Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger are the COO and CCO, respectively, of WCM Investment Management, an independent investment firm managing $120 billion in assets.

WCM has built something unique — a firm culture that actually gets stronger as it grows.

Sloane and Dave share the team’s simple, trust-first approach to building organizations. They’ve stripped away the unnecessary layers to create a repeatable process for scaling culture.

In our conversation, we unpack the lessons from the founder’s past that shaped WCM’s philosophy of hiring for character over credentials. They share what it really takes to lead through growth without losing the essence of what made the firm special.

We then turn to the mechanics — how modeling behavior, candid feedback, “honoring the absent in a meeting” and accountability have made WCM what it is today and how that mindset influences the leadership’s approach to compensation, ownership, and succession.

Finally, Sloane and Dave explain how WCM’s anti-corporate ethos guides everything from product design to talent decisions — and what that means in an industry drifting toward more systematized management cultures.