Pacific Asset Management (PAM) is a fresh and progressive asset manager, rethinking the conventions of how asset management works for advisers, institutions, investors, asset owners and the industry. They are responsible for USD 24 billion of assets for their clients.

PAM continue to push the boundaries of technology, investment research and to provide better solutions for their partners and clients, but most importantly – they've sourced their business support and HR representatives from Bain and Gray, so we were able to get the inside scoop for an interview. Please join us as our co-founder Emily Bain interviews Matthew Lamb from their newest offices in central London.

Emily - What does a typical day in the life of a CEO look like?

Matthew - So today I got up at 6:00 in the morning, I then went to the gym to get rid of some early morning stress, which tends to happen before I've even started. Then we had a South African client over and I was in meetings with them and our sales team. 10:00 we had our investment committee call, which I chair. We have about 60 people that dial in, every Thursday, and everyone joins, this is the one meeting that no one's allowed to miss. Whether you're an EA or you're in technology or you're in investments, you should understand what we do as a business. And actually, anecdotally, when we sit and chat with people outside of work, it's the non-investment people that find it the most interesting.

Emily - So you are classically in back-to-back meetings most of the time?

Matthew - Yes, and that's a nightmare, and I work very well with my EA to try and stop that from happening. Because what tends to happen is, I'm a guy that says yes to everything - hence why I'm here - I then end up having to do my day job at about 6:30 or 7:00 in the evening, which is then catching up on emails.

Emily - That leads me very nicely on to talk much more about how your current EA supports you. But before we do that, tell us about your current PA, EA.

Matthew - So Cobi (my first EA). Cobi came from Bain and Gray.

She has now moved up to HR, and we've just taken her through all her qualifications. We are a big believer of mobility within a business, in terms of retaining your talent, if you're a nice person and you work hard, we'll do everything we can to keep you.

Kelsie (my current EA) also came from Bain and Gray and has been with us four or five years. She's a machine, an amazing human being. She works incredibly hard and has worked out how to deal with me.

Often, she will sit at the door and open the door at meetings that I'm in because she knows I'm supposed to be at another one. And I'll keep saying, "five minutes, five minutes," so she won't move until she's got me out of the meeting. Which perversely when we started, I thought was deeply annoying. But now I would never live without it.

You know, she turned out to be much brighter than me, with regards to sorting my life out, 100%.

Emily - What is the biggest misconception that leaders, CEOs have about the PA or EA role?

Matthew - I think that the bit that everybody misunderstands is the effect that, Kelsie, in our sense, has on the rest of the business.

Because by making me operate efficiently it allows everybody else to operate efficiently. If I was completely chaos and missed all the meetings, it would impact everybody else's meetings. So, the biggest problems she solves are not just my problems, but making the business run more efficiently. And why the rest of the business respects it so much.

Emily - Can you share an example of when Kelsie has saved you from making a mistake or changed your judgment regarding a decision?

Matthew - Oh, my goodness. Probably daily. I was chatting with somebody in our technology department, and he was telling me that I never look like I really worry about anything. That I just have lots of energy, crack on, and have this ability to just digest everything. If he were to ask Kelsie, she would know that I was a complete neurotic wreck, and I get nervous for every meeting I turn up to. I worry about everything. She knows everything about my personal life.

Moreover, she knows everything about how I want to get more from people, more out of the business. She moves meetings when there are important things going. She's also the face of the business. We have clients that come in and so many of my clients will say, "Oh my God, isn't Kelsie amazing?" so, she becomes a big part of the brand and of the organisation.

Emily – I know that your organisation has gone through a lot of scaling up and change in the last five years, do you feel that Kelsie and you have grown together?

Matthew - Definitely. PAM had our 10-year anniversary, and I said a few words about everyone in the business. I think in her previous role, Kelsie was the PA to the EA, and then she had to come into a business that's grown at 60% a year for 10 years. And we now run USD 24 billion for the biggest institutions in the world, and that's not only been terrifying for me, but I suspect it's been terrifying for Kelsie too.

When we first started, before I had an EA, and my shareholders made me get one, I'm sitting at a breakfast with a client and my phone rings, asking me how long I was going to be before I attended breakfast with another client, and realised that I'd booked two client breakfasts on the same day.

That client that I missed in the city still hasn't spoken to me again, 10 years on, as I left him, with a bacon roll, I suspect, by himself, at the top of the Gherkin.

Emily - If Kelsie was describing your working style in three words, what would she say?

Matthew - Oh. Harsh. What my working style? She'd probably say, hardworking, manic and fair.

Emily - Thinking about the EA support role as a whole, we're seeing a huge shift at the moment between EAs who are looking for personal career development and moving into chief of staff functions. Especially with AI coming into the picture. So how much access do you think a PA, EA should have to strategic information?

Matthew - I think it is incredibly dependent on the individual. There are some people that will naturally want to get into that and can, it's a very obvious path to go from EA to chief of staff. And your chief of staff could be your chief people officer. It's somebody that understands more than anyone, and knowing that makes you an incredible person to be able to work out how you get the most out of staff, and it's also amazing for the staff to be able to talk to you as an independent.

Emily - What skills remain uniquely human and impossible to replace?

Matthew - That is a big question. Dealing with humans is uniquely human, and so skills that require interaction, empathy, lateral thinking, that you can read someone's body language, are essential. If you can't interact with somebody in a humanly way, then it will be very difficult to be able to deliver solutions.

AI is a utility, before you had Excel, you had graphs and numbers and rulers, and then someone created Excel, and that allowed you to do things in a much simpler way. And now someone's created AI, and that's going to allow you to do things at your desk in a much more productive way.

Emily - If you had to put a number on it, how much more effective are you as a CEO and leader of the business because of Kelsie?

Matthew - Oh, I don't think you can put a number on it. If our shareholders, the people that gave us the working capital to build a business, believe that I add value, then I wouldn't be able to be here without Kelsie.

So effectively she's the reason that I'm able to do my job and, and if our shareholders value that, then she's as valuable as I am.

Emily - Thank you for your time.