Building a Multifamily Platform Through Market Cycles with Ryan Brome

Ryan Brome is the Chief Operating Officer of Investments at Forum Investment Group, an institutional platform with nearly $6.5 billion in total capitalization. He leads investment management operations across Forum’s development, ownership, and credit businesses, overseeing the investment lifecycle from sourcing through portfolio management and helping align the teams, processes, and risk controls supporting the platform’s growth.

Ryan has more than 15 years of experience across real estate and capital markets. Before becoming COO of Investments, he served as Forum’s Senior Managing Director and Head of Capital Strategy and previously led Capital Development. Earlier in his career, he held roles at HFF, Real Capital Solutions, and McWhinney, where he served as Vice President of Capital Markets and Investor Relations. He earned a Bachelor of Arts with an emphasis in Finance from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Insights from Ryan Brome on Multifamily Investing Through Market Cycles

Multifamily just absorbed one of the largest waves of new supply the country has seen, yet occupancy across Forum Investment Group’s portfolio has climbed from roughly 93% to 95% and 96%. Rent growth is beginning to return, concessions are becoming less necessary, and Ryan Brome sees improving fundamentals even as heavily supplied markets continue to face distress.

That uneven market requires more than a single investment strategy. Forum has built its platform to move between lending, acquisitions, and development based on where the strongest risk-adjusted opportunities are emerging. The result is a business designed to remain active as different parts of the multifamily cycle open and close.

In this episode of The Dealmakers’ Edge, Aaron Strauss and Ryan Brome discuss how to read the next phase of the multifamily cycle and how Forum prepared during the downturn to deploy capital as market conditions improve.

1:29 - Starting in capital markets and entering real estate through HFF

2:43 - The lunch that led Ryan to Forum Investment Group

4:38 - How Forum evolved from regional syndication into an institutional platform

5:38 - Building a multifamily business designed to invest through market cycles

8:14 - Where multifamily recovery is taking hold and where distress remains

10:55 - Integrating development, ownership, and credit across the investment team

13:54 - Why investor demand for 1031 exchanges and DSTs is growing

19:30 - Building Forum’s infrastructure during the real estate downturn

22:47 - How experience and organizational culture build resilience through difficult cycles

25:38 - Why relationships remain the differentiating factor as AI adoption grows

Mentioned In Building a Multifamily Platform Through Market Cycles with Ryan Brome

Forum Investment Group | LinkedIn

Ryan Brome on LinkedIn

Podcast Disclosures

This communication is intended for informational purposes only, does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation, and should not provide the basis for any investment decision. Investments in such transactions noted within this communication will be made solely by means of offering materials provided to the recipient by Forum or its affiliates.

This material does not constitute a part of the offering materials.

The term “Portfolio” used throughout this communication means Forum’s collection of direct syndication, stabilized multifamily investments; excluding properties sold and acquired during the quarter as well as multifamily developments closed, under construction and in lease-up as of the date of this communication, unless disclosed otherwise within this communication.

Discussion of 1031 exchanges is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor as investment, tax, or legal advice. Individual tax situations vary; please consult your tax professional regarding your specific circumstances.

Investment in these transactions involves a high degree of risk, and investors should not invest in such transaction unless they can afford to lose their entire investment.

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This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security, investment, investment strategy, or market sector. This material is intended only to provide a broad market overview for discussion purposes. Discussion of 1031 exchanges is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor as investment, tax, or legal advice. Individual tax situations vary; please consult your tax professional regarding your specific circumstances.

An investor should not construe the contents of this material as legal, tax, investment, or other advice. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal and fluctuation of value. In considering any performance data contained herein, each recipient should bear in mind that past performance is not indicative of future results, and there can be no assurance that an investment program will achieve comparable results or will achieve any projected, estimated, or targeted results. Any projections, market outlooks, or estimates in this podcast are forward- looking statements and are based upon assumptions that are subject to inherent limitations. This podcast reflects our views and opinions as of the date herein. Which are subject to change at any time based on market and other conditions. We disclaim any responsibility to update these views. Any projections, outlooks, or assumptions should not be construed to be indicative of the actual events which will occur.

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Transcript

Aaron Strauss: You're listening to The Dealmakers' Edge with A.Y. Strauss, diving deep into stories behind commercial real estate leaders. 

Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Dealmakers' Edge. Today we have an exciting guest, Ryan Brome, who is the Chief Operating Officer of Investments at Forum Investment Group, which is an institutional platform with nearly $6.5 billion of total capitalization. We're going to talk about the platform, talk about Ryan's career, his mindset, what it takes to be successful, how investors and sponsors are leveraging the platform for a variety of different opportunistic situations, including 1031 exchanges, DSTs, et cetera. And we're going to learn about the market cycle, where we're in it and what Ryan sees. It's a great conversation and hopefully you enjoy it. 

Here we go. Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Dealmakers’ Edge. Today, we are really pumped to have Ryan Brome on with us and he's going to share a lot about his company, his background, there's some really exciting things going on at Forum. And you can educate us on markets, you can educate us on platform, you can educate us on why investors are going in direction A, B, C, or D, in this strange evolving market all the time. But it'd even be great to just kind of go back to the beginning. You can share where you went to school, how you got started in the industry and we'll take it from there, Ryan? 

Ryan Brome: Yeah, Aaron, well, great to meet you. I appreciate you hosting us. Yeah, going back to kind of history, I went to University of Colorado Boulder, graduated into one of the most probably interesting time periods. And then I came out of school right in 07. So that was kind of the first time period where I had to quickly learn to pivot, lean into my network and you know, sort of find opportunity. But kind of coming out of that time period, I was always in sort of capital markets finance. For three years, I was actually doing renewable energy finance, which is actually very similar to real estate. It's just a slightly different asset class, but ultimately, you're financing cash flows. Right around 2011, I had an opportunity to move to Los Angeles. I worked for a firm called HFF, a big real estate transaction brokerage, ultimately acquired by JLL, but that was the way I dipped my toe into the real estate business. And got just much more familiar with sort of the transaction side of the business, both between debt and equity, loved living in LA, decided probably not a great place to raise a family, convinced my wife to move back to Colorado. And for about five years, I worked for a single family office. So we did a ton of different stuff. It was really kind of private equity focused, but we had a huge sort of real estate business and I was doing kind of a lot of stuff, capital markets focused, both between kind of debt and equity. And then about ten years ago, I was introduced to our founder and CEO Darren Fisk and had the opportunity to sort of go grab lunch with him, kind of learn a little bit more about the business. And quite frankly, most lunches you walk in and you don't really know sort of where it's going to go, well, two hours later we effectively had kind of written down my job description, talked about an alignment of interests, where he was going and what I wanted to do. And as they say, the rest is history. For me, it's been most interesting because, again, I go back about 10 years with Darren and when you look at Forum, this firm has evolved tremendously over the years and sort of the experience of that. And the, kind of the one takeaway for me is, is that, you know, if you were kind of just a one trick pony, you go out of business. And, I think that's sort of what I've always seen kind of with the firm with Aaron, working for an entrepreneur is that you've got to always sort of think about kind of where the market is going. And so where we are today is very different than sort of when I entered the business, you know, going back 10 years ago. But it's been a fun time. It's been a fun time to sort of, you know, see how kind of the markets have evolved. You know, we're, we're not just a real estate company per se, we've got sort of this whole investment management business that we layered on top of it. But yeah, very exciting times to kind of be in the market right now. And, you know, I'm sure we have probably a lot to cover. 

Aaron Strauss: Absolutely. A lot to cover and we want to do the best we can to cover all of it. So, I mean, the bottom line is maybe we can step back and then kind of educate our listeners to the Forum platform. I know it evolved from when you first started, and I'm reading up. I understand Darren obviously got his start as a major investor and things evolved. And when you're growing, a lot of opportunities present themselves, so it's really exciting. Maybe you can just step back on a macro level, before we talk about, you know, your role and what you're doing day to day, just so that people listening can get a sense of the scope and the size and the reach, frankly, of the platform generally. 

Ryan Brome: To describe the platform, it's helpful to just kind of understand where we came from. And so, you know, going back about 20 years, I mean, the firm was, you know, more or less kind of a regional real estate syndicator. So, you know, we'd find an opportunity and go raise money around it. Over the years though, you know, we kind of became a product of our own success. The deals started getting larger. We started to expand kind of our client base. About 10 years ago, we stumbled into sort of this whole world of private wealth management with RAAs. And that's where kind of the business really started to pivot and evolve for us, where we had advisors coming to us saying, hey, like I really like what you guys do and it's really hard for me to allocate into these private placements, I can't do sub docs, I hate K1s, can you build kind of a platform, or a product that that provides more access. And so, you know, today the firm sets primarily focused on the multifamily space. But the way we've diversified the business is we've got really sort of a debt and credit platform. And then we've got an equity platform that's focused on kind of ownership, as well as development. We always like to kind of describe sort of where we see opportunity as sort of through a market cycle. And the benefit of that is, you know, at certain times, it's probably a great time to be a lender. At certain times, it's a great time to be acquirer. And, you know, sometimes development works and sometimes it doesn't. And if you think about just the last three to four years, that's been the biggest challenge, right? If you were just really developing assets, well, the market shut off when the Fed rose rates. And so for us, we've really kind of built this diversified platform and multifamily to really be able to be active, kind of throughout an entire cycle. And that's kind of where we sit today and we're sort of at the confluence of a couple different markets. The equity market's starting to kind of come back. We're seeing development start to show back up in select markets. And I always describe sort of the debt business as an always on business. There's always sort of consumers of capital, kind of on the other side of this and that for us, we have the benefit of being able to kind of underwrite those real estate projects, those borrowers, because we do it ourselves. And so that's really kind of how we built the business from a regional syndicated model doing one-off deals. So now we've got sort of a consistent spread of investment products across kind of the entire debt and equity kind of landscape. 

Aaron Strauss: Terrific. I've always been a fan of diversification, which you have to be as an investor, no matter what asset class, or any industry, frankly, for that matter, but also a fan of businesses that can be vertically integrated and also somewhat market agnostic, where you can always have something to do, right? The syndicator who falls on 2023 with rising rates and occupancy falling and debt maturing and unable to refi is a much different position than someone who's also making loans and actively rolling into the new cycle. And those firms are always very, very successful. They can integrate beautifully, which sounds like across the platform you guys have been doing. I'd love to touch on the market for a minute, because you brought it up and we could go in another direction shortly. But it does seem now the cycle is kind of this tweener moment, right? You’ve got basis forming, you have analysis justifying whether it's replacement costs, or whether it's, hey, somebody bought this for 35% more three or four years ago and we know, stabilize, we can make it work. I mean, are you seeing opportunity on the equity side to a point, where you would say, we're going to Recovery, obviously every market is different and every single sponsor and every single deal is capitalized differently, but we'd love to get a sense of just general optimism, or if you think we're still in a higher for longer rates cycle that's going to carry downward value over years. 

Ryan Brome: Yeah, I mean, I think it goes back to sort of that comment around every market's different. If you go to some of these Sunbelt markets that were kind of dramatically overbuilt, I think they're in probably a different stage of the cycle, versus you come into the kind of the Midwest and these markets that just structurally didn't get overbuilt. I think they're probably further along, in terms of, I wouldn't even call it recovery, because they didn't fall as far. But, you know, I think the bigger piece and we were talking about this earlier, kind of within our investments team is that, you know, when you look at multifamily across the board, the fundamentals have continued to get better. I mean, we just went through probably one of the largest supply waves that this country has ever seen. And what happened is, is those units were absorbed, they were leased up. It was just a function of, all right, well, what are the rates and what type of concessions existed in the market? We're now starting to see across our portfolio, we went from kind of Q4 of last year at 93% occupancy, we're now kind of hovering at 95, 96. So the market is tightening. So fundamentals are getting better. You're seeing a reduced kind of reliance on concessions. And so you're starting to see actual rent growth pick back up, which again, I think that's kind of the leading indicator of sort of where the market is going. You're still going to have some markets that have distress. I mean, you go down to Florida and there are certain locations where it's like they've got, you know, four years supply that they've got to work through. And so I think what you're going to end up seeing happen and we're already seeing is, is it's going to be kind of a tale of two outcomes, where if people are well capitalized, they've got the ability to either make a capital call, or refinance their asset, they'll be okay, because the fundamentals are there. It's people that probably overextended from a leverage perspective and they're in just a highly supplied market, they're probably going to end up giving the keys back, or there's going to be sort of workout scenarios. And we see both of those outcomes. And it seems like high-quality assets, great locations, those are trading. But the ones where you've got to come in and underwrite supply and concessions, you've got a pretty big gap between kind of bid-ask of where that asset likely trades. 

Aaron Strauss: That makes perfect sense. And obviously that aligns everything we're seeing constantly. And it's an exciting time for a firm like yours to be super successful. Maybe we could talk a little bit about your role. You've grown with the company. I mean, now it's been 10 years plus and you've seen a lot of different roles and the platform has grown as well, tremendously. Now you're COO, maybe you could talk about your day-to-day, you're on the investment side, but I know there's different verticals. Maybe you could talk about your mandate within the firm and how it ties into other interoperability, for lack of a better word, across the platform. 

Ryan Brome: I'm probably having more fun today than I've had in a long time in that I'm working across kind of 22 investment professionals within our investment team. And so, you know, when you kind of look at how we're structured, we've got our development business, we've got our ownership asset management business and then we've got our credit lending business. And one of the things that we always like to describe to folks when we kind of talk about the benefit of Forum is this integration of those teams. So every Monday we've got a full ICU or that entire 22 person team comes together and they talk about what they're seeing in the market. And so we get that purview of, all right, what's happening everywhere, both from kind of a lending perspective, which markets are working from a development standpoint. And so, you know, right now and actually spending a ton of time on markets and underwriting of just reviewing and sort of seeing where things are at. I'd be remiss to say that we're not using AI across all of our processes. And that's also another really interesting component of how we're now processing data and just getting more kind of real-time information and we're getting to quicker decisions kind of within the team. And so it's, yeah, it's been a lot of fun where we've got capital coming in. And then it's a matter of, all right, where are we deploying and where are we sort of seeing that best kind of risk adjusted opportunity? So that's where kind of a lot of the day to day is. And then I'll still spend time on the road, kind of with our sales and distribution team, working with kind of some of our clients and larger kinds of institutional relationships as well. Doing the same thing, you know, educating them on what we're seeing in the market, how we're kind of navigating the current cycle. But yeah, it's a fun time to be doing it just because I feel like every day is different. The data is always coming in and we're trying to identify sort of where that next kind of market, that next opportunity is. 

Aaron Strauss: Absolutely. And it's amazing to be around and spend time with somebody who's having a lot of fun and also juggling massive responsibility. And I think that's a mindset, frankly, that gets curated over many years of being an optimist while also dealing with day-to-day challenges. So I love that, especially this podcast called The Dealmakers' Edge. We try to get into the psychology that you have to have to frankly, take a lot of hits and keep moving, right? It's a constantly evolving cycle. It's a constantly evolving demand of needs from so many different stakeholders. So you seem to be doing a fabulous job juggling all of that with tremendous optimism. So congrats on that. Maybe we could talk a little bit about 1031 exchanges. Obviously, that's becoming more and more part of your mandate and the business. And DSTs, Delaware Statutory Trust, which some listeners may not know about, but maybe you could talk about how the organization is thinking through leveraging those two vehicles to navigate different investor demands and requirements and how they're sometimes useful, sometimes less useful, but kind of how people should think about those two tools in their arsenal as they underwrite different opportunities. 

Ryan Brome: Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing that we thought about when we kind of launched our foreign exchange program is just, you know, where does the investor demand lie? And I mean, I think the first thing that you can identify and you've seen it in the marketplace, which is one, these programs are getting more institutional. So general awareness around the 1031 exchange, the DST programs, the 721 programs has increased dramatically. And so across the board, when you're out in the market, people generally understand what they are. But the demand side of it is where it's most interesting just because you have this whole sort of, you know, baby boomer generation and below it has amassed a significant amount of wealth that's locked up in private real estate. And they're getting to that decision point of saying, well, do I want to give it to my kids? Do I want to do another 1031 exchange and continue sort of active management and take on kind of all of those issues that are associated with it? Or, can I sell this property, roll into an institutionally managed offering and effectively wipe my hands of that responsibility? And that's where you see the opportunity set is because a lot of these folks, what they're really trying to do is they're trying to manage, obviously taxes, they're trying to manage estate planning and then they're really trying to just create consistent dividend income, when they get to kind of that stage of retirement. And so, you know, I think the benefit of these programs is you can kind of pick and choose, you can build what you want. You could say, you know what, I want industrial exposure here, maybe retail exposure there. And so where you've seen the marketplace go is folks are really specializing and then it's really the client and/or the advisor that's driving kind of that allocation decision. We have the benefit of being multifamily focused because for us, then we can kind of represent that multifamily exposure, we think it's a great story in terms of the broader multifamily market that kind of the residential housing space. But we end up just being sort of a solution as part of a broader kind of mandate for somebody that, you know, might be selling a sizable real estate portfolio, whether it be personal or part of the business or anything like that. So you see it across the board. And I think when you have something that solves a need for somebody that allows them to, you know, kind of make a frictionless investment and ultimately end up in a diversified vehicle. That's where you kind of create this sequence and process for them that it's sort of hard for them to not make that decision.

Aaron Strauss: Right. And we see that constantly, whether it's somebody who built up a huge multifamily portfolio and it's obviously managing multi is much different than managing retail, certainly in a triple net retail, it's like two different universes, frankly. So we constantly see first or second gen selling off a huge portfolio and then just want to buy a slew of some triple net. That comes with issues too, even though you get the check in the mail, there's constantly issues to worry about. So it's great you can help clients navigate. On the DST side, we've seen more of our clients go to DST as a structure to fuel investment capital in a way that's different than the typical syndication. Maybe you can describe on the DST side, are you more on the sponsor side? Are you more on the investor side? Are you bridging the gap together? Maybe you can talk about that. 

Ryan Brome: Yeah, I mean, so the way that we've sort of built our business is with sort of a DST in place. So we are the sponsor of the DST, but ultimately it's a DST paired with a 721. So from kind of the standpoint of somebody selling an asset, then maybe to your point around why folks are doing that, the beauty of the DST is that you can put an institutional quality asset with an unlimited number of partners in that through that 1031 exchange process. And so, you know, again, most often if somebody is selling something and it's a $2 million sale, they've got to either go replace that property and kind of that exact amount of $2 million, maybe debt. In a DST, you could have a 50 or $100 million multifamily property that they come in and they own their respective share of. So I think the DST has really just allowed people to access higher quality real estate that they normally wouldn't be able to access. And then when you pair that with a manager that has sort of this 721 program, it effectively goes from single property to institutional property up into a diversified fund. That's not what everybody's looking to do. Some people will just use sort of a DST transaction and then when that sells, they'll move on and do another one. But that's kind of the beauty of where the market is right now. You have a slew of offerings. You know, you find yourself, if you pair up with a really good sponsor, there's a lot of good solutions out there right now. 

Aaron Strauss: Absolutely. And it seems like you're perfectly situated, you know, at the organization to apply them. And I think more and more, there'll always be a world of syndication and one-off deals. And it sounds like, you know, that will never stop, but investors are certainly at the level you're dealing with, registered investment advisors, et cetera. They do want institutional full service, full scope, full analysis, which you can offer, which is fabulous. The next question is basically, you're building a lot of success.The  Forum's grown exponentially. It keeps growing and growing and it seems like there's tons of investors who need to deploy capital. There's tons of opportunities to marry opportunities to that capital. What's exciting for you? What's exciting for the organization? What's exciting about these next few years, given the evolution of the company and where it's going? What do you have your vision on for the next few years to expand? Is it more of the same new product lines? We'd love to hear about what you think may be coming next, without giving away any state secrets, obviously. 

Ryan Brome: You know, I think the most important thing that we always talk about is being a boutique. And it's amazing, because like at the size and scale that we are, you know, 15 years ago we would have been well above a boutique, but now just with the assets have grown, we are able to just be kind of a bit more opportunistic and kind of nimble in the market. And when you look back over even the last three to four years, a lot of what we have in place today, we were building. So we were building out the infrastructure and the framework to really take advantage of what we saw was going to be another real estate cycle. And we were doing it through more or less a real estate recession. I think anybody that's been in real estate has to admit that, yeah, 23, 24, 25 were not great years for real estate, challenging headwinds. And so we really took that opportunity to say, you know what, we're going to reposition a firm. We're going to build out, put an investment in the firm, infrastructure, and position ourselves for a time when we actually have some tailwinds. And that's where we are today. We're starting to see those green shoots and have those tailwinds behind us. And fortunately we built the boat to then go take advantage of it. So I don't feel like we have to, you know, react to kind of an opportunity in the market. We've really prepared ourselves to do it. And you know, conversely, we've got capital that's now starting to show up, you know, to partner with us to do it. So I think that's probably the most exciting thing is that we're well positioned and we've sort of taken the time and tried to be thoughtful about, you know, what do we want the next, you know, kind of seven to 10 years to look like for us. 

Aaron Strauss: That's terrific. I think a lot of people watching successful business people and companies just assume they just flip the switch somewhere, but they don't see the years and years of time and energy and solving problems positioning for that next cycle. So I think that's great.

I always tell people philosophically, the people I'm most impressed with, and I try to be the same with what I'm doing day to day, is do everything today that it's three years from now, you know, the future, Ryan is high-fiving the old, you know, distant Ryan. Like, thank you, Ryan, from the past for setting me up today. So always do things with a longer term horizon, the right way with the right team and infrastructure over time. It's not going to be perfect, but you have a way outsized potential of success versus somebody who's just completely pivoting on the fly without infrastructure. So that resonates. It's very meaningful.

The other thing you said earlier, which was really great, was you're having a lot of fun. You know, I think real estate is very turbulent, ups and downs, chasing deals, it gets very emotional. Obviously, you're on a bigger boat. It's not a speed boat that's going to get sort of flipped over by a wave, you know, if you will. But I'm curious to cultivate that mentality. That's not easy, especially if you've been in the business for a while, which you have.

So I'd love to share with listeners how you curate that mentality on the toughest, darkest days when things are not going well or there's a problem on a deal no one anticipated, all the usual bumps. You know, how do you talk to yourself in a way that builds that resilience and builds that healthy mental state, frankly, you need to get into your position and have success?

Ryan Brome: Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. Probably one of the harder ones to answer. I mean, outside of, you know, just kind of a natural predisposition to, you know, believe that things are going to be OK. It does start at the top, though. You know, when we talk about kind of the culture of the organization, I mean, that really is it starts at the C-suite and from kind of the CEO all the way down to every analyst. And, you know, the benefit that we have is we have made it through different market cycles. We've been through challenging environments. And again, to your point of sort of having that experience in the history, I think as you get further into your career, the challenging periods don't become so challenging, because you sort of look at, you say I've seen this before, I mean going back to where we started. Graduating into the GFS, I'm like, well, that was probably the worst environment I could have ever shown up and I’m like and it's still worked out. Like ultimately you sort of see these cycles and they work out. COVID was no different, I mean, like we all made it through COVID and, you know, everybody came out the other side. So I do think it's one of those things, but it's something that like every single day, you've got to kind of wake up and be like, I believe this is going to work out. I think we've got the right people. We've got the right strategy. And then you just kind of put your head down and do the work. Because if you just always focus on the things that, you know, potentially might not work, that's exactly what you're going to go create. And it's going to happen. So, I think like it's as much of a function of like what you're feeding that subconscious and then it's contagious. I mean, again, it's contagious across the entire team. If I'm showing up and I'm kind of, you know, saying, oh, that's not going to happen, then everybody else starts to wear that same mentality. You know, it's a little bit of you just sort of have to kind of put your head down and, you know. Fake it till you make it's not the right term, but you really do just have to believe that there's a better outcome in the future. I mean, that's why we're all doing this, right? Like you don't show up every day and work hard, sacrifice time and energy, if you don't think it's going to work like that's destined to fail. So, I think we're fortunate and like, we've got a culture of people that are, you know, hard workers and they kind of just believe that tomorrow is going to be better than today. 

Aaron Strauss: That's a really well stated answer to a very tricky question, where it doesn't have any normal answers to it. So I apologize for putting you on the spot for that, but I really try to get to that next level underneath the mindset I think is so critical. A lot of people listen to this podcast maybe at their first job, or they're a few years out of school and they're really just trying to struggle up that chain of command, if you will. And also that culture of we can do this, we're a positive organization. If you have people at your organization that are draining or it could be toxic, it really is like a cancer. You got to be very careful, it's not healthy for everyone. So congrats on all the success. Amazing to learn about Forum. Amazing to learn about your mindset that's required. All the great things you're doing for investors. Anything I could have asked you that I didn't? 

Ryan Brome: No, I mean, the only other thing that always comes to mind for me is when you look at where we are, just as an economy, a market, all of those things, I think a lot of people get hung up on how quickly things are changing. And what we always try to remind all of our people, our analysts, everybody, we're like, guys, this is still a relationship business. It's still about people. Like the AI is not coming for your job. It's about your ability to connect with people, form relationships nd that's why we all do this, that's why we show up. And to me, I think that's… That will be the differentiating factor of why firms succeed, or they don't succeed is because they build relationships and they build long-term, you know, partnerships. 

Aaron Strauss: I love that answer. It's so apropos. Somebody once came on the podcast and said, the further the technology advances, the more critical the key themes of empathy and being human. So you totally, I fully concur. And honestly, it's been a great conversation, Ryan, getting to know you, getting educated on the Forum platform, getting educated on some of the products on your mindset, your career. It's been a great run. I'm really excited to see what comes next and I'm hoping we can stay in touch and just really appreciate the time. And it's been fabulous getting to know you on the podcast today. 

Ryan Brome: Yeah. Aaron, thank you. I really appreciate it. And yeah, absolutely, stay in touch, if I can help you in any way, please let me know. 

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