Aoifinn Devitt: Our next guest treats us to a masterclass in making the sale and notes the importance of preparation, follow-up, and maintaining visibility. He also tells a great story. Find out how to seal the deal next. I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people and their stories. I’m joined today by Tom Raber, who’s the founder and managing director of London-based Alvine Capital, a reverse inquiry solutions firm that Tom founded in 2005, with a particular focus on finding solutions for institutional investors in alternative assets. Originally from Sweden, he previously held leadership roles at Key Asset Management and a series of investment banks. Welcome, Tom. Thanks for joining me today.
Tom Raber: Thank you, Aoifinn.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, let’s start by talking through your career journey. Can you start with where you grew up, what you studied, and how you came to enter the world of investing?
Tom Raber: Absolutely. Yeah. So as you said, I was born in Sweden in the early ’60s, and my parents, my father had a medium-sized business that he sold, and in the late ’70s, we we decided as a family to move abroad. After some deliberation, we ended up in London. So that was the late ’70s. And what I did then was I enrolled in the American School, graduated in ’79, and then in January 1980, I went to the United States to study for 3 years. And it was a great thing. I’d always wanted to go to the US. I was always fascinated by the way the financial system worked and by Wall Street. I always, in a funny way, idolized America, particularly when it came to finance, but also many other things. And going to an American university was always a dream of mine. And I’m delighted that I was able to get into a few different places. And in the end, I went to Boston University and I graduated in 1983. And then if I want to continue from there, I can say that I did try to stay in the United States and I tried to go to Wall Street, but the problems were then, as they still are now, that getting a to get a work working permit in the US was very difficult. I did, however, have lots of interviews, but in the end, I ended up working for a firm in London called Credit Suisse First Boston, which at a time in the early, mid, and late ’80s was actually one of the absolutely most interesting firms to work for in London. And that’s where I joined in the autumn of 1983.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s interesting. I didn’t know that about your time at Boston University actually, but the ’80s must have been full-on that Wall Street movie, the kind of Wolf of Wall Street deal-making, high-paced, cutthroat. What was your experience of Wall Street, even though you were at the interview stage? And was London similar to that? Was it a hard-driving environment?
Tom Raber: So I went from Boston down to New York for various interviews. And for me, Wall Street and the various American investment banks were absolutely unbelievable. I couldn’t believe it when I walked into the various trading floors. And when I met the people and everybody talked about how they worked and the long hours, the money they made, et cetera, and I was awestruck and got a bit carried away. I mean, this was clearly what I wanted to do. And as I said, in the end, it became clear to me that I couldn’t get a job in New York. So I went to London, but by that time, of course, I’d practiced so much my interviewing technique on Wall Street that by the time I got to somewhat more sleepy London. I was actually on such form that I got loads of work offers, and in the end, I decided to go with CSFB First Boston. And ironically, after 1 year with them, they actually sent me to New York. So I ended up living pretty close to Times Square, working for First Boston on Park Avenue. And for a while there, one of the traders had some time off, and I was responsible for trading one of the bond books. And those were the days, of course, when we had telexes. So I would get a telex overnight about the positions, and then I would have to trade the book myself in the afternoons, which was really quite a challenge, but lovely. I mean, I loved every minute of that. And so I ended up on Wall Street, and then I went back to London. And then in the end, what happened in the crazy ’80s, as you said, I was offered various jobs by other firms. And in the end, I joined Lehman Brothers in 1985, on what I believe was something like 4 or 5 times the salary I had with Credit Suisse First Boston. I mean, particularly because it was so low. And in those days you could get those types of crazy salaries. And of course, you know, being in my early 20s and then already living kind of the crazy life, I was hooked on being a Wall Street banker.
Aoifinn Devitt: Let’s talk through then the turns that took you into Key Asset Management, which is a bit of a change of pace, I would think, from the Wall Street banking.
Tom Raber: Absolutely. So I’ll try to fast forward, although I’m covering quite a lot of years in a quick time here. So essentially, from ’85 to ’95, I was at Lehman Brothers. Unfortunately, today, everybody thinks of Lehman Brothers under bankruptcy in 2008, but the firm was founded in 1865. And I have some phenomenal memories and some very good friends and people that are popping up everywhere in the world from Lehman Brothers. And I can say certainly my time there was Not really a great time. In ’95, I was headhunted away again to work for BNP, the French bank, as European head of fixed income sales. I spent 2.5 years with BNP. There was a change of management in Paris. I got fired actually, which was a good experience for me because it made me really think, what should I do now? I’d been almost 20 years in the city on Wall Street. I’d done I do virtually the same thing, institutional equity and fixed income sales. What should I do now? And I had some sort of an inkling, and I had heard about and knew about hedge funds. And the reason for that was that I’d always been interested in independent fund management. And in fact, I invested already in 1986 with Paul Tudor Jones. So I knew about independent fund management, hedge funds, et cetera. And I thought, well, maybe this is the time for me to do something else. I looked around, I knew a Norwegian guy called Morten Kieland who had a firm called Key Asset Management. Long story short, I joined him essentially January 1998. We were 4 people in Portman Square. I ended up becoming a significant shareholder in that business and the managing director already within 1 year. Morten moved back to Norway and we grew the business at a phenomenal pace from the late ’90s to about 2005. I think it’s important to say that a lot of that was the tailwind that we had, the tailwind in hedge funds. I mean, London and Mayfair that had been essentially focusing on wealth management now was all of a sudden a hedge fund center. And we had a head start because we already had some hedge fund of funds set up. So, we grew them significantly from a couple hundred million to several billion. And then in 2005, I decided it’s time for me to do my own thing. So I started Alvine Capital and that was 2005.
Aoifinn Devitt: Before we go into the Alvine story, which is a great story of entrepreneurship and a startup that is living on to this day, let’s just go back to some of those sales techniques because you did say you had tailwind and key, but I think there’s more to it than that. I think you have a natural instinct for selling, for growing a business, and certainly you’ve been very instrumental in my life in terms of giving me tips as to how to seal the deal. Did anyone in particular teach you the tricks of the trade, or how did you learn to approach sales, and what’s your philosophy around that?
Tom Raber: My father was an entrepreneur. He had started his own business, and in fact several businesses, and sold most of them on quite successfully. And most entrepreneurs, not everyone of course, usually has a good sales technique because you have to sell your own product. You have to sell yourself in the sense that you need money into the business. You need to bring obviously coworkers in and partners into the business. How do you get them all in? You get them in because you’re a good salesman. Now, being a good salesman means so many different things to different people. I think there are a couple of key points that certainly I take away. One is to be genuine. I think it is so obvious when a salesman is essentially just putting on a sales hat, trying to kind of bowl somebody over so that he would get a commission from a specific sale. And I think people see through that. And I think when it comes to most businesses, there is too many sellers and not enough buyers. So people essentially weed you out very quickly. You have to be genuine. You have to be yourself. And I think it’s very important to be forceful in your sales, but you have to be forceful in the sense that you are convinced yourself. You know, if you’re not convinced yourself of what you’re selling, I believe you’re going to be a bad salesman before you’ve even started. So if you don’t believe in what you sell and if you’re not genuine, people see through you. So those are some of the basic facts. Then the other part, of course, is how do you structure a sales call? And it’s extraordinary. I’ve seen this over my, what is now almost 40 years, so many times where people walk into meetings unprepared. So you walk in, you think you know what you’re talking about, so you kind of wing it. That is a very bad idea. What you need to do is you need to be prepared and you need to get the person on the other side of the table to— essentially, you have to get him to focus on what you’re trying to say early on in the conversation. You must not wait too long because they will switch off. It’s absolutely key what you say during the first 5 minutes. But also, of course, you need to know what you’re saying. You need to know the product. So that’s the key thing. And then what within that product are you going to hone into? Now, what I have left out, which is also absolutely key, of course, is to try to make sure in advance of that conversation what is this particular— in this case, an investor— What are they focusing on? Again, I see it again and again and again, people walking into meetings saying, well, I’ve got this, that, and the other, and they just keep going on and on and on. And then at the end of it, you ask, are you interested in this? Let’s call it hedge fund. And they will say, no, we don’t do hedge funds. Okay. I mean, not only have you left a very bad impression, but you’ve completely wasted everyone’s time. So you need to know before you go in. And today, of course, you can find out most information on the internet. I mean, not everything, but lots of information is available. So you can kind of hone in on what that particular person that you’re talking to, what is he doing, and what is it that you have that could possibly fit into what he’s doing. So those are some key things, but I’ll stop there and then you can ask some questions and I’ll fill in some more afterwards.
Aoifinn Devitt: Yeah, definitely, because clearly listening then is a big piece of that. If you’re listening to what they need, and that can happen before, you can listen the evidence of what they’re looking for and listening there at, at the time. How about the sense of patience and taking no for an answer? Do you think people are born with a thick skin? Did your own skin develop in that sense? And, and how do you take the rejection that comes, I suppose, as part of the territory with sales?
Tom Raber: There are kind of two questions, or maybe three even, in there. I would say number one, yes, absolutely, you have to have thick skin. We have worked out at Alvine that the conversion rate is probably something like 2 to 3% of the people with whom we’re having a reasonably active dialogue. So this is not just some guy you sent an email, but people with whom you’re actually having engaged, you have communicated with them, they are roughly in the same space. In other words, they are looking at what you are trying to sell to them, cetera, et et cetera. So Most people, of course, don’t like rejection. I mean, in fact, I don’t really know anyone who does, but you have to early on understand that you have to pace yourself. And I know, Aoifinn, you said you’d run 51 marathons, so you will know when you run a marathon that you can’t start, you know, running a sprint the first 200 yards. You’re not going to last the distance. So with every particular prospect that you’re talking, you need to obviously try to make sure that there is actually something behind that. You never know. Sometimes, of course, there isn’t anything behind there and you think there is and you invest a lot of effort and time and it doesn’t work. But number— yes, you need to be thick-skinned. But the second thing which I must say, and that is, I think you hinted at that, is follow-ups. And in a way you can call it persistence, but persistence is also following people up. The amount of people I have met over the years where you’ve come in, you’ve done a good presentation, you may have sent one follow-up email, And then everything dies. Now, I can assure you, in the 17 and a half years that I’ve run Alvine Capital, I cannot recall one situation where people have actually called in and said, “I would like to place an order with you.” You have to follow up. You can call it chase if you’d like. You can call it persistence if you’d like. You can call it, in some cases, of course, harassment. But harassment is completely pointless. You need to follow up in a constructive and in a proper way. But the amount of people that don’t do that is astonishing. And so you put in a lot of effort to come in, present yourself, and sometimes maybe bringing managers over from the United States. You do this, that, and the other, and then you don’t follow up. And that is a real big mistake.
Aoifinn Devitt: How about actually making the ask? I mean, that is another difficult thing. We can dance around these meetings, we can build network, we can be interested. And hearing whether we know that somebody’s interested in our area of what we’re potentially selling. How do you coach people, or how did you learn to actually ask for the order?
Tom Raber: It’s obviously a question that comes up very often, and I do agree with that. I think it is true. I mean, it’s essentially— so let me give you an analogy. How many times have we seen in football professional players that somehow has managed to get past maybe the last defender and they’ve got the goalkeeper there and maybe they’ve even got past the goalkeeper and it’s an open goal, but somehow they manage not to put it in the back of the net. And I think it is true that some people have the killer instinct that other people maybe don’t have. And that of course comes from confidence. It comes from years of doing it. It comes from practice. But some people are just quite simply better than others, but you can learn how to do it. And you mustn’t be afraid to do it. You mustn’t be afraid to do it. A lot of people I’ve even seen, rather than ask for the order, they talk themselves out of it and they talk the possible investors out of investing. They start arguing, yeah, maybe you’re right, maybe you shouldn’t invest in this. I mean, it’s quite extraordinary how people are so afraid. Now, I don’t know why, but somehow that is one trait I don’t have. If anything, I probably push a little bit too hard. But I think it is fair to say, as human beings, we tend to be cautious. People are cautious, and you just have to overcome that the same way you overcome public speaking, for example. The first time you do it, it’s very uncomfortable. Once you’ve done it 10 times, it’s not too bad. Once you’ve done it hundreds, you don’t even think about it. So That is the way you have to do it. But it’s true, some salesmen, they can do everything right. They get to the 95-yard line, the red zone as they call it in America, in American football, but they can’t get the ball into the end zone. And then you’ve wasted all that other 95 yards and you have to start again. And that is, of course, where the follow-ups, the persistence, come up with another argument, follow up even extra. Try some way of contacting that particular investor one more time, one final time. Can you do something extra? Is there anything else you can add? What is You missing? Know, keep going because sometimes, of course, you have to remember that the investors themselves are afraid of investing and they need to be essentially pushed. And they want to be pushed. They don’t kind of maybe think that way, but that’s actually true. You need to basically box them into a situation where they realize, I’ve got to do this transaction now for me, for you, and for everybody else. And once you get to that space, obviously everything is a lot easier. But, you know, all of these things kind of coming together does take a long time, and that’s training, that’s practice, that’s everything that we discussed in the last 5, 10 minutes are kind of coming together to get the ball over the line. And that’s something that’s more an art than a skill. And you can’t learn that at Harvard Business School.
Aoifinn Devitt: Now you can only get it in the Tom Raver Masterclass, which we’ve just had here. So thank you very much for sharing that with us. And let’s just move to Alpine now. So focus on alternative investments. How has that evolved since 2005? I remember going to one of your launch parties, I believe, back in the day, and now you’re at 18 years in. How would you say client demand has evolved and what you do to meet that demand has evolved?
Tom Raber: Maybe I should just remind everyone what I did when I started. So I came out of a hedge fund of fund business and key asset management, and my idea at Alvine was to do two things simultaneously. One was to run private portfolios of hedge funds, essentially. An example I would put together a portfolio of 10, 15 funds for Mayfair-based family office, and I would run that for them through my contacts in the market, through my contacts with managers. And at that time, I had an investment team with analysts. We ran that business for a while, and it wasn’t a bad business. It was a fee-based business. I had a little team that was doing it. But what we realized quite quickly was that There was a lot of competition from other fund of funds, from wealth managers, from various banks. 2008, 2009 happened, we had the financial crisis. Essentially, since then, hedge funds didn’t perform for a very long time. And I realized that this business was really not going to be able to make money and was going nowhere. And lots of fund of funds went out of business simultaneously. I was quite successful selling independent managers on my own, and I was enjoying that a lot more because I tended to then deal with larger institutional clients, which I preferred. So, I was essentially selling single managers and I was helping various investors to find funds, as you say in the introduction, reverse inquiry solutions. And that was okay. The question was when hedge funds weren’t performing, what were we going to do? So we ventured into, for example, music royalties. We were involved in various other parts of the investment world, including litigation finance, life settlements, all sorts of different things. And to a certain extent, private credit. And private credit was becoming much more of an asset class by itself. So we kind of moved into private markets. And I think it’s important to say Alpine in the last 5 years has essentially closed down the advisory business completely. We did that 5, 6 years ago. We realized we weren’t really able to compete and we didn’t want to deal with the types of clients that were there. So the focus has really gone now to what we are today, which is a placement agent focusing on private markets, and that is private credit and private equity primarily. And although we like the idea of being an advisor, we think we still are an advisor because the types of people we deal with, which are by and large the largest, the most sophisticated institutions in Europe, and I of course include the UK, we don’t just try to call them up and sell them something. What we try to do is we try to We understand what they do. We act as their informal advisors, and we do often find solutions for them. And if we don’t find solutions for them, we’re always looking for various, what we think are good investment opportunities given the circumstances in the market at the time. For example, you could argue right now that there’s a bit of distress in the credit market, so distressed debt investing makes a lot of sense, for example. So at various points of the cycle, there are different things that one can focus on. So essentially today we are a pure-play placement agent focusing 90%+ of what we do on private markets.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s a very interesting evolution, certainly in terms of the demand. And I think that seems to be the most, I’d say, sticky area of demand in private markets. I’m going to change gears now a little bit because this entire podcast series has a particular focus on diversity across professions. You’ve had a career that’s spanned many decades in finance. Have you— what’s been, from your vantage point, how have you seen the diversity of the financial industry? And I’m talking not just gender and by ethnic group, but the socioeconomic class, perhaps cognitive diversity. We talked a little bit earlier about people with non-finance degrees entering finance. How do you see that evolving?
Tom Raber: Well, I think the first thing that really struck me was when I joined Credit Suisse First Boston in 1983, and you had almost entire graduate intake came from Oxford or Cambridge. And at the same time, you had barrow boys coming up on the trading side. Essentially, working-class people without degrees were working their way up through the back office onto the trading desk, and some of them did extremely well and made a lot of money. So you had almost two extremes. You had these very bright Oxbridge graduates on one end, and on the other end, you had the people that have come from a working-class background, no university education, ended up on the trading floor and they were kind of working side by side. And somehow that seemed to work quite well. Interestingly enough, I also remember in the early days in the ’80s that there were lots of women on the trading floor, particularly in the sales roles, but also on the trading side. So for me, it was always an incredibly obvious and natural thing to have people from different classes different educational backgrounds, different skin colors, different genders, and of course, different nationalities. So that was something I grew up with in the early ’80s and in the ’90s. And I really never thought that there was any tension or misrepresentation or misogyny or anything else like that. I mean, maybe I was too focused on doing my sales deals that I just didn’t pay attention. I don’t know. But I never really saw it. I mean, I guess the only thing I do remember, of course, was on the trading floor, there were some kind of jokes being thrown around that may have been inappropriate today, but even they, I don’t think, would’ve been a problem. So I’m, in a way, a little bit the wrong person, I think, to ask that question. I’m totally aware of what’s going on. I’m conscious of it. I’m trying to make sure that at Alvine, we have representation to the extent that it’s possible in every possible way. But we’re a small company and we have to go with what’s available at the time, so to speak. We don’t have too many roles to fill. But as I said, in my career, I have seen surprisingly few examples of what seems to be happening now every day.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s interesting because I ask this question of everyone and some people think it’s not their place to comment, but equally I think it’s everyone’s place to comment because it’s only through collaboration and joined-up action that we do improve the diversity. And I think equally our client base is becoming more diverse, and in order to cater for them, I think it’s important. So thank you for your insights on that. I would like to move to another interest now, just moving to some personal reflections, and I think it ties to my question around relationship development follow-ups and sales techniques, because Alvine is known for its wine tastings and some of the outings you might do, whether it be golf outings or Chelsea Football Club. Can you tell us a little bit about those other interests and how they integrate your personal and your professional life?
Tom Raber: Absolutely. Yeah. So I think the wine tasting, you touched on that first. So a couple of points I’d like to make. One is that London is absolutely chock-a-block full of wine shops and wine importers everywhere that are importing wines from all over the world. Essentially, I think the English are the masters of wine. You would think it’s the French, but it’s not. It’s the English are really, really good. There are other people, of course, as well. But so I had some friends that were very interested in wine. I became quite interested. I went to some wine tastings. I loved it. And then I thought, well, why don’t we do Alvine Capital wine tastings? And I, I was also chairman of a wine tasting club. And it is, to be quite frank, if you want to spend a few hundred pounds and get people together and, you know, spend, let’s say, an hour and a half, 2 hours after work, it’s the best bang for your buck that you can get in terms of creating a fun atmosphere, short period of time. You leave after work, you have a few glasses of wine. And then you’re home for dinner. So I thought in the early days of Alvine, this is a no-brainer in terms of client entertainment. The second thing is you can kind of mix everybody in. I mean, it doesn’t matter if you are 70 years old or 25 years old, you know, and all these other things we just talked about in terms of your background or your whatever class you come from, et cetera. Everybody throws in there, you give them a couple of glasses of wine and everybody after a few minutes has a good time. So it’s a great way to get people together and to get people to talk. But the most important thing I think is actually, and this is another thing that touches on sales that people forget, you mustn’t be forgotten. And what happens inevitably, and it happens no matter what you do, if you’re a celebrity or if you’re a placement agent or whatever you are, people forget you. People have busy lives, people have families, people have targets to meet, people have this, that, and the other. So if you are not out there advertising that you are still around, people forget who you are. So when you have a wine tasting and we send out maybe, I don’t know how many invitations, maybe let’s call it a third or 20% come, but the others, the other two-thirds or 80% that don’t come, at least they got an invitation and they will remember, oh, that’s Tom Rayburt Alvine. By the way, I’ve got a new fund. Maybe I should give him a call. Or maybe I have some more money to spend. Maybe I should give him a call. So it’s a good way to remind people that you’re actually around. So that’s the other reason I do it. So those are two extremely good reasons for people to have more wine tastings.
Aoifinn Devitt: Excellent. And your other interests, you spoke about my marathons, but you yourself participate in a ski marathon recently. You’re also a passionate golfer. What role do these other interests play in, I suppose, your general well-being and outlook on life?
Tom Raber: So I try to do at least once a year or sometimes more, something that I haven’t done before. What I try to do is I try to break some habits. And if I may give you an anecdote, I did my MBA at University of Chicago and there was a professor there that had a dice with I think 20 different facets on it. So if you rolled it, you get a number between 1 and 20, and each box that you landed on, you had to do one that particular day. And why do you do that? You do that because you want to break your habits because we’re all creatures of habit. So do something. So for example, let’s say you get in square number 4 and it says buy a magazine in the newspaper shop that you normally don’t buy. So I would then go to the newspaper shop and I would get a tattoo magazine. So I don’t particularly like tattoos, but I would get a tattoo magazine just because it’s something that is completely the opposite of what I would normally do. So Going back to what you said is a way of breaking your habits. So I have never skied despite being born in Sweden. I’ve never really skied cross-country, but I’d heard a great deal about this particular— there’s a race in Sweden called Varsaloppet, everyone knows that. But there’s also one in Italy called Marcia Longa, the Long March. And so I just thought, well, let me just sign up for that. So I signed up. I had trained a little bit on roller skates in Hyde Park. Fell over a couple times, almost broke my arm, but I survived. And I went to Italy, no training because I just couldn’t really train. And I completed the race. Not sure I’m going to do it again. I just thought, well, let’s just break the habit, do something you normally don’t do. I encourage people to do that because when you do things that you normally don’t do, you realize that there’s so much more out there in the world that you don’t know about.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s a great answer. And I love that focus on breaking habits. I think even Warren Buffett says something about that. So just coming back to some personal reflections, uh, finally, two final questions. One is around any key people in your life. I think you mentioned your father and the influence that his entrepreneurship had on you. Any other key people either in your personal or professional life that really made an impression?
Tom Raber: Absolutely. So many people, but I will mention, if I may, the name of the firm is Alvine. Alvine is my maternal grandmother. She came from Latvia when the Russians invaded. We all know how they do it now again. So she came in the last fishing boat leaving Latvia in 1944. She was born in 1903 and died in 2001. So she essentially lived the entire century, the last century. And when I started the company, I decided to call it by her name. And she was a very stoic woman. A very strong woman, a medical doctor, worked during the Second World War, remember the First World War even, unbelievable. And so she gave me a lot of strength to never give up, you know, and I think, which we didn’t really talk about, but I guess it’s the undertone in sales, never give up because eventually most things do come through. And the expression that says what goes around comes around, which is of course also means that you should behave courteously and nicely towards everyone, because you will probably meet that person again. But importantly, from a sales perspective, is to make sure that you absolutely, under no circumstances, ever give up. I mean, that said, you have, of course, got to realize that some situations are just not going to happen. So she is one. I mentioned my father. My mother, I think, gave me also a lot of strength. She had some hard times in her life and was a very determined woman, but she also had a big heart. And I think that is one thing that I have also taken with me from her. There’s lots of people in finance that are maybe psychopathic or towards that, you know, that’s really bad news. Always remember at the end of the day, we’re all humans and treat everyone with respect.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, there’s fantastic wisdom there. My last question is usually around wisdom. Creed or motto or advice for your younger self. I’m not sure if you have anything to add to all of that.
Tom Raber: I do. Sometimes things have taken me absolutely forever, things that I wanted to do that just seemed to— although I’m not saying I haven’t done a lot, I’ve done, feels to me, quite a lot. But I think sometimes, for example, when it comes to sports, if I had been reliving my life, I think I would’ve focused on one sport earlier on, one that suited me rather than to dabble in loads of different ones that just didn’t for some reason work and then I move on to the next thing and I’m back and forth, et cetera. I would really like to have had a stronger sport. That’s one thing. I think that this is my personal thing, but I was going to do an MBA in the mid-’90s. I didn’t do it. Took me a long time. I came back, I did it. Why didn’t I do it the first time around? So sometimes it’s taken me a little while to kind of make up my mind, but I have forced myself over time to make sure that I actually do things and I do them decisively. And that brings me onto the last thing, which is 2 years ago, I decided to give up drinking. It took me a little while to come to that conclusion, but I felt for a combination of reasons that that was the right thing for me to do. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I wanted to prove it to people in the office and my family that I can do it. And of course, you have more energy. And when you’re 62 and you’re trying to keep up with people in their late 20s and 30s, you need all the energy you have. And if you walk in having had half a bottle of wine 3, 4 days a week, you’re not going to be working at full capacity. And it’s a really bad thing.
Aoifinn Devitt: And just technical question, Can you continue with the wine tastings even if you don’t drink yourself?
Tom Raber: Absolutely. No problem at all. And you can taste a little bit of wine. You know, I mean, I didn’t do it for medical reasons. It’s not like I’m going to fall back into some drinking habit. No, no, no. You can taste a little bit. But I mean, I wouldn’t order wine in a restaurant. I wouldn’t, you know, if I go to a dinner party, I have a little, little sip because otherwise it becomes always the talking point of that particular dinner. So I’m trying to avoid that. But, you know, I do think, and somebody told me, and I think it’s true, you know, drinking is a young man’s game or a young woman’s game. I think when the older you get, there’s so many other things that fall on you. Sleep worse, you have less energy. If you’re prone to depression, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It’s just, and it costs a lot of money. Why would you want to do all that? I mean, is it that much fun after all? I’m not sure.
Aoifinn Devitt: Arguably the marathons are a lot more fun. Well, thank you so much, Tom. You are one of a kind in the investment industry. You really are demonstrating that warm heart, that big heart, the generosity that you mentioned before. You’ve given us a masterclass in sales technique here, which I for one will be returning to over and over again. I don’t think we can hear some of these pieces of advice frequently enough. So thank you for coming here, sharing your journey and sharing your insights with us.
Tom Raber: It’s been a great pleasure, Aoifinn. Looking forward to seeing you soon. Thank you.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces Podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, and all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest. This podcast was made possible by the kind support of Alvine Capital Management, a London-based specialist investment advisor and placement boutique.
Aoifinn Devitt: Our next guest treats us to a masterclass in making the sale and notes the importance of preparation, follow-up, and maintaining visibility. He also tells a great story. Find out how to seal the deal next. I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people and their stories. I’m joined today by Tom Raber, who’s the founder and managing director of London-based Alvine Capital, a reverse inquiry solutions firm that Tom founded in 2005, with a particular focus on finding solutions for institutional investors in alternative assets. Originally from Sweden, he previously held leadership roles at Key Asset Management and a series of investment banks. Welcome, Tom. Thanks for joining me today.
Tom Raber: Thank you, Aoifinn.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, let’s start by talking through your career journey. Can you start with where you grew up, what you studied, and how you came to enter the world of investing?
Tom Raber: Absolutely. Yeah. So as you said, I was born in Sweden in the early ’60s, and my parents, my father had a medium-sized business that he sold, and in the late ’70s, we we decided as a family to move abroad. After some deliberation, we ended up in London. So that was the late ’70s. And what I did then was I enrolled in the American School, graduated in ’79, and then in January 1980, I went to the United States to study for 3 years. And it was a great thing. I’d always wanted to go to the US. I was always fascinated by the way the financial system worked and by Wall Street. I always, in a funny way, idolized America, particularly when it came to finance, but also many other things. And going to an American university was always a dream of mine. And I’m delighted that I was able to get into a few different places. And in the end, I went to Boston University and I graduated in 1983. And then if I want to continue from there, I can say that I did try to stay in the United States and I tried to go to Wall Street, but the problems were then, as they still are now, that getting a to get a work working permit in the US was very difficult. I did, however, have lots of interviews, but in the end, I ended up working for a firm in London called Credit Suisse First Boston, which at a time in the early, mid, and late ’80s was actually one of the absolutely most interesting firms to work for in London. And that’s where I joined in the autumn of 1983.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s interesting. I didn’t know that about your time at Boston University actually, but the ’80s must have been full-on that Wall Street movie, the kind of Wolf of Wall Street deal-making, high-paced, cutthroat. What was your experience of Wall Street, even though you were at the interview stage? And was London similar to that? Was it a hard-driving environment?
Tom Raber: So I went from Boston down to New York for various interviews. And for me, Wall Street and the various American investment banks were absolutely unbelievable. I couldn’t believe it when I walked into the various trading floors. And when I met the people and everybody talked about how they worked and the long hours, the money they made, et cetera, and I was awestruck and got a bit carried away. I mean, this was clearly what I wanted to do. And as I said, in the end, it became clear to me that I couldn’t get a job in New York. So I went to London, but by that time, of course, I’d practiced so much my interviewing technique on Wall Street that by the time I got to somewhat more sleepy London. I was actually on such form that I got loads of work offers, and in the end, I decided to go with CSFB First Boston. And ironically, after 1 year with them, they actually sent me to New York. So I ended up living pretty close to Times Square, working for First Boston on Park Avenue. And for a while there, one of the traders had some time off, and I was responsible for trading one of the bond books. And those were the days, of course, when we had telexes. So I would get a telex overnight about the positions, and then I would have to trade the book myself in the afternoons, which was really quite a challenge, but lovely. I mean, I loved every minute of that. And so I ended up on Wall Street, and then I went back to London. And then in the end, what happened in the crazy ’80s, as you said, I was offered various jobs by other firms. And in the end, I joined Lehman Brothers in 1985, on what I believe was something like 4 or 5 times the salary I had with Credit Suisse First Boston. I mean, particularly because it was so low. And in those days you could get those types of crazy salaries. And of course, you know, being in my early 20s and then already living kind of the crazy life, I was hooked on being a Wall Street banker.
Aoifinn Devitt: Let’s talk through then the turns that took you into Key Asset Management, which is a bit of a change of pace, I would think, from the Wall Street banking.
Tom Raber: Absolutely. So I’ll try to fast forward, although I’m covering quite a lot of years in a quick time here. So essentially, from ’85 to ’95, I was at Lehman Brothers. Unfortunately, today, everybody thinks of Lehman Brothers under bankruptcy in 2008, but the firm was founded in 1865. And I have some phenomenal memories and some very good friends and people that are popping up everywhere in the world from Lehman Brothers. And I can say certainly my time there was Not really a great time. In ’95, I was headhunted away again to work for BNP, the French bank, as European head of fixed income sales. I spent 2.5 years with BNP. There was a change of management in Paris. I got fired actually, which was a good experience for me because it made me really think, what should I do now? I’d been almost 20 years in the city on Wall Street. I’d done I do virtually the same thing, institutional equity and fixed income sales. What should I do now? And I had some sort of an inkling, and I had heard about and knew about hedge funds. And the reason for that was that I’d always been interested in independent fund management. And in fact, I invested already in 1986 with Paul Tudor Jones. So I knew about independent fund management, hedge funds, et cetera. And I thought, well, maybe this is the time for me to do something else. I looked around, I knew a Norwegian guy called Morten Kieland who had a firm called Key Asset Management. Long story short, I joined him essentially January 1998. We were 4 people in Portman Square. I ended up becoming a significant shareholder in that business and the managing director already within 1 year. Morten moved back to Norway and we grew the business at a phenomenal pace from the late ’90s to about 2005. I think it’s important to say that a lot of that was the tailwind that we had, the tailwind in hedge funds. I mean, London and Mayfair that had been essentially focusing on wealth management now was all of a sudden a hedge fund center. And we had a head start because we already had some hedge fund of funds set up. So, we grew them significantly from a couple hundred million to several billion. And then in 2005, I decided it’s time for me to do my own thing. So I started Alvine Capital and that was 2005.
Aoifinn Devitt: Before we go into the Alvine story, which is a great story of entrepreneurship and a startup that is living on to this day, let’s just go back to some of those sales techniques because you did say you had tailwind and key, but I think there’s more to it than that. I think you have a natural instinct for selling, for growing a business, and certainly you’ve been very instrumental in my life in terms of giving me tips as to how to seal the deal. Did anyone in particular teach you the tricks of the trade, or how did you learn to approach sales, and what’s your philosophy around that?
Tom Raber: My father was an entrepreneur. He had started his own business, and in fact several businesses, and sold most of them on quite successfully. And most entrepreneurs, not everyone of course, usually has a good sales technique because you have to sell your own product. You have to sell yourself in the sense that you need money into the business. You need to bring obviously coworkers in and partners into the business. How do you get them all in? You get them in because you’re a good salesman. Now, being a good salesman means so many different things to different people. I think there are a couple of key points that certainly I take away. One is to be genuine. I think it is so obvious when a salesman is essentially just putting on a sales hat, trying to kind of bowl somebody over so that he would get a commission from a specific sale. And I think people see through that. And I think when it comes to most businesses, there is too many sellers and not enough buyers. So people essentially weed you out very quickly. You have to be genuine. You have to be yourself. And I think it’s very important to be forceful in your sales, but you have to be forceful in the sense that you are convinced yourself. You know, if you’re not convinced yourself of what you’re selling, I believe you’re going to be a bad salesman before you’ve even started. So if you don’t believe in what you sell and if you’re not genuine, people see through you. So those are some of the basic facts. Then the other part, of course, is how do you structure a sales call? And it’s extraordinary. I’ve seen this over my, what is now almost 40 years, so many times where people walk into meetings unprepared. So you walk in, you think you know what you’re talking about, so you kind of wing it. That is a very bad idea. What you need to do is you need to be prepared and you need to get the person on the other side of the table to— essentially, you have to get him to focus on what you’re trying to say early on in the conversation. You must not wait too long because they will switch off. It’s absolutely key what you say during the first 5 minutes. But also, of course, you need to know what you’re saying. You need to know the product. So that’s the key thing. And then what within that product are you going to hone into? Now, what I have left out, which is also absolutely key, of course, is to try to make sure in advance of that conversation what is this particular— in this case, an investor— What are they focusing on? Again, I see it again and again and again, people walking into meetings saying, well, I’ve got this, that, and the other, and they just keep going on and on and on. And then at the end of it, you ask, are you interested in this? Let’s call it hedge fund. And they will say, no, we don’t do hedge funds. Okay. I mean, not only have you left a very bad impression, but you’ve completely wasted everyone’s time. So you need to know before you go in. And today, of course, you can find out most information on the internet. I mean, not everything, but lots of information is available. So you can kind of hone in on what that particular person that you’re talking to, what is he doing, and what is it that you have that could possibly fit into what he’s doing. So those are some key things, but I’ll stop there and then you can ask some questions and I’ll fill in some more afterwards.
Aoifinn Devitt: Yeah, definitely, because clearly listening then is a big piece of that. If you’re listening to what they need, and that can happen before, you can listen the evidence of what they’re looking for and listening there at, at the time. How about the sense of patience and taking no for an answer? Do you think people are born with a thick skin? Did your own skin develop in that sense? And, and how do you take the rejection that comes, I suppose, as part of the territory with sales?
Tom Raber: There are kind of two questions, or maybe three even, in there. I would say number one, yes, absolutely, you have to have thick skin. We have worked out at Alvine that the conversion rate is probably something like 2 to 3% of the people with whom we’re having a reasonably active dialogue. So this is not just some guy you sent an email, but people with whom you’re actually having engaged, you have communicated with them, they are roughly in the same space. In other words, they are looking at what you are trying to sell to them, cetera, et et cetera. So Most people, of course, don’t like rejection. I mean, in fact, I don’t really know anyone who does, but you have to early on understand that you have to pace yourself. And I know, Aoifinn, you said you’d run 51 marathons, so you will know when you run a marathon that you can’t start, you know, running a sprint the first 200 yards. You’re not going to last the distance. So with every particular prospect that you’re talking, you need to obviously try to make sure that there is actually something behind that. You never know. Sometimes, of course, there isn’t anything behind there and you think there is and you invest a lot of effort and time and it doesn’t work. But number— yes, you need to be thick-skinned. But the second thing which I must say, and that is, I think you hinted at that, is follow-ups. And in a way you can call it persistence, but persistence is also following people up. The amount of people I have met over the years where you’ve come in, you’ve done a good presentation, you may have sent one follow-up email, And then everything dies. Now, I can assure you, in the 17 and a half years that I’ve run Alvine Capital, I cannot recall one situation where people have actually called in and said, “I would like to place an order with you.” You have to follow up. You can call it chase if you’d like. You can call it persistence if you’d like. You can call it, in some cases, of course, harassment. But harassment is completely pointless. You need to follow up in a constructive and in a proper way. But the amount of people that don’t do that is astonishing. And so you put in a lot of effort to come in, present yourself, and sometimes maybe bringing managers over from the United States. You do this, that, and the other, and then you don’t follow up. And that is a real big mistake.
Aoifinn Devitt: How about actually making the ask? I mean, that is another difficult thing. We can dance around these meetings, we can build network, we can be interested. And hearing whether we know that somebody’s interested in our area of what we’re potentially selling. How do you coach people, or how did you learn to actually ask for the order?
Tom Raber: It’s obviously a question that comes up very often, and I do agree with that. I think it is true. I mean, it’s essentially— so let me give you an analogy. How many times have we seen in football professional players that somehow has managed to get past maybe the last defender and they’ve got the goalkeeper there and maybe they’ve even got past the goalkeeper and it’s an open goal, but somehow they manage not to put it in the back of the net. And I think it is true that some people have the killer instinct that other people maybe don’t have. And that of course comes from confidence. It comes from years of doing it. It comes from practice. But some people are just quite simply better than others, but you can learn how to do it. And you mustn’t be afraid to do it. You mustn’t be afraid to do it. A lot of people I’ve even seen, rather than ask for the order, they talk themselves out of it and they talk the possible investors out of investing. They start arguing, yeah, maybe you’re right, maybe you shouldn’t invest in this. I mean, it’s quite extraordinary how people are so afraid. Now, I don’t know why, but somehow that is one trait I don’t have. If anything, I probably push a little bit too hard. But I think it is fair to say, as human beings, we tend to be cautious. People are cautious, and you just have to overcome that the same way you overcome public speaking, for example. The first time you do it, it’s very uncomfortable. Once you’ve done it 10 times, it’s not too bad. Once you’ve done it hundreds, you don’t even think about it. So That is the way you have to do it. But it’s true, some salesmen, they can do everything right. They get to the 95-yard line, the red zone as they call it in America, in American football, but they can’t get the ball into the end zone. And then you’ve wasted all that other 95 yards and you have to start again. And that is, of course, where the follow-ups, the persistence, come up with another argument, follow up even extra. Try some way of contacting that particular investor one more time, one final time. Can you do something extra? Is there anything else you can add? What is You missing? Know, keep going because sometimes, of course, you have to remember that the investors themselves are afraid of investing and they need to be essentially pushed. And they want to be pushed. They don’t kind of maybe think that way, but that’s actually true. You need to basically box them into a situation where they realize, I’ve got to do this transaction now for me, for you, and for everybody else. And once you get to that space, obviously everything is a lot easier. But, you know, all of these things kind of coming together does take a long time, and that’s training, that’s practice, that’s everything that we discussed in the last 5, 10 minutes are kind of coming together to get the ball over the line. And that’s something that’s more an art than a skill. And you can’t learn that at Harvard Business School.
Aoifinn Devitt: Now you can only get it in the Tom Raver Masterclass, which we’ve just had here. So thank you very much for sharing that with us. And let’s just move to Alpine now. So focus on alternative investments. How has that evolved since 2005? I remember going to one of your launch parties, I believe, back in the day, and now you’re at 18 years in. How would you say client demand has evolved and what you do to meet that demand has evolved?
Tom Raber: Maybe I should just remind everyone what I did when I started. So I came out of a hedge fund of fund business and key asset management, and my idea at Alvine was to do two things simultaneously. One was to run private portfolios of hedge funds, essentially. An example I would put together a portfolio of 10, 15 funds for Mayfair-based family office, and I would run that for them through my contacts in the market, through my contacts with managers. And at that time, I had an investment team with analysts. We ran that business for a while, and it wasn’t a bad business. It was a fee-based business. I had a little team that was doing it. But what we realized quite quickly was that There was a lot of competition from other fund of funds, from wealth managers, from various banks. 2008, 2009 happened, we had the financial crisis. Essentially, since then, hedge funds didn’t perform for a very long time. And I realized that this business was really not going to be able to make money and was going nowhere. And lots of fund of funds went out of business simultaneously. I was quite successful selling independent managers on my own, and I was enjoying that a lot more because I tended to then deal with larger institutional clients, which I preferred. So, I was essentially selling single managers and I was helping various investors to find funds, as you say in the introduction, reverse inquiry solutions. And that was okay. The question was when hedge funds weren’t performing, what were we going to do? So we ventured into, for example, music royalties. We were involved in various other parts of the investment world, including litigation finance, life settlements, all sorts of different things. And to a certain extent, private credit. And private credit was becoming much more of an asset class by itself. So we kind of moved into private markets. And I think it’s important to say Alpine in the last 5 years has essentially closed down the advisory business completely. We did that 5, 6 years ago. We realized we weren’t really able to compete and we didn’t want to deal with the types of clients that were there. So the focus has really gone now to what we are today, which is a placement agent focusing on private markets, and that is private credit and private equity primarily. And although we like the idea of being an advisor, we think we still are an advisor because the types of people we deal with, which are by and large the largest, the most sophisticated institutions in Europe, and I of course include the UK, we don’t just try to call them up and sell them something. What we try to do is we try to We understand what they do. We act as their informal advisors, and we do often find solutions for them. And if we don’t find solutions for them, we’re always looking for various, what we think are good investment opportunities given the circumstances in the market at the time. For example, you could argue right now that there’s a bit of distress in the credit market, so distressed debt investing makes a lot of sense, for example. So at various points of the cycle, there are different things that one can focus on. So essentially today we are a pure-play placement agent focusing 90%+ of what we do on private markets.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s a very interesting evolution, certainly in terms of the demand. And I think that seems to be the most, I’d say, sticky area of demand in private markets. I’m going to change gears now a little bit because this entire podcast series has a particular focus on diversity across professions. You’ve had a career that’s spanned many decades in finance. Have you— what’s been, from your vantage point, how have you seen the diversity of the financial industry? And I’m talking not just gender and by ethnic group, but the socioeconomic class, perhaps cognitive diversity. We talked a little bit earlier about people with non-finance degrees entering finance. How do you see that evolving?
Tom Raber: Well, I think the first thing that really struck me was when I joined Credit Suisse First Boston in 1983, and you had almost entire graduate intake came from Oxford or Cambridge. And at the same time, you had barrow boys coming up on the trading side. Essentially, working-class people without degrees were working their way up through the back office onto the trading desk, and some of them did extremely well and made a lot of money. So you had almost two extremes. You had these very bright Oxbridge graduates on one end, and on the other end, you had the people that have come from a working-class background, no university education, ended up on the trading floor and they were kind of working side by side. And somehow that seemed to work quite well. Interestingly enough, I also remember in the early days in the ’80s that there were lots of women on the trading floor, particularly in the sales roles, but also on the trading side. So for me, it was always an incredibly obvious and natural thing to have people from different classes different educational backgrounds, different skin colors, different genders, and of course, different nationalities. So that was something I grew up with in the early ’80s and in the ’90s. And I really never thought that there was any tension or misrepresentation or misogyny or anything else like that. I mean, maybe I was too focused on doing my sales deals that I just didn’t pay attention. I don’t know. But I never really saw it. I mean, I guess the only thing I do remember, of course, was on the trading floor, there were some kind of jokes being thrown around that may have been inappropriate today, but even they, I don’t think, would’ve been a problem. So I’m, in a way, a little bit the wrong person, I think, to ask that question. I’m totally aware of what’s going on. I’m conscious of it. I’m trying to make sure that at Alvine, we have representation to the extent that it’s possible in every possible way. But we’re a small company and we have to go with what’s available at the time, so to speak. We don’t have too many roles to fill. But as I said, in my career, I have seen surprisingly few examples of what seems to be happening now every day.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s interesting because I ask this question of everyone and some people think it’s not their place to comment, but equally I think it’s everyone’s place to comment because it’s only through collaboration and joined-up action that we do improve the diversity. And I think equally our client base is becoming more diverse, and in order to cater for them, I think it’s important. So thank you for your insights on that. I would like to move to another interest now, just moving to some personal reflections, and I think it ties to my question around relationship development follow-ups and sales techniques, because Alvine is known for its wine tastings and some of the outings you might do, whether it be golf outings or Chelsea Football Club. Can you tell us a little bit about those other interests and how they integrate your personal and your professional life?
Tom Raber: Absolutely. Yeah. So I think the wine tasting, you touched on that first. So a couple of points I’d like to make. One is that London is absolutely chock-a-block full of wine shops and wine importers everywhere that are importing wines from all over the world. Essentially, I think the English are the masters of wine. You would think it’s the French, but it’s not. It’s the English are really, really good. There are other people, of course, as well. But so I had some friends that were very interested in wine. I became quite interested. I went to some wine tastings. I loved it. And then I thought, well, why don’t we do Alvine Capital wine tastings? And I, I was also chairman of a wine tasting club. And it is, to be quite frank, if you want to spend a few hundred pounds and get people together and, you know, spend, let’s say, an hour and a half, 2 hours after work, it’s the best bang for your buck that you can get in terms of creating a fun atmosphere, short period of time. You leave after work, you have a few glasses of wine. And then you’re home for dinner. So I thought in the early days of Alvine, this is a no-brainer in terms of client entertainment. The second thing is you can kind of mix everybody in. I mean, it doesn’t matter if you are 70 years old or 25 years old, you know, and all these other things we just talked about in terms of your background or your whatever class you come from, et cetera. Everybody throws in there, you give them a couple of glasses of wine and everybody after a few minutes has a good time. So it’s a great way to get people together and to get people to talk. But the most important thing I think is actually, and this is another thing that touches on sales that people forget, you mustn’t be forgotten. And what happens inevitably, and it happens no matter what you do, if you’re a celebrity or if you’re a placement agent or whatever you are, people forget you. People have busy lives, people have families, people have targets to meet, people have this, that, and the other. So if you are not out there advertising that you are still around, people forget who you are. So when you have a wine tasting and we send out maybe, I don’t know how many invitations, maybe let’s call it a third or 20% come, but the others, the other two-thirds or 80% that don’t come, at least they got an invitation and they will remember, oh, that’s Tom Rayburt Alvine. By the way, I’ve got a new fund. Maybe I should give him a call. Or maybe I have some more money to spend. Maybe I should give him a call. So it’s a good way to remind people that you’re actually around. So that’s the other reason I do it. So those are two extremely good reasons for people to have more wine tastings.
Aoifinn Devitt: Excellent. And your other interests, you spoke about my marathons, but you yourself participate in a ski marathon recently. You’re also a passionate golfer. What role do these other interests play in, I suppose, your general well-being and outlook on life?
Tom Raber: So I try to do at least once a year or sometimes more, something that I haven’t done before. What I try to do is I try to break some habits. And if I may give you an anecdote, I did my MBA at University of Chicago and there was a professor there that had a dice with I think 20 different facets on it. So if you rolled it, you get a number between 1 and 20, and each box that you landed on, you had to do one that particular day. And why do you do that? You do that because you want to break your habits because we’re all creatures of habit. So do something. So for example, let’s say you get in square number 4 and it says buy a magazine in the newspaper shop that you normally don’t buy. So I would then go to the newspaper shop and I would get a tattoo magazine. So I don’t particularly like tattoos, but I would get a tattoo magazine just because it’s something that is completely the opposite of what I would normally do. So Going back to what you said is a way of breaking your habits. So I have never skied despite being born in Sweden. I’ve never really skied cross-country, but I’d heard a great deal about this particular— there’s a race in Sweden called Varsaloppet, everyone knows that. But there’s also one in Italy called Marcia Longa, the Long March. And so I just thought, well, let me just sign up for that. So I signed up. I had trained a little bit on roller skates in Hyde Park. Fell over a couple times, almost broke my arm, but I survived. And I went to Italy, no training because I just couldn’t really train. And I completed the race. Not sure I’m going to do it again. I just thought, well, let’s just break the habit, do something you normally don’t do. I encourage people to do that because when you do things that you normally don’t do, you realize that there’s so much more out there in the world that you don’t know about.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s a great answer. And I love that focus on breaking habits. I think even Warren Buffett says something about that. So just coming back to some personal reflections, uh, finally, two final questions. One is around any key people in your life. I think you mentioned your father and the influence that his entrepreneurship had on you. Any other key people either in your personal or professional life that really made an impression?
Tom Raber: Absolutely. So many people, but I will mention, if I may, the name of the firm is Alvine. Alvine is my maternal grandmother. She came from Latvia when the Russians invaded. We all know how they do it now again. So she came in the last fishing boat leaving Latvia in 1944. She was born in 1903 and died in 2001. So she essentially lived the entire century, the last century. And when I started the company, I decided to call it by her name. And she was a very stoic woman. A very strong woman, a medical doctor, worked during the Second World War, remember the First World War even, unbelievable. And so she gave me a lot of strength to never give up, you know, and I think, which we didn’t really talk about, but I guess it’s the undertone in sales, never give up because eventually most things do come through. And the expression that says what goes around comes around, which is of course also means that you should behave courteously and nicely towards everyone, because you will probably meet that person again. But importantly, from a sales perspective, is to make sure that you absolutely, under no circumstances, ever give up. I mean, that said, you have, of course, got to realize that some situations are just not going to happen. So she is one. I mentioned my father. My mother, I think, gave me also a lot of strength. She had some hard times in her life and was a very determined woman, but she also had a big heart. And I think that is one thing that I have also taken with me from her. There’s lots of people in finance that are maybe psychopathic or towards that, you know, that’s really bad news. Always remember at the end of the day, we’re all humans and treat everyone with respect.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, there’s fantastic wisdom there. My last question is usually around wisdom. Creed or motto or advice for your younger self. I’m not sure if you have anything to add to all of that.
Tom Raber: I do. Sometimes things have taken me absolutely forever, things that I wanted to do that just seemed to— although I’m not saying I haven’t done a lot, I’ve done, feels to me, quite a lot. But I think sometimes, for example, when it comes to sports, if I had been reliving my life, I think I would’ve focused on one sport earlier on, one that suited me rather than to dabble in loads of different ones that just didn’t for some reason work and then I move on to the next thing and I’m back and forth, et cetera. I would really like to have had a stronger sport. That’s one thing. I think that this is my personal thing, but I was going to do an MBA in the mid-’90s. I didn’t do it. Took me a long time. I came back, I did it. Why didn’t I do it the first time around? So sometimes it’s taken me a little while to kind of make up my mind, but I have forced myself over time to make sure that I actually do things and I do them decisively. And that brings me onto the last thing, which is 2 years ago, I decided to give up drinking. It took me a little while to come to that conclusion, but I felt for a combination of reasons that that was the right thing for me to do. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I wanted to prove it to people in the office and my family that I can do it. And of course, you have more energy. And when you’re 62 and you’re trying to keep up with people in their late 20s and 30s, you need all the energy you have. And if you walk in having had half a bottle of wine 3, 4 days a week, you’re not going to be working at full capacity. And it’s a really bad thing.
Aoifinn Devitt: And just technical question, Can you continue with the wine tastings even if you don’t drink yourself?
Tom Raber: Absolutely. No problem at all. And you can taste a little bit of wine. You know, I mean, I didn’t do it for medical reasons. It’s not like I’m going to fall back into some drinking habit. No, no, no. You can taste a little bit. But I mean, I wouldn’t order wine in a restaurant. I wouldn’t, you know, if I go to a dinner party, I have a little, little sip because otherwise it becomes always the talking point of that particular dinner. So I’m trying to avoid that. But, you know, I do think, and somebody told me, and I think it’s true, you know, drinking is a young man’s game or a young woman’s game. I think when the older you get, there’s so many other things that fall on you. Sleep worse, you have less energy. If you’re prone to depression, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It’s just, and it costs a lot of money. Why would you want to do all that? I mean, is it that much fun after all? I’m not sure.
Aoifinn Devitt: Arguably the marathons are a lot more fun. Well, thank you so much, Tom. You are one of a kind in the investment industry. You really are demonstrating that warm heart, that big heart, the generosity that you mentioned before. You’ve given us a masterclass in sales technique here, which I for one will be returning to over and over again. I don’t think we can hear some of these pieces of advice frequently enough. So thank you for coming here, sharing your journey and sharing your insights with us.
Tom Raber: It’s been a great pleasure, Aoifinn. Looking forward to seeing you soon. Thank you.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces Podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, and all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest. This podcast was made possible by the kind support of Alvine Capital Management, a London-based specialist investment advisor and placement boutique.
