Ep627: Brian Portnoy – Financial Wellbeing Is Your Gateway to a Meaningful Life

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning in our community. We know that to winning investing, you must take risks but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives and that mission has led me to create the become a better investor community where you get access to tools to help you create, grow and protect your wealth go to my worst investment ever.com to check it out. Eloise tigers, this is your worst podcast hosts Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests, Brian Portnoy. Brian, are you ready to rejoin the mission?

Brian Portnoy 00:46
I absolutely am. It's been a while back.

Andrew Stotz 00:50
Yeah, it's great to have you back. And for the listeners out there, I'll tell you that episode 17 was a knockout. And that was when Brian talked about his own worst investment ever. And that was four years ago. So it's really great to get you back on and figure out what you're doing and the value you're bringing. So let me introduce you to the audience that don't know you. Brian is the founder of shaping wealth, a learning technology platform transforming the human experience of money. He's one of the world's leading experts on the psychology of money. And he has written multiple best selling books, including the geometry of wealth and has 20 years, and more. I've experienced as an investor and educator in the hedge fund and mutual fund industries. And like myself, he's also a CFA charter holder, and he earned a PhD at the University of Chicago. So, Brian, take a minute and fill in some tidbits about yourself and what you're doing in your life right now.

Brian Portnoy 01:56
Yeah, thanks, Andrew. It's actually really a treat. It's cool. It's cool to be back. It's nice to see you. So yeah, you know, look, I'm nothing more than the bullet points on my resume. What else is there to say? No. Um, so yeah, I've been in the markets broadly defined for almost 25 years now. And it's been a journey started out in investment research, went into proper portfolio management. And I don't know 1112 years ago got bitten by the behavioral finance bug. So not just Kahneman and Tversky, and Thaler and Ariely, but all the way into social psychology and positive psychology, and then neuroscience and just really understanding how we tick as human beings, what makes us have shared qualities and experiences and what makes us unique. I enjoyed that endeavor of learning so much that I wrote a few books in the field. One's called the investors paradox, which you and I spoke about, because I touched in there on some truly awful investment mistakes that I made that you're, I'm angry with you for making me think about them. Again, it's been a while they're deep,

Andrew Stotz 03:12
See, there you go. behavioral biases, right, their emotional biases,

Brian Portnoy 03:16
I, and then a few years later, I published a quite different book called The geometry of wealth, how to build a life of, of money and meaning. And I broaden the lens quite significantly for personal reasons, for professional reasons. And, you know, I was working, continue to work in the wealth management area with financial advisors, I know different terms for different cultures, but with you know, financial advisors, or wealth managers, and in bringing behavioral finance, you know, fancy term for the psychology of money to that that community, you know, I heard big things in terms of well, what are people really, you know, worried about what people really care about, and it sort of boiled down to a couple of big questions. Maybe three, the first one, by far the most important one is am I going to be okay? So you and I were investment professionals, we hang out with investment people in markets, people and you know, like getting into the weeds in terms of okay, what is the balance sheet tell us here? Or how does this portfolio get better built over there, that sort of stuff that's uninteresting and suffocating to most people. They just want to know that they're going to live a life well lived and that they're going to be safe and people that they love are going to be okay. The second question that I heard over and over again, going back a decade and continued to this day is how much is enough? You know, how can I define that elusive category for the life that I want to live? Because, you know, abundance is a good thing. a lot over abundance isn't, and that there's a relationship between abundance and scarcity. And sometimes we have to walk a path, you know, sort of between the middle of those two poles. And then the third question I suppose is does money buy happiness? And the geometry of wealth, which I published in 2018, addresses all three of those? Am I going to be okay? How much is enough? And does money buy happiness, and the uniting theme of all of that was the term funded contentment, which was the way that I talked about true wealth, funded contentment is the ability to underwrite a life well lived a life that is meaningful to you, however you choose to define it. You know, there crudely, but not totally inaccurately, the driving assumption of most of economics is that more is better. That we know that that's not true, that there is a paradox of choice that there is very much not just analytically, but psychologically, the sense that it's about finding, calibration and balance in equilibrium, more than it is maximizing things, especially maximizing the size of our, our bank accounts, or, or, or our balance sheets. So the book was well received, that's when you and I met, the came up came out just around that time. And the idea of funded contentment landed all over the world, every continent, just feedback from not only professionals, but more importantly, just regular people saying, you know, it's a, it's a useful lens to think about the life that I want to live, and specifically how money fits into that journey. And so fast forward to a couple years ago, I started a coaching and content platform called shaping wealth, taking some of the key ideas from the geometry of wealth, and putting them into the world to help people make better decisions, form better habits, but more deeply achieve a more meaningful life with a very specific emphasis on financial wellbeing. So there's many different dimensions to our money life. We are overwhelmed by them. We live in this global financial supermarket, we're in an always on 24/7 world. How do we in the context of wanting to live a good life? How do we make the decisions form the habits and ultimately achieve the well being that we want? When there are so many things stacked against us?

Andrew Stotz 07:32
And how would you describe let's say, the ideal person, maybe we, let's talk about definitions, as you said, like, based upon different cultures, in different countries, we have different names for things like an investor and advisor, a managed fund manager and that type of thing. Tell us about kind of give us a description of the type of person that really benefits from what you're giving.

Brian Portnoy 07:55
Yeah, so we have two audiences. And the first is really by far our major port of call. And that is the wealth management industry. It's a bit jargony. But we're a b2b platform in the sense that we work with financial advisors, and to the extent and we can talk about the huge global transition taking place. As the industry, the financial advice industry moves from transactional, to more relational. And in the context of building relationships, advisors become not just planners, but also coaches and guides for people, we step into coach the coaches. There's a second market in terms of corporate wellness, because we've also seen globally, that companies are investing in their people in ways that they haven't in the past, physical wellness, emotional wellness, and now financial wellness. But what exactly are you sharing as a company with your employees, in terms of helping them make better decision form better habits, but more broadly, helping money fit into a meaningful life and so we've got programming for companies that they can put right into their benefits, offerings that that help help their employees help help their communities, the bulk of what we're building and putting into the world now is for the first audience for financial advisors.

Andrew Stotz 09:23
And, you know, one of the things about the finance financial industry in Thailand Wealth Management in other areas, that's interesting. CFA does a lot of surveys of like, things like gender diversity and stuff. The tie the tie financial industry is like nearly perfectly gender diverse in the sense that it's 5050. Almost like the end the leaders of the financial institutions, various financial institutions have a tremendous number of women running them. I think about when I first came to town Then 30 years ago, the woman that was running one of the biggest banks in Thailand was just a very impressive lady. And I got a chance as an analyst to meet her and talk with her. And she's still, you know, a leader in the community here. And I just think about all the people when I was president of CFA society, I work with so many different people in the women in the industry was fantastic. And one of the reasons why I mentioned that is just the idea of going back to this idea of, you know, the questions that you talked about: am I going to be okay, how much is enough? Does money buy happiness? And I think you could probably say that maybe women I don't know, are more in tune with those types of questions than men who are, like, grow and, you know, go get it and all that I'm curious about your experience related to gender?

Brian Portnoy 10:50
So yeah, I'd say that's a bit of a generalization. I think there's some truth to what you've said, I mean, in a narrower context, in terms of investment, decision making, and portfolio management, I think there's some data granted based on relatively small sample sizes, because the base rates are so low, but when you look at whether or not women make better portfolio managers, you know, there's some data to suggest that they do. And it might be, in part due to an unwillingness to take excessive risk to be a little bit more cautious. I think gender aside, I think the topic that you're raising that's super important is emotional intelligence. And so much of what we're doing at shaping wealth is basically helping financial advisors and in turn their clients improve their emotional competencies, so that they can achieve financial well being in a more effective way. You know, there's four dimensions to emotional intelligence or EQ, there's self awareness, there's self regulation, there's empathy, and there's relationship skills. And what we've seen globally, not just in the US and Canada, but Europe, Asia, Australia, is that there's an increasing interest in moving away from left brain analytics, getting out of the spreadsheet, getting out of the numbers, and getting more into the human side of money. So we often talk about human centric financial planning. And that's because we want to embrace the whole human we want to talk about not only numbers, but also story. I often say that we're not born as calculators were born as storytellers. And that's, that's meaningful, because most of the history of our industry is about numerical reasoning. It's about logic and analytics. But that's simply not the way people make decisions. It's not how they approach and live in the world, ever, it's never been that case. So a little bit of positive and evolutionary psychology go a long way, in helping us have very different frameworks for men and for women, as to how they figure all of this stuff out. And it's been cool, Andrew to just see how wide open the space is four different types of financial advisors, wealth managers, private banks, investment firms, you name it, acknowledge and seek out help in other complementary ways of thinking and processing.

Andrew Stotz 13:37
It's interesting, because I partner with the firm here called phenomena. And it's a, it's a mutual fund supermarket platform, basically, in Thailand, and they have connections with all the mutual fund companies, and I construct some strategies that their financial advisors, you know, follow, and sometimes they'll advise those to their clients to follow those. And so I do two sessions on a regular basis, I talked to the advisors about the, here's the strategy, here's the changes that I've made, you know, here's what you need to understand. And then I also go live and talk to a general audience, which includes the advisors and many of the, you know, investors that those advisors are kind of taking care of. And it's funny, because, you know, the question from the advisors are very different from the question from the investors, you know, the asset owners, the advisors are like, they're just on this roller coaster, you know, and they're like, What do I do, you know, and you can just see that they feel, you know, they they know, sometimes that look, I really need to be a stable force for my client that really is going up and down on a roller coaster of the markets and all that, but I'm getting pulled on this roller coaster too, and I need to think, you know, how do I start All this and a part of what I tried to do is like I think in frameworks, and I don't rebalance my portfolio except on a regular basis at a certain time. And so I feel like when I talk to the advisors in particular, it can bring them some comfort that look, stick to the framework, stick to what we've got, don't let the emotions overpower you. And ultimately, that's a big part of the value that you can bring to the client. I'm just curious, like, what is your experience about the advisors versus asset owners? And you know, all of this stuff about the roller coaster of the markets and all of that?

Brian Portnoy 15:35
Yeah, I think often advisors care a lot more than their clients do. You know, the stock market, which I personally don't find interesting at all. I think that's very common. Most people don't know don't care, and then the adviser raises the issue. And then the client thinks, Oh, should I be worried? And so the whole process is upside down, because, you know, supposedly the advisor is there to provide perspective and stability, and they're the ones that are upsetting the applecart. Yeah, so we we see that a lot, and it's hard for financial advisors, especially ones who are younger, in the first, third or first half of their career, to have enough client experience to know that doing less is more, and that having some basic understanding of human nature, not just so that they can analyze their clients, but instead so that they can know themselves, and then show up authentically providing advice that's meaningful to them, that then lands with their, their, their clients. So when we talk about, you know, emotional intelligence for financial advisors, it's for the advisors, you know, a general topic that we're working hard on we some, some client engagements on his advisor wellbeing. You know, there's always something clearly the markets over recent times have have been a bit wobbly, but you know, you know, as well as anybody, you know, if this is gonna go on for centuries, it's always something, it's all it's literally, there's always something to be worried about. That's not ever going to change, the only thing that can change is how you choose to react to it. And so this advisor wellbeing topic or phenomenon is so important, because as advisors, and I can't speak to what's going on in Thailand, but I could very much speak to what's going on in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, is that as they move from this more brokerage, transactional mode into more planning, coaching, relational mode, they become helpers, they become more invested emotionally invested in the well being of their clients. And that is hard in other helping professions, whether it be in psychology, or clergy, or medicine, those all have institutionalized help networks, as the financial advisor becomes a helper, there is no network for help, they are nervous and scared to talk about what they're worried about the anxiety, the sense of overwhelm, they don't know exactly what to do, there's imposter syndrome, there's burnout, all of this is taking place. So when we do address, things like the various forms of emotional intelligence, starting with self awareness, that that's the opening, that's where the door opens, a little bit of insight and wisdom goes a long way to help an advisor define the authentic version of who they are now, and the version of who they want to become, in the years years to come. And so helping people articulate their authentic self is very much front and center for what we're doing at shaping wealth.

Andrew Stotz 18:56
You know, those are the types of things that are not the type of conversations that are going on, you know, and when you think about moving from transactional, and I think in Asia, we're probably behind the, the West or the US in that movement from transactional, but in transactional based where you're, let's say, a broker, you know, and people are just submitting orders, and you're taking a commission on that, or whatever it's like, the skill set for that is a very different skill set than the relational. And I think that maybe people didn't realize that or they're not getting the support in that. So it seems like what you're doing is like, super valuable, because as I think about the advisors, and I'm particularly thinking about a lot of young ones, you know, they're not going to have experience of decades. So how did they make sure and this is a question I asked in an ethics class I was teaching yesterday, as I said, you know, are unexpected extreme events, like let's say, the war in Ukraine or COVID, or whatever. You know, can they be? Are they the responsibility of an investor or an advisor? Or a fund manager? Or can we say, well, I couldn't have seen it coming. And part of the, as I told the students, there's no real yes or no answer on this. But one thing you can say is that definitely having a bank have experience of seeing different things and, and a breadth of interest, let's say that you're reading and looking and trying to understand different things from different angles, you may be able to protect, you know, a portfolio, or family's wealth or whatever, based upon some basic understanding of things. But you know, also things come out of the blue. But this was a discussion that we were having, trying to think about, you know, ultimately, it's about protecting the client's wealth and making sure we don't lose it, but also making sure that we grow it. I'm just curious what your thoughts about that are.

Brian Portnoy 20:59
Um, I think that advisors can sort of overdo it on the expert front, I'm the expert, I know what's going on, when in fact, if you show up with some sort of some form of vulnerability, and say that there are certain things that I don't know, because there are many things that we can't know, such as what's going to happen in the market tomorrow, or next month or next year. And then enter a conversation about what it means to understand the probabilities of different types of market events, how those market events then feed back to the durability and effectiveness of the portfolio that you've written. To support the financial plan that you've created. It takes a certain form of courage for an advisor to go there. Look, if you're just a broker, selling a product, you're not a shaping wealth client, and I'm not here to convince you, there's good brokers doing good works, and they should do that. But if you are actually involved with helping clients, imagine the life that they want to live and achieve the goals that are important to them, Well, you've entered a world where you've taken on some responsibility for helping them figure it out. And ironically, helping them figure it out is introducing the words I don't know, into the conversation in a way that doesn't undermine you, but actually elevates the client to think about, okay, how can we go about achieving what's really, really important to us?

Andrew Stotz 22:35
You know, I was thinking about your three questions. And I want to tell you, what I would call a success story. And that's my mom and dad, my dad graduated with his PhD in a 1965, and went to work for DuPont, in the labs, and then later became a salesman, you know, he was never a super senior executive, but he, he made a good good pay, and my mom was a housewife raising three kids. And what's fascinating to me is that, despite not really having a lot of experience, or knowledge of the stock market, and investing in general, and really having no interest in it, my mom and dad were able to save up over time, and invest over time. And try to deal with these questions like, am I going to be okay? How much is enough? Does money buy happiness, I think my parents kind of knew Money doesn't buy happiness, but it bought kind of security is what they were planning for. But what's kind of remarkable, they work with different advisors. First of all, what most young people don't understand nowadays is it in the old days, the company really did a lot to help people with their finances. And so he had a pension plan. And he had advice from within DuPont over the years. And he worked for that one company, you know, all of his life. And then he found a great advisor in North Carolina in Charlotte. And basically that that advisor really did do a great job with them. And my parents had 22 years of happy retirement, which is just amazing. When you think about, you know, my dad wasn't making some huge salary. And then when my mom, um, when my dad passed away, you know, first of all, one of the things my dad did is he brought me to the advisor on a regular basis, every time I went to visit him, he took me to the advisor. And we would go see them and talk and just, you know, catch up, so that when my father did pass away, when I was there, I was able to go to the advisor to talk to every, you know, everything was was smooth. So that was one thing. But the point that I wanted to make was when my mother came to Thailand, I brought her to Thailand to live with me six years ago. And when I did that, you know, I looked at my mom's portfolio, and I discussed it with my mom. And I said, basically, you're okay for the rest of your life. So not only did they have a 22 year retirement, that they lived the way that they wanted to, but they also had what my dad's dream, I'm sure would be that when he passes away, my mom is living in a reasonable amount of comfort. I just think that that's such a story that I'm find pretty remarkable because it's hard to build that kind of wealth. And you have to admit that the pension was a big help in there. But I'm just curious about, you know, thinking about the stories that you've seen. And what's interesting about what you're talking about is your those questions really go to the asset owner, the client, the individual, even more so than the, you know, you know, then than the advisors who are also, you know, getting help, but I'm just curious about your thoughts on that story.

Brian Portnoy 25:39
Mike, it's a great story. I mean, it's, it's the ultimate success story, that's, you know, you're able to live the life that you want, you're, you're able to under underwrite, the version of the life that you've that you've dreamed of, and that you have the stability. That's, that's important to you. So that's, that's great, then, you know, there's an advisor who's been along the way who's helped stored that journey, then, you know, that's wonderful. That's wonderful.

Andrew Stotz 26:11
I mean, it's like, to me that's like the, that's like, the pinnacle of what we're aiming for in the industry is to try how do we help the client who doesn't know that much about investing? And they're not going to my parents didn't say, Well, we're gonna learn everything we can about investing. They're like, No, we need you as an advisor, as an expert, so that we are safe. And I often say, I did a speech here in Thailand, called Are we really putting our clients first. And I told the story of my parents there. And I said that, you know, if it is imagine if that investment advisor was either behaviorally all messed up, and they made big mistakes, or they just weren't putting my parents first, imagine where that story would have ended. And I think that we have a lot of people that are potentially, you know, victims of that. And so that's where I feel like, what you're doing is trying to help the advisors not get off track, and end up with these horror stories. And it's so much more important now, because we don't have the pension structures, like our parents had and their parents had.

Brian Portnoy 27:23
Yeah, you know, it's sort of a Be careful what you wish for, from a freedom point of view. I mean, as defined benefit plans have more or less disappeared, and in the US defined contributions, but you know, globally, people are often responsible for their own retirement success. I think we very much overstress conversations about retirement in the context of financial planning, I think it's a bit of a tired concept. But to the extent that it does remain the number one goal or discussion point in the financial planning context, yet people are on their own, and the financial supermarket that has, you know, evolved, now with just countless products that people don't understand that they really don't want to understand, to have help with, you know, from someone or a team of people to help them navigate not just the investing piece, because I think investing is largely commoditized at this point. But you know, all of the dimensions of of money, life saving and spending, giving, protecting, and so forth, there's more than just investing to money life, and a good advisor knows how to navigate all of them on behalf of their clients.

Andrew Stotz 28:40
And I'm just curious, since the last time we talked four years ago, you've been through quite a journey. I'm just curious, like, for the listeners out there, maybe you could share a few things that you've learned that you didn't understand is clearly when you, you know, went into this journey that you've been on for the last four years.

Brian Portnoy 28:58
Sure, um, you know, so, you know, I transformed you know, this book, the geometry of wealth, I transformed it into this coaching and content platform called shaping wealth. And I've, I've built a team of experts in behavioral finance. To help you know, like I said, Coach, the coaches, you know, lessons learned, you know, we talk a lot about what it means to understand navigate and improve the human experience of money. I actually, I like this idea of improving the human experience of money because it forces you to ask, Well, what the hell is that anyway? Well, it is something but it also forces you to ask the prior question as to what does it mean to be human? And that, you know, might sound like an incredibly broad, deep, maybe even a relevant question, but it's the opposite of irrelevant it's at the centerpiece of what we in financial services should be coming to terms With, because if we're doing this right, in my opinion, we are helping other people. And you know, in terms of understanding, you know, our evolutionary psychology, the relationship between risk and return, what is the balance between surviving and thriving? There's a lot of nuances here. So if we add, as investment counselors, as financial advisors can understand those rhythms and why we make the decisions that we do, we can transcend some of the, I think, older and stale understandings of behavioral finance, focused on biases and heuristics. Go beyond biases focus on what I call behavioral finance. 2.0. So big, big lesson, big lesson is that the industry's focus on biases and heuristics, Kahneman and Tversky not their fault, they invented a brilliant field, and they are brilliant, you know, brilliant people. But so much of the industry is about sort of identifying, diagnosing, maybe even trying to fix our clients flaws. And I have become a radical opponent of that way of thinking, like, it's a big, big learning moment for me. And a lot of the energy at shaping wealth is fighting back against what a lot of firms and other educational programs do in terms of oh, okay, confirmation bias and recency bias, and the endowment effect. And there's like, literally hundreds of these things. To which I say, Who cares? '' If you pathologize normal human behavior, and frame your client as someone who is broken, and then needs to be fixed, you're doing this wrong, I'm not gonna name names, and I'm not gonna name names. But there's lots of groups in our in our industry that still do this BS, and it's a waste of time, and it's harmful. So a big learning moment for me, in terms of what really is the human experience of money, it's really embracing what it means to be normal. Normal, you know, economists like to use the word irrational. That's a fancy word for stupid. We are not irrational or stupid. We're just normal. And we were wired to be in the world in a certain way. And so how about we as an industry take seriously what it means to be normal? And help?

Andrew Stotz 32:30
How does this parallel with what like, if I look back at my youth, basically, they didn't use the term back then. But they use it now ADHD, and I was kind of labeled, as you know, having attention problems and all that. And I was given drugs at a very, very early age. And I later became addicted to drugs, and had to go through rehab and all that. And whether there was a connection through giving me like Ritalin and that type of drugs at the age of seven or whatever, or to my later addiction, I don't know. But what I can say is that, I was kind of taught that I was a problem, you know. And now as I've grown, and been clean and sober for 40 years, and applied what I learned to not be on any drugs or alcohol for myself, I started to come to a kind of a new revelation, which was, no, no, I'm okay with ADHD called ADHD, whatever, I'm okay with what I am. And sometimes when I look at other people, like when you look at kids that just sit silently at their desks listening to a very boring lecture by a boring teacher, and I think maybe that's more of a problem than somebody that's, you know, all full of energy and excitement. But I think about the concept of kind of labeling and, and then trying to fix, you know, as potentially a more damaging or dangerous thing than saying, How do I work with what I got? How does that parallel with what you're talking about, you know, with trying to fix the client with behavioral biases?

Brian Portnoy 34:01
Yeah. Which to be clear, I'm 100% opposed to um, you know, I think it boils down that you should meet people where they are, but that requires you to listen, we say, and we teach that the superpower of the modern advisor is empathy. Empathy is not sympathy, empathy is something different. It is understanding where what someone is experienced, experiencing. And being able not so much to put yourself in their shoes, that is a misnomer, that is a misunderstanding of empathy. Empathy is more well, can you understand where someone is? And where they're going? Can you understand what they're feeling? And can you sort of walk alongside them in terms of their journey sympathy is sort of pity from a distance. It's like, Oh, I feel I'm sorry that you know, that's, that's too bad that that sympathy is pity. Um, And so why we do what we do with behavioral finance, positive psychology, emotional intelligence, is that the solution starts with the adviser being able to listen and learn and grow. And to truly understand, well, who is the human being? sitting across the table from me, the person, the couple, the family, the multigenerational family? And what are they all about? And if someone says what that sounds like, hard work, like Hell yeah, it's what you get paid a lot of money in this field, it's to do the hard work to understand who you're helping, not in the abstract, but very specifically, to listen in a way where you tease out their story, to help them maybe tell a better version of it, to figure out all the financial pieces to it. So yeah, I mean, meeting people where they are with the skill set that's necessary to understand them, which common sense and good intentions, is not, are not emotional intelligence, they're good. But that it's, that's more hand waving than skill.

Andrew Stotz 36:13
We've talked about a lot of different things. And I'm going to just kind of review some of the things that we've talked about, about authenticity, vulnerability, becoming a better version of yourself. And what you're highlighting so much is that to be a better advisor, you got to, you know, be better you. You talked about meeting people where they are, and I think that's really, really fascinating. And they a lot of people, they, they're seeing a client as something very different, you know, as a revenue stream, maybe. And you, you also mentioned about the superpower of empathy, you know, and trying and the difference between empathy and sympathy. And for the listeners out there, think about these three questions, right? Am I going to be okay? How much is enough? And as money buy happiness as a sum of the things, you know, that we're going through? And finally, you know, I'm thinking about asking you to give a next step. For the following two types of people, let's say, you're an advisor, and an advisor is listening to this in my audience. And they're saying to themselves, I like what I hear. I don't know if my company is going to help me at all in this, but I want to be better. What's the next step that they should take based upon the tools you have? And you know, from your own experience for that individual? Number one? And then I'm going to ask you for the next step for a leader of an institution that says any more of this, what's their next step?

Brian Portnoy 37:42
Yeah, I appreciate that. So let me and the two questions have connected, but not identical answers. So in the first case, you know, shaping wealth was built as a coaching and content platform that bridges science and wisdom in the pursuit of financial well being. And so we bring a lot of resources to bear to help advisors get to that next level to upskill, to gain new perspective, to not only treat their clients better, to create better client engagements and experiences, but also for the themselves to grow and just have a great time in their career. We've got coaching programs, so kind of finite beginning and end, immersive coaching programs. The main one is called Building the behavioral advisor. So just take it literally building the behavioral advisor of behavioral advisors, that person that we're talking about right now, she, she focuses on the human beings that she is helping, and isn't treating them as customers or just someone to sell a product to. That is a cohort based experience 15 to 20 people per cohort, the reviews, I have to say have been off the charts. And the main piece of feedback, the word that comes back to us all the time is transformative. This has been transformative to me not only as a financial planner, but also as a human being. Because we really do dive into the twin pillars of being a behavioral adviser. One is empathy, and the other is storytelling. So that is something I you know, suggest people check out and shaping wealth.com has got a very clear, you know, page on everything about that coaching program. There is another experience that we've designed and released relatively recently, which is not a one off course. It's an ongoing membership program called the outsourced chief behavioral officer experience. And it's called that because we asked ourselves the question, okay, well, do you have somebody at your firm who's responsible for technology for investments for operations for talent? Well, Of course, the almost by definition, the answer is yes. Well, who at your firm is giving dedicated systematic thought to whether you're making good decisions, forming better habits, achieving wellbeing, not just for your clients? But for yourself? The answer is usually no one, because we're just in the, you know, now the behavioral stuff is everywhere. We're in this thunderstorm of things coming at us. There's risk evaluation tools, and risk tolerance questionnaires, and books and blogs and all this stuff. Okay, fine. But how is that being streamlined and simplified, and then used in a practice to drive better decisions, and ultimately better well being? So in other words, who is your chief behavioral officer? We're in the marketplace now saying that shaping wealth can be your chief behavioral officer. And this is the that can be at an individual level. Or to bridge to your second question that can be teams. So we've got, you know, wealth management platforms that are saying, Okay, well, we're not going to spend some very large amount of money to have, you know, you know, someone with a background in psychology and finance, do all this know, it's hard. And it's confusing, and it's disruptive. But hey, how about a really cool, beautiful dashboard, with different content and coaching moments that are built to be used and shared in your practice to delight and improve your clients experience? That is, oh, CBO. So we want to, we basically tried to invent a new category, the outsourced chief behavioral officer, and, you know, we're talking here in November of 2022. We just launched this very recently. And so we're just ramping up with that. But the initial feedback has been like, wow, what why hasn't anyone ever done this before, like, this is exactly what I need. It's a light lift in terms of cost. It's obviously impactful. And so early days, but I'm crazy excited for that. And just like with building the behavioral advisor, at shaping wealth.com, which is a relatively, you know, slick and simple site to navigate, all of this is there, and I think, very clear detail.

Andrew Stotz 42:27
I love to ask my guests, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months.

Brian Portnoy 42:33
Um, you know, from a, from a business point of view, I, I want to make sure that an increasing percentage of the Global Wealth Management community understands the positive impact that a chief behavioral officer can have on their firm on their team, on their clients, I should have added added Andrew, one thing, which is that when we when we talk to firm, and we firms on five continents now, clients on five continents, when we ask people, what's the number one problem? Where's your main pain point? It's very, very rare that the answer is clients. It's very rare that oh, it's hard to keep clients, it's hard to, you know, it's hard to make clients happy clients are more or less fine. You know, the number one answer is it's talent. The industry notwithstanding this bear market, the industry is in good shape, and it's growing and firms are good firms are struggling to find new people, and also find ways to incentivize, you know, mid career existing employees. And so a lot of what we're doing is really providing learning and development experiences for firms. So it's, it's less about something kind of, off to the side called Applied Behavioral Finance. No, this is how you recruit and retain employees through different learning and development experiences that are powered by profound behavioural insights I want over the next 12 months, I want to tell that story 365 times minimum, you know, I, I'm passionate about it. Our mission is funded contentment for everyone. Wealth is a mindset and people need help earning and maintaining that mindset, and we want to make that impact.

Andrew Stotz 44:21
Fantastic. Well, as we conclude, Brian, I want to thank you again, for joining our mission on a second tour into this discussion, which I've really enjoyed. And just curious if you have any final parting words for the audience.

Brian Portnoy 44:40
Just gratitude. It's so good to see you. This weird world is a is a funny, strange place and the idea that we haven't spoken in four years but here we are, and for you to be so kind and inviting to let me tell the story about what my team and I are building so just I just want to leave with an expression of thanks and gratitude, you're good guy, and I appreciate it.

Andrew Stotz 45:05
And I feel the same. I appreciate you. And what you're doing is fascinating and we need more of it. And I'm going to Sure, share what you're doing with the people I know. So that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying, I'll see you on the upside.