On Oct. 16, Jud Bergman was memorialized in his hometown of Chicago. He and his loving wife Mary lost their lives when their taxi was struck by an impaired driver on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. Almost everybody in wealth management has either directly or indirectly been impacted by Jud and the business he built.
Jud created a powerhouse company that works with tens of thousands of advisers and accelerated the development of financial technology, as well as many of the tools and systems that we all rely on every day.
[Video: Remembering Jud Bergman]
Jud has deservedly been recognized for his impact on the industry, but the interactions we shared over the past decade deeply influenced the person I have become. Since not everyone had the benefit of knowing him personally, I want to share three specific moments we shared that made Jud unique and the lessons he taught me to become a better businessperson.
• Envestnet has been our biggest (and largest contract) partner for years. Our contracts would need to be renewed every couple of years. After months of back and forth between our teams, I would wait for the final call from Jud. He always sought a fair outcome, for his own interests and ours as well. He would take a personal interest in what we wanted to accomplish over the next couple of years and ensure his company was aligning with our needs.
He was one of the best negotiators I've ever met because he never took it too seriously, using humor to disarm any tension, and because I never had to question his intentions. Jud wanted to ensure we received more value than we paid for throughout our relationship. Many folks think about the world as a fixed pie, or a zero-sum game in which someone wins and someone loses; the more you have, the less there is for me. That wasn't Jud's view. Make the pie bigger for everyone and you win too.
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• Jud called to discuss his rationale for acquiring Yodlee. He realized that in the short term, his stock would probably be punished for moving Envestnet beyond its core business at the time. He understood that regardless of the naysayers, the changes he was implementing would be vital to helping his business grow and evolve into a full platform for advisers, beyond being an investment back office. In the short term, his stock was punished, but eventually the changes he made bore fruit and the stock reached new heights.
Having a clear perspective about the future, the courage to confront the adversity that comes with all change, and then successfully navigating the business through that evolution is the difference between being a visionary and a dreamer. That discussion and his ongoing focus on evolving his company was an inspiration as we built United Capital from an acquisition firm into an integrated financial life management company, and then launched FinLife Partners.
He applied the same logic to his own life, whether it was distilling an award-winning rye whiskey for the first time or learning about raising cacti later in his life. If you want to grow, you have to keep evolving, as a business and as a person.
• My first dinner with Jud was at one of his favorite Italian restaurants in Chicago. He introduced me to my first "proper" Old Fashioned (made with rye). The food was good, but the three-hour dinner was a revelation. We spent some time discussing the industry, but the vast majority of the meal was about the things we both really cared about beyond work.
Jud was a genuine Renaissance man and was able to talk knowledgeably about so many subjects, from chess to music, art and philosophy. Every dinner, he seemed to have a new hobby he was passionately learning about, with insights that applied to life in general. But his most passionate subject was his family; he glowed with pride when talking about his children's talents or some of the shows he'd seen with his cherished wife.
He might have been an accomplished businessperson, but he never lost sight of being human first. He understood that work is part of life, not the other way around. Keeping that perspective, growing as a person and investing in his life beyond work made him a better businessman and a happier human. Maintain perspective, because your life is more important than your work.
At the memorial in the Field Museum, many hundreds of people listened to the heartfelt eulogies given by colleagues and family. Behind the speakers, a beautiful picture glowed: Jud on a stage with the lights beaming on him, looking out at the audience with his back to all of us and six words posted underneath. They reflected this man perfectly: "Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly."
Joe Duran is CEO of United Capital, a Goldman Sachs company. Follow him @DuranMoney.
