“Many short-term decisions… are not primarily driven by numbers. It's not a mathematical science. It's a social science.”
For over 18 years Philip Bagdasarianz has been working with wealthy families from Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. This year he joined PWA Private Wealth Advisors AG, a swiss multi-family office boutique as a managing partner.
Our identities play a central role in our personality and it ultimately has a huge effect on how we work and interact professionally and personally. Identity can be categorized into three pillars: DNA, culture and upbringing, and our purpose. Understanding different identities and how they manifest themselves is important to consider when evaluating investment decisions. For example, western societies place more emphasis on individualism. “They are generally the individualists are generally what we call overconfident. Meaning they have the illusion of being in control of what they're doing in the markets.”
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SPEAKER
Philip Bagdasarianz
Managing Partner
Private Wealth Advisors (PWA)
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Rachel Pether: (00:08)
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is Rachel Pether and I'm a senior advisor to SkyBridge Capital based in Abu Dhabi, as well as being the MC for SALT a thought leadership forum and networking platform that encompasses business technology and politics. SALT Talks as many of you know, is a series of digital interviews with some of the world's foremost investors, creators, and thinkers. And just as we do at our global SALT conference series, we aim to provide our audience a window into the mind of subject matter experts.
Rachel Pether: (00:41)
Now the focus of today's talk is going to be on how a healthy identity leads to better and more sustainable investment decision making. And I'm very excited to be speaking to a dear friend of mine, Philip Bagdasarianz, the Managing Partner at Private Wealth Advisors, a Swiss multifamily office boutique. Philip is a true global citizen. He's lived in Africa, the US and now calls Switzerland home. For over 18 years, he's been working with wealthy families from Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He's a certified international wealth manager and an expert in financial advisory, and he received his MA in educational science from the University of Zurich. For the last 10 years he's also been on the faculty of the University of St. Gallen's executive MBL program, the sustainable investment decisions.
Rachel Pether: (01:34)
As always, if you have any questions for Philip during today's talk, please just enter them in the Q&A section of your screen. Philip, welcome to SALT Talks.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (01:45)
Thank you, Rachel. Very glad to be on board today.
Rachel Pether: (01:49)
No, we're super excited to have you. And the focus of today's talk is how a healthy identity leads to better and more sustainable investment decisions. So I guess we should start with identity. But before we go into that, and without sounding too psychoanalytical, tell me about you. Who are you really and what's your identity?
Philip Bagdasarianz: (02:13)
Yeah. Well, Rachel, I'm a bit like six feet tall and about 70 kilos, a bit more than 70. Well, no problem, quite a bit more than 70 of course at the moment. But that again, you read my bio and that just tells a bit where I was, what I've done. I told you a little bit of my outside. But that's mainly not enough to say who I really I'm as you said.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (02:43)
My name says a bit more about my background. I'd like to just give you a short overview of where my life story came from, or how that developed, because I think that will give us an idea of the pieces and the complexity that I think is behind each and every person's identity. So born in Switzerland, we left the country to go to Africa just a few weeks after I was born, my father was a medical doctor there, together with my mother, who's American. And unfortunately after already two years that we were in Africa, she was diagnosed with cancer just after my brother's birth. So we went back to the US to her family for treatment. But tragically, she didn't survive for very long. And when I was three and a half, she passed away.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (03:38)
So, grew up with my grandparents, my father, and I'm very lucky that my dad found a wonderful second wife just a couple years later. And after that, when I was seven, we moved to Switzerland for actually the rest of my formal educational life. But you see, I was uprooted in Africa, planted in the US, uprooted again brought to Switzerland. Didn't speak a single word of German, the local language here. And so in the remote mountain village that we landed in, the kids, they didn't, some of them didn't want to be friends with me just because I was different. I wasn't familiar to them. So that was difficult for me to understand why would that be? I played with African kids, I played with Americans. I was the American boy and suddenly in Switzerland, with an Armenian name, which was Russia. So you see I carried the cold war within me during that time.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (04:46)
And that obviously got me thinking about identity. The other thing is now how was it on a relational level? Was I an orphan or not? I never luckily never felt like one. But those are things that do influence personality. But identity is probably even a bit more. As a kid you don't think too much about that. You just cope and try to survive. Maybe remember when we first met Rachel, how I looked. Right?
Rachel Pether: (05:23)
I do remember. Yes. And I was actually very impressed that you still took the meeting because you had just had a bike accident and your lip was so swollen you could barely talk, but I was very impressed at maybe that's the German side of the Swiss. You stick to all your appointments, I was very grateful and happy that you did take the meeting that day. And you bought me Swiss chocolate at the end of it. So I remember-
Philip Bagdasarianz: (05:52)
Correct. So that's again, you see in my very short period of my life, that happens. Sometimes you fall flat on your face. Now with the biker it was my doing. I just was not careful enough would be too fast. But I think many of us, they have their origin, they have their heritage where they come from, which forms a great part of their identity, especially as kids. And we all have bruises. I'm lucky, this healed more or less quite by itself. So our body is a great example that, yes, we do get bruises, but let's get to work. Let's heal it. And so I think I'm really happy to say that many of the scars that I might have taken along from those difficult moments, they did heal. They did heal.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (06:44)
So, the next thing that happened to me was that we were in Switzerland, formal education, and all that. And of course, the older you get, the more your choices start defining more about who you are. It's not just what happens to you. It's also how when you actively choose which direction you want to go for work, how much effort you want to put to your studies and all that. So that's when I think the given identity from the outside becomes a bit more influenced by what we do and see. Yes, please.
Rachel Pether: (07:28)
Sorry, just jump in there. And I want to dive further into the choices and the personality aspects. But I know that one of your passions is you work for a not-for-profit organization that equips leaders, equips decision makers, through identity based leadership. So how do you actually define identity? What are the components that make that up?
Philip Bagdasarianz: (07:53)
Yeah. Well, the components that I try to bring it down to, let's say, three aspects, which makes it a bit easier for everybody to understand. This is an area I'm still exploring myself. So this is not scientifically totally based or anything. But I try to bring this, my passion for the identity or the different personalities that I meet also in my business life and in the organization. And mix it also to understand what's going on on the markets. How do I react? How do my clients react to all these things. So, identity Actually, I believe, has three sides.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (08:39)
One is what's called the inside, which is our DNA as humans, our look. our gender can be different, or it influenced our decision making. Our abilities, our disabilities, our feelings, passions, and I was saying, the coping mechanisms that we develop in life and reactions and reactions. Now, the good thing, what I think is, we do see the inside part of identity shows we have a need for uniqueness, we have a need for control, for decision making it all, for happiness, and generally some inner peace. So, just that's it.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (09:30)
A second side would be towards the out the outside. That is what probably is very strong when we're small kids, the circumstances, our culture, our tribe, and then later on relationships that we choose or that we just have family again. Language as I said can be a very quite defining who you are or even the social status, people define you by the language you speak. American accent or Australian, whatever. And then your life story. And what feeds into there is the need of each of us to belong to a group which gives us security. So those two basic needs are actually rooted in that part of my identity.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (10:16)
And the third side would be the upside. And the upside is, what is my purpose? What is the larger thing that I believe in, or that I aim for? It can be the authorities, truth, things that are outside of me, that I can just manipulate left and right, they're above me. Or, as I said, they can be goals. Businesses would call them the values, their mission statement, things like that. So with those three, I think we can more or less see how complex it is, identity. But also I do want to say that we need all three for healthy identity. And they have to be in balance. So you can't leave anyone out and you can't just overemphasize one or just take one away. I think it really is like a tripod. A tripod always stands straight if the legs are the same strength and same length. So that's a bit how I would see that. Yeah.
Rachel Pether: (11:31)
So I know you just said that you can't take one of those pieces away. But I do actually just want to focus on the last one you mentioned which was the upside. And given your experience and living and working in so many different countries and cultures, obviously, they have very different attitudes politically, philosophically, spiritually, whether it's dictatorships or religious states democracies. What are some of your key learnings from the different cultures that you've worked across in terms of that upside? And then maybe we can talk about how that plays into investing as well.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (12:10)
Right. Well, it's actually quite interesting to see that different cultures, cultures have an identity of their own. I know we know that. That's what we call culture. But when it comes to comparing that with the identity of individuals, it does look very similar. Of course, there are individuals within each of these cultures and societies which are totally different. But in general, there are, let's say, the typical Western investor. Or there is generally a bit more the typical South Asian investor. And they differ. They differ strongly.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (12:53)
And so, also thinking about our talk, I did try to see what defines those cultures? Which of those three elements is maybe overemphasized and which is weathering a bit? So yeah. And it does actually fit into my experience with clients of all these different cultures. You were just saying, one, without being just seeing that everybody would act the same way but if you look at for example, Russia, which actually defined per se, that they did not want to have an up. In the 1920s they said, "We do not want to have anything above the communistic regime." So they expelled religion and anything like that.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (13:48)
What happened, they became a police state and everybody was controlling each other. They tried to replace the up by the community. That's why they're probably called communism. Many, many good ideas for equality, but they missed something. And what happens is many people of that country still now, they are very... It takes them a long time to trust. They don't generally trust because they grew up in a society where you can't trust anything. There's no governing body, you don't know what the decision makers will do. So they're always ready to grab their stuff and run. They always want to... That's just what they are.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (14:34)
And the Westerners, for example, us Westerners, we have a very strong in focus. So that's why we're individualistic society. So of course we have some strengths. The strength of a strong in his creativity. We have invention, diversity, quality, excellence, things like that. But if you miss out on purpose which is an up component or belonging, which is one of those out components, it leads to loneliness. And we have one of the most lonely cultures we've ever had is the West. You have cultural divisions. Short termism. We'll maybe speak about that shortly, as well. And often some emotion based decisions which don't always turn out to be the most sustainable.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (15:29)
So looking at the investor type, they are generally, the individualists are generally what we call overconfident. Meaning they have the illusion of being in control of what they're doing and the markets. And then emotionally driven pride and greed can be very strong drivers. But on the other hand, the Russian for example, if they say I'm going into a very risky asset, that would be a corporate bond. Right? That's really risky. And if you take a Western or let's say the US client, for them a... I mean, the really conservative investment would be a stock one of the S&P 500. So that shows you, this is true. You can generalize it a bit for society and that has to do with their identity. Yeah.
Rachel Pether: (16:26)
So yesterday, we had a really interesting SALT Talk as well. And we were talking a little bit about the anxiety of learning a language and something that's very prevalent in Middle East and parts of Asia and the culture there is this fear of failure or of this desire to save face. So in your experience across these cultures, how do you see that playing out when it comes to investing?
Philip Bagdasarianz: (16:56)
Well, yes. There are probably two groups of what we call shame cultures. I don't know if it's a nice word. But generally, exactly as you described. I think the far East which over emphasize the community, the out. What you do see there, they have lots of strengths again. The unity that they have. They have a very strong output. They have commitment, collaboration, they're very efficient. The Kaizen principle, that everyone from the CEO to the cleaner have the same rights to bring in their ideas to make a process efficient. So, huge, huge benefits and quite stable. You would have a sense of belonging. But if you do miss uniqueness, the person that can be individual or different or purpose, then you start to have uniformity, which is the downside of such a community or can become. You see workaholics that work 24/7 just to reach the bigger goal there they have. Or then rebellion, fight flight patterns, things like that.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (18:20)
And from the investment perspective, what I see in let's say, the far East what we have is, you have some herding patterns. Herding means you just have to follow the crowd and what we call the home of bias. So whatever is familiar with your surroundings, that's where you invest. You find what is familiar to be less risky, and what is not familiar to yourself. So, these are things we all can fall for, but I think I do see a bit more in such community. And South Asia, the GCC where I also do have clients, I think, they are probably I would call it a societies or states that have an emphasize on the up. They have a common goal, Often these are religious states. So they have a common sense of values, a common set of how we do things. So, again, they have a unity which many other countries lack.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (19:34)
Quick decisions can be made. If you have a single leader, for example, a leadership that is lean, quick decision making, you can focus. Many of these countries are very resilient. But on the other hand, if it's overemphasized, you do see suppression of others, you see power struggles, corruption and detachment, double living. They, unfortunately some people, they go abroad to live the life they actually want to live and come back and have to play a game. So you do see things like that happen when the out isn't in balance with the other two. And predominately the investor would be a bit more fear driven. And yes, what we also talk about is they fall for the anchoring bias. So what they hear first, what is putting their mind since kids, that's what they stick with and they tend to diversify less.
Rachel Pether: (20:48)
Yeah. No, we certainly see that playing out in the Middle East with regards to home buyers and things that you're familiar with, like a lot of people are quite over allocated to real estate, for example. But back to your point on, living here at least we are often very grateful we live in a benevolent meritocracy. It definitely has its upside and certain sensors. And when you were speaking about these different cultures, I guess it also ties into the question of, well, what is wealth? Because in some of the cultures you spoke about, wealth and health and so many other things, that's actually part of the community, like you'd be willing to give up your personal wealth for the benefit of the community. So how have you seen that playing out between East and West as well?
Philip Bagdasarianz: (21:42)
Yeah, just to give an example, the Western culture is, again, very individualistic and very focused on ownership. So the banks here, they will always ask, "Who do the assets belong to?" And in the Western culture it's clear, it's my wife's, or it's mine, maybe it's both. But that's as far as it goes. If you go to South Asia, the GCC and they comes at wealth, it's family money. The Western banks, they don't have a concept for that. They just don't know how to handle that. So they say, "Okay, well, is it your money?" "Well, no, it's my uncle's but he gave it to me to..." Well, you have to... Is it the uncle's account? So these concepts sometimes don't fit.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (22:31)
And on the other hand, I mean, this is just the concept of shared wealth. And I think there's a benefit, a huge benefit for shared wealth, I must say, because I think what it helps us understand that maybe I'm not just always an owner of things, but I'm a steward. I'm a steward of the family assets. Even if they're in my name, but I might have kids, I might have a business to run, the family reputation, whatever. And it's not just mine, mine, mine. So I do think that we can learn from the Eastern cultures what it means to be stewards of a larger good that I could share with others. And I think we're starting to understand that, that it's maybe not only just a owning society, but a sharing society, things like that are coming into play just also because they make more sense. They make more sense.
Rachel Pether: (23:33)
Yeah. And when you're looking with all the work that you've done in identity, perhaps you can tie that into, what is the real driver or real drivers behind investment decision making?
Philip Bagdasarianz: (23:50)
So I'll tell you what I learned at school, or what I found to be true in life. Because there is a bit of-
Rachel Pether: (23:58)
Let's go with the truth. We'll, all go with the truth.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (24:00)
Well, I think we all would like to believe that investing is a numbers game. And if we just get the figures right then we have the right decision made. So you'll see number crunching up and down, big data, whatever. The problem is that the more data we get and the more research we do on that data, the more we understand that it's not about the figures. I mean, not only. Long term, yes. Probably. But many short term decision making and prices, which is let's say, the intersection of all the decision makers, the market where you have the buyers and the sellers, that is not primarily driven by numbers. It's not a mathematical science. It's a social science.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (24:58)
So I had to unlearn some of the beliefs that we had and say, "Well, if you just get the figures right then investment decision will be right." And having learned a bit more, I think can help you learn about yourself, and why would I be tending to make a decision in this direction, and someone else would be making exactly the opposite decision. And to balance the decision because in the end I have a bias and I have to make sure that I don't fall for that side. And the social sciences do help to understand the investment decision, which is much more driven by emotions. And behind emotions, obviously, is the way I see the world, the way, am I fear driven? is the next big bang just around the corner? Am I doing profit? Or do I always just see, well, mankind can overcome anything? Everything's rosy. And both exist.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (26:09)
And because both exists, there is a market. If we all would know exactly where the price would be, there'll be no buying or selling of anything. We just all stick with it. So I do see that the identity is not only who we are but also how we view things. So it's become our glasses of how we view the world, how we interpret what's going on in the markets as well.
Rachel Pether: (26:34)
Yeah, I think that's really interesting, especially when you look at, I'm a fan of Tesla, for example, but there are certain people that just have almost godlike status. So people, I'm sure there are a lot of investors in Tesla that don't really know about the financials of Tesla at all but they like and they trust and they've heard of Elon Musk. So they're happy to invest in them, even though maybe sales aren't doing as well, or missing projections or whatever. But we're very driven as well by perceptions of things only.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (27:11)
Perceptions and hope, of course, and sometimes greed. Yeah, it can be. So fear and greed, they do tend to make the markets overreact. But on the other hand, I think it's expectations. Lots of expectations. Where do we think the next big thing will be? We've seen that. Bitcoin is another issue. What is the price of Bitcoin? Nobody can tell. That's just nothing you can put out on a sheet of paper, but still you could have made lots of money with it, or lost lots of money. So there are things and I do believe we're understanding more and more how identity. Which is a bit more than just personality, I think. But identity is a driver for our decisions as well as our investment decisions. Yep.
Rachel Pether: (28:13)
And I've heard you say before that sustainability is the highest possible long term value for all stakeholders. So with this in mind, what are some tips for making highly sustainable investment decisions?
Philip Bagdasarianz: (28:32)
Yes. I think what you said is, the value for all. And, of course, we have to define what that all is. And in the past, I think the definition of all was just cash. A figure. What was the money? And I think that we're coming to a point where we do understand, well, there's more than just the value. You can't count value in money only, it has to be wider than that. So let's say the trend, especially now from Europe, of course, driven by Europe maybe, the trend towards ESG. I am totally committed to personally because I believe it includes more values than just financial values in the evaluation of a company. Because I believe that in the long term, if you do add more valuations to a company or look at it from different perspectives and the company does the same because they do want to please their investors, obviously, the value for a wider range of people will be seen, and that is sustainable.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (29:50)
And sustainable means, what is good for my future. What is good for my future, my future kids. So just having said that, sustainability is clearly a long term goal. It's not bias towards immediate gratification. It's not asking the question, do I feel like doing this right now? It's more like, how will I feel after doing this? Or another question, will my future me or my future self thank me for this? Will my kids thank me? Will the next generation thank me for my decisions now? I think, of course, you can say that's very hypothetical. But if we make our managers focus on the next quarter only, and we pay him for that, no wonder they'll do exactly what we pay him for.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (30:53)
So I like ESG, we generally like family owned businesses because they tend to have the longer term view. Then manager or purely manager driven businesses. And that helps strongly, in my view, yeah.
Rachel Pether: (31:13)
We've actually had a follow up audience question come in related to ESG specifically, and they've asked your team service is a wide constituency of high net worth clients, and individuals. Is ESG a trend you're seeing, particularly when it comes to maybe the next gen wealth transfer and the younger generation? And then maybe from there you could talk a bit more about the differences you see managing money from the younger generation than the older generation?
Philip Bagdasarianz: (31:48)
Yes, there is a difference. I think the older generation, they always tended to be more philanthropic. So they put money out for the good and more gave it away. But their investments were not ESG related per se. They didn't check that. It was... yeah. So they built the hospitals, or the schools or things like that. The younger generation is looking, where's my money coming from? Where's my food coming from? Is it grown healthy? Is there child labor behind it or not? They want to know that. And I think that's something that is really the younger generation is asking those questions. And I think it's right to ask those questions. It's, where we put our money does have an impact. And many of the ESG managers, they don't just exclude companies that are doing bad things, but they try to influence those companies to improve their governance, their social values and so on. So the younger generation, they do focus strongly on that, as I see. Yes.
Rachel Pether: (33:10)
And just before I ask this question, I just want to wonder if any questions are off limits, I.e politics.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (33:21)
No [crosstalk 00:33:22] limits. Forgive me if I'm not... don't say what they really like to hear.
Rachel Pether: (33:30)
So we've had a question come in, looking from where you are in Switzerland towards the USA, what words, this is a two part question. What words would describe how the Swiss have experienced Trump and Trumpism?
Philip Bagdasarianz: (33:47)
Well, I'm going to twist it a bit and bring it back to identity. But let me go around quickly. If you were a business and you need to hire people, do you hire competence or character? And the old way generally was, you hire competence, you go for the best graduate, go for the top schools, whatever, and then you take them on board, you put them in leadership, it doesn't really work often, because they were trained in competence. And then you put them into workshops that should start training their leadership skills or in the end their character. And it doesn't work. So it was interesting for me to, I was at the vet in divorce, that was now two years ago, and to speak to some of their top educational institutions and they say businesses are changing and we need to change our education as well. Businesses are hiring competence. Sorry, they're hiring character and developing competence.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (35:05)
And looking from an outside to America, I think, unfortunately the US with the last president, they hired neither or. They didn't hire a politically competent person. They didn't hire a person of character that would value all three parts that I think needs to be valued. But let me say this, it's not predominantly exactly what Mr. Trump did. In many regards I think he did clean up things that were not correct. That were not in the interests of the US, and it's okay to take care of that. But he did it in a way that he broke down more out, I mean more of the throwning than he really built. There are a few things that he built, especially in the past couple of months as well. But looking at him, I personally couldn't vote for someone whose character is so far away from what I think would be needed for true leadership. Yeah.
Rachel Pether: (36:17)
I think that's a great answer. So thank you so much for sharing those views. Just a few more questions and then I've actually had an invitation come to you from the audience as well. But maybe you could speak a bit about some of the issues that arise when we don't have a very strong sense of identity.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (36:38)
Well, I think we all have a strong sense of identity but the question is, how healthy is? Of course, we might be confused and it's not about self worth only. Self worth is the value that I give myself, or how I see myself. Am I okay with myself? And the problem is, maybe first on that. If we derive our self worth from what others think of me, my appearance, if I derive my wealth, and maybe my self worth or my identity or my possessions or my positions, the problem is that is too dependent on others, or what they think. Now the dilemma is, I can't just derive my self worth from myself alone either. It doesn't work. I can't just say, I'm the greatest. Well, what will smack me in the face is truth. I'm not. It doesn't work that way that I can just talk myself into a healthy identity. I do need to develop it. And that's why, as I said, I think we need to develop all three in the same way.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (37:52)
We have to have a purpose. And the purpose has to guide our decision making strongly. And that can be in the small purpose or a larger purpose. We need to take care of ourselves as an individual. We can take care of our uniqueness. The culture has to take care of uniqueness. You have to be allowed to make mistakes. You have to give yourself the grace to make mistakes, and use them as stepping stones for learning. And we've heard this before, I know, but anyone who's been successful has been unsuccessful 10 times more often than has been successful. But he used that to learn. So I think it's the grace that we need to give ourselves. And in the end, the identity has to be also given from other people to us. This is not something you can construct. It's not a Facebook identity you can just put in whatever you want and that's me. No, it's not. It's not completely me.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (38:55)
And if I may, I just want to share, I have just one example of how someone else can give, put speak identity or call identity out into. Because I think one way would be to surround yourself with people who do exactly that. You give them the authority to speak an identity into you, a uniqueness. And this is a birthday card I got from my daughter. And you see it's a bicycle. So a bit cynical. A few days later, I fell smacking my face. But she said, "Daddy, thank you for the encourager, builder supporter, networker, connector, advisor you are. Thank you for your loving and strong arms dear and thoughtful mind you have. You're certainly the very best that we could wish for. So amazing to see you happy, active and passionate. We're so glad you were born."
Philip Bagdasarianz: (39:56)
Of course that touches the daddy's heart. Unbelievable. And this is only my sunny side. I do have other sides, which are part of my identity. But I really love to see that this is somebody that loves you that speaks identity into you. And I think that's what we owe each other as well. Gather two, three persons that you say, okay, what... They like you the way you are but they don't like you to stay exactly where you are. They love you too much to just leave you there. So if you take two or three people that help you on this throughout, I think that is probably the best step forward because you can't do it alone.
Rachel Pether: (40:42)
That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing the personal message from inside the card as well. We have time for one more question. I'm actually going to take a question from the audience because I wish I had asked it. But it says, as someone who relocated several times in your formative years, have you found yourself without the need to belong to a group or the opposite? And how has this played into your ability to develop with, say, Westerners versus Russians?
Philip Bagdasarianz: (41:12)
Well, yes, being uprooted I had to learn my roots were very weak. I did have an issue to learn to belong or to be part of, to be recognized as a kid anyway. So I'm really happy that I did have family. And my dad always said, "Stick to us no matter what." So that was important. I developed very good and strong wings. So the roots and wings, which should be in balance, we're not very in balance, I can easily move here and there and adapt and go skiing one day and play at the beach the next. But also in the culture. But yes, that I had to develop and I had to sometimes forced myself to just sit still and contemplate and take time, me time, solitude, silence. And those are traits I learned to love and admire. I couldn't do that my formative years. I was always restless.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (42:22)
So finding that and just making myself and getting into a rhythm of activity, maybe even hyperactivity sometimes, but then also rest and complete, silence and solitude. That helped me balance. But I do think that also helps me understand different cultures and where people come from building some trust that I think they appreciate in our relationship.
Rachel Pether: (42:52)
Excellent. Thank you so much for that. It's been such a pleasure speaking to you today. But before I round things off, I do want to mention that you've actually had an invitation to speak at the 2021 Aspen Ideas Festival from Steven Keenan. So if that is something you'd be willing to do, I will put you in touch and thank you for the invite, Steve, as well.
Philip Bagdasarianz: (43:13)
Well, thank you so much. Yes. It's an honor.