The Origin of Belay Global Partners

I realized really early on that life's finite. Make the most of it while you've got it. And I have always felt, too, sometimes to a detriment, like I'm in a race. I'm a race to do all these things I want to do before life ends.

Hi, Adam. Welcome to Breakthrough.

Hi, Oksana. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk to you today.

Since COVID, you started a new company called Belay Investments. What was the purpose? Starting this new company and what does the name actually mean?

So there was a period in my life probably 15 years where I was into mountaineering. I've always done endurance sports. I grew up with competitive swimming. So belay is a mountain climbing device. I did a lot of mountaineering when I was younger before kids and essentially it protects the climber in front of you or behind you. So when I set up the company — it's a fintech platform, financial technology. In my career, in our shareholders, in our board advisors, they're all financial services people that have worked in the industry globally. So we've brought a core group of people together with the view that we will help entrepreneurs, we can guide entrepreneurs, we can seek out businesses that are going through transformational changes. Globally, the big metaphor is like climbing a mountain. The thrill is at the end. It's so true for entrepreneurs. They start out with something and people, everybody's a naysayer. Mountaineering, it's a lone sport. But when you get to your destination, those views, that exhilaration, the name Belay, I think fits really well with what we do.

When you look back at your career, has there been a breakthrough moment that has had a significant impact on your life?

Career-wise, I was 25. I was not thrilled with the direction my career was going. I had graduated from college, I was working at Solomon Smith Barney, and things were not… I was in the industry I wanted to be in, but not doing what I wanted to be doing. And eventually I dove into this world with an asset management firm. They sent me out to Nashville, Tennessee, and I was a kid from Los Angeles. And at that moment, I realized I needed to stop thinking about what other people thought of me. And I just plowed myself into it and didn't give a regard for what I felt people wanted to see from me. I realized I'm the only person responsible for my own success. Somebody else isn't going to hand it to me.

And I was so determined to succeed that I remember I had this little one-bedroom — it was more like a studio efficiency of a hotel in a not-a-great part of town — and I refused to turn on the television. I just worked. I worked seven days a week non-stop. And I thought, somebody had said to me once, it's like Columbus coming to America — just burn the ships. You can't go back to LA. You've got to make this thing work. And it took about a year, and things went great. And I've carried that through.

I have three daughters, and they're incredible. They're bright, they're smart, they're funny. And I've made a real effort to protect them, but if they fall down, and sometimes just literally fall down, not to rush to their aid. Like, okay, get up, stand up, you're okay. And little things like that, I think, make an impact. And my parents did that with me.

My father was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and he had some war-related injuries and Agent Orange. But he died of a heart attack when he was 38. And when I turned 39, it was a difficult moment, because I realized I was older than my father was and you realize at a really young age that life is finite and you can't sit and wait. If you want to do something you've got to go and pursue it.

When you think back at that tragic time, was there a breakthrough moment that helped you move forward towards your career or with goals in life? Has it helped you shape your direction?

Yeah. I am a big believer that everybody's had a tragedy in their life. It's just relative. And losing a parent, it's an emotional scar that never goes away. And it's a deep emotional scar. Things do come to an end. And it's important that you drive things forward and what do you want to do. And that notion of young kid that I was going to die at some point — it was depressing at first. But I probably also have a lot more compassion for people. And we all have a story. So I think it's important to be compassionate.

What aspects about this tragic experience have you carried through in your career?

When I'm engaging with people, I'm engaging with people in a way that I certainly recognize I've had tragic moments in my life and I assume everyone's had a tragic moment in their life. And that may be just compassion. Or I think it leads to positive relationships. I think it leads to understanding. But it's also this work ethic, and I think just a grit, a perseverance, a determination — is probably one of the reasons I like mountain climbing. I was a competitive swimmer growing up. It's a solo endurance sport, really. So that's something I definitely want my daughters to have, that grit and determination. And not — people fall down once and they can't get back up.

What does mountain climbing have to do with finance? How do you relate the two?

It's mental. It's grit. It's perseverance. When you are doing a technical mountain climb and you're in knee-deep snow and it's freezing and you're roped in with six other people and you're trying to get to the summit and it's going to take 24 hours to get there and you're going to sleep a couple hours on the way — that's pretty lonely and it's you in your own head. So that just exhaustion of put one foot in front of the other.

I am definitely from that experience the type of person — if there's a crisis, I certainly know what's going on, but I'm probably one of the more calm ones in the room. I'm not one to panic, and certainly the experiences that have shaped me in my life, like my father's death, but mountaineering — the worst thing you can do in a situation like that is panic. That's actually when people die, and it's not figurative. They actually die.

Mount Rainier, people die every year, and when you're climbing that peak, you've got to do it at midnight at a certain time of year, so the different crevasses — you're not falling through it. And if you're in a team and that person doesn't throw down their ice axe and arrest themselves from the rest of the group falling in, there's five people dead. So in those moments you cannot panic.

And the markets are trading every day. The markets right now during our interview are going crazy. And it will turn around. That's what the markets do. The markets are based on the long-term global economic health, and I'm a big believer that the long arc of things, we're going to end up in a better destination. But it's going through gyrations, and in finance, you've got to be patient and you cannot panic. Things I believe, long term, will be in a much better position. But to focus on those day-to-day moments — that's where people make mistakes, and they always do.