Alt Investing Made Easy

Sarah Florer (00:05.431)
Welcome everyone to Alt Investing Made Easy. Thanks for joining us today. Today we're very happy that we get the opportunity to interview our colleague, the founder of FBFK Law. Kyle Ferguson is here and he's going to tell us about founding a law firm and also his guiding principles, which we know in the firm is the FBFK way.

Kyle, thanks for joining us today.

Kyle Ferguson (00:36.632)
Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here with you both.

Sarah Florer (00:40.463)
Likewise.

Roland Wiederaenders (00:40.561)
Yeah, thanks so much for being with us, Kyle. And to start out with, you know, we talked about this episode ahead of time a little bit. had an email stream going on where we've been talking back and forth a little bit. And I got your specific permission to share this statement that you wrote to me that was really impactful to me. I'm 54 as an attorney and this language is unique. I think everybody will see why. So this is Kyle talking, writing in an email.

I've been given this opportunity, this platform referring to FBFK, the firm you founded in my little corner of the world to be love and light to others, not to preach or proselytize, but just to be a light, an example of love and care. The world needs more light. There's enough darkness and hurt. I want to be light energy to the best of my ability. That means having a lot of grace and meeting people where they are.

wherever that may be.

Kyle, from your life and history, where does this desire in you come from?

Kyle Ferguson (01:49.023)
Well, it comes from my upbringing. Just a little background on that. I grew up in Southwest Oklahoma and my dad who's a very strong mentor to me and guide to me growing up obviously. Very influential in my life as my mom as well. But my dad grew up very poor in Southwest Oklahoma and was a high school football coach, an English teacher and then started selling real estate one summer.

enjoyed that, had a lot of success at it early on, so then became a builder and developer in Oklahoma and Texas in the 60s, 70s and 80s. I won't get the lengthy story, but to abbreviate that, he had a lot of success in that and then in the late 80s with the real estate market crisis, he had a lot of failure in that and a lot of hurt and he was also battling cancer at the time. He was diagnosed with cancer when I was 11 and he was only 41 and then he

passed away from that cancer 18 years later when I was 27. So I grew up pretty formative years with a high degree of kind of dealing with a lot of family dynamics, a lot of love in my household, thankfully, I'm very grateful for that. My parents had a very loving relationship and I had a very deep loving relationship with them. But when you grow up in a household of an entrepreneur, and as I tell people growing up, I learned what it was like to be in plenty and what it was like to be in want.

knowing what it was like to struggle and seeing someone lose everything, including their health. And that was very painful. And it gave me, I guess, a high degree of empathy for other people going through trauma, just kind of being on the inside of trauma as a young person growing up and understanding the internal dynamic and the fear and the hurt. And then how do you respond to that? You can just respond and lean into the fear and the hurt, or you can respond and lean into love and lean into that

kind of that dynamic and that energy and looking at the positive and as my beautiful bride shares with me often is saying from her country Russia, hope dies last and that resonates with me as well. And again, so I just have a strong desire to love people and help and serve them to the best of my ability.

Sarah Florer (04:08.667)
Kyle, that's, you know, it was really when I read your email and you were talking about how your father was a man of faith. And I don't practice a religion, but my grandfather was a man of faith and he led a very large church in Dallas for a long time or partially led it. And yet he never talked to me about doctrine or any of those things that some people need from a religion. But he lived this life of deep faith in the Christian faith.

And I reflected on it a lot recently because I think I learned so much from him in the same way that you're talking about, just with that, the attitude that he had towards life in general, the empathy that he had for everybody. There weren't a lot of agendas that he had other than to approach people with empathy. He was the minister of pastoral care. He used to joke about he did birth, weddings and funerals. That was his specialty.

Kyle Ferguson (04:40.718)
Cough

Sarah Florer (05:07.547)
you know, all the milestone events of a life. But I really thought, you know, it's really wonderful. I can completely relate to having this sort of guiding figure. And I think there's a place for those people, also those men in history, where they may have come from a certain generation and a generation that experienced things lost, like even from their parents, the depression, those kinds of things that we have a different experience of these days.

And so it's a real blessing to have somebody like that kind of back in your corner when you're not, know, not even maybe they're out there somewhere rooting for you, you know. So I really resonated with that part of your story when you shared that with us. So thank you.

Kyle Ferguson (05:54.872)
Thank Thank you. Yeah, you know, again, I think that just gave me a love for people. think growing up in that paradigm, there's a lot of good in that paradigm and also some pain in that paradigm. Growing up in the Christian church, I people are people and churches consist of people. And, you know, as you read from that statement from me, I'm not, calling isn't necessarily specifically, I don't feel like I'm a preacher and should proselytize, but what I can,

Sarah Florer (06:03.386)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (06:06.927)
Yeah.

Kyle Ferguson (06:24.351)
lead and teach. again, in my corner, small corner of the world is serving people, loving people. And yes, there is a place for love in business. That's not a word used a lot, but some of the better coaches in our, we've come across in business in the last 50 years have kind of brought that in in the last 30 years, the dynamic of love, we can love each other as human fellow human beings and make that a priority. And, you know, if, if you find your, your space in that and, and

Sarah Florer (06:34.575)
Hmm. Yeah.

Sarah Florer (06:45.445)
Mm-mm. Yeah.

Kyle Ferguson (06:53.675)
and apply it in business, I think it also has a lot of business success, you that now people call culture. And everyone uses that word culture. I was laughing, I read an article a few days ago in one of the law journals and interviewing a large law firm leader and talking about culture. And he kept talking about culture, using the word culture, but never really explained what that meant to him. You know, and kind of that pragmatic, that's where that love and action kind of comes out is what's a loving action to take here.

Sarah Florer (07:13.947)
Thank you.

Kyle Ferguson (07:22.027)
What is a proactive thing I can do or if I'm reacting to a situation, how can I react? Understanding the people on the other side of this, even if they're attorneys who are very stubborn and I have to manage and lead and direct and steer and they can drive me crazy. have to remember I'm probably driving them crazy too and having that level of empathy and open-mindedness, so to speak, and helps me respond in love. And I feel like be a better leader. I'm still trying to get there. It's a daily striving.

Sarah Florer (07:50.203)
Hmm.

Roland Wiederaenders (07:51.367)
Well, Kyle, I mean, you've got some really distinctive branding with FBFK and there's a distinctive aspect of that branding known as the FBFK way. I think after learning more about this, I see completely how these values you've been expressing are expressed in the FBFK way, but I think our audience should hear from you. Tell us more about what the FBFK way is.

Kyle Ferguson (07:51.521)
That's my paradigm.

Kyle Ferguson (08:07.181)
Thank

Kyle Ferguson (08:21.431)
Yeah, for sure. And it's something important to me. A lot of firms and lot of businesses have general statements that kind of define their culture. And that is a big mantra the last 10 years we're hearing more of it, even in the law firm circles about culture, culture. And what does that mean? And most organizations define it from my perspective at a very high level. Everyone wants to say they have honesty. Everyone says they have integrity, do the right thing, care about people.

Big statements, you might see five or six or seven or eight big statements a company has. And that's wonderful. And those are great words and thoughts and ideas, good ideologies to ascribe to. For me though, I've always been, okay, where's the rubber meet the road? What does that mean? What does that mean in action to treat each other with respect and dignity? What does it mean to be responsive? What does a culture mean? All of these big global statements, how do you apply those?

You know, and everyone has a different framework and a different perspective and background from whence they come. responsive, be responsive to our clients and our attorneys and our team, what that means to me, someone else has may have a very different understanding of what that means. You know, be responsive to someone else might mean if I respond next week, that's great. You know, so for me responding same day, hopefully within a few hours, that's something I strive to do. And when I miss the mark, I'm frustrated about it because I want.

You know, in our fast moving society, not to go too far down the trail on that, but in our fast moving, fast paced society with texting and, you know, 30 second most attention spans, people have an expectation. We all have an expectation and we all have a response when that expectation is not met and it's usually not a positive response. you know, it's, it's so again, this, that's just one example of why from my perspective, it's important to be very

Sarah Florer (10:05.156)
Hmm.

Kyle Ferguson (10:13.427)
specific about what defines our culture, what behaviors actually define our culture. And I'm very grateful that I learned about this system. It's not novel to me or to FBFK, but you know, our 26 fundamentals that we have, we had a coach guide us through that and help us with that and an organization. And it was, it's, is core to, what FBFK does. And it's been core to our branding externally is that first we care about people.

It's like I tell our team all the time and if you know of really good human beings, people that you enjoy being around and you want to spend more time with them and they happen to be excellent attorneys, please let me know because we'd like to talk to them and bring them on our team. We want to work with other good people. is short, so what are you going to do with it? How can you apply love and meaning and purpose in the context of a profession and a work? To me, that's a daily striving that I want to evolve.

and promote within our organization into the best of my ability, share with other leaders and help them and their organizations to share the same thing, not just use the word culture. What does culture mean? Where does the rubber meet the road?

Roland Wiederaenders (11:24.977)
Well, I really relate to that, Sarah. I'll just briefly interject because I know that when I'm emotionally connected to what I'm doing professionally, I perform at a higher level. And I think that that's, you know, it's in our self-interest to design systems in our business that really allow us to connect with what we're doing at that level, because in the end, it's going to result in greater financial performance. We want to...

Kyle Ferguson (11:31.393)
Thank

Roland Wiederaenders (11:52.913)
have fulfilled employees for sure, but in the end, people that are fulfilled in the workplace are gonna make the business more money.

Kyle Ferguson (12:01.837)
Absolutely, absolutely. And they're going to have more joy. know, mean, fulfillment comes with joy, some purpose. It's not just about making money. You know, at the end of our, every rich person ends up with the same, who dies ends up with the same thing. They're dead. You know what I mean? Yes, people say, oh, generational wealth and protecting their families and their generations. And yes, there's a lot of value in that. But I think to me, there's more value in creating generational wealth and creating legacy.

Sarah Florer (12:04.879)
Yeah.

Kyle Ferguson (12:30.304)
by helping other people find and achieve their purpose. Creating generational wealth isn't truly finding purpose. It's not making the most money. Each of us could share stories about very extremely wealthy people that we know who are miserable and unhappy. We all know that. Can having wealth make your life easier? Absolutely. But you can also be very wealthy and be very miserable. So from my perspective, helping people find purpose and fulfill that purpose and find joy in that, that is a better...

That's a better, I hate to the word calling. It kind of hearkens back to maybe my religious upbringing, maybe calling, it's a better thing to do, I guess, in life, is helping others find and fulfill their purpose and finding joy in that. We're all in the same boat, ultimately, and so helping each other is, to me, it makes my life more fulfilling.

Sarah Florer (13:08.997)
Hmm.

Sarah Florer (13:18.064)
Yeah.

Sarah Florer (13:23.567)
You know, do you want to, it's interesting because 26, I mean, first of all, just to speak to the culture point, I really appreciate that you articulated that because culture is such a big word and such a small word at the same time. And, you know, I've lived all over the world and I am in a marriage. My husband is from a completely different culture for me. And in the end, my observation after 20 years of living this way, but also I grew up with a lot of people from a lot of places, because my parents were also expats.

Kyle Ferguson (13:27.67)
Thank

Sarah Florer (13:53.167)
but is that in the end we're all people. And so you can use words like cultural differences and reasons to be divisive, but actually what you need to do is exactly as you have done with the FBFK way or the 26 points, however many points you want to rely on, is identify the things that keep us in common. know, show me a person in the world that doesn't want to do a number of those things on that FBFK way list. Maybe they don't know how to do them, maybe there are certain cultural things that

prevent those from being expressed in the way one person would want them to be versus another. But in the same, mean, in my observation, like everybody wants to live a satisfying life in a certain way, take care of their responsibilities, you know, if they have children, ensure their health and success to the extent that they can. This is kind of like a basic human thing. So it's really nice to see that brought into the law firm environment, especially where there's so many stereotypes about lawyers out there all over the world.

particularly in the US, because we have such a TV culture about legal dramas and stuff. But one thing we've noticed doing this webcast and talking to people is how nice it is to get to dispel some of those myths. It's even been recommended that we do a series of myth busting about lawyers, it humanizes us. And even when you do really sophisticated or complex work or high stakes work,

Kyle Ferguson (14:56.684)
Right.

Kyle Ferguson (15:12.32)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Florer (15:19.297)
Arguably, there's no work that's more high stakes than other work when it comes to the people whose work it is, right? Especially in litigation, right? That this is where we get a, what we try and do here with, you know, talking about being authentic is how, you know, we're people too, and we want to live a fulfilling life and these, to counteract that narrative about lawyers or bloodsuckers or, I have a magnet on my fridge that, from the Globe Theater that says, let's kill all the lawyers, right? From Shakespeare.

Right, you know, it's not a new theme. So it's really nice that you took the time, because the FPFK way, and I don't know if we want to go through every single one of them in this session, we're going to do a separate project with Katya about it. But maybe it would be great, what do you think, Roland, to ask you to speak to three or four of your favorite, or three or four of the ones that you're thinking about right now, assuming you don't have a favorite.

Kyle Ferguson (15:49.13)
Right. Right.

Yeah.

Sarah Florer (16:18.235)
And see what you... Yeah, exactly. Well, that's the beauty of having 26 is that you always have a good choice, a selection. But it is something that obviously you can't work on 26 things at once in your brain at all times. And so, you know, maybe you have something you're thinking about these days that you'd like to share with us sort of the origin story, like how they make the list.

Kyle Ferguson (16:18.572)
It depends on the week or the month I have favorites.

Kyle Ferguson (16:41.76)
Yeah, for sure. No, I can share probably the two, maybe even three that come up for me on a pretty regular basis that are top of mind for me personally. One is just be responsive. As someone who's, for me, when I was a young lawyer and was building a book of business and wanting to have some of the autonomy that comes with that, viewed any time I got a call from a client or I got a project from one of the partners I worked for,

You know, I viewed it as there were 5,000 lawyers within five miles of me who would love to have this project or love to have this client and I needed to be the first to respond. I wasn't going to be the smartest, maybe not the best, but I was going to be the quickest, the most rapid to respond. So they knew that I cared. Honestly, that's really what it is. They just knew that I cared. mean, a lot of people, know, they're, yeah, I mean, they're paying us a lot of money and our clients are paying us a lot of money and we should care about them.

Sarah Florer (17:18.875)
Hmm.

Sarah Florer (17:26.587)
I totally get it. Yeah, I completely understand.

Kyle Ferguson (17:38.06)
And an analogy that I've used, I stumbled upon, I don't know, eight or nine years ago, which really resonated with our team. It resonated with me and is, you know, imagine you go to the doctor and it's a Thursday afternoon and the doctor says, yeah, I don't know, this scan's interesting. I don't think it's cancer, but let me ask a colleague of mine and figure out what, this is and I'll get back to you. What's the first thing you're going to think? One, you're going to think I'm dying. You're going to be, fear is going to settle in. And when fear settles in,

It brings a lot of other emotions with it. You're going to be worried. The next thought you're going to have along with that is you're going to get back to me when. You want a doctor to say, I'm going to call you by noon tomorrow. If you don't hear from me, here's my mobile number, text me. Here's my nurse's mobile number. Here's my front desk number. If you don't hear from me, text me. You will hear from me. Because the last thing you want to do is sit through the weekend worrying about it. Yes, of course, what we do is not healthcare related.

Sarah Florer (18:23.044)
Hmm.

Sarah Florer (18:30.97)
Right.

Kyle Ferguson (18:35.243)
It's not life or death necessarily, but it's no less important at the rates that we charge and as expensive as lawyers are. And even though FBF case considerably less expensive than most of the other large firms we work across from or work alongside. nevertheless, it's still expensive and we have to ask ourselves, would we pay for that? And if we, if we were, what would we want? You know, for me, I want to know that the person I'm paying cares about me. You know, if I know they care,

Sarah Florer (18:37.435)
Bye.

Kyle Ferguson (19:02.387)
I'm going to and they have empathy and they care about what they're working on and they value how much they're charging me, then I'm going to feel a lot better paying them. I'm not going to, I'm going to feel a better paying them. I'm going to want to pay them quickly. I'm going to want to take care of them because they want to take care of me. So it's building this nice reciprocity. So that's, that's the B responsive. Sorry to go down that rabbit trail, maybe a little too long. Another one, another one that we use a lot is a team. And this is really gets to the team. Cohesiveness is debate than a line.

Sarah Florer (19:10.703)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (19:19.226)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (19:23.342)
No, no, that's great.

Roland Wiederaenders (19:23.417)
That's good.

Kyle Ferguson (19:31.839)
That's a big one for us. And it's been a game changer for FBFK over the last eight, nine years that we've had our FBFK way and really kind of writing down what our core behaviors that define our culture is, is debate and then align because we're going to have disagreements. We're going to get frustrated with each other. We're going to get mad. Roland, Sarah, you are new to FBFK and you're going to get frustrated with me. You're going to get frustrated with each other. I'm sure you have.

Sarah Florer (19:43.995)
Hmm.

Kyle Ferguson (20:01.036)
Key is how do we handle it? Do we take our ball and go home? Or do we lean in and say, hey, I don't like this. We're going to debate this. We're going to argue it. But then we're going to put our swords down, so to speak. We're going to line, even if it's your solution. And I'm going to, OK, we'll do this. I do it all the time with our team. If I don't agree with something, OK. Had it happened yesterday. At the decision point, a couple of team members said, here's why. said, OK, then we're going to pass on this.

Sarah Florer (20:19.707)
Mm.

Kyle Ferguson (20:28.619)
opportunity because they did not want to do this. And from my perspective, the debate and the line also helps me as a leader better hone my ideas and my concepts. I want that as a leader. I want my team. does me no good to have a manager or a leader within the team who just rolls over. want them to push back, but I want them to be willing to let me push back without fear. And that's why the debate and also that's why I use that phrase a lot. Let's debate and align because I want to tell the other person, yes, though I'm the CEO.

and responsible for running FBFK, I want you to feel comfortable engaging with me and debating with me, argue this with me. But then let's align and let's move down the road and help each other. Let's not sandbag. If I don't agree with your decision, I'm not going to dig in my heels and say, yes, I agree, but then work counter, not help or not lean in or not provide. I'm going to support that decision 100 % and lean in to do everything I can to make that decision successful. Even though it's one I disagreed with, that is debate and align.

And that's a very important thing because what people will do if you don't have that, hold that space for that, what you'll have is people, significant percentage of people will then gossip. They'll want to go to other people and complain and they'll dig in their heels. They won't help make it successful. They'll fact that might even proactively undermine it. So that's why we have everyone agree. We're going to debate then align. And as a leader, from my perspective, I have to be willing to step back and be okay with the decision that I disagree with.

You've got to allow your leaders to make decisions. If I try to steamroll everyone's decisions, I don't, I'm micromanaging. So debate, then align. Another one, and this is, we evolved our, it's now kind of buried, this isn't really the title in it, but it's, I call it treat each other like our chosen family. Be respectful, treat each other like chosen family. That's a big one to me. I know everyone has a different paradigm with family and each of you, I think, had good families. I had a wonderful family, but that's not the case.

You know, over the years we kind of framed that one, reframed it was treat each other like chosen family. And now it's kind of embodied within our, you know, treat each other with dignity and respect because we are human beings. And even if we get frustrated and the clients pounding on us and putting, we've got to treat each other internally, like fellow human beings that we're all trying. We're all really trying to do our best. You know, my job as a leader is to create an environment and create space for everyone within FBFK.

Kyle Ferguson (22:54.603)
to excel to the best of their ability and to provide them everything they need to excel and to provide them a platform where they can debate and align with each other, provide them a platform where they can feel like they're cared about. And that's hard to do as you grow. And I'm still striving to learn how to do that better. Anyway, those are a few three that hopefully that's some background. they're all, mean, all 26 have tremendous value, but those three are ones that I tend to think about the most.

Sarah Florer (23:21.013)
You know, I once heard it said that managing lawyers is like herding cats. You know, I guess it's good to have this debate model because you're not going to get away with not having it. You know. Yeah.

Kyle Ferguson (23:31.913)
Very smart cats. Yeah. Very, very smart cats. And they're gonna debate. Yeah, you might as well just say this is part of who we are. Yeah.

Sarah Florer (23:43.565)
Yeah, yeah. Well, it probably results in some good solutions because when you flesh out different points of view and that's part of empathy, right? Just figuring out what you weren't thinking about. know, you don't know what you don't know.

Kyle Ferguson (23:56.597)
Exactly. want that. Yeah. And that's what I, for me as a leader, I've got a lot of blind spots, you know, I mean, I'm grateful to be in this position and I want to be a good steward of it and a good steward of the lives at FBFK and the communities we serve. And I don't see everything. I don't see most everything. I'm naive to a lot of stuff. So I love having other voices come in. And, but if you don't give people space to do that, to say, Hey, I disagree with you. think that's a boneheaded decision.

If you don't give people space to do it, they're not going to do it. And then you're just going to be making your own decisions. And that's not effective. know, and I want, again, this isn't, FBFK isn't my firm. It's our firm. You know, it's our, it's like you asked me before we started how to introduce me as was your colleague. I'm not boss. I'm not, I'm part of this just like you are. I just have the obligation of creating the vision and hopefully leading to it to the, you know, do it, definitely leading it to it, to the best of my ability and making mistakes.

Sarah Florer (24:40.869)
Hmm.

Kyle Ferguson (24:52.234)
I ask for lot of grace from our team on a pretty regular basis. As I tell them, I've never been the CEO of 100 attorney law firm, much less a, who knows, maybe 200 attorney law firm someday. I don't know. See where we go. So I'm learning on the job. So I ask everyone to have a lot of grace and I try to do the same with them.

Sarah Florer (25:02.651)
Mm.

Roland Wiederaenders (25:11.079)
Well, you know, I think that that's all really good. what one thing that I really want us to make sure we bring out is talking about the firm. And for all we know now, it might be a family law firm or some immigration law firm. We really haven't said anything about essentially what FBFK is, but Kyle, we want to hear about that. We want to know how FBFK is related to a podcast about alternative assets.

Sarah Florer (25:11.291)
Yeah, screw it.

Kyle Ferguson (25:28.202)
Yeah.

Kyle Ferguson (25:42.635)
So FBFK is a little over 20, formally I think 23 years old now, but technically I guess a little over 20 years old. I started as a transactional attorney in Dallas doing mergers and acquisitions and securities work. Typically I'd lovingly refer to 33 act work, private offerings, private placements, things that you guys are very familiar with. Started my career doing that and...

evolved.

total employees, full-time employees within FBFK and across four offices, Plano, Texas, North Texas, Houston, Austin and Orange County, California. And each of those offices is growing and obviously very grateful for each of you being joining our Austin team and very excited about what we're doing and you're gonna do with us and the opportunity to help and serve you. As I said, it's an honor to be here and it's an honor to be able to work with such fascinating and interesting.

people is you guys have some really neat backgrounds and I'm very excited about working with you and getting to know you both. But FBFK's three main legs really are corporate transactional, commercial litigation and IP. But we've again really become a full service firm with bankruptcy tax, estate planning. We just added oil and gas practice in May, very excited about that and looking to grow that. And we've got a couple of other locations that we're looking at probably doing over the course of the next

12 months. We'll see how that evolves. those that we're looking at right now would be in Texas. you know, it's kind of wherever the market takes us. And as I said, my desire, my passion is to serve other lawyers, which is pretty funny because the first, I don't know, 18 years, 15 years of my law practice, I avoided other lawyers like the plague because for the reason, Sarah, that Shakespeare maybe felt they just lawyers were weird, really smart people.

Kyle Ferguson (28:05.959)
And I was among them, obviously, and it was just a weird, I just didn't, none of my personal friends in my private time were attorneys. But as I evolved and in managing, I had this epiphany, I don't know, maybe some years ago, this is very difficult profession. When you sell your time for a living, and so the way you make more money is selling more of the resource that you cannot reproduce or get back. That's stressful.

Sarah Florer (28:15.163)
Mm.

Kyle Ferguson (28:34.046)
Even if only on an unconscious level, that's stressful. so, you know, I realized, and then I also remember back when, right after I took the BARDs, passed the BARD exam in Texas, you're required to take a substance abuse class because where they tell you that substance abuse is so incredibly prevalent among attorneys in the legal community, in the bar community, that you need to be aware of this and here's tools. And I'm like, wow, this is a tough business. And all of these lawyers,

are just human beings. All of these lawyers just have needs just like the rest of us. They just happen to be in this profession that is the practice of law, but they have the same needs a truck driver has. They have a garbage truck driver, a golfer, a professional football, basic core same needs, community, all these other basic things. I thought it kind of evolved my thinking and I wanted to provide an opportunity to serve lawyers and create a safe space where lawyers could work, be eminently successful.

and evolve themselves. that doesn't mean, and I've had to learn this too, that doesn't mean we're all going to sing kumbaya and I'm just going to be friendly and just smile. It also sometimes means being my high school football coach. As I've shared with people, it's being on that 10th, 100 yard wind sprint in August and 101 degrees in Southwest Oklahoma. And you've got two more to go and you fall down and you're throwing up in your helmet and the coach comes and picks you up and says, you got two more, go, keep going.

Sometimes it's that, that's that coach, but you push through those things and then you're proud of yourself because you push through those things. So I view my role as kind of being a, to the best of my ability, being a coach and I'm still learning. I'm good at the nice side. I'm not good at the pushing, sometimes the hard side. I'm trying to learn how to do that well. anyway, FBFK is a full service firm and our clients tend to be middle market.

companies, middle market entrepreneurs. have a passion for entrepreneurs and so that's how the firm's grown up. But now we've got big companies as well and we want to serve them with great care and honor and respect the opportunity, the trust that they put in us and do a good job and really be a business partner to them. That's the goal is we want to be a business partner to our clients.

Roland Wiederaenders (30:52.029)
Well, from a securities law standpoint, you know, that's the area that Sarah and I are practicing in a lot. But one of the selling points was, you know, focusing on the mid market, but being able to do everything that the bigger firms can do up to and including an IPO. I know getting to know our team now, I have confidence that we could do that. And that's what really inspired Sarah and I to want to join FBFK is

Kyle Ferguson (31:08.009)
Absolutely.

Roland Wiederaenders (31:20.175)
working on some of these bigger deals that require it, a team. And, and, that's, that's really what you've assembled at FBFK.

Kyle Ferguson (31:29.245)
Thank you. Yeah, no, that's, and that was always my goal. I wanted to have a lot of different practice areas that I could offer and serve the clients and communities that, that I had the honor and privilege of being a part of and what I wanted to be able to serve them. You know, we refer things out when we need to and that's, you know, if that's in the best interest of clients, but you know, I'm very, again, very passionate about people and I want to be able to serve them. And what's cool is now we have this size and all these different practice areas.

So we have the opportunity to serve wonderful attorneys like you in your practices. you can serve, again, it's it's it's kind of trickle down effect. There's a lot of opportunity by having more, more people with, you know, wonderful areas of expertise who happen to be really, really good people and lawyers too. such as yourselves.

Sarah Florer (32:11.909)
Thank you. It's been a fun week this week, Kyle, to hang out with Dan a little bit. Roland got to spend a little more time with him before. And today I got to really understand and get to know Jacob a little bit more. And he's such a lovely fellow and I'm really grateful for the quiet support I didn't know we were getting until now I know.

Kyle Ferguson (32:17.426)
Awesome.

Kyle Ferguson (32:30.579)
Awesome.

Roland Wiederaenders (32:39.197)
So just to...

Kyle Ferguson (32:39.529)
man, gonna meet so many, you you haven't mentioned yet our one secret weapon at FBFK. We do have a secret weapon and his name is Super Nate. And everyone you ask anyone at FBFK, what's the best part of FBFK, they're gonna say Super Nate. He runs our IT team and he and Eric Ackerman run that team and Nate's full time in our offices in Plano. And he is just an absolute superstar. And he is our, he's the one super power.

Roland Wiederaenders (32:51.674)
yes.

Sarah Florer (32:53.241)
We know Nate.

Yeah.

Sarah Florer (33:05.571)
It's so great.

Kyle Ferguson (33:08.837)
One of a few, but he is the core superpower that we have. So we call him super Nate. I think good luck. He's a little quiet, but I think that'd be great. great idea. I think you should. He is the epitome of our culture, by the way, every one of the things that we do. He lives in walks and breeze it and is a model of the FBFK way and all 26 fundamentals, which as you well know, not a friend point this out to me about a year ago. Those fundamentals are just good.

Sarah Florer (33:12.591)
Maybe we need to get super Nate on here. What's it like working with lawyers? Yeah.

Yeah.

Sarah Florer (33:30.138)
Yeah.

Kyle Ferguson (33:38.567)
If you live your life this way and your marriage or your partnership, your personal relationships, your kids, your family, just your friends, if you just live that way, you're gonna have a pretty good fulfilling life. Those are kind of the ground rules. If you do that, you'll have a good life.

Sarah Florer (33:51.163)
Yeah. Well, actually that brings me to, you know, we've been talking for a bit and brings me to a question I usually like to ask anybody that we interview and you can answer as much as you want. But, you know, to come up with, to be a leader, to be a person, to be a professional, to live this life, we all kind of have our personal mottos or personal practices that help us maintain ourselves.

We work a lot with people in the commercial real estate investment area and pretty much every one of them has a really busy entrepreneurial life and they have certain practices that they do or certain like teachers that they might respect and follow some of the principles of. And so I wonder if you have anything that you'd like to share about, on the personal side about, know, for example, I meditate every day, Roland meditates every day.

sometimes do journaling and things like that. And mostly I just try to be a good present person, but it's not always easy as we all know. But is there anything you'd be willing to share about that?

Kyle Ferguson (34:56.925)
Just some personal practices for me. I journal every morning and every evening. It just kind of helps me. That's a practice I started a couple of years ago and it's been huge for me in terms of just kind of writing down my thoughts. And the first thing that I do, the journal that I write in, I'm a huge proponent, a fan of the five minute gratitude journal. That five minute journal literally takes five minutes and it's just literally starting the day in the right mindset. It's easy to get frustrated about a lot of stuff and so when I'm forced to sit down and...

Sarah Florer (34:59.322)
Yeah.

Kyle Ferguson (35:25.351)
Some days it might be as simple as saying, I love the color of the sky because it's a really pretty blue. I mean, lived on a bad day, finding something to be grateful for. usually, yeah, I'm a big fan of the gratitude journal. I also write down and I've become a big fan of this with the help of my wife of really kind of thinking about and praying and manifesting for what I want with some level of specificity.

Sarah Florer (35:35.383)
I know. I do gratitude journaling too, yeah.

Kyle Ferguson (35:54.193)
And I grew up in that paradigm, but never really applied it and literally writing it down. What are specific things that I want to achieve? And I've learned in that process that most people, most of us don't even really ever think about enough to even write down what we want to accomplish with our lives, what we want to happen in our lives. So that's been a good practice for me is writing down every day. It's often, it's very repetitive, but I'm reminding these are my goals. These are the things that I want to achieve.

And why I want to achieve those. it's anyway, there's a really good journal for that, but that I write in every day morning and evening. And I also have a meditation practice. I'm not as diligent every day, but I'm getting better at that. it's, know, some days I go in waves, but that's huge for me, calming my mind. Another thing is kind of getting out of my head and into my body, so to speak, by working out.

Roland Wiederaenders (36:48.828)
Mm.

Kyle Ferguson (36:49.913)
I like to lift weights because it gets my mind right. And it's funny, at the end of the day, I would suspect half the time, one of my top three, like what were the good things that happened today in that five minute gratitude journal? One of the things I'll, I had a great lift workout. It's just funny. just, that is so, that is meditative for me. Just being able to lift, not thinking about, just working out and stressing my body and I'm having to think, okay.

Sarah Florer (37:04.719)
Mm.

Sarah Florer (37:08.699)
Yeah, I understand.

Kyle Ferguson (37:14.585)
How much of a break do I need to take between this set? I'm not thinking about what's going on. I'm just literally in my body and that's huge for me. It gets my head right. I tell people I don't work out to get big or any of that. Not that I am, but I work out for my head. Keep my head right. Yeah.

Sarah Florer (37:27.119)
Yeah, I completely understand. Yeah.

Roland Wiederaenders (37:30.301)
For sure I can say the same thing, swim and lapse at lunch time. come back and my afternoon is set, so I can for sure relate to that.

Kyle Ferguson (37:36.839)
Yeah. Yeah. Huge for me.

Sarah Florer (37:37.221)
Yeah.

Sarah Florer (37:42.683)
Thanks Kyle, Roland, anything else you want to address?

Roland Wiederaenders (37:46.045)
Yeah, no, was just, we always kind of like to give an open-ended invitation, you know, anything about the firm or yourself that, know, just really a concluding statement or anything that we've left out, we want to give you a full chance to speak.

Kyle Ferguson (38:03.577)
Well, thank you. I've said a lot and, you know, again, for me, it's I think a big push for me is this where am now is really learning to be a better coach, a better leader, a better manager. And I'm grateful for the opportunity with FBFK. And that's something I'm really striving towards to make our culture better, to make our team better. We've got a wonderful culture, but, you know, I use the phrase often in our team that's it's a constant evolution.

and you guys will see it in this team, we're constantly evolving, opening to change. I don't have, none of us has all the answers figured out and the answers that works today may not work tomorrow. So how do we evolve? How do we pivot? Do we have an open heart, open mind? And the core foundation, the first principle of all of it is serving people to the best of our ability. That's the core foundation. That is the first principle is serving people well.

Roland Wiederaenders (38:59.613)
God, sir, I think that's a great place to wrap. What do you think?

Sarah Florer (38:59.931)
Thunder.

Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Thank you for your candor, Kyle. Really, it's so wonderful. And genuinely, if there's ever another thing you want to get on, we'll talk about it. I mean, we'll have lots of opportunities to work out content, you know, in one context or another as directed by Katya. yeah, but see, that's the first rule of marriage.

Kyle Ferguson (39:05.64)
you guys.

Kyle Ferguson (39:18.3)
you

That's right. That's right. She knows best.

Kyle Ferguson (39:27.944)
That's what she tells me or reminds me. Exactly. That's what she tells me a lot. She knows best. So she's usually right.

Sarah Florer (39:30.357)
if we need a new way. It avoids a lot of conflicts. But thank you so much for your time too. I'm starting to get a feel for how busy you are and you live a life across many time zones. Thank you for inviting us to join you and your firm and really looking forward to being a part of this journey.

Kyle Ferguson (39:40.622)
Exactly, exactly.

Kyle Ferguson (39:45.65)
Thank you both.

Kyle Ferguson (39:52.936)
Thank you.

Thank you. It's an honor. Thank you both. I'm very grateful.

Sarah Florer (40:03.547)
All right. So thanks to everyone for joining us today on Alt Investing Made Easy. If you like this episode, please like and subscribe.

Roland Wiederaenders (40:11.547)
And remember everyone, take aim with your alternative investing strategies.

Sarah Florer (40:17.179)
See you next time.