Good Life Project - The Things We Do For Money | Jill Schlesinger

Episode Date: February 27, 2020

Jill Schlesinger is an Emmy-nominated and Gracie Award-Winning Business Analyst for CBS News. She covers the economy, markets, investing and anything else with a dollar sign on TV, on the “Jill on Money” podcast, and on her nationally syndicated show, “Jill on Money.” Before stepping into the world of financial news and advice, she spent 14 years as the co-owner and Chief Investment Officer for an independent investment advisory firm, after following in her dad’s footsteps as a trader on the floor of the NY Commodities exchange. She discovered that her heart was more in understanding the psychology of money and helping other people make better decisions that enable better lives. That same quest also led to Jill’s first book, The Dumb Things Smart People Do With Their Money, that reveals so many of the completely irrational things we do in name of money, how so much conditioning from family and society leads to bad decisions, and what we can do about it all.You can find Jill Schlesinger at: Website |Instagram-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So my guest today is Jill Schlesinger. She's an Emmy-nominated and Gracie Award-winning business analyst for CBS News. And Jill, she covers the economy, markets, investing, kind of anything else with a dollar sign on TV, and also on the Jill on Money podcast and her nationally syndicated show, Jill on Money. But before stepping into the world of financial news and advice, she actually spent 14 years as the co-owner and chief investment advisor for an independent advisory firm. And that was after following in her dad's footsteps as a trader on the floor of the New York Commodities Exchange, which back in the day when she was doing this was kind of known as a bit of a brutal place to exist. And she discovered that her heart was more in understanding the psychology of money

and sort of like why people interact with it in certain ways and then helping people make better decisions that enable better lives. And that same curiosity has led to Jill's first book, The Dumb Things Smart People Do With Their Money, that reveals so many of the completely irrational things that we do in the name of money, sometimes getting more of it, sometimes completely avoiding it. And so much of the conditioning that we get from family and society that leads to these completely aberrant decisions. And also, we talk about what we can sort of like do about all of these things.

Really excited to share this wide-ranging conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. I had a town that was very involved in our soccer team. We had the, this is crazy. Now you'll, now the deepest, darkest secret of my life. Now.

Bring it on. All right. So my soccer team in high school was undefeated for four years of high school. We broke a Guinness book of world records streak for consecutive wins. We were in the New York times before like girls sports teams were in the New York times. So when we had big games, 500 people would show up at these games. For high school games. For a high school game of girls' soccer. And when I went to college and was in a top 10 program in college, like 50 people showed up.

And so it was such a letdown. I was like, oh, where's everybody? This is not fun. And I'm not starting. Why am I not the best anymore? I mean, but that's so interesting, right? Because we've had, we've had Abby Wong back on the podcast and talked about sort of, and also Kay Fagan, we talked about women's soccer to a certain extent also, how probably the last five years or so,

it really has become this big national phenomenon. If we're talking like mid seventies, this was not a thing in any way, shape or form to have a town. So rally around that is extraordinary. Yeah. It was crazy. It was really insane. And everybody knew who we were. So we were a little bit of like the local minor celebrity.

My sister likes to tell the story of my sister went to university of Pennsylvania and how she went on a job interview. I think after her junior year of, of college and she's at Goldman Sachs or something. And this guy looks at her resume and he's like, Schlesinger, Schlesinger, wait a minute. Is your sister the one on that team in Scarsdale? And my sister, like, by the way, the most generous, loving sister ever, because that could be a horrible And my sister, like, by the way, the most generous, loving sister ever, because that could be a horrible thing where you're like, oh, why would they ask me about my sister? And she's like, yeah, that's my sister. Isn't she great? And so it was funny to enter, you know, everyone. And we were just talking about your daughter going to college. And I think

freshman year of college is always such a weird time because, you know, everyone realizes and readjusts like I'm not the best looking and I'm not the most popular and I'm not the best athlete and I'm not the smartest. And so for me, it was really intense not to be the best on the team. I was recruited to play. It was a huge program at the time. And it was devastating that I was not starting. I like had a mental breakdown practically because I could not believe that I was no longer the best. And I knew at the moment I got to preseason and I watched some of these girls playing. And I remember calling my parents up and saying to my father, my dad was like my big cheerleader. I said, these girls are so fast.

They're so talented. There's no way I can start on this team. Like I knew it one day. It didn't matter how hard I worked. I didn't have the talent. And it was not a terrible thing to actually reckon with that early in my life. Yeah. I mean, I'm wondering, because there's, it sounds like it was such a part of the, it

was a core part of your identity up until the moment where you both leave home and then step into this new place. And I often wonder whether so many kids, I think who have really struggled in high school, they'll, they can't wait to get out. And, and because they know they're going to like drop down into college and it's like a clean slate. Like nobody knows them, whatever associations people had from middle school that nobody was able to break out of, it's gone. Like they can just, they can almost step into sort of like, this is how I want to be perceived, you know, like moving forward. Whereas it's almost like the opposite for you. Like you show up and you want to hold onto this. You're the star athlete. You're like, you,

you're accomplished in this thing. And all of a sudden you're the star athlete. You're like, you you're accomplished in this thing. And all of a sudden you're not. And it's almost like a sense of, but I, but I still want to be that person, but I'm not being allowed to. And, and it wasn't, you know, it's funny. My, so my father was really like, not like a stage mother kind of thing, but he, my dad did not miss a game four years of high school soccer. Like dads dads didn't go to games at that time. You know, we're talking about, being recruited to play in college. I remember we're, we're going around and we're driving up to schools. And, you know, by the way, this is like one of those funny things because we have an age where your parents sort of tell you what to do and you're like, okay, sure.

And my, I remember like getting a call from the Cornell coach and my dad's like, that's too far. You're not going to Cornell. I was like, okay. You know, that was just, all right, fine. So I remember going to Brown and going to Harvard because the Ivy League was actually very good for women's sports before all these other schools started recruiting and spending money. And I remember talking to him and he said, do me a favor.

You go on these tours, you meet these stupid coaches. Do me a favor. Pretend you break your leg on the first day of school. Then tell me where you want to go. And so he was really, he was really great at breaking through in that respect. Like he wanted me to play, but only if it was fun for me. I mean, we weren't thinking about playing in the Olympics or going any, it was four years of college sports. You're going to have fun or not and have some fun. And if it's not fun, don't do it. What a great sort of invitation to also focus on maybe what really matters. Especially coming from parents, because I think so, so often parents will get wrapped up in the success of their kids too. And wanting them to enjoy that for as long as humanly possible. That identity wrapped around being just amazing at something. And you're like, no, keep it for as long as you can. Probably, you know, because we want to also to a certain extent. Sure. And I'm not a parent. I'm an auntie and 13 nieces and nephews on one side and three on the other. And I think that watching parents play that role,

even the word parenting didn't exist when we were growing up. You were parents. That was it. You didn't have this thing called parenting. And I think that sometimes we do these kids a disservice because when, when I interviewed someone for my book, he, he described it as a snowplow parent, not a helicopter parent.

Like we want to smooth the way for our kids. And I think I had a father who was like, you are going to experience some horrible things and you're going to figure out how to get through it. And actually having sports be part of your life does help you understand. I mean, I didn't lose enough probably, but I lost plenty in basketball. Those Mount Vernon girls kicked our asses. So I think that understanding loss and understanding not getting what you want.

I think understanding things go crappy sometimes. My dad was a trader on the floor of the American stock exchange. So a lot of his life was framed in terms of like my worst losses. He, he often talked about that. Have you ever interviewed a professional athlete? Sure. So, you know, the weird thing about professional athletes is they always will tell you about their worst games, their worst moments. They're very clear. They sort of isolate that and they freeze it in time. But if you just like find a hacker golfer, he'll tell you about his great round. And it's almost true with traders that traders will often focus on, they will rarely tell you about the big hit they had.

Like, oh my God, I made so much money doing this. What they'll often say is, oh, my God, let me tell you where I was in the financial crisis. Let me tell you where I was in the crash of 1987. Let me tell you how much I lost. Let me tell you how much I effed this thing up and what I learned from that. And, you know, when I went to become a trader, I think that I had learned that losing is very much part of your day-to-day. And the idea, you know, my godfather, once he was a trader on the New York Stock Exchange, and I was clerking for him. And I said, didn't you just lose a lot of money, Uncle Ralph? Like,

wasn't that hard? He says, oh, honey, that's part of the game. Some days we lose. We hope we lose smaller than we win big. That's all this is. It's in law of numbers. You have to understand you're going to make a bad trade. You have to recognize that it's a bad trade and you have to get out fast. And that's a lot of my DNA. And a lot of my training is about understanding that, hey, it's actually, that's your human nature that you will screw up. How you get beyond that is going to shape you as a human being and a professional, and that we should be a little bit nicer to ourselves when we screw up. Yeah. I mean, what an amazing experience to be around that at such a young age. I think so many of us still grapple with that, but also the lesson, you know, classic

trading lesson, you know, like let your wins run, you know, and cut your losses as soon as you can. That's what everybody says. Right. And you, you hear that in the markets all the time, but the human psychology behind that is brutally hard. You know, it makes complete, yes, that makes a hundred percent sense. Have you like your numbers, have your cutoff, you know, like just keep going. And because we always think, you know, and I think it's not just what happens on the trading floor, but it's life too. It's like we always think, but if just a little bit further, it's going to turn around. And if I get out now, then I'm going to lose out. I'm not only going to lose what I've already lost, but I'm going to lose out on the turnaround.

And then the big win that I just feel is coming after. And then it plummets. I think that one of the reasons I love financial services and, so I started as a trader and then I was a money manager and a financial planner. And now I just cover it and talk about it. The reason I love it is for this concept that it is so emotional, that I love listening to people telling me about their algorithms and I just laugh. And I say, I'll give you the old story of like the trader on the floor, which is, we didn't call it an algorithm, then we just called it the electronic trading program. Right. And I remember when they were telling us, well, we have a mathematical model to price options. And it is true. It's based on probability and statistics. Great. Okay. I love statistics. And you see that the model goes out the window

all the time. First of all, the model's created by a human being. So there are certain assumptions that you make in those models. The second thing is your emotions are stronger than those models. Even when the model tells you to do one thing, you will try to trump that and try to second guess it. And you will lay bare your humanity as you go broke on a trading floor. And I've seen, I mostly men because, you know, the COMEX, the commodities exchange in New York at that time in 1987 was 800 men and eight women. And it was fascinating to me to really watch and say, oh my God, these people are just human beings.

Some of the greatest traders, not the smartest people, they were so disciplined. That's what I think really was the interesting thing. No, they weren't, they were not super smart, but they were disciplined and they knew, they were very clear, this is what the risk is, this is what the downside, this is what the upside. And they made their decisions and stuck to the game plan. Most everyone else, including me, would kind of fly off the handle a little bit. And I mean, I think that's compounded especially. So you end up going to Brown, you play soccer, international affairs, I think. But when you come out, you end up in, like you said, commodities trading floor in New York. So you're saying, well, the best people were the ones who were kind of almost clinical about it.

But things have changed now. Describe the day-to-day reality of being on that floor Aykroyd movie, because a lot of my friends are in that movie and watch that. And I can tell you that it was not that there were people like that were manipulating markets because of a crop report here and there. But the floor itself was a pit. And so a trading pit, which is no longer – it basically doesn't exist anymore, is essentially around a ring with going from the top down. It sort of drops down by level, usually three or four levels. And where you stand in that ring signifies something to everybody else. So the guys who stand on the top ring are the guys who are brokers.

They execute orders for other people. And the people, as you go down, have different jobs and also different stature. And the people at the bottom are called locals. They just trade for themselves and they try to intercept buy orders and sell orders and make a few shekels in between. So I was a local and I worked for a company for a year. They gave me a big bonus. I left. I bought my own seat and just went into business for myself and bought a seat. My dad and his partner backed me and I just traded for myself. And it was, what's amazing about it is, you know, it is a vicious, brutal, disgusting environment. It's a great place to have been from kind of, it's a great place to say I worked there. Isn't that amazing? I wasn't a particularly good trader, decent. If the markets were busy, then you can always make money if in a busy market, but it was slow. You had to start to take a lot of risk.

And I learned something really early on, which is I did not like risk. And one night, this is before we had 24 hour markets. One night I went home and I had, I traded gold, silver, and copper options. So these are products that derive their value from a futures contract that gold or silver, mostly silver is where I ended up. And I went home and I messed up my math in the middle of the day. And I went home with a position. I usually would go home sort of flat. And I remember being long silver. And I called my father up and I'm like, Daddy, you're not going to believe this. But like, I went home, I'm like long six silver.

He's also go buy it when London opens, go buy it and cover your position. I'm like, but it's going to cost me so much money. He's like, I don't want to hear about this. Too bad. You did your math wrong. And he hung up on me. And it was awful.

I was so bummed out. She like just watching the clock tick until London opens. Please don't move too much. Please, please. And it cost me real money. Like it was like, it was significant. I couldn't believe that I had blown it. So I never made that mistake again. And I also realized, you know, slowly but surely that as much as I lived my early years thinking that the coolest job in the world was to be a trader on the floor of an exchange. And as much as my father or my godfather hoped

that I would use this experience and commodities and then come over and join their firms, that I didn't like it all that much. And there was, yes, there was a brutality to it. But the reason I didn't like it is I learned something fascinating. I didn't like making money as much as I thought I would. And I was living on the Upper East Side.

And my dad came over one night and he was looking at my trading papers, my profit and loss statement. He goes, oh, my God, you had such a great July. What a month you had. And I was like, yeah. He looked at me and goes, yeah. He says, wait a minute, honey. If you can't get excited about a month like this, because you're making 10 times what your friends made a whole year in one month and you're not excited about it because you're not, you're not doing anything to help society. This is a great job.

This is a job that has great hours. It allowed me to go see every single one of your soccer games. I've got camaraderie. It's fun. But if you don't like making the money when the money's there to be made, you better think about something else to do. And I think that that was really, I didn't make the leap until some months later, but I think that was the kernel of truth. I thought that I would like

making money a lot more than I did. That was the first domino for you. Yeah. What was the last one? What was the thing that happened that made you say, you know what? It's time. So there were two things that happened in pretty close succession. There was a very busy day and there were two guys who were standing above me, behind me, and they were yelling at each other. And it is truly like the school playground. And one guy's yelling, your clerk pushed me. He put his arm, he crossed the plane into the trading ring and you're not allowed to do that. Don't tell me what to do. And as I'm standing there and I'm like, guys, come on.

And I sort of turn around, glance up and say, guys, come on, relax, will you? And things are starting, it's weird. There's a rhythm to the trading floor and things can be dead for a while. And then all of a sudden it starts to creep up, creep up. It's almost like a crescendo. They're yelling at each other.

The markets are getting really, really active. Things are happening. Someone walks to the other side of the ring and shrieks out, you know, a half bid for a hundred. At the time when the two guys behind me are fighting so much that one guy head butts the other, blood spurts out. It's all over my trading jacket. And someone screams a half bid for a hundred.

And all of us are shrieking at the same time, sold. And I never turn around again and look at these two guys. One of the guys ended up in the hospital. I don't know. I mean, so I went home. I was look at these two guys. One of the guys ended up in the hospital. I don't know. And I mean, so I went home. I was still wearing my trading jacket. I walked out of the ring. I never knew what happened.

I got home. My sister lived on the third floor. I lived on the fourth floor of this apartment. She goes, what the hell happened to your jacket? And I'm like, I said, oh my God, Nikki and Jerry got into a fight. And one of them went to the hospital and this is the blood of one of them.

I don't know who it is. And I said, oh, Christ, what am I doing here? This is like the silliest place in the world. It really is. And concurrently, I was dating a guy who was in medical school at Brown Medical School. And it was kind of an easy out. I was like, you know what? F it.

I'm not doing this anymore. I'm done. And it just clicked in my head. Like I'm going to move to Providence. I'll move back to Providence for a couple of years. We'll figure it out. I can't stay here. This is not for me. That was it. And you were out. Sort of. But it was a funny thing. Oh, can I tell you the best thing that happened from my time in the comics?

Yes. The very best thing ever. And it's not about money. I had a very dear friend named Evan. He was my gold futures broker. I set him up on a blind date with my sister. They've been married for 30 years. That's awesome.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. So you learned a lot in a relatively short amount of time.

Not just about money, but about what you cared about and sense of humanity. But also, again, this was like a bigger, this was you standing on the lowest level in a pit with all these people going bonkers emotionally and learning that that didn't get anyone where they needed or wanted to go. And just like being in that, it's almost like exposure therapy. Yes. And what's fascinating is when you're in those situations where you think it's going to be so great, like, well, I just made hundreds of thousands of dollars in the month of July. And you think that should make all the other crap worth it. And at the time I was actually volunteering in the pediatric cancer ward at Sloan Kettering. Talk about two extremes.

It was such a weird extreme. And I remember going, I was there every Thursday night because I felt so disgusting about my Monday through Friday. And I felt like I had to do something to make myself feel good about doing something beyond me. And so I think that the experience of, you know, every single week coming in and seeing some child died and who was there and who survived the week and how you're going to get through it and what you did. And, and that, I think that also was like a really good reality check to say all this nonsense that's going on down at four world trade center, which is where the commodities exchange was, is just nonsense. It's complete nonsense. And so it did not, I think that it was really instructive. It's still, you know, by the way, a hundred years later, I can still wake up in the middle of the night and have a bad trading dream.

It's just so weird. I don't have dreams about being naked. I'm holding six silver. I mean, really, I think that it made sense that I wanted to go into the side of the business where I could help. I could use my, my knowledge and my ability to kind of cut through the bullshit with people and help them kind of cross over that emotional barrier that they had to getting what they wanted out of their lives. And just the money is the means to

an end. And, you know, look, I was trying to write a book forever. I really was from when, you From when I was an investment advisor, money manager, and I had this, I should write a book, I should write a book. And then I end up at CBS News and, you know, someone from Simon & Schuster says, you should write a book. Oh, what book am I going to write? And I had an agent and I don't know. And what I realized was I was having lunch with my agent, Brian. He's a book agent.

And he said to me, what is it that you like gets, gets you going? And I said, you know, what's amazing. Like it is incredible to me how many smart people do incredibly stupid things when it comes to money. I mean, it's sort of like saying, isn't it stupid how smart people can have affairs on their, you know, and, and create chaos in their lives. They do way worse things in their financial lives. And it's for the exact same reason. It's all emotional. So you are done with the business of trading money for money's sake, but you weren't done with the business of money. No, because it is fascinating. I mean, human nature is fascinating. It's just, I find it amazing.

I actually said to a friend of mine who was a shrink, the good news about being a financial advisor and somebody who gets that same intimacy that you would have with a patient. I said, but I get to tell people what to do. Isn't that great? I don't have to get them there. I can basically say, you're screwing yourself.

Stop doing that. Whereas a therapist wants to say, oh, Jonathan, what did you think? It's so fascinating because I think when I came out of law school, I ended up in securities law. So I was at the SEC. So I was like the other side. I was the white knight who was enforcing the markets being honest. But secretly, the driver for me underneath that was never the law side of it. I think we both came to the same realization that the way that people deal with money on all levels is this astonishing mirror of just the human condition and human psychology

and emotion and decision-making and stress and greed and fear and all these things. It's just a way to, it's a metric almost for all these different things and how fascinating to try and deconstruct that puzzle and figure out if you can re-engineer it in some sort of like more constructive way. And when you, when, when, for me, when I started getting into a business where I saw clients and listen to people's stories, that was fascinating to me. And, and frankly, it was probably why I was very good at what I did as an investment advisor. and I built a company up with a partner and, you know, it was successful, but I was probably too involved in my clients' lives. You know how they say, you know, the doctor doesn't want to, but I would get very vested in the outcome. Like, oh no, Jonathan is not doing

the thing I told him to do. It's dangerous. What he's chosen to do is dangerous. And, you know, one of my friends at the time was in a surgical residency. And I remember saying to her, I'm like, oh my God, this guy, they wouldn't tell you. He's not buying life insurance. He needs life insurance. What's he gonna do? This is crazy.

Guy rides a motorcycle. He's not gonna buy life insurance. She says, Jill, do you know how many times a day I tell people to do things like you need to lose weight, got to stop smoking, you're drinking too much, got to take your medication. She's like, you cannot live your life and determine whether or not you're successful based on whether what they do, you can give them the best advice you can give them.

That's it. And that was hard for me. Yeah. It's a problem of compliance. You know, it's people are weird. Raising my hand along with like all the other people there. It's, it's, it is that, and, but people, I think get even weirder, you know, like there's one thing where in medicine sort of like, okay, we can all agree

that this is the best decision and I'm still not going to do it because I want to have fun, because I want to do this, whatever it is like that. But when it comes to money, it feels like there are more layers to that and to your decision about whether to comply or not, because there's like generations of all these things that you've seen and witnessed and been taught that play into it. Yeah. It's fascinating because I have a chapter in the book about basically that parents can pass along their money issues to their kids. So deconstruct that a little bit. So I found it interesting when I was in the business of giving financial advice that you could have two people who grew up in sort of similar circumstances and react quite differently to those circumstances.

So, you know, in my world, giving financial advice in southern New England, there were a ton of immigrants there. And I remember there's this one woman who was a client of mine and her father was a first generation Portuguese immigrant and raised the family and created something out of nothing in the United States. But what he passed along to them

was essentially he used money in a controlling way and he would not allow them to spend any money. Very, very common among first generation kids to come out of an experience where you feel bad that you got more than your parent, but that your parent has like beaten the crap out of you and put that message in your head. So when you become an adult, two things usually happen. One of two things. One is that you rebel against that. When you have children, you indulge them because you say, I will never do to my kids what my parents did to me, or you become them. And it is so hard to come to a healthier balance. And what is interesting is that because we don't like to talk about money and because we don't want to like mix

money's numbers and emotions or emotions, because we don't really think that those are married, we don't understand that there's pathology that's passed along from generation to generation. And it's often that pathology that will lead you astray as you become an adult. And that's why I want people to sort of own it. Like, hey, I have a friend who married a guy and he was a professor, he was like an academic. He then went on to

go into the financial services business. He became a billionaire. And I always say to her, how are you kids so normal? She goes, cause I grew up in Queens. Like I'm a Queens girl. Like I never bought into this whole thing that like this guy made me so much. She's like, look, I have a gorgeous apartment. I've got like the best life in the world, but you know, I'm still the same person from Queens. And my parents were kind of normal about money. She always tells this funny story. She's like, I told my mother, I got into, you know, an Ivy league school and her mother's like, well, you better get a scholarship. Otherwise it's Queens college for you. And that was it. That

was like the way she lived her life. So I think that there are people who are so grounded in their value system around money and they're very comfortable with it. And then I think that some people get that messaging from their parents and they struggle to overcome it so that they can live more balanced financial lives. Yeah. I mean, you must've, because you were actually on the advising side for what, 15 years or so, right? It seems like there's probably, probably from the outside looking and people are like, well, you're an expert in this and you're going to come in and tell me how to allocate this and make these decisions. But it sounds like what you're describing is almost like a therapist. Like I would imagine so much of what you did on a day-to-day basis was trying to get underneath this belief system and figure out almost like, okay, so I know that this is destructive. Can we try and figure out what's underneath it so we can get

you a place where you're making more constructive decisions. What's interesting is at the time we didn't label it this way, but I always felt like it was so emotional. In my office, I had a desk, but when a client came in, the client sat on the couch and I sat in a chair. I never sat across the desk from a client. That's pretty interesting. And now there's a whole field called wealth psychology. Oh, really? client. That's pretty interesting. And now there's a whole field called wealth psychology. Oh, really? Yeah. It's really interesting. I interviewed a guy who's a wealth psychologist. His name is Jim Grubman for the book. And, you know, he, I mean, he gets brought in on these big, massive estates, right? Big dynastic families who basically are saying,

you know, he gets hired because, you know, Nana won't give her money away or little Joey is completely inept and is a spendthrift. So he tries to, he gets brought in to kind of bridge the gap. And I think most of these families have no idea that they're actually like, if I call it a wealth psychologist, it's not a psychologist. It's like a wealth manager, you know? And, and I think understanding that it is so emotional really helped me give better advice. And it was interesting because when I made the leap into going to CBS to start this website with this team called Money Watch, I was the only non-journalist, right? So there's a bunch of financial journalists and me.

And I would always say, well, that's not what would happen in real life. What you just said or what you're writing, that's not how it would go. And they were also, they were very critical of the financial service industry. You know, everyone should be able to do it themselves. And I said, you know what? Not everyone can do it themselves. And I said, you know what? Not everyone can do it themselves. Not everybody is to be trusted with his or her own judgment when it comes to these matters. And what you're advocating is doing step-by-step. This is the DIY way to manage your financial life. I said, a lot of people need somebody just like I need a trainer.

I can't lift weights on my own. I always get injured when I lift weights. I know what I'm doing. I mean, I know how to squat. I know how to do a bench press, but nine times out of 10, I'll rush through it. I need someone there saying, slow down. No, you're not going to put another plate on there. You look tired today. That's not the best for you. That's what a really good person, a good financial advisor is there to kind of customize the experience and to say, Jonathan, you're a small business owner.

I get it. These are the things that you say you want to do. Ideally, you would do plan A, but now I know you, you're not going to do that. Let's do the thing we think you can actually do. Ideally you would do plan A, but now I know you, you're not going to do that. Let's do the thing we think you can actually do. Let's put that plan in action. And I think that's the nuance of really understanding the real world implications of the advice you give. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because if you said to somebody, using the medicine example again, you've got X symptoms, whatever it is, and you gave them kind of like full access to information, I think they would still want to talk to a qualified medical professional

before they make their decision. Because they're going to say, I can read everything that I can read on the internet, but I still want to talk to somebody who's been in this world to help me understand and translate it and who knows me a bit and helps understand. But in the world of money, it's interesting that then the journalistic side would have been like, no, the problem here has nothing to do, this is a purely an informational issue. Like once we get an equal playing field and everyone's got access to like all the information they need, problem solved. Right. And that's not the truth.

Yeah. It's funny you bring up that medical analogy. I used to be a runner and with an emphasis on used to be. And I went to a doctor over at hospital for special surgery. My hips were hurting. And I went there and I said, killing me, like I can't run like I used to. I don't know what's going on. And so let's go to physical therapy and, you know, being a typical idiot. I was like, oh, physical therapy sucks. They also,

they're a bunch of idiots. They don't know anything. He's like, go to this physical therapist. And I started to feel better. And I remember going, being done and I go back in and I said, so can I run again? And he looked at me and he goes, you can run two miles twice a week. That's what you can do. And I looked at him and I said, what, what do you mean? Two miles, like two miles is what the first two miles is the worst two miles of a run. I run five to six miles three times a week. He's like, not anymore.

And then it occurred to me, I'm about, I'm trying to bargain with this guy. I said, you know what? Let me ask you something, Peter. What would you tell me if I were your sister? Am I allowed to curse here or not? He said, he looked me in the eye. He goes, if you were my sister, here's what I would say to you. Don't fucking run anymore.

You're too old. Your body's not made to run. You're fine cycling. Can you just like find some joy, find another activity to find joy in. You should not be running. I'm going to tell you right now, your body is not made to be a runner.

That's what I would tell my sister. And I was like, okay. And I never ran again. And I said, well, why didn't you say that coming out of the gate? He goes, because no runner ever will listen to me when I say that. Yeah, gotta meet people where they are.

I was like, wow, that's amazing. So you're in this role of financial advisor slash therapist slash mentor slash everything. And then you make this semi-abrupt leap to the broadcast side of things. And this isn't like, well, I tried the CFP thing for a couple of years and that just wasn't right. So let me try the next thing. You had built a really substantial career.

And it sounds like there was a lot about it that you really loved that was nourishing to you. And you were getting some of that, the deeper meaning side of it. Like you are really developing these deep long-term relationships and seeing things happen in people's lives that you could point to and say, well, maybe I was a part of that. What makes you then say, okay, so once again, it's time. I want to completely close that chapter, but I want to stay in sort of like the general, you know, ecosystem of money. But there's something that's not happening in the world of broadcast that I want to make

happen. So when I was a pop financial advisor, I said to my then business partner, we got to figure out a different way to get people in the door. I can't be doing cold calls or warm calls and marketing and this, that, and the could get. And I said, you know, there's this guy who's on the air and he's giving financial advice. It's like 1993, 4. And I said, maybe we could do that. So I called up the guy who was the general manager of the radio station. I said, you know, that guy you have on the air, he sucks. He's so boring. He goes, well, he's fine. He does a good job. And then six months later, he called me out of the blue and he said, you know, got into a fight with that guy. If you and your partner want to come audition,

come on down. So we auditioned and we started a radio show and I liked it a air. I caught the bug and I had an end just weirdly. I was decent at it. My business partner was pretty good at it and we built a show and that's how we got clients in the door. People heard the show. And so it started to gain some momentum. And then a guy called me from the same TV station where I was an intern. And he said, oh, I listened to your radio show. Have you ever done TV? I said, no. But I said, but I worked at WJR TV when I was in college. I worked for the sports guy and I started appearing on TV. And I had two wonderful angels in each of those environments. It was a guy named Bill Hess on the radio side, who was a program director. And the news director of the TV station was a woman

named Betty Jo Cugini. Each of them came to me separately and said, you're pretty good at this. Do you want to get better? And I said, I'm fine getting better, but all I care about is bringing business in the door. So fine. Yeah, I'll do what you tell me to do. But they very much nurtured and mentored me in both of those mediums. And so I got good at it. And then I started dating somebody in New York and I was going to New York. And I said to my friend, Betty Jo,

I'm like, I'm gonna be doing back and forth to New York. And she goes, I think I know someone at Fox News Channel, someone who used to work here a long time ago. Now, this is before Fox went off the rails. So everyone, before you start going nuts, I know. OK, I'll tell you a good story about that. And I went in and I started to do and I did segments on Fox and I started doing more and more television and more and more radio. And at the time it was becoming clear that I was not going to live my life in New England. My life was going to bring me back to New York. I didn't know what I was going to do in New York. And I was sort of transitioning out of my business. The businesses had been sold and I was kind of

wondering, should I try to do this media thing full time or should I just go into another person's financial advisory firm? And I really was sort of up in the air about that. And so I'm not a huge planner. I mean, I'm a planner in that I had a binder and I talked to a million people and I interviewed people and I taught and, you know, got great experience talking to people. And just out of the blue in 2008, in the beginning of 2008, I was appearing on Fox News Channel as just a guest. And just to plant a flag, 2008 is when the world fell apart. Right before it fell apart. So in the beginning of 2008, I was on Fox News Channel on Neil Cavuto's show. And I said, I think I said something like not, you know, essentially I was saying like the shit is hitting the fan.

It was the Bear Stearns. The hedge funds had gone broke. And I just said like, you know what? This is not good. It's not good. Like bad things are going to happen. And so someone from CBS saw me on the air, called me up, and I started appearing on CBS. And I was in the middle of negotiating my exit from my firm, essentially, because I knew I had

to go and we just had to do it in a methodical way. And then everything was hitting the fan. In the fall of 2008, that's the height of the financial crisis. I was on the air a ton on CNN, on Fox and on CBS. And it was just crazy training, you know, like live TV, talk and react and use metaphors. And, you know, clips of me went viral because, you know, I got on The Daily Show because I said something on the air like, you know what? Everyone was at the frat party.

Everyone got not everyone got drunk, but we are all paying the price. And this is one hell of a hangover. And because I knew how to talk to regular people about money in a way that they could take that messaging in. Beginning of 2009, CBS called me and said we're launching this website nobody wants this job we need somebody to be the face and voice of it everyone else who has a job is like hanging on for dear life and no one wants to take a shot are you interested and i was like yeah i won't come in and talk to you and i signed a contract three weeks later and i left the internet side of the business where all the all the action was over there. So I spent a few years

building up that website and the broadcast side of the company kind of said, you know what, we really want you over here. And so that's what I did. I moved over. And so it is so fulfilling because it's, you know, it's first of all, working in news organizations, like the best job in the world for someone who's done something else. Because as much as you lament what used to be, I didn't know what used to be. All I know is that this morning at 730, a black car picked me up, took me from my apartment to a studio. Someone did my hair and put my makeup on. I got to talk about why it's important for people to actually

get life insurance. And I have this platform where people listen to me after I get to go into a studio, do my own podcast, my own radio show, talk to real people, feel that same connection that, hey, I'm helping you, but on a massive level. And no, I don't get to have the same intimacy, but it's pretty great. Hmm. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

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Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. So it's kind of interesting because it wasn't, I teed it up as like, what was the moment you decided to close this door and open another one? And it really didn't happen like that. It was this gradual evolution. And I mean, fascinating too, that your intention was entirely to generate leads for an existing business is what got you into it. Eventually you just started to really enjoy this new thing and it made sense to be somewhere else. And so this was like a years long evolution. Was there a time, was there a moment along that timeline where you kind of just paused and kind of took stock and said, I didn't necessarily ever think I would be here doing this,

but I love this. You know, now in my 11th year at CBS, there's not a moment when I walk into that CBS broadcast center that I don't think to myself, I have the best effing job in the world. I can't believe how lucky I am. Now, part of that is as someone who owned her own business, I was not a great owner. I had a nutty business partner. I felt like it was just yet another marriage that was breaking up before me. You know, like it just was very heavy. I wasn't, I loved the business. I didn't love running a business.

That's not the thing I love. I'm a doer and I love, I'm a sole proprietor in the best sense of the word. I feel great creating opportunities, having fun. But when I left that business, what I knew was I would never have an employee ever again in my life because I didn't want that. I didn't like it. Now, I have an executive producer who works with me,

but he is not my employee. I pay him and I pay him well. And I know how much, how valuable he is. He's never asked me for more money. I've always given him more money, the more and more things he's done, but I don't want more than that. I need one person to help me do certain things. And I think knowing that I really didn't like running a business, I did not want to be part

of that ever again. And now walking into an organization that frankly, over the last 10 years has been a clusterfuck in many ways, just in the way it, you know, the news has come out and horrible things that have happened. But you know what? I'm walking that building and it says CBS News Broadcast Center. And I feel so proud of what happens in that building all the time.

I think that because I have a sort of an outsider's approach to walking in there, I say it's so hard to do what these people do. They're amazing. And I get to be part of it. When I walk into the radio and podcast studio, I walk by the map that sat behind Walter Cronkite when he was doing the evening news. Now, kids, Walter Cronkite used to be a very important anchor, figurehead in the United States culture. I just, I get tickled pink.

I still, I mean, I still cannot believe how lucky I am. And that even when I'm exhausted and I had to be there at four o'clock in the morning or whatever, I'm always so clear about that. And I feel so fortunate. And I really, it wasn't by design. It was by saying yes, like being willing to completely get out of a comfort zone and to embrace this unknown world and say, well, I don't know what's going to happen next. Yeah. But a lot of that also comes from your exposure to worlds where you need to make decisions that persistently have you stepping out into the abyss and somehow trusting that you'll figure out how to make it okay. Absolutely. And what's funny is, you know, my partner in life, you know, she doesn't consider herself a risk taker and, and she does the same thing sort of under the radar in a way, you know,

she'll just say yes to things that you wouldn't like. So, you know, she started her career as a litigator. And then someone said, well, you know, did you ever think about going into compliance? She was like, hmm, maybe. And she would say yes. And so those are big risks. Whenever younger people will ask me, like, what should I do? And, you know often what career advice?

And I will often say, try saying yes, try saying yes and see how it feels. And you know, don't say yes to like creepy bad dudes. Like, let me start there. But I mean, if someone's giving you an opportunity, even if you're not a hundred percent sure you do it. Instead of saying, I couldn't do it, say, well, why couldn't I do it? It's like my friend Marty is very funny. I'm morose, you know. My friend Marty is dying of cancer, of leukemia. And someone said to him, he tells me the story,

he goes, you know what's so funny? Schmuck says to me, do you ever think why me? And Marty's like, no, I always think why not me? And there's a part of that, that's sort of the downside and the upside. Like we're all human beings. We're all going to take risks. Some good things are going to happen. Some bad things are going to happen and it's okay. It's okay. I mean, if you don't want to do it, like I'm not, I wasn't like the hugest lean in fan. I really wasn't. Like there are times in your life where you cannot say yes, but at the time when you can try it on, see what it feels like.

I mean, it's interesting also, cause you, you talk about fear a lot. You write about fear in your book, something, one of the topics you explore fear and greed sort of relationship there. And part of it is that it's that dance, which never really ends. You know, it's always sort of like asking the question, what is behind this? Am I aspiring to something which is motivated by something a little dark or aggressive? Or am I not saying yes? Or am I saying yes because it's coming from a place of fear where I don't want to, I don't have 100% certainty of how this is going to work out.

So I'm just going to take whatever option allows me to step out of even having to make a decision. You know, it's funny. I think that as you get older and different opportunities arise, you get a sense, you do have a sixth sense and you have that gut that you can rely on. And it's a beautiful thing. It really is. And it leads you astray every so often. That's okay. So what? But it's so great to, you know, it's funny. Someone had asked me to do a demo, do a podcast for us. So I do the demo and I say to my producer, Mark, I'm like, there's no way they're going to want me. He goes, why would you say that? I said, I could tell already. I just know. He's like, that's so ridiculous. Why would you say such a thing? I said, you know what? Because they want someone who's not me. I could just tell by a conversation. It's like, it's almost like speed

dating. I said, I'm going to try. I'm going to make it as good as it can be. Even if they said, no, it's not a big deal. But it's kind of almost like a salesman's instinct to say, that client said yes in the moment, nodded their head, but you got the sense behind it. They were going to go choose somebody else. Building on the idea of intuition, having a sense too. And again, this is something you write about. It's cognitive bias. Like on the one hand, we're like, I trust you got,

you know, like you kind of know. And the other hand, there's this weird way that our brain functions. There are these cognitive biases, I don't know what the plural of that is. That sounds right. That make us think that we're making the right call and we're completely off the rails. Yeah.

I think that I'm more apt to trust my gut when it is a human being, not necessarily a financial decision, a scientific decision. I give you an interesting example. You know, I talk a lot about my dad. So I'm like one of those daddy complected girls, I'll admit it. And my father died six and a half years ago. And I remember when he was sick, I just, I really had the sense like, oh my God, he's dying.

And my sister and I talked very candidly about it. What's interesting is that I remember saying to the doctors, you know, we're like down at NYU. And I remember saying like, it's not getting better. And they're like, well, but he shouldn't, you know, this will be okay. Don't worry. This is fine. And then, and by the way, the doctors all loved him because he was like funny Albie, you know, the guy who like ordered deli from the second Avenue deli two nights a week for the night

nurses and ICU. Like that's the kind of guy he was, right? Like, well, we're going to have fish and bagels tonight, everyone like gather around. And so I remember watching the doctors saying they don't want to see what is so obvious. Like it couldn't have been clearer to me that he was dying. And they're all scientists and healers. And it's not like they don't want to rip your emotional heart out. They really do believe they can make him better. And I got that. I really got it.

But I remember thinking, like I said to my sister, I'm like, they don't, they don't want to throw in the towel because they don't want to think that they've failed. And, you know, we basically were like, okay, this is over. Like it's done. And I remember like the head of the ICU looked at me and he's like, what are you saying? I said, that's it. We're done. There's no more treatment. And I think that there are times where you just get this clear bolt and you get it. You're like, oh man, I see it. And that was not a bias. That was just, that's what I trust. And sometimes, you know, I use a lot of medical analogies because I think that everyone, we

have like sometimes a better feeling around the industry. Oftentimes when people will tell me about their aging parents, I have a 96 year old mother-in-law and they'll say to me things about, you know, well, we're going to do this, that, and the other thing. I said, well, what if you didn't? What if you didn't do that surgery? She's 92. Well, then she'd die.

I said, uh-huh. And just sort of let that hang there for a second. And I said, well, what if she survives? What if she survives the surgery and then has a horrible eight months of recovery and then dies? What then? Ask the doctor that. Yeah. survives the surgery and then has a horrible eight months of recovery and then dies what then ask the doctor that yeah i think we get we all get so irrational when i mean if you if we talk about the fact that money is this taboo issue to talk about um extend that to death and it's a whole different level and then if you extend them both together,

it's like this crazy. Totally. My two favorite chapters in the book are about life insurance and about estate planning. Which you would think are relatively straightforward. Thanks. You know, I have to like wrestle people to the ground. I work with people who are rich people and famous people

and I have to absolutely just nag them to get their stuff done. You know, what's fascinating is I think when you look at why most people are not going to create a will or get their documents in order, it's not that they are fooling themselves, like I'm not going to die, but they do not want to think about it. And it's much easier not to think about it. And all I suggest in the book and in life is, can you just think about it for a little while, get it done, and then you don't really have to think about it again. Because when you don't do those things, which are in my mind,

the worst financial decisions that you can't, that you don't make, right? The things that you don't follow through with because they're irrevocable. You can't make them better. I can't make a messy estate better after someone's died. I can't create life insurance after someone's died and not purchased enough. I can fix a lot of mistakes. You can really be a shitty investor, but be a good saver and still be fine. So if you save a lot, but you kind of

monkey around with your portfolio too much, you're probably going to be okay. But what I cannot fix are some of these decisions that have lasting impact from generation to generation. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There's one other thing I want to explore with you, which is money and happiness. Because there are really interesting dynamics around that and assumptions that are made and really interesting science on it too, which has changed a bit over the years. I think for a long time, the assumption was money equals happiness, that you can buy yourself into a certain amount of happiness. And then we hit this window where it seemed like, well, yes, but it seems like maybe what

it's doing more of is it's buying us out of a certain amount of misery, but it can't buy you past a certain point and into this giddy happy, like everything is awesome type of thing. Curious what your lens is on this. No, there's this great bit of research about, you know, what's the optimal level of money and happiness? Like, where can we graph that? And it's a funny number, right?

So it's, you know, worldwide, it's 75,000, 95,000 in the United States, and maybe it's 130,000 in New York or whatever on the coast. It's really not that. What we want to understand is once you have shelter and once you can buy food and take care of your family. So once you are out of scarcity, when are you optimally happy? And I think it's a sliding scale. And there is no number. But what I do know is I know a lot of unhappy millionaires. I really do. And you do too. You know, listen, let's just go across the street and we'll go to Zabar's and we'll bump into a lot of unhappy millionaires. And the idea of what makes you happy and the freedom that you feel to make good choices to me often boils down to having some flexibility in your life. There's something about flexibility in there and owning your schedule a little bit, not feeling like because I listen, listen, I'm sure you know people in the law

profession. So they're partners of these firms. They're making millions of dollars a year and they're wildly unhappy people. They are chained to their desks. They're owned by their clients. It's awful. And I know a lot of people on wall street who are pretty unhappy people who make gobs of money.

So it's not that, but what is it? Is it you have some, you have some agency or ownership over your job? You feel appreciated. You feel like you can live your life and have it part of that every day where you feel some bit of freedom. One of the reasons I love financial planning is that I feel like it really opens you up to some opportunities. Like if you do this right, it doesn't have, you don't have to be a gazillionaire, but you have opportunity. And I think when people feel trapped, that's when the money really will not bail you out, right? You build a lifestyle, you won't get out of it. But I don't know if I'll ever, you know, I would have been a

much richer human being if I not rich, richer money, not richer in soul, but I would have had more money if I stayed on the trading floor, slid over to my father or my step or my godfather's firm, and I would have had a lot of money. So what? Right. And so it really has to be like a motivation. Also, I'm not like one of these people. I'm not, you know, I learn a lot from my millennial coworkers and the millennials in my life about how there has been some unlucky timing issues in their lives that makes them, it makes it really hard for us to have a similar conversation. Because when you and I came out of college, it was like,

you really had to be a numbskull not to get a job, right? Pretty much. And the investment compared to what it is today is profoundly different. And so it's like college was not as expensive. Career was easier. You're in a bull market. You mean, right. And so it's like college was not as expensive. Career was easier. You're in a bull market. You know, all those things were happening. But I would be very careful

about trying to find ultimate satisfaction from what you do. I think that you really need to find ultimate satisfaction in who you are. And I think that to me, that's within each of us. That has nothing to do with money. Yeah, I completely agree. If there's a confluence of the two, awesome. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't. And sometimes there's a blend. The money thing is interesting that the

last time I dove into it, I saw those same numbers that you threw at like 75 or something like this. And it changes based on where you are. But then I saw this really interesting, more nuanced take, which when they looked at the relationship between money and happiness and then money and then what they called subjective wellbeing, or like, am I just, do I feel like I'm living a good life? And there, while there is sort of like a leveling off, if you don't, on the happiness side, once you hit above a certain amount of stuff, there's really no relationship that's meaningful. What the data that I saw showed, it was based on a much bigger, later data set that was global, was that there is a direct relationship between people saying, I'm living a good life and how much you earn and it doesn't level off. And researchers were trying to figure out

what was behind that because we kind of don't want that to be the case. It's like, we'd be better if it was like, no, no, no, it's not all about that. And the probably best hypothesis is it's about access to really high level healthcare. Oh man, that is so interesting. I think it's a dual part. I think it is interesting to consider that when you live around affluence, like we used to have a very funny saying about the segments of our clients. And we would have one segment called the nearly affluent, right? And the reason we would say, right, they're the most unhappy people and they're all over the place. But what's fascinating to me is this, many of those people, they, I'll give you like the,

the, the, you know, the, the family that lives in a wealthy area, but doesn't make quite as much as everybody else. And they don't look and say, you know, cause everyone says in real estate, oh, you know, buy the smallest house in the greatest neighborhood and get the best schools and all that. And, you know, I think what happens for a lot of those people is they say,

you know what, I'm busting my ass and I take that goddamn train and commute into work. And look at Jonathan sitting in his nice apartment with his lovely microphones and living this life. And I'm kicking ass and, you know, he must be so rich and he, or he works for a hedge fund or she's a partner of a law firm and, you know, they don't understand how I feel now. Okay. Objectively, I'm going to tell you that these are the people who make in, in big coastal in D.C., in New York, in Boston, in the Bay Area, in Los Angeles. These are people who probably make three, four, five hundred thousand dollars a year.

They are among the most unhappy people I've ever met. And what's fascinating to me is if I find two married teachers who live in a good neighborhood, their kids work hard, and they didn't feel like they had to buy their kids the very best private school education. The kids went to state school. The kids are fine. They're doing well. They have pensions. Life is good.

One of them called my radio show today and like, we got $1.8 million saved. We're 68 years old. Kids got no debt. We're happy as can be. So what is it about the aspirational quality of a certain type of person that compares up, right? Like you could probably say, I'm around all these people and they make gobs and gobs of money.

I never think like that. It's so weird. I really don't. I'm around all these people and they make gobs and gobs of money. I never think like that. It's so weird. I really don't. My dad wasn't like that. My mom was more like that. She's still alive. So I'll trash her.

You know, it's not good to trash someone who's dead. I think my mother always felt like, Oh, your father could have worked harder and we'd have more money and life would be better. Like how much better? What could it, what could have been the difference?

Nothing, nothing bad ever happened. Like he went broke a couple of times and it was, it sucked like those things. But like over the course of her 80 years, life's been good. So what would have been better if he had an extra zero on his net worth? Yeah.

It's not a rational thing. It's so weird. It's just, we were, his net worth. Yeah. It's not a rational thing. It's so weird. It's just, we look at everybody else and the brain just wants to know that we're not at the bottom of the pecking order, completely irrational. And I think we can even be aware of that bias and still suffer from it. Yeah. You live in a place like New York. Right. You will never be. You're just not going to be there. And it doesn't matter. And, you know, we also have a culture in some of these cities where you are so defined by your work that it's different.

It's really different. You know, and I'm the worst, you know, when I meet people, I'm a crazy extrovert. I interview people like at cocktail parties. Like, tell me about yourself. What do you do? That's my first question. And I probably should say, who are you? Like, where are you from?

What's going on? Tell me your life story right now. Get switching up. Yeah. Alternate a little bit. Exactly. I hope that people can right-size some of this stuff. It's hard.

It really is hard. My grandfather was the CEO of a publicly traded company, my father's father. My grandfather was like, you know, super German Jew, but came from nothing, built up. You know, did you see the Lehman Trilogy when it was here? So you have to get tickets to see the Lehman Trilogy. It's coming to Broadway. It's a British play. It is about the Lehman family,

which emigrated from Germany and started basically as like cotton traders down in the South before the Lehman Brothers. And it's a fascinating story. It's sort of like, it's like American capitalism, Jewish diaspora. There's so much that's like woven in there. And it's fascinating.

And, you know, my grandfather kind of came from nothing. He got a job at a department store while he was putting himself through law school at Fordham Law School. And he stayed on at this company. And they said the guy's like, well, you graduated from law school, but you're going to be like, you got a career here, Teddy, you should stick around. He did. He stuck around for 47 years and became the CEO. But it was a time when he was a CEO of a publicly traded company before they like made tons of money. They were, they had perks, but they didn't have a ton of money. And I remember that I was shocked at how little

the asset base that my grandparents had, because I kind of knew about, they lived long. And I was like, how could they only have that much money? And my father's like, your grandfather never cared about money. Never cared about money. He cared about ascending to a place where he could be the decision maker. He not even like power hungry, but like he wanted to be responsible. Like autonomy. I mean, it's sad that, you know, we were probably nearly affluent as a result. One time my grandfather was buying a piece of land. My grandparents are buying land in the West Coast of Florida, a place called Longboat Key.

And they were selling these lots for, you know, $1,000 on the Sarasota Bay. And my father said to my grandfather, my father was just starting to get into trading. He's like, why don't we buy 50 lots? My grandfather says, Albert, I only need one house. What are you talking about? That's how he thought. Totally different mindset. Yeah.

It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So sitting here in this container of the Good Life Project, if I offer up this phrase, to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life, be happy with who you are and where you are. Thank you. Thank you. This is great. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do.

You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love.

If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. We'll be right back. Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

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