Speaker 1: 0:01

Coming down with one mark to go. Tom King and Mark Turnbull out of Melbourne set to claim Australia a very historic second gold medal. We look for the Australians, tom King and Mark Turnbull to make history for Australia to claim our gold medal. Here are King and Turnbull coming into the finishing line. Are those boys happy? A gold medal? The comeback kings have scored gold for Australia in the men's 470 class.

Speaker 2: 0:29

Welcome back to Finance Friends, your personal seat at the table with leaders shaping the financial world. In this exclusive season, we meet with high profile, incredibly successful athletes who achieve the greatest heights on the sports field and are now dominating the finance world. On today's episode of Finance Friends with Fabian, we have Tom King, who's currently the Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager of Nanook Asset Management. They're a sustainable investment manager, arguably Australia's leading sustainable investment manager. Tom was a gold medalist in sailing at the 2000 Olympic Games and participated in Atlanta in 1996. Tom shares his story about being a professional athlete in sailing, studying engineering during this time, working as an engineer before transitioning to the world of finance and having a very successful career in finance. It wasn't easy for Tom, so it took him about five years to get comfortable with the corporate world. Tom shares his story. This is a must listen to.

Speaker 2: 1:39

Before we begin today's episode, a quick note. This conversation includes a discussion of mental health challenges. If you are struggling or find these topics difficult to hear, please take care of yourself. And also please note you're not alone and support is always available. We've included resources in the show notes if you or someone you know needs help in the show notes if you or someone you know needs help. Hi, tom, welcome to the Finance Friends podcast. How are you today? I'm good, thank you. Well, thank you for coming in. So you're currently you work at Nanook Asset Management, is that right?

Speaker 3: 2:25

Yeah, I'm the Managing Director and Chief. Investment Officer at Nanook, I was involved in starting the business about 15 years ago and been well involved in that journey ever since.

Speaker 2: 2:30

Yeah, so tell them. For our listeners that don't know, nanook Asset Management, can you share some insight into the business?

Speaker 3: 2:36

Sure, we're an Australian-based funds management business. We run a global equities strategy called the Nanook New World Fund, and it invests in industries and technologies around the world that are related to environmental sustainability and resource efficiency.

Speaker 3: 2:53

So that covers a pretty broad range of industries and technologies, from the obvious things like renewables and clean tech through to healthcare technology and things to do with the internet of things tech through to healthcare technology and things to do with the internet of things A very broad, really interesting set of opportunities around the world and we have believed for more than 15 years now that investing in that part of the broader market is likely to be the right place to be to deliver good investment outcomes, and if we can do a great job of picking stocks from that part of the market, that we can deliver great outcomes for our clients.

Speaker 2: 3:29

Yeah, and what is your? You talk much a bit about your investment process, and how do you decide whether you know an investment is a good investment or it's not a good investment?

Speaker 3: 3:39

Yeah, we have a team of very experienced portfolio managers that I run who are looking around the world every day and every week to find what we think are prospectively good investments, and for us that's typically mature, profitable businesses that can generate and have proven that they can generate good returns on capital that are benefiting from the way in which the industries they sit in are evolving, both in terms of these long-term trends and themes but also the shorter-term industry dynamics and the way that the companies are being affected by new technology and policy and changing competitive dynamics and industry cycles. And if we can find things that fit those criteria, at the end of the day, we're fairly conventional. We want to buy things that we think are cheap enough today that they're going to deliver good investment outcomes if we're close to being right about what's going to happen in the future. So, good quality businesses at reasonable prices with good thematic tailwinds.

Speaker 2: 4:37

And do you have a limit on how many investments or assets you will hold in the portfolio?

Speaker 3: 4:49

We do, we cap the number in the portfolio at 70, which is a number we came up with. That gave us a good balance between being able to invest across a diverse range of these sectors and get good exposure to them, but also have a fund that has a relatively benign risk profile and is therefore useful to our clients.

Speaker 2: 5:04

And when did you know you wanted to work in investment management?

Speaker 3: 5:09

About 23 years ago or 24 years ago, maybe even a little bit longer than that.

Speaker 3: 5:17

I'd always had a fascination with it whilst I was sailing, but that was really just because what I saw as an engineer looking at the news every night was these share price charts that looked a bit like wind direction charts and people talking about a tactical and strategical game of capitalising on what's going on in those charts.

Speaker 3: 5:43

That look very similar to what happens in sailing and I'd always sort of wanted to know more about that.

Speaker 3: 5:49

And then I studied mechanical engineering and I actually went down a career path in industrial consulting, working on performance improvement in big manufacturing businesses.

Speaker 3: 6:00

But that experience actually opened up a different sort of angle on wanting to be involved in the finance industry, which is what ultimately led me to move in that direction, and that was becoming aware of the potential for things to be done better and more efficiently in business through good decision making and the value that could be created through doing that. And as a consultant, that's very hard to do and you get paid a tiny fraction of the value you create, and I had in mind that I wanted to get to the other end of the spectrum where you had the control of shareholding or sort of top-down control over making better decisions, and you got the full benefit of the value that was created through that, and so I looked for a way to get into finance and investment, and that put me on a career path that has taken me to where I am now, which isn't necessarily where I thought that might be 25 years ago, but it's been an interesting journey since then.

Speaker 2: 7:00

So it would be good to bring it back to the start, because you did mention sailing a couple of times. So you were a professional sailor and you competed at the Olympics. So can you share some of your experience from your early days, maybe when you were a teenager? When did you know that you wanted to be a professional athlete?

Speaker 3: 7:17

So I sailed full time you could call it professionally for 10 years after I finished school. I'd learnt to sail when I was 12 or 13. I grew up in Melbourne sailing on Albert Park Lake. I wasn't a particularly talented sailor immediately, but I really loved it. It was something that I had some aptitude for and I just loved being out on the water and the opportunity to compete and get better at something, and over a number of years, got involved in the junior training program here and then ended up winning national and ultimately a world championship just as I was leaving school, and that, I guess, made the dream of going to the Olympics, which I guess is something I'd had since I was a little kid even well before I had ever sailed a distinct you know, or maybe a distance probably the better word possibility.

Speaker 3: 8:12

And yeah, I decided after finishing school that I wanted to sort of pursue that and see where I could get to with it. So I spent, you know, 10 years sailing a lot, whilst sort of working through an engineering degree over that same timeframe. So I took a year off after school and focused on raising enough money to go and sail and compete overseas. I then started an engineering degree and ended up doing three years of that before I deferred because we were getting close to being selected for the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996, which we ended up going to. And then, having had that experience, I really wanted to go to the Sydney Games and to go there and do it properly. So I finished my engineering degree in 98 and then sailed full-time through to 2000.

Speaker 2: 9:00

Yeah, so for our listeners that might not be familiar with sailing and you mentioned that you raised enough money to do that full-time and travel around the world talk us through that. Were you a paid athlete? Is there like Sailing Australia that plays their top, like the Australian cricket team that has a list of 20 paid players, or how does it work?

Speaker 3: 9:22

I think sailing is similar to a lot of the sort of minor Olympic sports where there's not a lot of money involved. We did get a little bit of funding through the Sports Commission and through the National Federation and support from organisations like the Victorian Institute of Sport federation and support from organisations like the Victorian Institute of Sport.

Speaker 3: 9:46

But most of what it costs to campaign is the living and travel expenses and we had to find a way to make that work ourselves and some of that was through working alongside travelling and training and competing, and some of it was with family help, but it was never something where we were making money out of it and certainly towards the end I had this strong sense that I was slipping behind my peer group financially, because we were borrowing money in order to be able to go to the Olympics and even if we won, we weren't going to come out of it with anything you know significant in hand.

Speaker 2: 10:28

Yeah, and that must be quite challenging during that time when you want to. You've got a goal of competing in the Olympics and, I assume, an ultimate goal of winning gold, which you were able to achieve, and balancing between you know this is costing me money to hopefully achieve my goal. Was it challenging at times? Or you always had your goal on the prize that? You know, whatever it takes, I'm going to get there, You're right.

Speaker 3: 10:55

It was challenging and challenging, often frustrating, because through most of that timeframe I think we'd always have felt that if we'd had more money we could be doing more and be more successful than we were. So we were constrained by that, but it was sort of part and parcel of doing what we were doing. We didn't start it with any expectation that we were going to be making money out of it. It was a journey that I was on with the two people I sailed with over that time frame to see how far we could go. I didn't think of it as or didn't go into it thinking it was a financial sacrifice to do that.

Speaker 3: 11:42

In a lot of ways, I think the right way to look at it is we were really lucky to spend a huge amount of time just focused on making ourselves better, and that's a privilege that athletes you know who are training full-time. Have that very few people in society have to invest all their own time and effort into making themselves better at what they do not making you, not making money or not making someone else money yeah, and how did you, how did you balance during that time?

Speaker 2: 12:10

because you mentioned you were studying an engineering degree.

Speaker 3: 12:13

You were doing a little bit of work here and there and also focusing on becoming the best athlete you could be I guess you know we made it work as we needed to, so I was fairly committed to the idea of finishing my study over that time frame, and I was lucky that the university was accommodative in terms of being able to take time off when I needed to and defer studies for extended periods in order to fit in competition and particularly overseas travel.

Speaker 3: 12:46

But yeah, it's just a constant juggle, and I don't think balance is the right way to think about it either, because you don't get to that level by being balanced, and it's an interesting sort of topic in sport these days that everyone's focused on achieving balance in sport and life and achieving sort of all-round success. If you want to win an Olympic gold medal, you've got to be the best in the world, and unless you're the most obsessively committed to achieving that, you're pretty unlikely to do that. And so I thought of it more as a period, towards the end at least, where it was absolutely unbalanced, obsessive commitment for as long as I could sustain that up to the point that we finished, knowing that at some point it was going to finish and I could do other things after that.

Speaker 2: 13:41

And how does that relate to what you do in your current role, the commitment to getting the desired outcome, and what you do in your current role?

Speaker 3: 13:53

The big picture is, you know, I got to where I did in sport because I'm outlier in terms of obsessive commitment to and determination to achieve, achieve sort of perfection and and to be as good as I can, and that's that's what you need in that sporting environment.

Speaker 3: 14:14

But there's a big difference between that and, you know, a more normal professional environment. The big one is that you can sustain a level of intensity in that sporting arena knowing that it's going to stop at some point, and you're always focused on a goal that's within line of sight. So you're working towards a world championship or an Olympic Games in a couple of years' time. You know where that finish line is and you can structure everything around that and it's easy to go all in when you know it's like that. When you're dealing with a job or a career aside from some very transactional sort of jobs and industries, it's a continuum you don't have that focal point and you need to find a balance that enables you to keep going and going and going. Yep, and I think that's quite a big difference between the sporting environment and the working environment.

Speaker 2: 15:19

Yeah, and was it a challenge for you to transition from being an athlete to you mentioned? After 10 years of sailing, you then went and working.

Speaker 1: 15:32

you're working as an engineer.

Speaker 2: 15:34

Can you talk about your transition and how you found that transition?

Speaker 3: 15:38

Yeah, if I'm frank, I found it extremely difficult and I went through a period of four or five years during which I was depressed and I wouldn't say I had depression in a clinical sense, but felt very down about sort of who I was and where I was in the world and where I was going and how I was going to sort of get back on track.

Speaker 3: 16:07

And that's a pretty common thing, I think. If you speak to most Olympians who move away from their sport and into something else, they go through extended periods of having to rethink who they are and what they do and how they succeed in different areas. So yeah, it was a really challenging period for me and I think the thing that made it really hard was this sort of huge disconnect between people around me at the time, constantly sort of saying, oh, you know, because you've done this, you'll be great, and that didn't sort of sit well with the athlete in me, which you know as an athlete. You know what excellence looks like, you know what world class looks like and you know that false confidence doesn't underpin excellence and you know how long and how hard you have to work to become excellent at something.

Speaker 3: 17:17

You know when you move into another field that you're you know, you are chasms away from being as good at that as you could be. You might want to be. You need to be, to be, to be good in a new field and to have sort of people saying, oh, it's great. And operating in a workplace environment where negative feedback is frowned upon, compared to a sporting environment where 95 percent of the feedback you get every day is negative feedback, and it's really healthy because that's what helps you improve. It was a really difficult transition into a different environment and it took me a long time to sort of find comfort with that and to realise and I think sort of internalise and accept that the workplace environment and succeeding outside of elite sport is very different to in elite sport.

Speaker 3: 18:15

Elite sport's one of the real pure meritocracies in the world. I mean maybe you could. You could point the finger at some of the team sports where selection becomes a bit subjective, but in most sports the results do speak for themselves.

Speaker 3: 18:30

It's merit that gets you where you want, and there's no hiding from that. In most other facets of life, it's relationships and connections and intangibles that are important in getting to the next step. It's not a meritocracy, and I think for a lot of athletes that's a pretty challenging thing and I didn't realise at the time it took me a long time to work it out that the thing I really earned during my olympic journey was not, um, not not a set of skills that some people say are what olympians have. It's not. It's not being a hard worker and disciplined and organized and all these things that people keep saying. Like plenty of people in business have those kind of skill sets and they're you know they're they're a starting point for being successful. You don't come in as an.

Speaker 3: 19:34

Olympian, suddenly you're going to succeed because you're more organised. But I did have a calling card, so I'm an Olympian, and that opens up a network and a set of relationships and conversations that's very difficult for people who don't have that background to to engage.

Speaker 2: 19:54

that was the the competitive edge that I had, and when I sort of realized that and that there was a network of people there who wanted to help that you know, I opened up doors and opportunities that have taken me where I've got to yeah, and would you, what advice would you have for someone that is just maybe towards the end of their professional career as an athlete and looking at their professional career in finance or as an engineer or in the media to help with that transition to a different career or to their next career?

Speaker 3: 20:32

Yeah, I mean along the lines of what I've just said about my experience. I think if people are coming to the end of that sporting career, they should absolutely make the most of that time, because it does end and you's you can't go.

Speaker 3: 20:51

It's very hard to go back and do that again, but that yeah, the finding a new path after that isn't easy, but as a sports person you have a network and a community of people there who want you to succeed and who will, if you ask them, you know, at least once sit down and talk to you and if you're polite and thoughtful, they will make introductions, they will do what they can to facilitate you moving forward and if you, if you open-minded, if you, you know, recognize that and take advantage of what you have, which is this community of support and network, that you will find opportunities, and you don't need to know exactly what they look like.

Speaker 3: 21:43

Yeah, um, so there are. You know, there's this group of us who've been through this kind of athletic experience where, in some ways, it's really simple and it's a luxury because you, at some point, work out that's what I want to do with my life and you can go and focus exclusively on that. It's really simple, it's really clear, um, and there's an appeal to thinking well, that's how the rest of my life should operate, that I should come up with the same kind of clarity I had when I was 14, that I wanted to go to the Olympics. My career needs to have that kind of clarity, and the reality is that 95% of us in the workforce probably more never have that clarity.

Speaker 3: 22:27

We're not pursuing an end goal that we've had as a dream since we were 14 years old. We're making the most of the opportunities that we've got and letting that sort of take us to to where we should be. Um, and the people I see trying to find that next goal as their primary concern, they very rarely do like if you, if you're lucky enough to work out after you finish your sporting career, that you know I want to be. You know I want to be a property developer doing X and that's my passion and I'm going to go for it. I want to make paper straws and sell them to wherever. Go for it, like that's, but that's the one in 20 or the one in 50. The rest it's not going to happen. Like you've got to accept that you're not going to have that purity of you know this is what I really want to do.

Speaker 2: 23:19

The ultimate outcome or goal.

Speaker 3: 23:21

Yeah, that goal, that singular focus, won't be there. But it doesn't mean you can't have a great life. You don't need to have that singular focus to be happy, to be satisfied professionally, to have a great life and the things that you might value and if you free yourself of that worry. I think that's half the battle.

Speaker 2: 23:41

Yeah, and it is a bit of a change of a mindset, isn't it? Because you've gone from, like you said, the age of 13 or 14, wanting to go to the Olympics and ultimately you achieve the greatest sporting achievement of being a gold medalist. Then how do you change your mindset of not necessarily having an ultimate goal in the business world to just enjoying the journey and learning as you go? It could be challenging.

Speaker 3: 24:09

Yeah, I don't think it sits well with people. I think people who've had that previously want to find it again. It's not impossible, I think it's just unlikely. And in getting worried about that, you're likely to miss the opportunities that are there. Because I think one thing becomes sort of clearer the longer you're in business is that there are people who succeed in the most extraordinarily diverse range of stuff. There are people making great livings and having happy careers and successful businesses doing absolutely everything. There's some guy you know who makes the, the sound deadening stuff that's stuck on the wall next to us. Who's the guy, who's the go-to man who knows all about that and has it, and I'm sure he's doing just great and having a happy life. Like everywhere, there are these opportunities around us, um, and yeah, it's hard to know what that's going to be and probably it's a circumstantial thing that you'll end up in something like that. You need to be open to it.

Speaker 2: 25:17

Yeah, and is there someone that had a big influence on your career, to your career beyond sailing, like your career in finance or engineering, someone that you looked up to that helped you with that transition comes to mind.

Speaker 3: 25:34

Look, I haven't had a mentor. A lot of people do seek out business mentors who help guide them over time through that journey, and I think that's a great thing if you can find the right people who you have the right rapport with. But I have had a number of people during my career at different points, provide great advice and good counsel and be what I think have been great role models for me in the way that I operate, and most of those have come through sporting connections and you know getting to know people because of the sporting connection, but then having a relationship that extends beyond that.

Speaker 2: 26:18

Yeah, and it would be good to. We've spoken a lot about your career as an athlete and transitioning to where you are today, but I want to talk more a bit about the journey. So you mentioned that you studied engineering. You were working sort of engineering was it consulting, where you're helping businesses improve their manufacturing? How did you get from there to where you are today?

Speaker 3: 26:41

So I worked for this really interesting small business that was based out of Sydney and had an operation in the UK only for about a year and was involved in a couple of projects to deliver performance improvement work. The first thing I worked on was in a very large toilet paper factory in the UK making the equivalent of Softly toilet paper there, and within the first few weeks that I was on the job managed to solve a couple of problems. That probably saved the company the better part of a million dollars a year wow and, as a consulting firm, we might have been paid a

Speaker 3: 27:21

hundred thousand dollars and as a consultant I was paid ten thousand dollars and on a ten times earnings. Multiple shareholders were 10 million dollars better off. So I was a you know three orders of magnitude away from the shareholders in terms of capturing the value. Um, but I saw that in business a lot of stuff can be improved and my immediate reaction to that was I want to be in private equity, where not only are you not fighting the system, as a consultant you're able to influence with real control over how things get changed, but you're at that equity end of the value spectrum, and so I worked out quite quickly that that's what I wanted to try and get to was being involved in private equity, being involved in business ownership, where you could help make better decisions and benefit from doing that and make the world a better place by being being more efficient.

Speaker 3: 28:24

yeah, lots of people are wasting a lot of the time out there doing things that are not not not achieving a lot, so what Australia could do is productivity improvements. Yeah, and the opportunities are there.

Speaker 3: 28:41

And it wasn't necessarily easy for me to get into that industry and I ended up getting a job with a small Australian equities fund manager down here in Melbourne. That was my entree into the investment industry. And once again, I only worked there for less than a year but it, I guess, gave me an education in markets and investment and the things that are important to good investing and through that, yeah, I was clear that I wanted to stay in the industry and continue down this particular path.

Speaker 3: 29:17

And then, yeah, through a series of conversations with people who wanted to help me, I ended up getting a job in an investment bank and moved up to Sydney, so I worked for Rothschild initially with the CEO there in a sort of corporate strategy type role, looking at private equity opportunities, and then in their corporate advisory and M&A business and also in the forestry managed investment scheme business, which I ran for a while.

Speaker 3: 29:48

Rothschild got most of its business, got sold to Investec and I moved on at that point and joined Consolidated Press. I worked for James Packer for three years in a role that was with a small group of people responsible for most of the unlisted assets that Consolidated Press owned, which is a pretty interesting mix of businesses that Kerry Packer had bought during his lifetime and the goal there was to build an institutionalised private equity business within Consolidated Press, much as they'd done with the listed markets in Elliston. And for a variety of reasons that didn't come to pass, uh, but through a series of conversations that actually started with people I knew through sailing um in early 2009, um, I left consolidated press to start nanook. We saw an opportunity in the midst of the financial crisis to start a business that focused on the areas we focus on today that no one else was really doing in Australia at that point in time.

Speaker 2: 31:00

Yeah, so you're the leaders ultimately in sustainable investing in this country.

Speaker 3: 31:06

Look we run. I think the largest actively managed, sustainably themed fund in the country. There are a couple of other incredible people out there doing similar things, but yeah, we're one of the leaders in that space.

Speaker 2: 31:22

Well, it's an incredible journey that you've had, from being a professional sailor to studying engineering, travelling around the world, being an Olympian, going to two Olympics, winning gold medal, working in engineering, so investment banking, private equity and now for the leading sustainable investment firm in the country. So credit to you.

Speaker 3: 31:45

It's kind of you. It's nice when you put it that way.

Speaker 2: 31:48

Yeah, do you sort of look back and say, wow, I've achieved a lot in my career?

Speaker 3: 31:55

No, no, I mean, I don't look back is the main thing, I guess in sport I've always had a view that you're only as good as your next result.

Speaker 3: 32:13

And yeah, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what I've done previously, Like we've only got a limited amount of time in our life and I like to do as many good things as I can whilst I've got the opportunity. Got the opportunity, and it's nice to be in a position now where we've built something that's our own and it's a successful small business but there's a great opportunity. I still believe, more strongly now than I did 15 years ago, that what we're doing has merit and is a worthwhile thing to be doing, and that we can deliver great outcomes for our clients if we do a great job, and so that's what I'm focused on.

Speaker 4: 32:56

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 32:58

Yeah, if we can do things well, I get satisfaction out of that and, I guess, to some of the stuff that I said earlier, I don't have an end goal. You know a specific end goal in mind in terms of we have to get the business to here, or I'm trying to, you know, take my career to the next spot.

Speaker 4: 33:20

You know, I've thought more about.

Speaker 3: 33:22

You know, the longer my career's gone on, the more about what matters to me is working with good people doing something worthwhile and doing it well and yeah, trying to have the right way of operating that I can enjoy.

Speaker 2: 33:37

Yeah, we definitely make an impact. And what about sailing? Are you still involved in the sailing community?

Speaker 3: 33:44

Not particularly. It's interesting, though, my boys, who are 8 and 11, have started sailing in the last couple of years, so I'm now a sailing parent driving around with a trailer and a boat dropping them off at events, so they can do it.

Speaker 2: 33:59

Yeah Well, do you have any? What advice do you have for your children? I don't, I don't.

Speaker 3: 34:05

Yeah, make sure your boat's packed up when I get back. Yeah, I try not to get too involved.

Speaker 2: 34:13

I've got coaches there to do that, and I don't think it helps to have parents interfering. They won't listen to me. Yeah Well, I'm sure one day they'll want your advice Maybe, maybe not. Well, thank you for coming on the podcast, tom, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for sharing your story and and first time we're meeting. But I'm familiar with the business and I know Matt, who works in your team. So thank you very much for coming on, it's been a pleasure. And thank you for sharing your story on Finance Friends Podcast my pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for listening this week. Stay tuned for our next episode and keep up to date with us by following the Finance Friends Podcast on Instagram and TikTok Plus. Connect with us and our guests over on our LinkedIn page, all linked in the show notes.

Speaker 4: 35:00

Disclaimer this podcast exists for informational and entertainment purposes only. The personal opinions of the speaker and guests do not represent the view of any other party. If this recording contains reference to financial products, that reference does not constitute advice nor recommendations and may not be relied upon.