Beyond the Numbers: Why Culture, Integrity, and Operational Judgment Drive Value

In this episode of Leadership Quotient, Lindsay Guzowski, CEO of The Crucible, speaks with Robert Garcia Checchia, CFO at Benzinga, about the evolving role of the CFO in private equity-backed companies and why financial expertise alone is not enough to drive value. Drawing on a career spanning operations, investment banking, M&A, and private equity-backed businesses, Robert discusses the importance of trust, loyalty, and integrity in leadership; why CFOs need to understand how the business actually operates; and how behavioral dynamics influence decision-making. The conversation also explores M&A integration, why cultural fit should come before projected synergies, and how holding firmly to your values can create better outcomes over the long term. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I got I got a call from from the leader of the company and he said, Listen, I need you to fudge some numbers here. Right. You know, that was like, okay, this is my opportunity. Am I going to be different? Or am I going to be the guy who plays ball and uh uh, you know, and and just says yes, sir, and does it, and then I said no, and I got fired. It was the best decision I've ever made.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Welcome to Leadership Quotient, a podcast by the Crucible where we explore how leadership teams and investor-backed companies are built, aligned, and scaled for impact. I'm your host, Lindsay Gazowski, and in each episode, we'll talk with the people shaping value behind the scenes, from operating partners to investors to advisors to C-suite executives about what it really takes to drive performance through leadership. On today's episode of the Leadership Quotient Podcast, I speak with Robert Garcia Checchia, CFO at Benzinga, about trust and loyalty, the academic nature of finance and investment firms, and why holding tight to your values outperforms in the long run. Robert, welcome to Leadership Quotients. So currently you're a CFO in a private equity-backed company, taking on all the mantle of leadership and strategy that that involves. But your path there, I think, wends its way through operational roles, private equity-backed roles, investment roles. And I'd love to hear about how you got to where you are today. But let's start with you know, a kid from Queens moving to Brazil.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Absolutely. Thank you, Lindsay. Yeah, this is definitely, I know it's not the cookie-cutter pathway into being an executive or or you know having a CFO role. And you know, we'll we'll get to it. Uh in the beginning, there's a lot of things that I thought I saw as as maybe a liability or a weakness, but today looking back, I see that all the you know the ups and downs and and crisscrossing the pathway are really strengths that that I have. Okay, so yeah, let's start out from the beginning. Uh I I was born and grew up in Queens, New York. When I was uh 10, my my parents came to me and said, Hey, we're moving to Brazil in a few months. Okay, so that was an yeah, uh crazy experience. My my dad was an entrepreneur and he saw an opportunity in the tech market that was uh that industry was opening up in Brazil in the 90s. Okay, so we we I got there in 97. I lived in Brazil for 22 years. Um, I moved back to the US about eight years ago. I saw, you know, I saw the company start out from uh literally a garage door all the way up to selling it, you know, selling it, managing it, selling it again to a multinational American business. So that in itself, you know, a privileged uh uh upbringing. That was an MBA in itself, you know, from my childhood watching that happen. Yeah. Um, so that was really cool. And when I when I uh uh when I decided to go to college, I always knew I liked numbers, um, you know, from from seeing everything and the challenges, um, I really liked science and physics. So I I went to study uh uh physics. And um, you know, when you when you when you graduate in Brazil, it's it's like, okay, what am I gonna do with this? I don't want to become a professor. So I hopped into finance. Okay, so uh my first my first job was I was a trainee at a private equity-backed company in Brazil, uh, the same group as 3G Capital. Uh so that really taught me a lot, okay, in business and management and and more so in how to just how to be reliable and and you know uphold yourself and carry yourself in a professional setting. We had it was a very, very competitive environment. Um, the culture is very similar across all of 3G Capital's company uh businesses, and you know, I try to I learned a lot and I bring that with me to every company, every opportunity I have. Uh sense of ownership, focus on results, focus on on delivering the best quality to your clients. That's that's you know, those are the main things that that I learned there. Um, so I spent about four years there. And then afterwards, my boss at the time went to another company. She brought me with her, uh a large multinational agribusiness company. We spent uh a few years there. Then uh uh I went into banking and consulting. I worked in different roles, different industries, both in Brazil, and then I moved to the US a few years ago, started out in uh uh uh banking consulting. Then one day I got a call, you know, and they said, Hey, we want we want you to help uh on our MA team. And I moved over because I said, Wait, wait a minute, there's something there's something interesting there, right? And I went over to work on the the pre-IPO and IPO process. Uh it ended up that we uh we got a very nice tender offer from a strategic, so we ended up selling to a strategic, but that process of being you know PE backed, then preparing for an IPO, and then ultimately uh uh uh transitioning towards integration with a strategic. That was that was a lot of hard work too, but interesting. And then from there, I transitioned over to a fintech company based out of uh uh uh Colorado, and then from there, I I spent two years there, and then from there, the last three and something years, I've been at Benzinga Financial Publisher based out of Detroit. So yeah, uh which is which is uh private equity backed, uh uh Canadian private equity. But it's so my entire career has been in finance, right? Either corporate finance internal roles, uh usually PE backed, or on the consulting side, uh uh and investment banking side. So um, yeah, that's that's a little bit of my trajectory. Um some you know, back and forth, back and forth. But today, Lindsay, you know, I want to I want to highlight that the CFO role currently is much more than a financial engineer or or just a reporting role. You know, it's it's uh if I'm being honest, that's even the lesser part of the job. The the bigger part of the job is being a partner to the up, is being an operator and a partner to the CEO and to the private equity group. Okay, so it's really you know, uh uh once you get in and professionalize and establish your calendar and your recurring processes, reporting, planning, things like that. The real challenge is okay, how and where do we need to optimize processes? And that goes, that starts with mapping things out, but ultimately today it's it's my biggest role is talking to people, aligning, drawing out, and executing on better incentives that drive the company forward. Okay, so uh uh yeah, it's been a wild ride, but this is the most fun I've had in a long time, and I can say, you know, no no false uh uh pretext here. It's I learn a lot from having this different perspective, but I had to be I had to start over in the sense that when I got here, I'd never worked at a fin pub. I had to really relearn uh uh from the ground up, okay, how how do we make money? What's our business model? Right, and that's not an academic exercise where you just sit down and you know review the books. It's it's really okay, who are the key people? How do we sell something? What does our contract look like? And more importantly, how do we execute and deliver the value to our customers and our clients? Okay, so that uh uh still learning, okay, by no means an expert, but uh uh it was a lot of fun learning something in-depth from the ground up.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

What stage of your journey did you get the CFA? I I have a CFA charter myself, so um, so I've been on and off.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Uh I started, it was back in Brazil. It was it was when I was in investment banking. Um, so I did level one, level two, and then and then level three. I think I finished level three because they had I finished level three during during COVID. So I did level one and level two a few years before I moved, and then I stopped for a bit. You know how banking is, right? So that was yeah, passing level two was already an endeavor, right? Because I was sleeping three hours a night, right? But then uh uh level three I did in the US. So it was, I think I got the last one maybe eight years ago when I moved. So yeah. Um the CFA, yeah. No, I think let's let's touch on that if if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

I think yeah, please.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

I regret, you know, I only found out about the CFA after, you know, I was already a few years into my career. I think the CFA is awesome. And if I had known about this in college, I definitely would have taken the test in college. I think you know uh um it there's a lot of depth to it. And I think I just think it's an amazing way for you to fast track your understanding into finance, into into be it corporate finance, be it any other tangent area there. So it's been uh uh it's been very useful for my career. And even you know, uh uh many times now I don't you know operate some I've you don't use everything on your day-to-day, but you go back, oh wait, I remember that, you know, and then you just study up a little bit and it all comes back to you. Um the one I gotta say, one thing that you know from my career when I started and I thought it was just lip service was, for example, the behavioral finance prospect of it, right? Yes. Today it's probably the piece that I use the most because when that clicked, wait a minute, people are not rational beings. We don't operate to maximize our utility function. We have different incentives, different biases. I apply that daily to my work, even to my personal life. Okay, so that's something I learned a lot from the CFA and I apply a lot in all the all the other uh sections as well. But uh uh it is very, very uh uh um it's very good for you to get involved and learn more and expand your business, your your knowledge in in the finance field. I'm a part of the CFA New York Society. I attend you know as much as I can, but uh uh I would definitely highly recommend it. No, they didn't pay me anything to say this. Uh on the contrary, I spent a lot of money with CFA, but it's it's a it's a worthwhile endeavor.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Well, I I appreciate that. I mean, it's in order to get to CFA highlight something about tenacity and ability to put yourself through long hours outside of regular work and things of that nature. But yeah, to the point of behavioral finance, that's speaking my language because it uh I was a quantitative sociologist who decided she wanted to get into finance and private equity. And so pursued that in part through the CFA pathways. Uh but that behavioral finance is really core to a lot of uh why private equity-backed businesses work and don't work uh in various scenarios. Because as you noted, people aren't necessarily behaving in a spreadsheet rational way. That doesn't mean they're not behaving what seems rational to them in the moment or for other considerations, but accord to whatever the investment thesis was that was put forward. No, your CEO might do something that seems really strange. Or you might pursue an an acquisition because your competitor was going after them and you don't want to experience that fear of loss or missing out, or even the private equity fund spending as much time as they do with companies that are underperforming rather than maximizing the companies that truly could return the entire fund. It's there's a lot there that I think everyone should spend more time with, but we could go off onto um to that area forever. Tell me a little bit about the lessons you learned from your dad being an entrepreneur and especially doing so in such a dynamic environment that he was able to grow in Brazil in you know the 90s, basically.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Absolutely. Yeah, you're gonna bring me to tears here, Lindsay, reminiscing on the uh those those lessons. But it's it's uh uh I learned a lot from observing, okay, not from sitting down and hey, do it this way, do it that way. But it was a lot more on uh uh watching how he treated people in general, not only externally, okay, his clients, his vendors, uh uh even people uh uh you know in the same office building, but mostly internally, okay, because uh I think the main lesson that I learned from him was you have to treat people, you have to empower them, uh uh, you know, trust but verify, because they will take care of the business for you. You can't be everywhere at once, but you so what you have to do is you have to create more eyes and ears and instill that sense of uh uh uh that sense of ownership in people. And what's more is um loyalty. Okay. I saw there was one of there was one of his partners that he he got, you know, he's he helped build the business, he helped, you know, for many years, and then he got he got a serious illness a couple years later, like five, six years later, where he was severely debilitated. And there were people who said, Oh, you know, this guy's not working, get rid of him, he's he's not, you know, he's he's holding us back. And no, and his decision to no, we're holding him here. He may, you know, loosen the handle on some things, but there's no world in which we're gonna let him go or we're gonna, you know, diminish his his uh uh his share, his ownership, or or things like that. So I think that I think that when you if you want to really build an enduring, a lasting uh endeavor company, you need to build it foundationally with with values and with ethics. Okay, so that means you know, in his case, it was loyalty. It could be, you know, there's there's other companies where okay, we don't value this, we want to, we want to, you know, prioritize uh maximize our short-term potential to do a deal or something. But I believe that in if you want to have an enduring legacy, an enduring lasting company, you need to instill ethics because that's gonna drive all the business decisions along the way. Okay, it's uh uh uh being honest, upfront, transparent. I've seen times where where he would go to, hey, listen, I you know, cash flow is tight, we cannot pay you on on the the agreed upon date. Oh, but this uh yeah, but guess what? I'm paying my my employees first, you know, I'm paying my vendors after that. So I, you know, this is a tough decision, but that's why I think the leadership role is that's why you have that responsibility is to have the the difficult conversations, the difficult decisions. So I saw him, yeah, treated up front. No BSing, no, oh, you know, turn off his phone, don't pick up the you know, don't pick up the messages, and oh, when he calls, pick up and hang up. Oh, I was at the doctor's. It was always up front. Hey, listen, I have this, this, and this issue. We're going to pay you, we recognize this, but it's going to take some time, right? So I've seen him go, you know, ups and downs. Every business has their ups and downs, but I feel like that was a big lesson that I learned was treating people, empowering them, uh trust but verify, uh, um instilling a sense of ownership. I think that was a big one. And uh uh uh loyalty and what's more is sharing on the one when you guys have an upside. Okay, so I saw a lot of profit sharing during the good years and the tough years, hey, you know, buckle up. We we we're not gonna be able to distribute bonus or dividends or whatever it is this year, you know. So those were those were things that I brought with me throughout my entire career. Uh a big one that I learned afterwards, right, um, is communication. I think we we we discussed this a little bit beforehand, but in my career when I started working at at the PE backed company, I I scaled the the ranks quickly, but I hit also hit a ceiling very quickly. Okay. I was really good technically at analysis, but I wasn't a good an effective communicator. Um, so I had to go back to the drawing board, you know, and and read and learn how to be an effective communicator. So I and at that point I did take a lot of you know memories and lesson reminiscing back and and how I saw effective communicators, and I would end try to emulate them, you know. So that's that was another big lesson I had.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

And so it sounds like you know, you were taking away from this both from observing your dead, but also in uh your early experience lessons of trust, loyalty, directness, um empowerment, authenticity, and an intellectual curiosity and drive to get better. How did those play out as you then went further in your career? Were there elements of that that you were able to draw on that you know it really differentiated you from others?

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Um I didn't yeah, I let me tell you a story, and and this this is one really opening up here. So uh uh there's one story, Lindsay. Um, I'm not gonna name where, but I got I got a call from the leader of the company, and he said, listen, I need you to I need you to fudge some numbers here, right? And you know, that was like, okay, this is my opportunity. Am I going to be different? Or am I gonna be the guy who plays ball and uh uh you know and and just says yes, sir, and does it, and then I said no and I got fired. Okay, yeah um and yeah, I got fired and I was you know shaking and desperate and everything, and it was the best decision I've ever made because from that when it was the you know, the number one at the company, the number two, who was my boss at the time, saw that and he got me, you know, my next gig, which was a lot higher in terms of ranking than than it was at the time. So it was uh uh you know, it was it was yeah, I went through a period of desperation and and oh my god, I can't believe this happened. To this is the best thing I've ever done because I you know I I I I fell upwards. So uh hot take here. I don't know if you if you uh uh if you want to edit this or not or cut it out, but anyways, it uh no names mentioned, of course, but this is something that I I believe that to answer your question. When you when you hold yourself to to your values, it's always better in the longer run. Okay. And this isn't only with me. There's a couple of people around me that I saw them do something similar and they stuck to their truth, and I I saw them excel in their uh uh capacities in the same way. You may not know it, you may not realize it immediately, but you it will it will become clear, you know, eventually. So I think that that's that's that's a big take too, you know, and it's it's uh uh because at the end of the day, Lindsay, listen, it's it's all we're we're we're all people, we're all human, and it's about dealing with humans who are irrational beings. You know, you want to have you wanna have a uh a bad MA deal. It's doing MA and an MA deal based only on cost-cutting synergies, okay. You have to you have to really gauge, you know, what what how what's the culture? How are these companies going to integrate together? What what's you know, they could it could be destructive interference, right? So I feel like the the the values, the culture is it plays a big role in when you combine any business, when you're doing any business, right? So that's that's one thing I wanted to mention. Throughout my career, it's been scary, you know, doubtful at many times, but I gotta say it has been fruitful holding to my values. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Yep. Yep. And I think that it's when you think about having that sense of integrity and holding your values, it's so critical, especially in fast-moving environments where people sometimes can unintentionally uh get sloppy or get themselves into a challenging scenario. And raising your hand and saying, okay, we have to take a step back. We have to be honest with ourselves about what where we are and pushing forward from there. Um, it's also critical when you're managing someone else's money to be as much above board as you possibly can be.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Absolutely. No, it's it's uh um you're either honest and truthful or you're not, you know, it's it's very different than oh, shining the best light on something. Yeah, of course, you you gotta, you know, the storytelling plays a big role, but to to straight out, you know, go against what you believe in and telling something that's not truthful, that can never happen. Okay, uh, at least in my view. Because once once it's broke, once trust is broken, Lindsay, it's it's gone. You know, it's it's so it's it's uh uh that's uh you know that's a that's a deal breaker for me. And I treat I treat everyone on my team and and even people at the company who aren't on my team up front, direct, you know, polite, of course, right? But but I'm not the type of guy who's like trying to play game theory, you know, oh I'm gonna say this, so he responds that, and I'll gotcha moments, right? I I prefer to, you know, let's solve this together. And you know, because I feel like when you build bridges, people not only respect you more, but they also they want to bring you solutions, they want to bring you solutions and not only problems and issues, you know. So again, I think you multiply efforts. Um so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Um let's uh change gears slightly. Um The critical aspect of being a CFO in a private equity backed company is that you're not only helping to be a great business partner to the CEO and facilitate moving things forward, but also to uh represent some of the private equity fund's interests within the business, provide a good line of communication, and be someone who can provide them the financial information they need. What skills and traits have been most critical for you in uh that dual role?

SPEAKER_00 22:42

When you're when you're the CFO of a P-backed company, you need to be an operator. Okay? Yeah, you need to understand. Because if you don't, I'm telling you, no matter the industry, no matter the size, the the operational team will uh uh obfuscate and will pull the hood over your head. Okay, so if you don't know how the business model works, how you generate revenues and how you deliver, you will lose detail. Okay, because if if you're just gonna talk financial jargon, you know, up and down, that's that's not that's not helpful for the PE group. Okay, you have to learn the operational aspects of it and translate them into that second language. Okay, so it's it's uh uh I'm not you know, you it you're not gonna become an expert overnight, but you will have to get you know, roll up your sleeves, get down and and really understand what's going on. And a lot of things, you know, it it's for the engineering team, you know. When they when I started attending some engineering meetings, I thought they were talking Greek, you know, why? Well, because I was looking at our PL, I'll say, wait a minute, what is this huge spend that we have on the engineering team? You know, what is all this about? And then when you talk to them, no, no, we need all of this. So when you attend when you start attending the meetings, you're like, they're talking Greek. I don't know, maybe they do need all of this, right? I don't understand anything at all. So little by little, right, you start, you know, untangling everything, and you and it's when it starts making sense, then you can start, you know, oh, what if we did this differently? What if we did that? And with the mind frame of a processed approach, you know, sales, engineering, all of this, execution. Uh uh, then you can start really understanding that language and communicating more effectively to your uh PE sponsor. So uh being an operator, number one, okay, that is the most important skill set, and it's uh uh you know uh work in progress. I'm always learning. Uh by no means am I an expert yet, but uh you know I thrive to learn a lot more. Number two, effective communication. Okay, that's you know, you have to you have to be the one that either in certain situations you're gonna raise the temperature with the team or lower the temperature with the team. And um where do you shine the spotlight to your PE sponsors? Okay, that's that's very important too. So uh um we spoke on being an operator, communication. The third one is it's a completely different skill set when you're you know at your investment banking job, and you know, you're you're there in uh midtown New York and everything is fine. It's completely different to be an operator, it's a different skill set. Okay, you have to know you're working with going back to CFA with uh uh um asymmetrical information, right? You don't know the whole story. It's uh you're gonna have to do mosaic theory, you know, to fill in uh uh a picture with smaller pieces of of information, and you're gonna have to make decision business decisions, very important ones, based off of limited information, and you're gonna be held accountable to those. So um but I'm I'm saying this because the third one is um you have to know what's important and you're gonna have to let some things pass. 80-20 rule. Okay, that's that's a big one. And uh uh uh I want to say another one, which is you have to really say no to a lot of things to say yes to bigger things. There is no lack of ideas within the company to oh, let's grow revenues, let's start a new product, a new business line. Hey, it's probably you know, we did the study, we did the business plan here. It is profitable. We see a positive uh uh uh IRR on this project. Yeah, but it's not enough, it's not above our threshold of your your uh uh opportunity cost. Okay, so the first one we said was be an operator, communication, knowing what's important and differentiating. So 8020 rule, uh uh saying no to good things to say yes to bigger and better things. I think those are those are the big takeaways that I have here. That if you have these, it will make your life easier and it'll make your P sponsor a lot happier too.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

I think those are great lessons for all private equity backed CFOs. Um as we're wrapping up our conversation, I'm curious as to how you think about understanding in acquisitive environments, understanding uh that team fit, that understanding of what you're bringing on. You mentioned, you know, is this going to be a good uh integration, acquisition, et cetera? And uh one of the things that I work on with our clients is understanding what do these teams look like and can they work together. But uh from the CFO's seat, what are you thinking about with regard to not just the numbers, but the actual process of putting everything together?

SPEAKER_00 27:34

That's that's a great, great question, Lindsay. And I gotta say, um, you know, I I'm very proud of this. I started the HR role, you know, at the company. I had to learn, sit, sit back and learn a lot of this, not not HR and the function of payroll, but uh strategic uh uh uh acquisition of people, retention, incentives, things like that. And and it it's it's fascinating uh for me. And bringing my experience from doing deals, um, when you look at, for example, synergy synergies, right? Uh uh cost and expense synergies, those take the backseat to everything. I'm not saying that it's not important, it definitely is optimization, right? But it takes the backseat. The number one thing that I look at is really if we we feel that together there's going to be a fit where one plus one equals three, right? And we've we've done uh uh in the past, we've done even personal personality profiling to understand if if if things match, okay. But the big the big one that I like to start out with is having a clear set of rules and and a clear uh transparent deck, you know, a deck of cards. So hey, we're we're gonna we're gonna merge whatever it is. Maybe one is is buying the other, but we want to retain this founder for two, three years for an earnout, whatever it is. How is he gonna fit in the new role? You know, so hey, who is he, what's his reporting structure? What powers of decision did he have before when he was running his business that he's not gonna have anymore? Okay, and we have we have to from the get-go uh uh establish ground rules. Okay, hey, this, this, and this is gonna change, you know, and sometimes there's you know, there's uh uh family-run businesses operate sometimes in a different way, and maybe it's not it wouldn't work that way. So the number one thing that I look at when when uh uh potentially doing roll-ups and and from my MA days was how does the culture fit, right, so that the businesses can continue and be more valuable together. That's the number one uh uh uh uh item I look at. Secondly, okay, what is you know potential for new revenue development? So cross-selling, upselling, touching different audiences, touching different geographies, that's the second uh uh uh uh part, which is you know it uh uh very important too. Um the third one would be the costs and optimization synergies and things like that. Okay. So even if I had zero, you know, of course it's gonna depend each case, but even if the third one was not material or relevant, but I had a good structure on the first two, you know, I I think that that suffices for me. But if you can have the third one and not have the first two, that's that's sort of my point.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

Well, and I think that's where the stats show that a lot of these don't realize the values that are projected in those spreadsheets because you don't have the first two, and therefore you can't realize the third.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Absolutely, absolutely. I've seen even when it wasn't uh uh, you know, we did a roll-up once and we had three companies, okay, and we worked on a huge uh uh uh we we were establishing a central uh uh services uh for shared services, right? This was back in Brazil. It failed miserably, okay. Even though there were three companies in the same space, why did we fail? It it was a lot of money wasted because the way the cut three companies operated on billing, on collections, on on payments was completely different. And even something as as clerical as accounting, as you know, uh uh APAR, we failed right at the time because we didn't account for the differences in culture. Okay, so that's uh uh uh and the differences in culture within the integration. Okay, I think you I think it has to account for you know a little bit of each one, but uh having the ground rules set in advance and and running with those. So org chart values, uh what the structure looks like, uh uh corporate governance, rules, you know, of of how to operate decisions. Okay, this this type of decision has to go to a committee, right? Um, that sort of thing has to be established from the get-go. So yeah, those those are lessons I've seen, uh, where I've seen things fail because of basic lack of engagement from one or both sides.

SPEAKER_02 31:47

Yeah, that's it's highly consistent with everything that we see here and are reported on. Um, so what's next for you for Benzinga? Where are you where are things headed in terms of your skill in career development?

SPEAKER_00 32:02

That's that's a really cool question. I I'm very uh uh very proud to answer this. Is we are uh turning Benzinga from a Fin pub to a Fin Tech. Okay, so uh yeah, it's really cool. So we've uh uh we've our CEO was our CTO, okay. So we're uh uh nothing more logical than put the technology officer in in uh uh the main seat, the main executive seat. And that in itself has been a huge shift in culture, okay, in uh prioritization. We've we started a data science and and analytics team that didn't exist a few years ago and heavily investing there. So it's uh uh what's next for Benzinga is really going from FinPub to fintech. And uh uh our goal is always the same. Our goal is to empower retail investors, level the playing field between retail and institutional investors to have the best timely data to make actionable decisions. Okay, so that's that's Benzinga's motif in life. Uh uh, we level the playing field so institutional investors don't have an unfair competitive advantage in terms of information and timing. Uh uh, and and we're we're really growing in that sense. You know, we've uh uh we've we've expanded our product uh uh portfolio, geographies, we touch different audiences. We're really, really proud of that. And for for myself, uh I want to continue being this operator, you know, that I am, CFO in title, but C A C O O at heart, right? And uh uh learning more and more about the space, the industry, and with my team. I I uh you know, not too many people to name, but the the greatest thing that I've had at this business at this job, you know, it was the people I've met and the people I've worked at side by side. They they are amazing and they deliver and they teach me so much, you know. Even, oh yeah, Robert, it's CFA, worked in investment banking, different, you know, Brazil, South America, here. Yeah, I learned so much from them. It's it's not even uh I can't even account for it here. So thank you to the team. And that's what I want to keep doing is helping people because it's it's a mission and in and my mission in life, Lindsay too, is financial freedom for people, you know, and you do that through better financial discipline, personal finances, and better investment decisions. So that's that's my my personal moat here. Personally, and that's been singing it too.

SPEAKER_02 34:31

And that wraps up today's episode of Leadership Quotient. My thanks to Robert for sharing his experience and insights with us today. To our listeners, if you found this conversation valuable, be sure to subscribe to Leadership Quotient wherever you get your podcasts. You can also learn more about The Crucible and how we're helping investor-backed companies align leadership teams for scale at thecrucible.com. We'll see you next time for more real conversations on leadership, talent, and value creation.