Episode 100: Achievement unlocked—looking through the rearview mirror

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Kevin Headland

Commentaries for general information purposes only. Clients should seek professional advice for their particular situation.

Kevin Headland

The quote “The time flies when you’re having fun”, has been attributed to Albert Einstein and Janet Jackson even has a song, “Funny how time flies when you're having fun”. Pretty much the same message and very true. You don't realize how fast time moves until it's already passed. This is why you need to take a pause. Sometimes and reflect on where you’ve been, where you are, and what got you there.

Kevin Headland

Macan Twain once said, find a job you enjoy doing. You'll never have to work a day in your life. Now, this is easier said than done, but the meaning is so true. Enjoy what you do for a living, and the people you work with is often an underappreciated contributor to your overall health. Macan and I are so fortunate to do what we do and are so thankful for the advisors, clients, and colleagues that we've come across over the years.

Kevin Headland

On this episode of Investments Unplugged, we celebrate a milestone the 100th episode. We're going to take a look back on what set us on the path to our current roles. Discuss some of the lessons learned and even offer some advice on what we would tell someone that might be interested in following a similar path. Listen on. This is Investments Unplugged.

Kevin Headland

Welcome back to Investments Unplugged.

Macan Nia

I'm your host, Kevin Headland Co-chief Investment Strategist for Manulife Investment
Management.

Kevin Headland

And with me, as always is my other co-host Macan Nia.

Macan Nia

Co-chief Investment Strategist as well. We've got a lot of Co’s going on here. But welcome back.

Kevin Headland

It's a pretty exciting episode Macan!

100th episode. It's a it's a milestone.

Kevin Headland

Who would have thought we started this, back in 2018? Going on almost seven years ago.

It was kind of a way to deliver our message, to the field, to our advisors, to our wholesalers. And it's kind of caught on. I was at a conference recently, and a couple advisors who I had never met before came up to me and said, “I feel like I know you, I've heard your voice and I listen your podcast, and I feel like I know you already”, and I've never met them before. So it's kind of a kind of a fun way to interact with them.

Kevin Headland

But, interesting enough, Macan and I don't, you know, but I've got a few stats on, on our podcast. So since we started, we are roughly at 86,000 downloads.

Kevin Headland

We average around 2000 per episode.

Kevin Headland

And-and this is where it really gets me.

You know? Wow.

Kevin Headland

We have at least a download on every continent, except Antarctica.

Macan Nia

So we have one in the Arctic? How does that work?

Kevin Headland

The Arctic is not considered a continent.

Macan Nia

Oh isn’t it?

Kevin Headland

No.

Macan Nia

Oh. I learned that. Clearly, we're not geography majors. But

Kevin Headland

Yep.

Macan Nia

This success has been very humbling. It's been overwhelming. Like you mentioned, 86,000 downloads over the past five plus years, 2000 per episode. We often record these and send them out to the black hole. So, we always feel nice when we have advisors or clients come up to us saying that they enjoy the podcast.

Macan Nia

So we want to thank every single one of you for making this a success.

Kevin Headland

Yeah. And it's fun for us, too. You know, it's. It's a good time. We enjoy it.

It's just another way that we can get our message out to, to our listeners.

Kevin Headland

On today's episode, I think we might do a bit of a look back. We want to actually, talk about, young Kevin, young Macan how we got into, investments.

What was our decision like back when we were younger?

You know, 17, 18 university.

And, we're also going to talk about some of the lessons we've learned over the years, kind of about investing and some of the things we might say to, perhaps,

young people getting into the Markets or getting to investments.

Or what we tell our own young self, when we're getting investments.

Kevin Headland

That sounds like a good idea.

Kevin Headland

All right. So I'm going to go ahead and start with, with my young Kevin story, how I got into investments. And it's interesting. I'm going way back when I started, I graduated high school in 1993.

And we had a CEGEP, in Quebec. And I think CEGEP is great. It's kind of preps you for university.

Macan Nia

Okay, so that's a proper university.

Kevin Headland

Yeah, it's like OAC, but it's like university.

Kevin Headland

You go to different schools, you have like classes. It's it's like university. It's it's essentially like it is,

but it allows you to kind of find yourself, especially at that age.

I was really into computer programing back in high school. I did video games on, you know, really old programing, so I thought I was gonna be a computer programmer and or gamer, programmer.

And in CEGEP, you actually had to go through sciences. There was a, you know, a business, stream or sciences stream. So I was going to science stream, just like you would, would if you're wanting to be a doctor, etc..

And I got stuck at organic chemistry and just couldn't get past it. It just wasn't clicking. So I changed my idea and decided, go a business and it's got a light bulb went off and I'm like, this makes a lot of sense.

This is really interesting. I really love it. And then when you go to university, of course, you gotta pick a major. You have no idea what you want to be in. You're when you grow up, you got to pick a major. And I thought back to high school again and grade ten economics class. And we had this student teacher at the time and he did a stock market competition.

So you had like $10,000 of fictitious money to buy stocks.

And, and this is before the internet.

This is how long it was. So you're actually, using Thursday's, newspaper. And this is back when all the stock quotes are actually listed in the newspaper for the TSC 300. And you have to pick stocks on Thursdays. Thursday was your buy and sell.

And I thought it was really, really interesting, you know, going back and looking at different companies and kind of like, yeah, he's the Warren Buffett, you know, invest in what you know. So of course I invested in things like Molson beer. That actually was pretty good for me back then.

Anyway. I finished second in the class unfortunately, I didn’t finish first. My first second. It was really exciting and it was a lot of fun. I thought about that when I was, starting my university career or university studies.

So I picked finance as my major in marketing as minor because I really enjoyed Marketing aspect. And lo and behold, many years later, here I am working in the industry that I actually went to school for, got my degree and and loving it.

Love this industry. I'm type person that reads fed minutes on the beach in Mexico.

Instead of some kind of other, fictional novel.

But it's a lot of fun being in this industry. I'm glad I made the decision so many years ago, and I wish I could talk to that student teacher from grade ten.

I would love to thank him for for putting me on the path to, to finance.

Macan Nia

Have you tried googling him?

Kevin Headland

I don't even remember his name.

It was 1992.

Macan Nia

That's funny. Well,

Macan Nia

I kind of similarly to you, how I got into the business was actually failure was how I ended up in the business. Like you, I always liked investing. I remember one of my first trades. Don't ask me what it was. Was in back when I was in grade six. And I remember making a lot of money for that time, and then afterwards investing in a gold company and losing it all.

Macan Nia

And I just thought the notion of investing in companies, participating in their success or their failure was very interesting. That being said, Iranian background. So growing up to Iranian parents, there's three careers. It's a doctor, dentist or an engineer. Business isn't even in it. And at the time when I was going into high school was during .com and computer engineering, electrical engineering was very popular.

Macan Nia

Persian parents consistency in a job. They were paying for my school. So they influenced me to go into engineering. I did electrical engineering, very micro right. When you're looking at circuit boards, as you can tell from our roles, we’re macro. I like looking at things from a big picture perspective, engineering and I did not mesh. Tried it out a couple years.

Macan Nia

It just wasn't working out. And at that time, I decided to make a big shift and, you know, drop engineering and start business from fresh. And what I did, I went study engineering at Western. Then I went to Ryerson for business and ended up at Ivey, Kev, I was thinking about this question, and it's interesting how your previous experiences when you're younger, you may not think that they're going to have an impact in your career, but I think back to when I was at Ryerson trying to get into Ivey.

Macan Nia

Extracurriculars were important. I was lucky enough to be hired on as a teacher's assistant for, doctor, Doctor Han. And she wrote this, thesis, wrote this thesis, and I was lucky enough to contribute to it. Got my name on it. But why, I think that's important is, our job, a big aspect of it is presenting in front of big crowds.

Macan Nia

And often I have friends, family, even advisors saying, do you get nervous for that? And I laugh because in the process of positioning this thesis, I had to, not me, Doctor Han and myself. We had to present it in front of a panel of ten PhDs. I think it was, and she took the majority of the questions, but I had never been so anxious or nervous in my life.

Macan Nia

Even now, and whenever I get in stage, I always think of that position. I think, you know, I did that. This is easy. So that's how I got into business. It was actually, failure in engineering at the time. It seemed that my life was ending, but it's interesting looking back now that that failure in one led to the success in business.

Kevin Headland

How happy were your parents when you decided to change from engineering to, business?

Macan Nia

Well that we’re gonna save for a later part. Because they weren’t, initially. But uh, we’ll talk to that in a bit.

Kevin Headland

So, the other aspect I think we want to talk about again is kind of lessons learned going back,

over the years, both our careers, through the podcast, through investments. So I'm going,

actually, as of next March, I'll be hitting 25 years in the business.

Actually, this week, as we're, so we're recording this on the Friday before Thanksgiving.

I started Manulife 22 years ago. My anniversary is essentially now, this, this coming week. So definitely a lot of a lot of years going by.

Macan, I, I’ll pitch it to you. This first question that I have you start is, what's one of the lessons that you've learned that that when people ask you, you know, kind of what would you say, to people starting out or, you know, if you were telling yourself, the business, what would you say to them?

Macan Nia

One thing I have realized is the importance and we've talked about it and nauseum, but the importance of probabilities, statistics and emotions, I think investing is a probability-based decision. I think depending on what the market is pricing in or what investors are expecting, it gauges, okay, the odds of success versus failure. And we often say when clients ask us what we think, yes, it's important, but ultimately it's not what we think.

Macan Nia

It matters what's priced in. And we have seen that really evolved in the Covid environment or post-Covid, in terms of market expectations for cuts or increases, if, if they're not met, whether there's upside or downside. So, I think one very key lesson for any investor, whether they're starting out today or whether they've been investing for years, is the ability to rationally determine the probabilities rationally is the key word there, because the other flip side of that coin is is controlling your emotions.

Macan Nia

More often than not, when the probabilities are in your favor, your emotions are working against you. The markets have sold off, let's say 20%. The odds are in your favor based on statistics. But we know when markets sell off, emotions come into play and we are all rational to a certain degree until those selloffs happen and we become irrational.

Macan Nia

So one lesson that I've learned and still trying to improve on how to become more rational, how to gauge the probabilities better. But I think successful investing is two things the importance of gauging the probabilities correctly, and also keeping your emotions from preventing you, from working against those probabilities or working for those probabilities.

Kevin Headland

It's funny you say probability, because, when I get the question kind of “what do you do” from friends and family members that that aren't in the industry, right? They’re kind of like, what's your job? I have used the analogy of a meteorologist.

Kevin Headland

And, you know, people laughing like meteorologists get a bad rep because they're always wrong.

Kevin Headland

I'm like, no, because it's always probably based. It's about probabilities of being of raining or not being or being sunny or weather. And it's based on unscientific fact. It's based on data which is like ours is. But at any time, winds can shift and all of a sudden things change and can change very quickly. And I think that's exactly kind of what we do.

Kevin Headland

Right? You have the probabilities and everything's on your side, but a piece of data comes out from anywhere and or multiple pieces of data, and it can shift. And you have to be willing to change as well and look at things you said rationally and step back and kind of say, okay, this is where I thought things were going.

Macan Nia

This is where I thought it was going to happen. How does anything change yes or no and adjust and, adjust your, your, your views. And I think that's, you know, again, murals get a bad rep. But it's, it's interesting when we see that.

Macan Nia

How about you, Kev?

Kevin Headland

So my first one is, the benefits of compounding and the, the, our industry is so focused on annualized returns, you know, one, three, five year and numbers, right.

Kevin Headland

Oh, you earned 4% annualized over three years. What does that mean? And it's so and it's sensitive. And early in my career, every major fund company had these growth of 10,000 charts. They call them mountain charts, right. You've probably seen the andex chart.

Kevin Headland

And it's it's a great way to really illustrate to a client how much money they're making.

Kevin Headland

Because percentage what does the percentage mean like tell dollars, right. I started x dollar when I have now. And the benefit of compounding is essentially why it's important. Because having that idea of not losing. And if you protect on the downside, your money grows more so. Right? If you have more money to begin to grow even in down market to protect the downside, you don't need as much money on the upside.

Kevin Headland

And I think that's key is compounding is understanding that what the angles return really means.

Kevin Headland

And I think unfortunately companies got rid of this, these mountain charts in 2008. Really, because that mountain turned into a cliff, as the Markets went down, extremely strongly.

Kevin Headland

It didn't look as good anymore. And I really think the idea of illustrating it to investors, what they're earning in terms of dollars and the benefits of compounding makes sense.

Kevin Headland

We talked about our portfolio managers all the time, talking about companies that compound wealth. And I think that's important for investors, advisors, to understand that the compounding of your money is more important or a better illustrated illustration of, the returns than just look at annualized returns.

Macan Nia

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that transitions nicely to my second lesson, in terms of what I've learned over the years, is cash is a bad decision. I think I was impacted coming early in my career, so early in my career. It was the great financial crisis. I was 3 or 4 years into the business and coming out of it, that had an impact on many investors, their psychology moving forward.

Macan Nia

And I thought that, you know, the decisions of buying and selling, getting, you know, riding an investment, selling it at the peak, going into cash and waiting for the Markets to correct. And as a result, getting back in. It's a very difficult decision. It's very difficult to do for two reasons. Number one, you have to make two really smart decisions against the Market, which is very rational.

Macan Nia

So you have to make the right decision to sell at the peak, and you have to make the right decision to get back. In talking to my first point, Kev, in terms of the probabilities and emotions, not only do I have to make one right decision to try to understand those things, now I'm making two with cash and when Markets over we have all the data right over a ten year period or five year period, ten year period when using the broad U.S. stock Market, the S&P 500, when you're up 90% at a time in any rolling period since the early, I think it's the mid 40s.

Macan Nia

Why am I even going into cash? That's a very difficult decision. I think I was much more likely to do that earlier my career. Young whippersnapper coming out of university thinking he's smarter than he actually is. And you realize that's a very difficult thing to do. So my second lesson is we always get the question, when's the best time to allocate cash?

Macan Nia

Statistically, the answer is now. So that's the second lesson I learned is cash is a bad decision. You're better off investing somewhere, whether it's in equities, whether it's in bonds. The only time that didn't work in the past really 50 years is during Covid, right? When if interest rates went up,

Macan Nia

Market sold off, when you had broad U.S. stock Market and broad U.S. bonds both down 10%, one of the only times that cash was,

Macan Nia

useful.

Macan Nia

But outside of that, which was a function of Covid, which was a generational historical event, you're better off allocating that, whether it's in stocks or bonds.

Kevin Headland

Yeah. In 2022 was was an abnormal year. Is this, you know, the worst year in history for both stocks and bonds and how many people would have been able to allocate cash at the right time there and predict that that's the problem is you sort of cash you have to know in advance or have a very high degree of probability.

Kevin Headland

They're going to be right to go to cash. And when you get out of cash and go into investments, when is the bottom? And I think that's the key you made there is it's a timing. You got to make two very tough decisions. The first one is probably a little easier, but the last one is not. And I think that's that's the key there.

Kevin Headland

Right. It's like it's an emotional be rational when Markets are down. How are we going to put the money and put the cash in. Right. I think that's really difficult as well. So it kind of leads into my, second one as well is leave the investments to the experts, leave the stock picking to the experts.
You talked about picking your stock in grade six. I too have dabbled in stocks. Of course. You know, I even did options from Nortel back in the day.

Thought I, you know, was doing well. I was I was actually in the money in options, but way into lying and, and, and, you know, such worthless, picking stocks during Covid, you think you're doing well.

And then again, it's a, it's a buy and sell decision. You're up you on a ride the wave. And I think I realized that unless you're going to do the research and really know what you're investing in and watch it, you know, essentially on a daily basis, it's just for you to think that you can do better than the experts and our portfolio managers.

I think, you know, I should know what I do well and do it well and leave the, the stock picking in the investments to the experts. And I think,

I've moved to that side and active management, you know, stock a little bit of stocks in my, in my TFSA, fund with but overall, from my actual portfolio management and my retirement fund, it's leave the stock thing to the experts.

Macan Nia

Our individual roles, whether it's us or advisors is there's investment management is one aspect of it. We have other aspects to our roles. Whereas the PM teams you have a team of anywhere between 6 and 10 individuals daily coming into the office, daily looking at individual securities, meeting company management, you have to be humble and and realistic to think that.

Macan Nia

And do I have the edge when it comes to selecting securities or do they? And you know, I think we just have to be humble and realistic with that. Now let's transition to advice because we often get it,

advice or, you know, advisors, we have individuals reach out asking us for, you know, tips or lessons you might have given your younger self or whether you would give it to your children.

Right. So Kev, both Kev and I have two young, where we each have a pair of young kids, not together individually, but what lessons I would give myself. There's a couple, Kev. Let's do one each.

Macan Nia

To start with is for me, I think the lesson. And this is hard to do as parents with two young ones, I'm realizing how hard this could be.

Macan Nia

But at some point, I think it's important for parents to just let their kids go, let them fail, let them clean up their mess. It will build resiliency. And I speak from personal experience. As I mentioned, I was frustrating to my parents. I think academically always got really good marks. I could have gotten even better marks. I had a mid 80 average, could have got more.

Macan Nia

And, you know, back and forth with engineering.

Macan Nia

I just it wasn't me. And then ultimately my parents finally said, not that we're done with you, but we're done supporting you. Go figure it out financially. Go figure it out. Go figure out what you want to do and do it. And at that time, it was extremely scary. Think about someone in their early 20s, you know, they've relied on their parents, and then all of a sudden they got to figure it out themselves.

Macan Nia

And it created a massive amount of resiliency in me Kev. Because I had to be responsible for myself. I knew that my success was only going to be because of me, and once they kicked me out or kicked me off the payroll, I started realizing, I mean, we'll talk about crappy jobs I've worked throughout my life,

Macan Nia

but then when you have to support your entire self, you know, the realist, like the reality of living and making money comes into fruition.

Macan Nia

And I would have never learned that if my parents didn't finally say, you know what? Figure it out yourself. So I think that's hard to do as parents. I know I'm seeing that with my kids right now, but I draw back on my own personal experiences and say it's okay to feel. I think a lot of people's character is not from their successes, it's how they've reacted to their failure.

Macan Nia

So that's a lesson is, you know, just let them go. It's better off that way sometimes.

Kevin Headland

That's a great point. And I find myself doing it all time. My children. It's it's-it's so hard to. You want to protect them and make sure that they're on a path to success. And you realize that they have to forge their own path for perhaps. And it's, it's good that you were able to learn that lesson at the young age and, and be successful.

Kevin Headland

Not everyone can be successful. So kudos on you for-for standing up and doing it. One of mine is don't be afraid to ask questions and, you know, some people say maybe ask too many questions sometimes.

Macan Nia

Haha, I was going to say that Kev! I was going to say you ask too many questions.

Kevin Headland

Yeah, I, I just like to know. Everything about something. And what it means is, is don't don't like, don't fake what you don't know. Because I think people will realize that very quickly it will become evident.

Kevin Headland

I've been fortunate in my career at Manulife to be surrounded with some really intelligent individuals, some great, portfolio managers that took the time to explain things to me and help me learn more about equity valuation.

Kevin Headland

Fixed income and bonds. And and took the time and I when I started, you know, working with these powerful managers fairly early in my career and, you know, they were really important, you know, well-known individuals.

Kevin Headland

And I asked the questions and they took the time I was very fortunate that they were able, willing and able to answer the questions.

Kevin Headland

But don't be afraid because you sit there and say, I think I know what I'm doing. I think I know the answer.

Kevin Headland

And if you think you know the answer, what I do is I say, here's where I see things. Do you think is is that right? And the person who I think knows more about the subject than I do will help me and say, yeah, you're you're online or know and help you out.

Kevin Headland

So I think ask questions, don't fake things. Make sure you understand what you're talking about. This is extremely, important.

Macan Nia

Our industry is always evolving. It's not physics. It's not science where it's set in stone, the principles, it's constantly evolving inflation. Today's dynamic is very different than what it was a decade ago or rates, valuation. So yeah, I think that's really important in our industry where it's constantly evolving. And if you're not asking questions, it shows that you're not evolving with with the business.

Macan Nia

Now my second one in terms of lessons and one I would definitely do with my daughters, is get a job, get a crappy job. And I know personally, listen, my parents came here from Iran before the revolution in 1978. Didn't have much back then. My dad studied medicine. So eventually, yes, but they they came back. They came from poor backgrounds.

Macan Nia

They wanted better for their kids. So they're really hesitant for us to work in high school. We would work in the summer. But I found those summer jobs and the jobs from high school to university, even that year that I was figuring out myself in university, you know me. Have I had that one year or two years where I supporting myself are not one year, but when you're trying to get back in, I had a lot of crappy jobs, and those crappy jobs made me realize how much of an education I needed, how much I needed to do something that I enjoyed.

Macan Nia

The money will eventually come, and a couple of crappy jobs I did was, some of you may remember this, story, over the years of podcasts,

Kevin Headland

I think we've talked about all your jobs you had.

Macan Nia

for a couple months was, remember, you would have those individuals that would go door to door selling those Dominos coupon cards. So for those that are millennials, you have no idea what I'm talking about. But it was basically a sheet with coupons that you would go door to door. And if you bought the package, it's like buying ten pizzas.

Macan Nia

For the price of eight, let's just say tough job, door to door. Terrible weather. I hated that job. I also worked tobacco in high school. I picked tobacco waking up at 4:00 in the morning, being on the field by 4:30. So cold that you had to put your hands on the muffler to keep them warm of the tractor, picking tobacco for a day, Kev, and your hand would be covered in tar from just naturally picking the tobacco leaves.

Macan Nia

The resin. And then I think the job that was the worst, but actually the most impactful, was when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next post engineering, that summer, I worked at a petrochemical plant. In my soul job, Kev was to paint Hazard yellow on the stairs throughout the entire, plant, which took all summer.

Macan Nia

And basically we all heard the phrase watching paint dry and how boring that is. That was literally my job. I painted these hazard yellows and watched it dry and then put the second coating on. The reason I'm putting out there. There's a lot of time spent in my thoughts which can be dangerous sometimes, but in this context it was very powerful, sat there, realizing how much I was working, how much I hated this job, how little I was getting paid, and it made me really change my ambition very quickly in terms of, okay, I have an expectation of what I want in my life.

Macan Nia

What I'm doing now is not working. You need to change. So I think crappy jobs are, you know, within reason. We don't want the working 35 hours a week during high school. But there is something to be said about getting a job. A crappy job shows you the value of a dollar, responsibility, so on and so forth.

Macan Nia

So yeah, that was that was my one lesson. The second lesson is get a crappy job. It will it will help you out.

Kevin Headland

It really puts things in perspective. I can't even compete with jobs like that. I. I was very fortunate. I didn't have to deal with any crappy jobs in my life. I did like, you know, a couple of, like, warehouse jobs, driving a forklift around. What? Nothing. Nothing. They picked tobacco in

Macan Nia

Sure you got paid. Well for those. Those are always high paying jobs. Those warehouse jobs.

Kevin Headland

I was lucky I had, I had friends. So as a benefit of nepotism, I guess, where I got,

Kevin Headland

You know, I had friends whose parents had companies, very, very lucky.

Kevin Headland

My last one, just to finish up, is, you know, I think we talked to this all time, and really, you really.

It's still this. A lot of me is show the work.

You know, when you're when you're reading information and, trying to understand it, the only the best way to do it is actually do the work, you know, run through it. I do with my kids all time. My son is- is, very, intellectual in terms of mathematics.

Kevin Headland

And he knows the answer. But of course, you got to show your work, right? You got to show that you understand how you got to the answer. And I think it's important in our industry when we're creating charts, when we see things, it's. And we got gotta. It's great to have a visual and and, you know, show it.

Kevin Headland

You got to understand it. And the best way to understand it is actually do the work. So put in the time, put the effort like you did with your jobs. You know,

Kevin Headland

it really makes you better off, in the end.

Macan Nia

Yeah, absolutely. It's that's something I know my first boss told me is don't just trust the numbers. Do the work yourself. And it can be like these concepts are complicated. So that individual could have done it inaccurately just by a different sign. Also too, it's it's complicated work. And when you're doing it in Excel on a laptop, there can be many manual errors.

Macan Nia

Right? So I was taught at a very early age by my boss, don't trust the numbers, do the work yourself so you have confidence when you're speaking to it. This is enjoyable curve. I think this I think we're all guilty of this is we get stuck in life and it's never ending. And every year just keep keeps compounding and we often don't take time to pause, take a step back.

Macan Nia

We're always looking forward right. That next when that next promotion. And sometimes it's important to just take a step back, pause, reflect on where you've come. And I really enjoyed this podcast because it kind of forced us to pause, take a step back, look back at our careers, how it's evolved, what was impactful in terms of, you know, getting there, but also there's been a lot of failures along the way too for both of us.

Macan Nia

And I keep reiterating and I keep saying this to my kids is, you know, failure is a part of the ultimate success. No one is just purely successful just from being successful. You just don't see cases of it. So I thought this was great. Looking back at our careers, time has flown by. We both been in the business for 15 plus years.

Macan Nia

But you know, shows you that you're we're doing something we enjoy. I also wanted to take time now to also thank those that were a part of the journey earlier on that aren't with us today. They’re alive, but they have moved on since. But, we have to mention Philip Petursson, our, former boss. He- we all started this podcast.

Macan Nia

Well, back in 2018, the idea, as you mentioned, was, you know, if a couple hundred advisors here are messaging great. It's bloomed into a thousand. A lot of the early success of the podcast can be attributed to Philip. So Philip, thank you. Also Peter Ward, who was in charge of our design podcasting, making this sound professional.

Macan Nia

He's moved to other part of the business today, but the success of this Investments Unplugged that's been unplugged is due to him as well.

Macan Nia

And then also our current team. So, Derrick Ortencio, Jocelyn Sutherland, Rebecca La, they deal with us on a daily basis, not only with this but with Marketing. They deserve a lot of credit. Kevin, and I are traveling. We travel probably 80 days each a year, in addition to our actual jobs. They're always on us. They have to remind us and our success is due to their resiliency, their discipline.

Macan Nia

Just their overall professionalism. So I also wanted to thank the three of them, but and ultimately everyone listening, we will not have our roles. We would not be recording this podcast if you weren't listening. We are very well aware of that. And we thank you for continuously being a part of our journey and listening to how we look at the world.

Macan Nia

Kev, any last thoughts before we sign off?

Kevin Headland

Yeah. Just again, you know, reiterate your thoughts. And thanks everyone that support us along the way. And also our listeners are, you know, advisors, investors, whoever, listening, if you have questions, comments, reach out on different podcast players. Reach out to us directly. If you think you want to have a topic, want, get discussed, you know, please reach out.

Kevin Headland

We're always looking for improvements and topics. So, please, you know, feedback is always important. So we appreciate the time and the effort and listening.

Kevin Headland

And this has been definitely a lot a lot of fun.

Macan Nia

Yeah. That's a great, I think, great spot to end the podcast. Thanks, Kev. Thank you, everyone for listening. And to another 100? Does that mean, we're working for seven more years?

Macan Nia

It's kind of a depressing thought.

Kevin Headland

I'll be more than seven years, you know, still a ways away from retirement. So as long as I'm employed, I'll be happy.

Macan Nia

Yeah, aint that the truth. But yeah. To another 100 episodes. And thank you again for listening. This is Investments Unplugged.

Macan Nia

Macan Nia.

Kevin Headland

And Kevin Headland, take care.

Macan Nia

Thanks for joining. Take care. Bye.

Kevin Headland

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Kevin Headland

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Kevin Headland

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Kevin Headland

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Kevin Headland

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