It’s a very expansive level of engagement you have with clients, right. A lot of that is very emotional, when we talk to clients. And their greatest concern might be the failing health of their parents. We have families where they’re worried about the kids, and they’re also worried about their parents. So increasingly, our business is personal. And it’s emotional. So when I think about the skill sets required, yeah, you need to be a good financial planner. You need to understand how to navigate asset allocation and manager selection, but you also need to have an emotional skill set. So we’ve had a lot of success recruiting people from different backgrounds, people from psychology backgrounds, and that advisor is bringing a very different lens to a relationship than somebody who got a CFP, a Certified Financial Planning degree or finance degree. They both can be very successful. The most successful financial advisors have both IQ and EQ, and they’ve got a strong ability to engage and build trusted relationships. Because when you think about it, when you do really detailed planning work, you got to get a client to open up. If they’re guarded, and they’re not exposing the rawness of their hopes, their dreams, their fears, you’re really not getting a lens into how to build the best plan to address their needs. So relationship management skills are crucial. We’ve had a lot of attorneys that get a great technical skill set from that legal background. And then they deploy it in our world. And they bring knowledge relative to trust and estate planning. When you have multigenerational ultra-high net worth individuals with complex estate planning issues, that legal background is huge. So I think our industry needs to do a better job of telling the story of the opportunity for people. If you’re passionate and interested in this, we can help you with a lot of the technical skills, and develop those over time, if you really want to help impact people’s lives, by helping them have a true plan and figure out how to navigate the financial aspects of their life in concert with the values and what they want to achieve more broadly. A life of purpose. I think this is a great industry. And we are fortunate to have a much higher percentage of female advisors and leaders in Wealthspire than a lot of our peers. Diversity is something that we continue to work on. We have areas where we’re better and areas where we’ve got a lot of work to do. It’s something we focus a lot of energy on. And I often think well, why is that? I think part of it is once you get some very successful women advisors and leaders in your firm, when you go out and seek new talent, that talent sees someone. So if I’m interviewing a talented undergraduate, when she comes in for the interview process, if she sees a whole bunch of successful women, younger women, more experienced women, advisors, functional leaders, office managers, that individual either subconsciously or very consciously sees herself being successful in the organization. If she’s only interviewed by middle aged white men, it’s harder for her to see that this is a place where I can have success. If you look at somebody from a specific ethnicity, if they come into our organization, and they don’t see people that look like them, that they can relate to, it’s harder for them to envision themselves being successful. So I think to some degree, success begets success, once you start to have some more successful women within your organization, in leadership roles as senior advisors, running functional departments at various ages, once you have that, it becomes much easier to attract that talent. I think the challenge for us and for our industry, is how do you get more diversity in because once we start to do that, then the flywheel starts spinning, and people will see individuals that that they can relate to, that give them the confidence that they can be successful in our industry. And that’s just breaking down barriers. Getting greater diversity within our industry is something I’m passionate about, we need to do more, we want to do more. It will ultimately benefit our clients will benefit our industry. I’m a big believer that the more diversity you bring to the table, the better solutions you create, the better outcomes you create. And the stronger you become as an organization,
Jody Lowe
Here here! I’d be remiss in not asking you about growth. This year, you completed the acquisition of Stratwealth, a significant addition to your growing firm, and you focus both on inorganic growth through acquisitions as well as organic growth. You’ve just recently named Jim DeCarlo chief strategic growth officer focusing on helping all of your team think about how they can grow their practices. Why is growth important? And, you know, how do you plan to execute that growth vision?
Mike LaMena
You draw back the lens a little bit and you say, well, what’s our business about. Our business is all about talent. We’re not manufacturing where we’ve got millions of dollars invested in equipment and intellectual property. Our business is built upon the talented people that go up and down the elevators or in and out the door, on a daily basis. We have to be in a situation where we continue to attract, retain and develop the best talent in the industry. If you’re a growing enterprise, that enables you to attract talent, because they see the opportunity to professionally grow their careers, they see the opportunity to grow. So from my perspective, you have to have growth to keep people excited and engaged and career pathing. We do a large summer internship program every year. Last year, we pivoted to virtual, but we had 10 interns across the country. We offered a number of those individuals permanent jobs, when they graduate from college. If you’re not growing, you can’t do that. You don’t have the dollars to fund the intern program. Or you can fund the intern program, but then you don’t have the ability to offer new people jobs. What we want is to constantly be in a situation where people are moving through a clearly articulated career path. We’re constantly back filling with new talent being injected into the organization. And you have to have sustainable growth to maintain that kind of model. Right? Otherwise, you end up developing really talented people and they have to go elsewhere to fulfill their career aspirations. So growth is essential to the long term success and also enables us to reinvest in the business in an incredibly competitive landscape where you need to invest in technology and resources across the spectrum. Growth enables you to do that. It’s one of the reasons why I’m so focused on scaling the Wealthspire business through organic growth and inorganic growth. Our ability to scale the business gives us more resources to add differentiating capabilities that help our advisors amplify what they can do for clients and expand the value proposition. We talk every day about how do we put more arrows in the quiver of our advisors to ultimately be able to create great solutions that have a positive impact on clients. And, you know, tying this back to Jim’s role, as we scale one of the things we were able to do was to hire Jim and have him in a dedicated strategic growth roll. And what does that mean? Jim’s job is to look at across the enterprise, work with our advisors, work with our functional leads and identify the highest conviction ideas we have to drive growth and then put resources, capital and energy behind that so that ultimately we can expand our ability to serve our clients in a meaningful way. So excited to have Jim on board. It’s going to be a real impactful role for us to have somebody who can spend all their time just working with advisors and saying what do we need to have a bigger impact on clients? And then how do we, mobilize resources, capital and people to deliver on that.
Jody Lowe
Wow, we’ve touched on so many topics here today, but I want to wrap up with a few rapid fire questions, to get to know you a little bit better and to help our audience find out what excites you so, so you ready? I’m gonna fire away. What’s your morning routine?
Mike LaMena
Cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, a few Wall Street Journal articles and then you know, some quiet reflection before the chaos of the day to just focus on how can I have a positive impact? Where am I going to deploy my energy for the day ahead?
Jody Lowe
What’s the last book you read before Range by Epstein?
Mike LaMena
The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday.
Jody Lowe
What is your favorite family vacation site?
Mike LaMena
Skiing anywhere out west. We weren’t able to do it this year obviously with all the implications of the pandemic. Snowbird, Utah. Big Sky, Montana. Whistler in Canada,
Jody Lowe
What is the snack you can’t pass up? For me it’s popcorn.
Mike LaMena
Unfortunately, I have a weakness for cookies I struggle to resist. On the healthier side its nuts, cashews, almonds, anything with a little bit of salt on it. I just can’t resist it.
Jody Lowe
Chocolate or oatmeal cookies?
Mike LaMena
Chocolate.
Jody Lowe
What’s your go to exercise?
Mike LaMena
Definitely the Peloton. I bought it a few years ago for my wife and I probably use it more than anybody, but all three daughters, my wife, we all jump on it. It’s a great workout.
Jody Lowe
Favorite movie or TV or series you streamed during COVID?
Mike LaMena
Ted Lasso. I love soccer. The premise is that American football coach goes over to the UK to coach a soccer team and doesn’t really know the sport. But it’s actually a great series about leadership for anybody running an organization and trying to create culture. It is phenomenal. Highly recommend it.
Jody Lowe
Well, thanks again for joining us, Mike. This has just been a treat.
Mike LaMena
It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me, and I look forward to talking again soon.