If you had told me seven years ago that we'd be working with a few hundred clients across the country, that we'd have 30 different team members helping to support those clients, though we would have about a billion dollars in assets that clients had entrusted to us to help the manage, I would have said, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are out of your mind that is not going to happen. I was very happy at my old firm, prior starting route, never saw myself going anywhere,

yet here we are. And so, Ari, what we're going to do today is we're going to tell the backstory

of both how Root came into existence, how you and I met, how we've grown what we've grown,

and what that ultimately means for the team here, for clients that we serve, and hopefully for the industry at

large. It's going to be a special episode. And this was prompted by your guys' comments. So yes,

we look at those and we appreciate them. We have a really special announcement in that we have a

name for the show officially. I'm going to tell it to you guys all in one second, but I have to shout out some awesome names that came through that we have a name for the show officially. I'm going to tell it to you guys all in one second,

but I have to shout out some awesome names that came through that we heavily considered.

We saw someone say, you should just call it retirement made easier, discussion about dollars,

curb your volatility, a reference to curb your enthusiasm, the J&A show, twin minds, lots of awesome comments.

So thank you guys for leaving those.

We are going to call this Root Talks.

And it would not be right to start Root Talks without the story behind how Root got founded.

So that comment was left left by Alan Young 159, who says,

you guys should do a video on how you guys met, how Root came about, the challenges of building

up the business. I'd find that interesting. I think you will, Alan. Yeah, well, if you find it interesting,

we're happy to tell it. I will say one more thing, that we are now going to host this channel

or this video on a root-specific YouTube page. So, all right, you and I both have our individual YouTube pages where people follow us. And one of the reasons we started doing this podcast was so many people said, wait, Ari, you and James worked together? I had no idea. I followed you both independently. So really cool to see that you're both at root. And so this is going to be on the Root YouTube channel. So make sure wherever you're listening to this, go subscribe to

the Root YouTube channel, the Root Financial YouTube channel. Let's tell the backstory. And I'm trying to

figure out. We're trying to figure out, how do we do this in 15 to 20 minutes? Because the story is

long and it's got this crazy plot twist and twist and turns.

But we're going to keep at high level and share how this came to be because it has been quite

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