A Bigger Purpose

I've worked a lot of different jobs. I've rented cars, I've sold insurance, I've flipped pizzas, I worked at a sporting goods store. I owned a frozen custard store for a period of time, and all of those jobs are rewarding, but money is such an important part of everybody's life. When we have an opportunity to make a difference in the way that people view money, what their money can mean for their kids, for their life, and ultimately get them to a better spot. We're trying to get people the best investment experience possible, and it does start to shift away from the numbers and the data to what it can do for people's lives, and that transformation, I think you see it in almost every single employee here. Interacting with the academics, the thought leaders at Dimensional, it's surreal, because they're the people that you read about in your textbooks. They defined the industry. They're the ones that came up with the idea. These are the smartest people thinking about financial economics, and yet from an outside perspective you might say, "Oh my gosh, how do you even sit in a meeting with them?" or, "How do you interact with them?" but they're so focused on doing the right thing for clients and thinking about the research the right way and what it means, that it's right in line with what you do. They're just one of the team members. Now don't get me wrong, there are times when you take a step back and say, "It's pretty incredible that I'm sitting "having lunch with Ken French," or whoever it is. But in the moment, you never feel like that because it's all about what's being debated at hand and the issue that you're discussing. What's the difference between owning a custard stand and working at Dimensional? There's a bigger purpose of working at Dimensional. I used to be able to make people very happy, but it was sort of they were happy in the moment, and then it faded. This is a little bit different to where you have a much longer term impact on people's lives versus just the five minutes that they're eating the dessert.