Commanding Heights: The Investment Journey of Josh Harris

Greg Dowling (00:06): Welcome to the FEG Insight Bridge. This is Greg Dowling, Head of Research and CIO at FEG. This show spans global markets and institutional investments through conversations with some of the world's leading investment, economic and philanthropic minds to provide insight on how institutional investors can survive and even thrive in the world of markets and finance. Today on the FEG Insight Bridge, I am thrilled to welcome Josh Harris, one of the most influential figures in modern finance and sports. From growing up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, to co-founding Apollo Global Management and building it into one of the world's leading alternative asset managers, Josh has spent decades shaping markets and redefining investments. After Apollo, he launched 26North, a rapidly growing alternative investment platform with a focus on private equity, insurance and private credit, continuing his impressive investment legacy. Beyond finance, Josh has become a prominent owner in professional sports with stakes in the Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Devils, Washington Commanders, among others. His journey bridges Wall Street and Main Street, business and culture. And today, we explore the lessons, challenges and perspectives he's gained along the way. Josh, welcome to the FEG Insight Bridge. Would you introduce yourself and 26North?

Josh Harris (01:29): Greg, thank you for having me. Very excited to be here and to be speaking with you. And I'm Josh Harris. I'm the Founder and CEO of 26North. Very grateful to say that we're now 31 billion after 3 short years and about 150 people and look forward to chatting today.

Greg Dowling (1:46): That's great. So we're going to do a long kind of career journey because you touch on so many different things. So we're going to start way back. So you grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland. What was life like?

Josh Harris (01:58): So Chevy Chase, Maryland, was a great place to grow up. Washington, DC, obviously lived inside the Beltway, but Dad was an orthodontist and grew up upper middle class. Myself and my brother, it was great. I was a big Washington sports fan and got a chance to experience that part of Washington. And that was life in Chevy Chase. I was a high school wrestler and was also a soccer player, loved sports. And it was a nice place to be, a nice place to grow up.

Greg Dowling (02:26): And I heard you were a pretty good wrestler.

Josh Harris (02:28): Well, I made it to college wrestling, but then I ran into people that were better. But it was an amazing life experience going through the sport. There's nothing like someone on the other side of the mat. That certainly sharpens your mind and teaches you about preparation and resilience and helped me begin and be successful in my life's journey.

Greg Dowling (02:49): So you're growing up as a kid. You're a sports fan. Your dad's an orthodontist. How did you get into investments? Was there anything along the way that kind of piqued your interest?

Josh Harris (02:56): Yeah. So finally, I had never heard of the Wharton School, but my dad had gone to Penn. He was a first-generation college student. Mom was a first-generation college student at Temple University in Philly. They met in Philly. And my grandfather was a U.S. postal worker from Philly. So my dad had gone to Penn. It was my aspirational school. I somehow got myself in there. I was a turnaround in high school. I didn't do so well early, but came on at the end and got myself into an amazing institution. It turns out Penn has this school called the Wharton School, which people who are in business obviously know about. I didn't know about it, but I took an econ class. And I found my passion early, which was finance, and I got transferred in. Big joke in my family was that my parents just got a notice from school. I didn't ask. I guess I should have asked. Next thing I know, I was on my way and studying finance and on my way to Wall Street.

Greg Dowling (03:49): That's great. From Wharton, you kind of go to Wall Street. And then, a handful of years later, you're one of the co-founders of Apollo. How did that take place?

Josh Harris: (03:58): I was always intrigued by Wall Street, and it always felt like business, right? I always took the approach that I wanted to be around the best, smartest people, the most driven people and to get the most experience early. So I was very attracted by these 2-year analyst programs. Got a job at a number of places, but ultimately, I chose Drexel, which at that point was really doing many of the most creative financing transactions. Michael Milken had pioneered the high-yield market, ended up working at Drexel. And then I met Marc Rowan there, who was an associate. I was an analyst working 100 hours a week. Leon Black was the head of M&A. We worked in M&A doing leveraged finance transactions. And then, I applied to one business school, the Harvard Business School. And while I was in school, we hit the 1990 recession. Drexel went out of business. And I got a job coming out of business school at a little-known firm of 30 people, 5 years old, called Blackstone, if you can believe it. So I had started at Blackstone when Marc Rowan called me and said, "Hey, we're starting this firm called Apollo, and can you join?" And that's how I literally got to Apollo, quite a funny story. I can never forget peeking my head into Steve Schwarzman's office very timidly and telling him that I was going to leave after only 90 days at Blackstone and just telling him I'd have to pay him back the $15,000 signing bonus because I had spent it on my student loans, and him graciously telling me I could keep it. So pretty wild story, but that's how I got started at Apollo.

Greg Dowling (05:34): Well, that's wild, Blackstone, of course, but even Milken, I mean, a pioneer in the high-yield space. Took what was called junk bonds, and he magically turned them into these things called high yield that everybody wanted to invest in. Pretty amazing. And so when you started out at Apollo, what were the early days like?

Josh Harris (05:50): Literally, we raised $400 million. And then ultimately, a series of other funds from a bank called Credit Lyonnais. And we were -- We innovated, right? We started the distress-for-control business along with a small number of other people, and we bought companies through buying the debt and then deleveraging them. And so, during the financial crisis, where people couldn't raise financing, we did buyouts, the reverse. We deleveraged the companies, and that got us started. And there were literally 12 of us in a rented office space in the Bear Stearns Building. 245 Park, believe it or not, used another storied name that's no longer around. And there were six of us there and six of us in LA, and we just were making it up as we went. We had never -- We were innovating, and it was a very entrepreneurial place. And it was successful and ultimately led to 31 amazing years, a massive company now with, depending on the day, about a $75 billion market cap. And I started the private equity business, credit business. We added insurance and ran the firm the last decade day-to-day. And it was an amazing experience, and I continue to be a happy, but passive, shareholder there.

Greg Dowling (07:05): In your 31 years there, what are you most proud of?

Josh Harris: (07:08): Most proud of the amazing investing ecosystem we built, the alpha we created for our underlying investors and then the many lives we touched and helped, both the employees that we impacted in a really positive way, but also our investors. It was an amazing experience and learned a lot and continue to cheer the firm on.

Greg Dowling (07:32): This might be a good transition into 26North. But before we turn that page, from 1990 to today, when you look at the private equity industry, how has it changed?

Josh Harris (07:45): Yeah, so when we started, right, there wasn't really a private equity industry. There were the fixed income group. And you go down the hall, there's the equity group. And then you walk down the hall further, there was a little office that had three to five people in it doing something, right, investing in commodities, investing in private assets. There was no such thing as private credit. And what happened is that it evolved over the 31 years to become an asset class. Now more than 25 percent of the U.S. pension system is in alternatives, private assets. You have endowments that are 40, 50, even 70 percent of their assets. And the outsized -- the risk adjusted returns, which were traditionally better in many cases, drove people into the asset class, and it became this multitrillion dollar asset class, which is a maturing asset class that's been a little bit commoditized in terms of the way many people approach it, not the way we approach it at 26North. So literally when I started, it was just a group of people trying to invest and create alpha and make money and zig while other people were zagging. And then it became this big asset class where, obviously, certainly in the case of the larger firms, it generates lots of fees. And so very, very, very different situation now versus when I started.

Greg Dowling (09:03): Yeah. I mean, you said a few misfit folks that didn't fit in a box, and now it's an asset class, and it's an industry. And people grow up wanting to be in private equity, right? That wouldn't have made any sense to you back in your warden days.

Josh Harris (09:16): There was really very few firms doing it, and there was very little opportunity, and it was private. No one really understood what it was. And so over time now, it's become highly transparent. Many of the biggest players are public companies. And obviously, you even have retail now getting into it.

Greg Dowling (09:33): Yeah. I mean, private equity is everywhere. And so you leave Apollo after 31 years, storied career. Why launch 26North? Haven't you done enough? What was the motivation?

Josh Harris (09:45): Yeah, so I felt that I had a unique opportunity. First of all, I love to work. I really enjoy building organizations that stand for excellence, being around really smart people. And so I enjoy doing this. Secondly, I felt that the big firms were getting bigger, and they built incredible investing ecosystems. But many of them were public companies and really were driven by ultimately the need to get bigger, right, the need to generate larger and larger pools of capital. And the smaller firms hadn't kept pace, hadn't developed the incredible investing ecosystems that many of the bigger firms had developed. And I felt that I was uniquely positioned because of my energy, my experiences, my access to investor capital and, importantly, my access to talent. I was really surprised to find that if I set up a company like 26North, I could get the best and the brightest people, even out of many of the bigger firms. And so I decided to start 26North. It was really founded on three principles. I wanted to go back to basics. I wanted to go back to alpha, right, and not make it about asset gathering. I wanted alignment. So I was an investor, and I was going to be the largest or amongst the largest investors in everything we did. This was set up for me to invest my own capital, but to do it side-by-side with other investors that I respected, that I could have a dialogue with and for us to curate an amazing team that would win, and so there was a lot of alignment, and then lastly, to do it with the best and the brightest. And so I put all those things together, and we started 26North, and it's been an amazing ride. And the key to it has been getting people who are literally willing to bet their careers not on the management fees, but on the returns they would generate for investors. And that's kind of who we are. People take big cash cuts to work here, but then they participate. So everyone is aligned.

Greg Dowling (11:52): So alignment, just you're smaller. You've got the critical mass, but you're still much smaller than a lot of your brother. And you've tracked this great talent. What else? What else is in that alpha bucket that you think is really important to drive returns?

Josh Harris (12:03): What we want to do is build a big firm ecosystem and put it against the middle and upper middle market and bring skills and capabilities that big firms have in many cases that the middle market doesn't really have for the most part and create competitive advantage. And so that's a whole cadre of things. First of all, we have an integrated platform. So we have private equity, credit, and insurance all under one roof. And so there's a give-get. We go into businesses that are highly synergistic and mutually self-reinforcing. And so, for example, the capital markets acumen, the market-leaning nature of credit, of insurance allows for better private equity investment in terms of the ability to have more robust and more thoughtful capital structures, to be on the cutting edge of credit trends, to unearth potentially distress-for-control opportunities. And then private equity creates a library of knowledge and information and allows for credit to do a better job in the industries in which they're investing. We have an alpha creation team led by John Garcia, who was one of the most important partners at McKinsey. He started the McKinsey fee-at-risk business. That led to a strategic partnership with McKinsey and a whole series of operating capabilities that really don't exist very much in the middle market. And we have the adjacent sports ecosystem where, even though we don't obviously invest in teams because that's growth investing and we don't cross into that, there's a massive amount of importance of sports in the media ecosystem. There's a ton of picks-and-shovels businesses that come out of sports, and so we have that knowledge. Finally, most importantly, we get amazing people, amazing people that are coming from big firms, have had amazing careers and are leaving great seats, where they're going to definitionally make a lot of money, to bet on themselves and to go back to where we started as an industry, which is generating alpha. We set the firm up quite differently. This is about continuing to invest in the capabilities of the firm and to win in the marketplace. And so when you go into the middle market, the upper middle market, you find pockets of value that usually don't exist in the top side of the market because, let's face it, the big firms are pretty good at what they do. But 80 percent of the capital that's been raised has gone to 10 firms in the last few years. And there's this massive shakeout going on in the middle and the upper middle market. And so that leaves us the opportunity to really do a great job there and to unearth great deals, low purchase prices for really good companies that might be below the radar of a $25 billion fund or a $20 billion fund.

Greg Dowling (14:48): And so if you're getting this talent to leave their seats and come, how do you explain the culture?

Josh Harris (14:53): For us, I think that culture and people are almost -- You win with the best people in the culture in the investment business. And I love talking about our culture. It's pretty simple. What I always say is that you need to be excellent. I try to work on myself every day and become a better person. But in order to win in the investment business, you need to be excellent. Secondly, you need to be mission-driven, which means, all of us, we love coming to work. We love winning for our investors. I always say that we're in the NFL or the NBA of finance. We're up against some of the biggest, most well-financed competitors and we need to bring it every day. It needs to be a priority. It doesn't mean you can't have other things in your life, but we need you to want to be here and want to be part of it. We are slightly undersized, even though we have approximately 150 people. We are slightly undersized for the amount of capital we manage. And so if you have to be on that 10 o'clock conference call, there's not someone behind you that's going to do the work. You just need to be willing to do that. And then the last thing I add is that you need to be a nice person, which is somewhat different. This is my second time doing this. And I find that you can be really competitive. You can try to win for your clients appropriately, but you need to be nice to your colleagues. You need to be humble, low ego and realize that we're all blessed to be in this position. And so bring that stewardship mindset to the company.

Greg Dowling (16:19): I love it. It's been 3 years, very different when you founded this firm than your last -- I don't think you have student loans. Maybe you still do. I doubt it, so very different. What surprised you about this in these 3 years? Do you have any sort of big surprises?

Josh Harris (16:33): Yeah. So, look, when you go from having thousands of people to having 10, and you start something -- I did a start-up when I was age 55, right? Start-ups are amazing. They're super fun. I was meeting with people in my kitchen.

Greg Dowling (16:48): Approving the dental plan, the firm dental plan.

Josh Harris (16:50): It's really fun, and you can be really entrepreneurial. But you have to get on the plane, visit investors, visit companies, visit talent, make stuff happen. It's a lot of fun, but it's also quite taxing. And it's like no task too big, no task too small. That's how we run our company. And we say this to people. I say, I'll be on the 10. Unfortunately, I'm still at the point where, to do this right, I have to be on the 10 o'clock conference call and doing the investment committee, which is where I spend a lot of my time, is approving investments, in some cases coming out with presentations for our investors and making stuff happen. And it was quite humbling to do that and to go back to what I had done early in my career. But at the same time, it was quite rewarding. And, look, I have to say I'm surprised and grateful to the support we've gotten from our investors, our clients, getting, I feel, a great sense of responsibility for everyone at the company, who's left big jobs and bet on themselves and our company. And I feel a great sense of responsibility to our investors. I think that if you're investing someone's capital, the way I define stewardship is, their capital has to be more important than your capital. And that's really the way I feel about it. Living through that has been very gratifying, but also somewhat stressful and many sleepless nights.

Greg Dowling (18:09): Takes a lot of energy. I asked you about private equity earlier and how that's changed. I might ask you here about private credit and how that's changed because that has also seen tremendous growth, kind of hand in hand with private equity, but even taking on different forms. So maybe thoughts on private credit now. And then also, maybe based on that, any sort of derivations on how you're doing it at 26North?

Josh Harris (18:32): Private credit has been a function of the regulation of the banking system, other people such as GE Credit and some of the credit companies. And what happened was the regulators, I think appropriately, decided that systematically important taxpayer-backed organizations shouldn't be managing risk. That was better left to private pools of capital where, if things went wrong, the investors themselves would suffer, as they should, but the taxpayers wouldn't be pulled in to protect the system. And so, to a large extent, the government, I think appropriately, said, let's regulate the banks. Let's manage how much risk we're going to allow them to take because they're playing with taxpayer money, essentially. And so that's led to the growth of private credit, which is now a multitrillion-dollar asset class. I would say, like other things today, credit spreads are lower than anyone would like, but there still are pockets of value. That's created the growth in private credit. And you see companies like Ares, companies like Owl Rock, companies like Apollo that have very big pools of credit assets, Blackstone, KKR. It's all the same big companies. And what they're doing is the same thing that's happening in private equity, is they're going upmarket. They're trying to find bigger and bigger pools of capital to get those management fees because they're public companies. It's a more commoditized, tougher, more mature space. Everything in the investing world is not easy. What we're trying to do is find those pockets of value in the middle and upper-middle market to invest with companies, for example, in direct lending, that are smaller, to do 1 to $500 million underwrites. Private equity, we're trying to do 1 to $500 million equity checks to manage pools of capital that are smaller, that have better returns, better spreads and less risk. And we're finding that in the middle market direct-lending space, which is below the big guys, below the Owl Rocks, below the Gallups, below the Ares, we're also finding that in a business called investment-grade alpha. In the case of direct lending, our book, which is a $2 billion book, is still 600 basis points over SFR. And that's pretty darn good with covenants and very low attach and detach points, loan-to-values of less than 50 percent on average. And in investment-grade alpha, we're generating more than 200 basis points over the curve for privately originated investment-grade, which for probably many in your audience is -- So it's like an eight instead of a six. I mean, it's not as exciting. Our private credit business generates a 10 percent dividend, right? And that's pretty good for loan-to-value of less than 50 percent in this market. And so we continue to sort of demonstrate through our investments that we're serious about the word alpha, that we're not just following and raising, and we constrain how much capital we take.

Greg Dowling (21:32): One of the criticisms that gets thrown out from time to time is that when they overly regulated the banks or changed the regulation, maybe, and it pushed all of these things to unregulated entities, are they just kind of hiding the problem? Can this be a systemic risk?

Josh Harris (21:48): Yeah, I think generally not. I mean, a lot of these pools of capital, even though these are big companies, the bigger alternatives firms are 50 to 300 billion market cap companies. They're managing up to a trillion dollars of assets. And the reality is that many of the assets are not cross-collateralized. They're in separate pools of capital. There are things that you need to watch. By and large, I'd say that the way the firms are structured is not systematically risk-oriented. They're not cross-collateralized pools of capital and levered, like the banks might be, that even though the underlying investments themselves may be levered, that generally the institutions are not levered.

Greg Dowling (22:30): Yeah, that makes sense. I wanted to move on to sports. This is kind of bookending our beginning conversation. I mean, so you're growing up in Chevy Chase, Maryland. You got family in South New Jersey, Philadelphia. You basically bought all your favorite teams growing up.

Josh Harris (22:44): Yes, that's been an incredible blessing. I mean, obviously, I'm sitting there and Chevy Chase, and the Washington football team wins the 1982-1983 Super Bowl. Everyone comes out and cheers for Washington football. John Riggins goes around, in the end beats the Miami Dolphins 27-17. And then I go up to Philly, which is another tough city, and I watch Dr. J and Moses Malone sweep through the playoffs and win the NBA championship for the Sixers. And so obviously, those two experiences, it dawned on me that sports was one of the few things in a tough world and tough cities that brought everyone together. And no matter where you came from, your religion, your race, your socioeconomic background, you were at that moment a Philadelphia 76er or a Washington football fan. That dawned on me. Then I went back about my business, back to work. I was literally a freshman in college. And the next thing you know, I find myself in negotiations to buy the Philadelphia 76ers in a lockout in 2010 from Comcast. That started me on this incredible journey, where I was able to buy a whole series of sports assets, which have been a lot of fun, but also amazing investments.

Greg Dowling (24:02): Now, you're a few years older than me, but not that much older than me. And I remember growing up, and in the '70s, some of these teams were like fly-by-night. I grew up in Cleveland, and we had an NHL team that folded mid-season because the owner couldn't make payroll. What made this become this industry that it is today, sports?

Josh Harris (24:20): Yeah, so when I was looking at the 76ers, right, they were losing $40 million a year. I remember scratching on the back of the napkin to my friend, and my friend literally still has the napkin because I was so nervous about it that I only bought about 40 percent of the team. And I put together a group, and I looked at we could reengage with the city, win, become more relevant, why I thought the gate would go up, but also how we would go from almost last in the NBA to top quartile. But more importantly, I really felt that the media -- It was the beginning of the globalization of media content and the beginning of watching, in addition to on cable, on your phone, on tablets, on the Internet. And that was starting to really change these businesses from live entertainment businesses to global media businesses, and so that was our thesis. And then also I felt that this live content was really special.

Greg Dowling (25:21): It's like the only thing that people watch live these days.

Josh Harris (25:23): Yeah, I remember the experience of the 25-year waiting list in Washington to get a season ticket and kind of how the parade in Philly, and I just felt that it was a really unique thing. And so that was my thesis. I was early in it. We bought the Sixers for $280 million. We bought the Devils in 2013 for $350 million. We bought Crystal Palace, which is a small upstart club.

Greg Dowling (25:47): Yep.

Josh Harris (25:47): But it just won the FA Cup. And then obviously, ultimately the Washington Commanders, which is in the NFL. And so all of those teams have been good investments and also a lot of fun.

Greg Dowling (25:57): I can imagine. Is there synergies in owning multiple sports franchises?

Josh Harris (26:03): I would say there's some synergy in terms of obviously the concert businesses and certainly some of the back office and other things. But the biggest synergy is, if you have a bigger platform, you track the best people. And again, it's a lot like the investing world. You win with the best people. Certainly there are synergies across the business and across even the sports side in terms of analytics and sports science and data platforms. But by and large, the sports, they're somewhat focused in their underlying cities.

Greg Dowling (26:35): This might be sort of like some of the differences between asset management and sports. But how do you balance being long-term stewards, making some money, right, versus fans who probably want you to win now? That's got to be hard.

Josh Harris (26:50): I think in business, your scorecard, both of them are stewardship businesses. You're committing to your investors and you're a steward for their capital. You're committing to the fans and the city to create memories. In business, your currency is EBITDA, stock price, value creation, returns, alpha. In sports, your currency is happiness, which is creating memories, which is winning. But it's also like driveway-to-driveway experience. If you go to a game, and the person in the parking lot doesn't treat you well, or if your food is bad, if you don't have a good experience, you're going to remember that. So everyone matters. People matter. Culture matters. So what I do in sports is, I literally try to create memories and I try to win. And I say to all of our investors, it's one of the reasons why 26North does not invest in teams. And there are definitely private equity firms that do invest in teams. But I literally will say, look, we're going to try to win for this city. That might mean we're in the luxury tax. That might mean we build a new training ground. That might mean we invest in a stadium. And I think that the globalization of media and the strength of these leagues have allowed me to do that and to take a long-term perspective and still do well financially. But really, this is about the fans.

Greg Dowling (28:09): In 26North, you will touch sort of the ancillary sides of sports, some of the infrastructure. How do you do that? And how does your sports franchise ownership influence that?

Josh Harris (28:20): So obviously, we have a lot. The sports ownership, sports are incredibly important to the media ecosystem, whether it be Disney, ABC, the networks, certainly even the tech companies and the cable systems. Also, sports is like a massively growing industry, whether it's building arenas, whether it's serving food, tickets and ticket platforms. All of this is growing like crazy and requires infrastructure, requires CapEx. We bought a business into private equity called ArchKey. They provide the electrical systems to stadiums. We have another business that provides A/V systems, all this stuff. I mean, stadiums are multibillion -- and arenas are multibillion-dollar projects. They require a lot of construction, and then there's a lot of demand for food and for other things. And there are a lot of businesses that are just growing like crazy because of all the investment in sports. But by and large, when we invest in 26North, it's about value creation on the buy. It's about buying cash flow cheaply. And so you'll know at 26North because you'll say to yourself, wow, everyone else is buying at 10 or 11 times cash flow. These guys are buying good businesses at seven or eight times cash flow. And so you'll see then we have all the alpha creation and everything else. But we pride ourselves on getting that good deal up front. And our purchase multiples now are well below industry average. And even though in some cases sports is a growing industry, we've been able to find those transactions that might be a little bit different, a little bit more complicated. We trade complexity for rate of return and purchase price. Sports is a growth industry. You pay multiple revenues. You pay very high multiples. 26North buys cash flow cheaply, but that doesn't mean that the two can't be synergistic to one another.

Greg Dowling (30:08): Yeah. No, that makes sense, growing industry, find pockets where you can buy cash flows cheaply. And sports may be one of the few industries that is AI-proof, right? You're going to go watch the 76ers or the Devils. You're not going to watch an AI simulation of this.

Josh Harris (30:25): Fair enough. And I think increasingly those basic businesses, right, where certainly they'll be touched by AI, and certainly AI will be very important to how content is delivered and how -- your experience, right? We already have cashless checkouts and the new media deals that the NBA just did and the coming one in the NFL, that a lot of the content delivery will certainly be impacted by AI very positively for a consumer experience. But the basic experience won't be touched.

Greg Dowling (30:59): Final question on sports, perhaps been a little bit of controversy, maybe a little bit of politics surrounding this, but with the Washington Commanders, have you found your franchise quarterback?

Josh Harris (31:09): We've found our franchise -- I mean, Jayden is amazing. He's an incredible human being and man in addition to being an incredible football player. He's a warrior. And our job is to put a line around him, put weapons around him, like Deebo and Terry McLaurin, to protect him. And also, I'd like to say as a joke, we've also found our franchise quarterback in private equity in Mark Weinberg, so.

Greg Dowling (31:35): Hey, I wanted to talk a little bit just outside of 26North and sports. I mean, you're a very generous person and give back to the community in a lot of different ways. What are some of the different charitable organizations that you're involved in?

Josh Harris (31:46): Yeah, so from our point of view, one of the biggest things we do is Sports for Life, and because wrestling touched me so deeply and because we're very familiar with the power of sports to really loop in kids. Whether it be us giving the largest gift in Police Athletic League history or After-School All-Stars or this basketball program called the 48ers, we do a lot of stuff that -- where we feed them the lettuce. We make them eat well. We take them and keep them in a safe environment. We make them study and do homework. If you want to play on the basketball team, you got to get good grades. And so it's really Sports for Life. I think secondly, we sponsor a lot of wellness and medical research across various universities. We're strong believers in education, that being the key towards sustainability, like intergenerational wealth creation for communities in need. If you can make enough that you can ultimately send your kids to college, you've created intergenerational wealth. As an example, I made an investment in a company in Philly called Mosaic, which is a Black-owned, Black-led business that builds affordable housing and created a grocery store in a food desert. And so those are some of the things that we do.

Greg Dowling (33:01): That's great, and I love the sports aspect of it. It's something we do. We support a lot of adaptive sports. Sports is such a magical thing, right? It can impact so many different aspects of your life and just -- It is wonderful. I wanted to maybe kind of -- You kind of hinted at a lot of these throughout our conversation. But if you looked at your life growing up to today -- You've talked about philanthropy. We've talked about sports. We've talked about building businesses. What do you think are the key leadership or lessons that you would tell somebody? Like, hey, I want to be like you or want to be successful in anything. What are the key attributes?

Josh Harris (33:38): I was never the tallest. I was never the smartest. For me personally, I think that hard work and resilience, it go an awful long way. I mean, obviously you need a certain amount of aptitude. Everyone's good. I found my calling early. I was a good investor. I don't know how I stumbled on that. But from the day I took the Econ 1A class at Penn, I transferred into Wharton. I wanted to be an investor. And it was something that I was naturally good at and that I enjoyed. But honestly, I think even when I think about my life and my career, I'm humbled. I'm just grateful. I can't even make up the stuff that's happened to me. It wasn't a straight line. It seems like a straight line. But a lot of it was being resilient, getting up when you were knocked down, those old sort of lessons from wrestling, and working really hard and bringing it every day and outworking people. And I think people do it differently, right? But that's my lesson, and I think as I've gotten older, right? I started off as a doer. I would just do everything. Then I was a manager. I would tell people what to do, and now leadership. I think as you get older, it's about finding great people, creating a value system, creating a big vision, creating a mission, creating a culture, and then holding people accountable. Whether it's 26North or buying the Commanders, making this about something that's greater than yourself. In our case, it's about creating alpha for our beneficiaries, many of whom are frontline workers, some of them whom are families creating retirement savings. Or in the case of Commanders, it's about winning for the city and making sure that every fan has a great experience. I think that's leadership, right? You're not going to be able to do everything. You manage big organizations. And it's about having a culture where people understand what they're supposed to be doing, and they're held accountable, and they know what to do. And so that sort of evolution has been fun for me and interesting and really self-reinforcing across sports and finance.

Greg Dowling (35:36): Wow. That is so good that I think we're just going to end it right there. I love that. That was fantastic. And I just want to thank you for spending time with us today. As we record this, the NFL is going. The EPL is going. But shortly, the NBA and NHL. So good luck to all of your teams. Continued good luck on the investment side. And we really appreciate this.

Josh Harris (35:59): Greg, great to be here and thank you for having me. And let's go!

Greg Dowling (36:03): I love it. I love it. All right. Thank you. If you are interested in more information on FEG, check out our website at www.feg.com. And don't forget to subscribe to our communications so you don't miss the next episode. Please keep in mind that this information is intended to be general education that needs to be framed within the unique risk and return objectives of each client. Therefore, nobody should consider these to be FEG recommendations. This podcast was prepared by FEG. Neither the information nor any opinion expressed in this podcast constitutes an offer or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any securities. The views and opinions expressed by guest speakers are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of their firm or of FEG.