Episode 3 — Taking Share: Lessons From Leaders

Welcome to Taking Share: Lessons From Leaders with Rob Holmes, Chairman, President & CEO of Texas Capital. During each episode, you will hear from leaders, decision-makers and culture-shapers across industries. What drives them? What tips the scales when making tough calls? How do they continue to evolve? We're here to understand the thoughts behind their actions and discover how they are taking share. Thank you for listening.  

Holmes: Our guest today has built one of the most recognizable investment firms of the past decade, by making a choice most leaders would avoid, putting transparency at the center of the strategy, not just the story. Cathie Wood is the founder, CEO and CIO of ARK Invest, a firm built on long-term conviction and disruptive innovation, from artificial intelligence and genomics to energy storage and blockchain. But ARK is known not only for what it invests in; it is known for how it operates. The firm publishes its trades daily, opens its research to the public and communicates directly with investors through both outsize gains and public drawdowns. Before founding ARK in 2014, Cathie spent decades inside traditional asset management. When her vision for an actively managed, transparent ETF focused on innovation was dismissed as too risky, she made a defining decision to walk away and build it herself. That decision put her at the center of some of the most important debates in modern investing: conviction versus volatility, innovation versus speculation, transparency versus control. Along the way, she has become one of the most closely watched leaders in finance, praised by some, criticized by others, but rarely ignored. Today, we will discuss what it takes to lead with conviction when outcomes are uncertain, how trust is built and tested under scrutiny and why Cathie believes transparency is not just a value, but a competitive advantage. Cathie, welcome to Taking Share. It's an honor to have you here. You had a very successful career inside traditional asset management. When you came up with an idea for a transparent, actively managed innovation ETF and it was turned down, you chose to leave and build ARK. I want to talk about a little bit about what gave you the confidence to make the leap to do this. But then I also want you to, if you don't mind, put it in context, because managed ETFs at the time weren't as prevalent as they are today. So just, it's much more extraordinary at the time you did it than today.

Wood: Yes. So thank you, Rob. Yes, 2014, as I think you said in your intro, I founded ARK, and it really was for a couple of reasons. You know, at my prior firm, one of the things we did after '08-09 was we analyzed, OK, how are the financial markets changing? Where are the share shifts? Where's the disruption? This has been very disruptive. And we saw mutual funds losing share to ETFs. And I didn't know really what an ETF was. And so we did some research on it. And we said well, why can't we put an active strategy in an ETF wrapper? Why? It's a great wrapper in terms of liquidity transparency, tax advantages and so forth, and cost effectiveness as well. And there really was no reason except people said it had never been done and that ETFs were created for passive strategies. So we decided to go for it. The other reason I started the firm, though, was, at my prior firm, and I would say throughout the asset management industry, there was an increasing shift to quantitative research and, pendulum shift towards passive and benchmark sensitivity. And I felt it was becoming extreme, meaning many of our stocks are not in the broad-based benchmarks. Right. These are the innovators, the pure play innovators of the future. And so I felt, OK, well, there's not enough research being done on these names. And we can fulfill an unmet need. We're doing original research. So let's do this and then become very transparent, just like the ETF wrapper itself. Give our research away, post our trades every day. And it seemed, just as you said, about starting Texas Capital, it seemed doomed to failure. You know, according to more traditional asset management folks. So, yeah, we've been through a similar kind of journey.

Holmes: We hope to have as much success as you.

Wood: I have no doubt.

Holmes: So you built ARK around a contrarian premise focusing solely on disruptive innovation with a five-year time horizon. And this is in a world which, I obviously am very aware of, is obsessed with quarterly results. Talk a little bit about that. How do you keep your team and your investors aligned with a long-term vision when the volatility tempts everyone to actually look backwards a quarter?

Wood: Yes. Well, we've recruited not from the financial services industry. I guess that's the first thing I should say. I mean, we do have people who have come in from the financial world, but our primary search is for people who are experts in a given technology. So we've set up our research team very different from traditional research firms. Our analysts' responsibilities are organized not by sector or industry or sub-industry, but by technology. So there are five major platforms evolving today: robotics, energy storage, AI (big-time), blockchain technology and multiomic sequencing. Involved in those five major platforms are 15 technologies; that is how our analysts' responsibilities are organized. And you can see, your listeners can see this at ArkInvest.com in our big ideas 2026, they'll see not only the 15 technologies, but they'll see how they're converging. And we believe that in order to analyze and research innovation correctly these days, that research teams are going to have to reorganize by technology, technologies that scale across sectors. So tech specialists in one technology, and a sector generalist.

Holmes: But is uncomfortable with a five-year time horizon?

Wood: So because they're not from the traditional financial world, I think they, they feel like I did when I started 2014, that we're on a mission.

Holmes: Right.

Wood: To capitalize on some inefficiencies in the market. And, of course, we go through tough times. But as I always say to our team, keep your eye on the prize. Make sure our models, both our top-down and our bottom-up models, are robust. And just keep your eye on the prize. You know, this is the way the world is going to work. And we just are a great diversifier for asset allocators who are heavily committed to traditional benchmarks.

Holmes: Right. So I guess you answered, my next kind of question, which was, how you keep the noise turned out during the drawdowns. And it's just the conviction and the positions you put on based on your view of the 15 different technologies.  

Wood: Yes, and I think that many of the people who have been with us from the beginning, have seen, you know, many of the forecasts we made play out and, you know, in Tesla, for example, in 2019, you know, Elon described, that period as manufacturing hell. Most analysts thought Tesla was going bankrupt. We did not. And, it was because we had analyzed the learning curve associated with electric drive trains for electric vehicles in such a way that we saw the costs were coming down and that he would be able to scale, once he worked all the kinks out of manufacturing, that he'd be able to scale and that there would be demand. So we saw Bitcoin, for example, people completely dismissing us on Bitcoin...

Holmes: including me

Wood: when we gave our clients their exposure at $250, today, I think we're around $75,000, having come down from $125,000. So here again, we're in a correction. And this is where our research and our conviction really kicks in because our clients look to us for, you know, in these times of turmoil, to see if our own conviction has changed. But if our research is correct, then it shouldn't change unless, there's a big unless, and we learned this from COVID, that was a supply chain shock, and it took three years to work out. We never thought it would take that long. We thought just-in-time technology would take care of things quickly.

Holmes: Right.

Wood: That did not happen. If we're in another moment like that now, and it is a consideration, because there are supply chain issues associated with AI primarily, but they're not economy-wide. So we do have to be careful on our AI assumptions in terms of scaling, and so forth. Lessons learned from COVID, but from a bigger picture point of view, we think the five innovation platforms I named are going to transform the world completely and really disrupt the traditional world order. And we want to provide a portfolio that our clients can rely on to at least diversify them away from maybe the value traps that they might hold in the more traditional portfolios.

Holmes: So I jumped ahead. I was going to ask you, you picked out two of your more well-known super successes, Bitcoin and Tesla. You were early, as you said, why don't others see these inflection points? How did everybody else miss it?

Wood: Well, one of the things that has happened as the markets have gone passive or benchmark-sensitive is analysts and investment firms are renumerated for the following and analyzing the names in these large, broad-based benchmarks. And they've become extremely concentrated, right? So I think one of the things that happened in the course of that pendulum shift, and as M&A shut down under the last FTC, M&A just shut down. So investment banks, they really got rid of a lot of their research in this area because the investment banks were the source, shall I say, of renumeration for the analysts who were providing them inputs for these companies they wanted to bring public. Well, that wasn't happening. So that kind of research diminished considerably. And we felt we could fulfill an unmet need. And in fact, many, many companies and their boards come to us because we're providing that kind of insight that the bankers used to. Now, M&A is back, and I think everyone will jump right back in and we're going to welcome it. We're going to welcome it because we need broad- based acceptance and understanding of what's going on out there and how profound it is.

Holmes: We've been criticized and applauded for getting into the public sector research business. We've got about 100 names under research. We'll have 150 into this quarter. I see a lot of benefit to it, but your points are spot on. When companies are coming to talk to you, and what? Give me an idea of how that works. And a board or a CEO. How would I come ask you for help?

Wood: Well, many CEOs, you know, they're looking at our research. They have to be longer-term in their thinking from a strategic point of view. And so they'll pick up a piece of our research and say, oh my gosh, the ground will shift under my company. I better try and at least with my board brainstorm around what could happen, how much could be disrupted here. So and then the newer companies, those, let's just say in the digital asset space, there really isn't any research in the traditional ranks that that they can, you know, that they can reference where, there are many in the crypto world itself, many people, you know, doing very interesting kind of research, but in the traditional world, nothing very much. It's changing slightly, but, and so our research, especially because we put out big ideas, we've put it out every year since 2017, you know, 100-plus pages of "here's how the world's going to change." So, in Silicon Valley, they definitely pay attention to it, which is great because of course that's where a lot of the startups are coming from.

Holmes: Sure. Well, it certainly affects banking for sure. I've told my senior team, many times, we've proven to be pretty good at traditional financial services, but can we be really good at the future of financial services with digital assets and AI and all the things that are coming to us really fast.

Wood: They're coming so much faster, I think, than anyone expected. And I'll even say, in terms of AI, we have been surprised, by how quickly things are changing.

Holmes: Can we talk about that just a second? So, I'm just trying to understand fact from fiction. So I've been with a couple of the very renowned CEOs that you know, that in private told me that they're probably much further behind in AI than people think. And then I'm with others that I would think would be ahead that suggest that they're ahead. What do you think corporate America really is with AI right now? Is that a fair question?

Wood: It is a very fair, very good question because the consumer has taken up AI very quickly.

Holmes: Yes.

Wood: You know, emails and so forth. Enterprises have to organize to restructure with AI, and it takes time. A company, Palantir, from this rough neck of the woods now...

Holmes: right.

Wood: is the platform-as-a-service company that is helping enterprises move into this new world. Its U.S. commercial growth this last quarter grew 142%. And the reason it is growing that quickly is the CEOs in that first group who feel they're behind, they're thinking strategically and it's coming from the CEO. It's not bubbling up from the bottom. And they are going to Palantir, which forces companies to collect all of their far-flung data, data they did not even know they had. 

Holmes: Right.

Wood: Clean it up, integrate it. And along with mapping out workflows in excruciating detail, is able to really help the company develop its own language and its own customized software with AI and, as Alex Karp, the CEO, says, he doesn't want CEOs to be just surprised and to think, this is fantastic software. He wants this to be a magical experience, and it is a magical experience if a company is doing it the right way, letting it bubble from the bottom up is not going to accomplish, you know, the productivity gains that AI should unleash.

Holmes: I'm on the board of Dallas Economic Club, and, Alex Karp came and spoke to us probably, I guess the fourth quarter sometime. And they're clearly a leader, as you say, so I do think it's going to be kind of the have and have-nots for a while with AI. Because also, again, I think we got lucky because we started this transformation in '21. And one of the first things we did is focus on data. And so we've been focused on getting our data right outside of the prospect of AI, just because we knew it was important. But now here we are with AI leading the data already in the right place. So I think we're going to be competitive, but I'm not sure that mid-cap, small-cap America is ready for that.

Wood: Well, it depends. So Palantir itself is starting to segment the service there. Many former Palantirians who graduate and go and set up their own consulting.

Holmes: Right.

Wood: I think we, for example, we're only 70 people, 30 billion in AUM, but we are using Palantir. We have committed to it. Now for us, we couldn't do the big enterprise software package at all. But they have bootcamps. We sent a number of people on our team to bootcamps for the financial services sector.

Holmes: Right.

Wood: And from that we met some of these consultants, and we are working with Palantir as well. So it's very possible. And it is very important that everybody do this.

Holmes: Well, we're focused on it. We have a multi-model platform. And we have, it's made up of, some commercial components and some inside platforms that we did ourselves. And we're definitely doing the workflow processing and the mapping, you know, end-to-end mapping and stuff. And if anything else, it just makes the bank safer. It takes out a lot of operational risk.

Wood: And the other thing that I encourage, I'm encouraging our own team. You know, there's a tendency, especially CTOs like to organize and plan and make sure, that's important, as I just mentioned there. But what's also important is that people within the firm start experimenting with whatever. We've hired a research engineer just for our research department, experimenting with the agents that he has delivered...

Holmes: right

Wood: to our trading team and our research team.

Holmes: Right. So, that's interesting. I want to stay on this one more, if I can, and then I'll move on because it's such more than AI. But, it is fascinating and it is topical. So we have agentic AI, but we only have a couple of agents in the wild right now, and we're trying to decide and we're regulated, as you know. So is it a model? Is it not? The regulators have come out and said that you got to do, risk, you know, work as if it were a model, because, you know, we have to test all of our models, etc., in financial services for regulators, etc. And so I'm interested in where the regulation goes with AI. We're actually working with our HR provider right now to where our agents, and maybe this is just normal, I wasn't aware, we're enrolling our agents as an employee and we're keeping track of them in our HR platform, which, we'll be able to do that starting in April, which, that way, if we do need to govern as a model, we can and we know they are. We know which agents are out there, we can control it. Is that similar to what you hear other companies doing?

Wood: You are early in doing that. So I think that's really good. And you're right, the most important thing is we document everything, right?

Holmes: Right.

Wood: And so we're in the same situation, highly regulated, and doing the same sorts of things. But I think for internal purposes, so not sharing with clients, and so that's why we started on the investment side, for internal purposes, we want the muscles to develop here in the organization because it is a different way of thinking about productivity and efficiency. And it really gives a lot of individual agency to the youngest people in the firm who come out of school, and they're already thinking about, you know, the easiest ways with the AI tools they've been using in college...

Holmes: right

Wood: to increase productivity. We say go for it. You know, just experiment. But, we've started on the research and investment side mostly because again, it's not, this is internal. It's not client-facing yet.

Holmes: So that's interesting. So, I tell our junior people all the time, the juniors that use AI and lean on it will be the ones that benefit from it, as opposed to get displaced by it.

Wood: So it's interesting about that, really interesting, is if you look at the 16 to 24 age demographic, that unemployment rate has gone up dramatically. It's at 12.2% and some have it higher than that. I, like you, we're in the market right now looking for young people who have embraced AI, are passionate about it. When I started in the business a very long time ago, I became the tech expert. And guess what? Guess what the technology was, it wasn't even PCs. It was timesharing. 

Holmes: Oh, wow. Yeah...

Wood: Right? And, nobody else had time to fiddle with it. I was the young person. I wanted to make my boss look brilliant, which I always advise young people to do. And...

Holmes: I think it's a good idea.

Wood: Yeah. So, to make that. And so I wanted to use technology to do something for him that he had never seen before and that he would not expect, and today it's so much easier to do that.

Holmes: We're doing what you suggested, we have, all of our employees have a form of AI they can use, and then a certain segment have a little more expensive, elaborate AI. And then we have, from the top down, some agents and stuff as well. So we're coming out from all directions.

Wood: Yes, yes.

Holmes: So let's get back to what you do best. Because there's so many unique things about it. You talked about earlier, your transparency. You publish trades daily; your research is open to the public. I mean, it's just something that you don't typically see. And, how did you get comfortable doing that? You know, transparency is actually, transparency, candor and discipline. And all that you do is something that is a core value of ours. So I'm a big believer in transparency. I think it saves a lot of time. It creates a lot of understanding upfront without misunderstanding. Talk about why that was so important to you, because that was one of your foundational tenets.

Wood: Yes. So again, studying '08-09 and going through it, we could see how much trust the financial industry had lost. 

Holmes: Right.

Wood: You know, and, we started in the retail space. Social networking was natural to that. And the only way we could start, institutions weren't going to believe in this without track records and so forth, so transparency was our hallmark. And yes, people loved it. Now people, you know, many people, and at the time, I remember the traditional asset management world said, well, that's ridiculous. You know, everyone's just going to front-run your trades when you get big enough and I said, first of all, I say, "Well, that'll be a nice problem to have."

Holmes: Yeah.

Wood: But today, I'm operating no differently than I did at any of my other firms in the old days. What happened if we had a big trade at my last firm? It was very clear that the trading community got wind of it just because there weren't that at that time many dark pools that, you know. So it was out. So what did I do? I would just put limits on everything. And that's what we do now. So, it's no different, I think, today, for us at least, than it has been historically.

Holmes: Well, it's something that's been something to see. And, I applaud it. I think it's really great. OK. We talked about this before, but I kind of want to talk about, you talked about, how we you keep calm in periods of pullbacks and you said that your innovation stocks are in the bargain basement, and I understand what you said of convictions, how you do it. But talk about, like, you're in the moment and...

Wood: like now

Holmes: exactly like, I understand, like you're one of the best at this. So I understand your conviction and your discipline to maintain that conviction. That's kind of who you are. But what do you say to the new professional, and it's their first time going through a period like this?

Wood: We talk them through what this is, how we are going to use it to our advantage. So typically during a downturn, and right now we're in the middle of a significant downturn in anything AI, crypto, multiomics was holding up, but it's succumbed as well. And so what we typically do, and it's a great psychological release for the portfolio management team and for the analysts, we concentrate towards our highest conviction names, especially if everything is, if the baby's being thrown out with the bathwater, you know, we have a scoring system, and it is a six-metric system that we use for every company. So we have our top down research, our bottom up research, our scoring system, so that quickly during these times we know where the highest scores are. We'll make sure that nothing's changing today to change those scores. Have that kind of brainstorm.

Holmes: Right.

Wood: And then we'll concentrate. And so what we're doing during those moments is we're selling names that maybe since we added them, there's been like that little inkling that we haven't talked too much about.

Holmes: Right.

Wood: But when someone asks me, all right, this is from a scoring point of view. This is where we're going. Sometimes they will pick a higher score name than I would have expected, and they will introduce that risk and the discussion is very good. You know, I basically say, hey, "now is where we get rid of sins, if you have any sense."

Holmes: Right.

Wood: So it's in a way cathartic. There's action-oriented. We're not being pelted, you know, of course, the downturns can be pretty vicious. But it has paid over time for us to do this. And then in a bull market, as we saw last year, we had four of the top five ETFs in the Morningstar universe. During those times, we diversify. Why? Because the IPO market opens up. There are new ideas. Maybe we sold some ideas that, you know, where there's been evidence that some of our doubts weren't justified, and we will reintroduce them. So, I think the fluidity of our process, and I also think we're doing something opposite of traditional asset managers. When the market goes down, they diversify to get close to their benchmarks. What are they doing? They're selling our stocks.

Holmes: Right.

Wood: So baby out with the bathwater. That's why even if they're, you know, really good companies on the, you know, leading edge of an explosive new technology...

Holmes: Realizing the gains in them. 

Wood: Yes, yes.

Holmes: So, that's two employees. What about investors; is that the same story? As you kind of explain your theory and take through the same process.

Wood: So, because the COVID and its aftermath were so extreme, both the upside and the downside, we do remind investors when you've had good gains in our strategies, you know, rebalance, rebalance, rebalance. So I hope more people are doing that. We didn't do enough of that during COVID. But I think people learned, investors, asset allocators, learned during that period, OK, yes, this is a strategy that can be volatile. Let's rebalance both ways. And so, you know, now we'll be saying to them if this goes on for very long, all right, every time I've done a roadshow it's tended to be during a crisis for whatever reason. Last year during April, the tariff turmoil.

Holmes: Right.

Wood: And, you know, I was saying, gosh, you know, I think the building blocks are here for something very productive in the next year or so, you know, I would use this to buy. So hopefully regaining credibility that way.

Holmes: Right. So you're, but what I hear you saying, and we do it too, during those periods, we're not hiding from our clients. We're going to see them. So you're visible during those periods with your clients.

Wood: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yes, yes.

Holmes: Yep. OK, so much of your career has been challenging the entrenched thinking. This is Lessons From Leaders. What advice would you give to leaders who see a better path forward but are constrained by legacy systems or expectations or technology? How would you advise them to break out?

Wood: If they have a really good idea, and they see that their own companies are thwarting it, do what I did. But you have to have a good idea that really does fill an unmet need, right? And it has to be big enough. So if it's just a little productivity tweak here or there. No, no, no, but if it's something really that could change the course of the company, there's probably a market out there for it. And what I love about this period of time is with AI costs collapsing, the cost of innovation is collapsing. The first big collapse was during the emergence of the cloud, AWS.

Holmes: Right.

Wood: You know, then we didn't have to put servers and networking and storage and everything in each of our buildings, if not offices, right?

Holmes: Right.

Wood: What's happening with AI right now, AI training costs are dropping 75% per year. AI inference costs up to 95, 99% per year. So really the costs are collapsing. And I'm encouraging especially young people, who, maybe they are unemployed because that first job is elusive, you know, fine, it takes a while to find a job, keep interviewing, but also think about a problem, a problem or a frustration that you've had that you think you could solve with technology. And you know other people have this frustration as well. A lot of influencers these days have made a name for themselves and made a business out of solving problems.

Holmes: Good.

Wood: Yeah.

Holmes: Great. OK so, you may have heard that the Texas Stock Exchange is going to open in Texas next year. Oh, yes. Nasdaq is opening an office here. NYSE, opening as well. Yes. Move the medallion here. What do you think about the exchanges in Texas versus New York? And does Texas Stock Exchange have a chance to be successful? What's your mindset there?

Wood: I actually had the pleasure of meeting Jim, the CEO...

Holmes: Right

Wood: of the Texas Stock Exchange. And we talked about what Texas has to offer that companies headquartered in New York or Chicago cannot offer because of regulatory constraints.

Holmes: Right.

Wood: So I think, we moved to Florida. We moved ARK to Florida in '21 because we were looking for a more business-friendly climate. I think what I heard today about Texas and how Governor Abbott is all in on this.

Holmes: He is definitely all in.

Wood: Yeah, I think that NYSE and Nasdaq are here because they hear the, I guess I can't use this, but the Thundering Herd, to use that...

Holmes: You can. That's perfect, actually

Wood: It is, and it is and it isn't. And so I was stealing someone else's.

Holmes: That's great. There's a lot. I mean, the Texas miracle is truly alive and well, that is for sure. Politically, regulatory-wise and mindset-wise. So, I hope you feel it.

Wood: I do, and, actually, we were talking this morning about the boom belt...

Holmes: Right

Wood: from Texas through Research Triangle into Florida. That's really distinguishing itself and happy to be part of the family.

Holmes: Yeah. OK, so I've got some rapid fire questions for you. Just at the end, if you don't mind.

Wood: Sure.

Holmes: You've been great. Thank you for being here. Who has had the biggest influence on your leadership style?

Wood: Sig Segalas, who was the Chief Investment Officer of Jennison Associates, I moved to Jennison in the early '80s from Capital Group in L.A. to New York, and he knew Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard and Gordon Moore and really inspired me from a technology point of view and my leadership style is a lot like his, and many people, because they see my face, they think, you know, that it's a one-man show. Couldn't be further from the truth. I stand on the shoulders of our research team.

Holmes: Right.

Wood: Starting with our Chief Futurist, Brett Winton. All of our directors, analysts, research associates. And again, just like the discussion about bringing in young people and having them use technology because they know so much more about it than we do. I want them to feel ownership and be accountable for these stocks, this research, these relationships. They have so much latitude. And I think what's wonderful about the brand we've all built, and that includes marketing, includes everybody in the firm...

Holmes: Right

Wood: is that we have tremendous access. These young people never dreamed that they would be able to talk to anyone they wanted in the crypto space...

Holmes: Right

Wood: or anyone they wanted practically. I mean, there are some in the AI space who are too, too busy given everything going on. But the access, we have. So, you know, you ask, how do our employees feel? I think during downtimes, I think, because we have been so loyal to innovation, that the innovators out there, public and private, have been loyal to us, because we see the same future and we're not looking backwards. So and that's my leadership style. Keep looking forward. Keep your eye on the prize. Yes, do soul searching during moments like this. Could we be wrong? Of course we could be wrong. We can always be wrong. But we have our, our discipline. It has worked over the years, and we just have to stick to it.

Holmes: It's great. OK, I'm not sure you do this, but if you did, how do you unwind after a long day?

Wood: You know, it's so interesting. Well, I love St. Petersburg, Florida, is, it's a very interesting, I always say it's like Austin was 15 years ago. It really is. And the restaurant scene is starting up, and it's just so much fun to see the city grow. I love to go out to restaurants and really, the city is surrounded by water. It is beautiful. So I love walking around, even while I'm working, doing, you know, conference calls, walking.

Holmes: That's great.

Wood: Yes, yes, yes.

Holmes: OK last fun one. And then, I've got the most important one. What's the one thing people would be surprised to learn about you?

Wood: Well, they might be surprised to learn that I lived in Ireland. My parents are both from Ireland. And, when I was young, and I was educated completely in Gaelic, we called it Gaelic back then. Well, today would be called Irish. Now I wasn't there for a long time. We were there for a year. But, you know, a seven-year-old is not going to be different in that environment. So I became fluent in Gaelic, which is, that's what young kids do. And of course, I remember "go raibh maith agat" too, which means "thank you." That's about it. And I guess the other thing is, you know, I, again, there's this is all as you're seven years old, my father said on my birthday one day, "you can do whatever you put your mind to doing." And so he got me thinking back then. So the two things on my mind were ballerina or curing cancer. And so we're now really focused on the latter because we are getting close to that. But I, I'm coming at it from the investment side.

Holmes: Right. OK. This is the one last question that I ask all of my guests. So I wanted to ask you, I think it's the most the most important one. What's the single most important trait for an effective leader to have?

Wood: I think, well, you have to be resilient.

Holmes: That's a good one.

Wood: Yes. And you really have to believe in what you're doing and bring that mission to the firm and reaffirm it every day in some way, shape or form.

Holmes: Right.

Wood: And use adversity to sort of add an exclamation point to it just as I described the concentration, you know, the soul searching, you know, and just really being authentic and, you know, being very honest and saying things that, you know, sometimes when you tell the truth, people don't like it. But if they know you're telling the truth because that's all you do, you want to get to the truth...

Holmes: Right

Wood: What, you know, "truth will win out" is what I always say. Truth will win out. And so it's very important if I'm saying that, to make sure that we are truthful to ourselves.

Holmes: That's great. Well, thank you so much. And thanks for being on the show today. You've been fantastic.

Wood: Yeah. Well, Rob, I want to thank you and Texas Capital for being such a great partner. Actually, ARK has developed Texas roots, believe it or not. We imported a Texan from Dallas.

Holmes: Great.

Wood: Yes, into Florida. So, you know, this boom belt that we're all on? He's feeling really good about that. He's our Chief Strategy Officer and our Chief Financial Officer. Although he's giving up many of those responsibilities to really become Chief Strategy Officer. And so that's why we're interacting so much and doing so much together. So looking forward to great times ahead and growing together.

Holmes: Well, thank you, Cathie. Thanks for being here. It's a real honor that you'd take the time to do this.

Wood: Oh, my great pleasure. Thank you so much, Rob.

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The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not represent or reflect the views, positions or policies of Texas Capital. Texas Capital is recognized as a premier financial services firm with a world-class, full-service platform and a commitment to partnering with visionary leaders. Texas Capital Bancshares, Inc. is the parent company of Texas Capital Bank and trades as TCBI on the Nasdaq. Texas Capital is the collective brand name for Texas Capital Bank and its subsidiaries and affiliates. Please visit texascapital.com to learn more.