The Wealthy Barber Podcast - #68 — Brian Portnoy: A Behavioural Finance Expert on How to Shape a Life of Money and Meaning

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Our guest this episode is Brian Portnoy — behavioural finance expert, founder and CEO of Shaping Wealth and author of "The Geometry of Wealth" and "The Investor's Paradox." Brian holds a PhD from the University of Chicago, is a CFA charterholder and spent more than two decades in the financial industry. His mission is helping people use their money to underwrite a meaningful life. In this episode, Dave and Brian dive into behavioural finance and the fast-changing world of financial advice. They explore the challenges of building an AI coach that's genuinely helpful, the lessons Brian took from Morningstar and the hedge fund industry, and why "simplicity on the far side of complexity" is worth striving for. They also break down the investor's paradox, choice overload and how thoughtful choice architecture can combat decision fatigue. The conversation also traces the 50-year arc of financial advice, from product-pushing to planning to the human side of money, and why good financial planning can sometimes feel like marriage counselling. Along the way, Brian shares the difference between being rich and being wealthy, the impact of his "funded contentment" concept and his perspective on growth, hope and defining "enough." Whether you're an investor, an advisor or simply someone trying to figure out what money is actually for, this episode is packed with thoughtful insights you won't want to miss.   Show Notes (00:00) Intro & Disclaimer (00:55) Intro to Brian Portnoy (03:52) Shaping Wealth and the Lydia AI Innovation (06:43) The Challenges of Building an AI Coach (08:50) Partnering with Conquest Planning Software (13:15) Lessons from Morningstar and the Hedge Fund Industry (15:53) Simplicity on the Far Side of Complexity (20:33) The Investor's Paradox and Choice Overload (24:04) Decision Fatigue & Choice Architecture (29:03) The 50-Year Arc of Financial Advice (33:25) Financial Planning Can Be Like Marriage Counselling (35:35) The Difference Between Being Rich and Being Wealthy (40:53) The Impact of the Funded Contentment Concept (42:03) Growth, Hope, and Defining Enough (44:08) Conclusion

Hey, it's Dave Chilton, the wealthy barber and former Dragon on Dragon's Dent. Welcome to the Wealthy Barber podcast. Well, we'll be hosting some of the top minds in the world of personal finance. Yes, that's to balance me out. The podcast is about making this subject not just easy to understand, but dare I say, even fun, honest. Whether you're trying to fund your retirement, figure out how to build a down payment, save for your kids' education, manage debts, whatever, will be here to help you.

You do it. Before we jump in, a quick but important note, nothing we discuss here should be taken as investment advice. We don't know you and your personal financial situation, so we're not here to tell you we're specifically to put your investment dollars. We're here to educate, get you thinking, and we hope entertain. But please do your own research and or consult with your financial advisor before taking any action. Hey, it's Dave Chilton, the Wealthy Barber with the Wealthy Barber podcast. I know I say this in several of our episodes, but Thank you so much for tuning in. We honestly did not see this property becoming the success that it has.

I mean, most weeks, it's number two or three in the country of all business podcasts, and we're up against some tough American competitions, some tough British competition, Canadian-only financial planning advice. It's amazing. Tens and tens and tens of thousands of people listen to every episode and the feedback we get, the comments, the questions. It's all appreciated. We do weave it in to future episodes and take all of your comments.

and your queries very seriously, but a heartfelt thanks. It's been a lot of fun doing this. Great guest today. This is a guest that's come recommended maybe 10 times from different guests. That's how much respect he commanded. I say commanded past tense because now that he's on our show, that will decline precipitously. But he is a fellow who is famous in our industry for a lot of what he's achieved. Brian Portnoy, Brian is a BA. He's a Michigan man, went to University of Michigan, Doesn't have the mason blue on today, but deep down, it's in his blood for sure. He then went on to University of Chicago where he got his Ph.D. He has a CFA. Clearly, he is much smarter than the host. Admittedly, that's a very low bar. A lot of you know him from the Geometry of Wealth, a book that came out years ago.

One of my favorite books, as many of you who followed me on stage and on the page know, I've recommended that book for years and years. He's an outstanding communicator, behavioral find. finances his area of specialty. He has shaping wealth, the name of this company that's a platform, in essence, to help advisors to understand how to help their clients, how to use better examples, better communication techniques. That's how he's become so well-known in our industry. That platform has allowed him to have a huge ripple effect, where he's taken all of his knowledge and able to bring it to advisors who in turn have taken to their clients. Now he has a new product, AI chat in essence, Lydia, that we're going to talk about in a few moments.

and he's actually working with Conquest, the very well-known Canadian software company in the financial planning arena. So a remarkable career of achievement, a great guest to have on. Brian, welcome. A little overwhelming, but I appreciate all the kind of words.

Thanks. It's great to be here. I've obviously been following you for a very long time. Yes, I'm old. That's a very, very lightweight of sake. No, honestly, you've done a wonderful job. And for whatever reason, you were a guy who was able to grab this behavioral finance,

and bring it over to the financial planning community in the most impactful way. There have been other authors who've done good jobs, but with your platform and the approach you've taken, you really have had the ripple effect. I wasn't just blowing smoke there. You talked to American financial advisors and now Canadian financial advisors. You're very well-knowing. And you've really, therefore, help clients on the far end. Talk to me a little bit about what you're seeing in AI.

We're going to go to your background and everything else in behavioral finance. but I was fascinated by Lydia. So tell me a little bit about what's it all about. Yeah, let's go right to the tip of the spear, which is the innovations that were plowing forward with artificial intelligence. A level set for just a moment to say that the company that I started and run called Shaping Wealth

is a global coaching and content platform that engages advisors and their clients on what we'll call the human side of advice. Right. Trump, emotion, navigating conflict. imagining and fulfilling a beautiful and meaningful life, figuring out how money attaches to all of that. So we can backfill maybe some of the work that we've done with advisors and their clients in U.S., Canada, UK, and frankly across the world. The AI innovation, the light bulb moment, as it were, was about three years ago when my colleagues and I were beginning to use chat GPT.

I mean, it's hard to fully appreciate the chat GPT is what, five years old, four years old? Yeah, you're right. It seems like it's been a part of our life for a lot longer. Yeah, I think it's fair to say it's the highest velocity industrial revolution in history. Right. And it was clear at that point that AI was going to help me in two ways. Number one, it was going to help me flesh out, amplify the content and engagement that we were creating. And two, just from a business building point of view, allow me to interact with people who might not want to take a day or an hour to do a workshop or a seminar or a coaching program.

that they can have just in time, fully integrated access to behavioral insights. What really makes us tick, especially in money world. That was the flash and it's been just a heck of a ride, ups and downs, trying to figure out how to build this. You can't just go into chat or clod, especially back then and vibe code behavioral finance, meaning like you just can't say, hey, build me a behavioral coach that's knowledgeable about the psychology of financial planning and the psychology of money. stepping back, we want Lydia to be seen as a member of the shaping wealth team and ultimately

a member of an advisory firm's team. You can have basically us built in through an AI just to talk to. You got a hard conversation coming up with the client. Help me think through this. Help me maybe even role play that conversation. I've got a new advisor and he's great, but he's 25 years old and his emotional intelligence needs some work. How can I engage with him in a way to bring him along maybe a little bit faster, which would be good for him and good for the business. Lydia can engage you in any of those topics related to more deeply connecting to clients, teammates, and ultimately to yourself

because we take advisor well-being very seriously. You know, you mentioned earlier the ups and downs of developing this product. We've been working on something similar, but not in behavioral finance and not competing at all. And it's challenging. I mean, yeah, the technology is very advanced now, and you're layering over chat GPT or client. bod, whatever you're using, rag, but you have to capture the voice. You have to have to make sure that you've got checks and balance systems to make sure misinformation's not flying through,

through hallucinations, et cetera. You must have had a pretty sharp team working on that and trying to perfect it and constantly testing it as it evolved over the last three years. That's been the fun part, Dave. I've been lucky to build just a cracker jack team of experts, not only in behavioral science, but in technology. And so I have a chief technology officer. He's got a couple guys that are helping him out in terms of building the architecture for all of this. And you alluded to something that we spent a lot of time on, which is guardrails and guidelines. Yes. So Lydia, and by the way, you know where Lydia comes from? No. I assumed it was your grade school girlfriend in my role. You are wrong. That was Megan. That was Megan. Shout out the Meg. I won't use her last name.

Yes, please don't. She's watching the wealthy barber podcast. Megan, we'll always have suburban Pittsburgh in the mid-70s. So, no, the very first money ever discovered was the Lidian coin. What's Turkey today? Oh, that's right. Years ago. Yes, good. The empire of Lydia.

So if you Google or perplexity search the Lidian coin, it's this really cool coin made out of a certain metallic compound called Elementum with a lion emblazed on it. Our brains from a software point of view were last updated more than 100,000 years ago. Money is only 3,000 years old. So one of the main reasons why we struggle so much with our fire. is that we've got very old software trying to process very new social institutions like money. And so Lydia is our shout out to the human journey with money. Yeah, I think that's very clever and very creative.

We called our chat the wealthy barber. So you can see we're scrambling up here to come up with the kind of creative angles. The you are. I think that mean Joe Green, Pittsburgh background of yours has probably aided you in your thinking. How did you partner with Conquest? Some of our listeners know that Conquest, I think, an initial a Winnipeg firm. I know they have Toronto offices too. Yeah. A lot of sharp people. They have really been impactful now in the financial planning industry on both sides of the border

with their software. How did you end up partner with them and show us a little bit how you work together to add value to the advisor? So I've known of conquest for some time, just being in the industry. They have a clearly fantastic product and a dominant position in the Canadian market and have been making important inroads into the U.S. market as well through mutual friends like Jason Pereira, who I think everybody knows. I had the opportunity, really the privilege to get to know Ken Lataki, who's their chief product officer, and one of the founders of the company. And we got to talking, and it was just hand-in glove. They've built a very innovative platform to deliver modern advice, a very flexible, powerful platform for advisors to help their clients

get where they want to go. And so they've built this engine, and the engine is the IQ. It's It's brilliant. What's not there because it wouldn't be because it's a design into it is the EQ. So when Ken and I got to know each other, he saw him and give a keynote at actually an AI conference a year and a half ago. We just got to talking and pretty quickly realized that if we combine the EQ and the IQ in one seamless offering, then we not only can give great advice, we can find ways for the advisor to deliver it such that the client actually follows through on it. It's a marketing line, but I think it's, uh, no, I, I, I know that you're passionate about that. And it is the key. It doesn't get implemented. Yeah, yeah. And I think by wrapping the EQ in with your communication skills, yeah, the likelihood of

that goes up. Plus, I will give you this. It's going to sound like I'm kidding, but I'm not. If Jason Pereira likes what you're doing, you should be proud of that. Because he approaches everything with a lot of skepticism, healthy skepticism, warranted skepticism. But if you can get past Jason, you're on the right track. He is a sharp guy. Yeah. Well, Jason, well, Jason, they had my advisory board. Oh, well, there you go. So you're in good shape. Me and I've been working closely together. He is just a fantastic, number one, he's a fantastic human being, but secondly, he is such a sharp critic of the industry. So his input has been invaluable. Yeah, so when it came together, I think the idea is as simple and as broad is that conquest solves for the plan and we

solve for the conversation. Because it's one thing to have a wealthy couple and complicated finances and conquests can brilliantly solve for the mathematics of the cash flow and how they're going to divest assets over time and a whole variety of complex planning. But the chances are that the plan is going to quote unquote fail, not because the math is wrong, but because the people disagree about priorities. Right. Because there are adult children who don't like the legacy that their parents are leaving and there's difficult conversations to be had.

There's overreactions to market volatility that aren't captured in the math and are captured in the psychology. So the innovation, just to put a very fine point on it, is to have this behavioral coach fully and directly embedded in their software. So it's not just some outside thing with the occasional API call. There's a behavioral coach that's going to be alongside the advisor. And she or he is going to know it every step along the way that they're going to have someone to talk to about stress testing, psychologically stress testing, a plan or a conversation, thinking about risk from different angles, conducting what's known as decision hygiene. You want to move your retirement age from 65 to 60. Well, that is mathematically challenging because maybe you have to invest in riskier assets to hit a certain bogey or whatever the fact pattern is. But the implications for how people think and feel about those changes are also huge. Now it's come together where it's the IQ and the EQ. So I'm excited about it. I think it's wonderful. Look, we've all seen so many of these plans. As you say, they fall down because they don't get implemented. And there are all of those potential

psychological obstacles and barriers and something that can help with the communication, understanding what could happen ahead of time, which I know does. I think it's great. Okay, we're going to move on to a second subject. I want to go way back in time. When you first came in the industry, a lot of your work was in the fund end of the industry. Yeah. Evaluating funds. I want to look at some of the things that you learned over the years in that space. I mean, you're 20 years. Morning Star, of course, was one of your employers. Yeah, yeah, for fun. One of everybody's employers who was in that industry. What conclusions did you come to? Are people right that it's almost impossible, for example, to outperform passive

and index funds? Well, the data suggests that. I mean, there's, there's mountains of data that demonstrate that most active managers over any reasonable period of time don't exceed their benchmark. And partly that's a headwin because of fees and partly it's a skills issue. If I take a step back and think about big lessons learned because I started my career in our industry at Morningstar, as you point out, doing investment research. And after a few years there, having a great experience to this day, probably the best company I've ever worked for, moved over to the hedge fund industry where I got really on the deep end of the pool. It was like going from black and white television to multicolor with the complexity and how

interesting it was. And so I had the chance to analyze, invest in some of the most sophisticated hedge funds in the world. And so a few things in retrospect became, if not obvious, I think fundamentally true. Number one, I concluded that success in investing is less of a math problem. and more of a psychology problem. Because there's some really smart people out there, and they end up not doing well,

mostly because of not being able to control their emotions or not having an organizational culture that supports great, great investing. So psychology over math, and then secondly, simplicity over complexity, because I had opportunity and privilege to swim in the deep end of the pool or the deep part of the ocean

as it relates to sort of hedge fund strategy complexity. So much of it sounds great. Look at this brilliant person. Look at this brilliant strategy. Look at this sort of offbeat market where they have an advantage and an edge. And much of it sounds good much of the time and much of the time it doesn't work.

Not to say that it can't work and doesn't work. There are some absolute superstars in private equity, in private credit, in venture, in hedge funds, in all of these alternative areas. But the bar to choosing wisely is so high, I would suggest that in many cases, the juice isn't worth the squeeze, especially for individual investors who are trying to stay in the middle of the fairway in terms of managing their pre-retirement and retirement assets.

Do you remember that expression? It was very popular years ago, simplicity in the far side of complexity and talking about how a lot of people started out doing the basics. And then when they mastered them and things were going well with their personal finance, they thought they must be missing something, that there was something bigger and better. So they went for the more complex products, the more complex strategies didn't do well. And then went back to just doing more of what was simple. That is a pattern I've seen repeat itself over and over again, very much in tune with what you just said.

That pattern holds all over because we're tempted. Yes. Because just getting into the human psyche, we want to be on the other side of that velvet rope. We want to see what's in the club or the private space. They must have access to something better. and it's not wrong. It's normal to feel that way because much of our psyche is formed by in-group versus out-group dynamics.

But the belief that somebody else has the answer and that you want to be in the same room with them, totally normal. It just so happens that in many cases, effort is negative, effort and brilliance is negatively correlated with outcomes. It's so true. You sound like me. These are all the things I say. I sound like you because I read you 30 years.

What we're talking about? Of course I sound like you. You look at my dad. I've often said, this guy buys index funds and outperforms everybody. And he doesn't really ever know what's going on. He doesn't follow the markets at all. He doesn't go to seminars. He doesn't read the Wall Street Journal.

He doesn't try to get in hedge funds. He added numbers he puts up, of course, have been absolutely tremendous. But you really said that well. I love that expression. We all want on the other side of the Velfer rope. It's so true, isn't it? Like you're just drawing into that. We want to be on the in crowd, but often that leads to underpour.

performance? Yeah, well, look where the industry is now, across North America, access to private investments. The average investor doesn't recognize that the typical investment management firm is a consumer products company. That's so true. And it's their job to run the factory and to put out different flavors of toothpaste and soap and shampoo because they test the market to see what people want. And so in one way or another, access to the alternative. And what is the non-alternative. The non-alternative is unlevered, transparent, directional indexed exposure to either the equity market or the bond market. Right. I'm not in any way saying that we don't want exposure out. I'm not saying don't go outside of those spaces. No, I know, but you're saying within

those cases. That's the traditional. It's also really boring. We have an action bias as humans. And like we want to say, don't just do something stand there, but no one listens most of the time, right? We want to do something, we want to do, and we want to do something different. And if you look now, the flavors in the alternative space, the private space, are just bountiful. Liquid or semi-liquid private equity, liquid or semi-liquid private credit, other asset classes like cryptocurrencies. We want to believe that these are going to be solutions to our problems. And by the way, in some cases, they can very well be part of a balanced, diversified, diversified. diversified portfolio is just into the first book I wrote called The Investors Paradox, which

was about the psychology of investing, but specifically on alternatives. The thesis there was simply that a good investment is an investment that meets your expectation. The challenge with alternatives is that it gets very difficult to set expectations for illiquid, complex markets. And therefore, like, what's going to be good for you? It's kind of hard to say. And I want to add actually a third pillar to my sort of retrospective, you know, perspective on sort of markets and investing because I said psychology over math, simplicity over complexity. But we also want to make sure that we know that we are investing in the context of a financial plan.

That purchasing investment products, stocks, funds, whatever, outside of a plan is speculation. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm not assigning a value to that immediately. But let's just recognize that if you're purchasing a fund or a stock or a bond or something that's being sold to you without reference to a goal that you have, what's the point? Well, the point is simple. You want more. Right.

You bought it for a dollar. You want it to be worth $2. And that's great. Nothing wrong with wanting that. But when it's not attached to a goal, when it's not in the context of a plan, we don't have the ballast to really understand what makes it successful. No, that's right. You can't measure it properly.

Going back to the Investor's Paradox, I really enjoyed the book. And at one point, was it there or one of your other works that you talked about the paradox of choice as well? That's right. And yeah, okay, so just expand on that for our listeners. Yeah, and that was sort of maybe the opening salvo of that book. And it's why it's called The Investors Paradox. There's some really interesting, some years ago, pioneering research into how humans make decisions, how we make choices. and one of the observations that I think everybody will agree with is that we live in a world of infinite choice or unbounded choice.

When you're going to the supermarket or trying to buy something on Amazon or choosing a flight, it's just an overwhelming menu of things. The paradox of choice says that humans are hardwired to value choice because it indicates that we have control over our environment. Remember, our 100,000-year-old brains, we want control in a danger of choice. world. And when we don't have it, we're scared. We need to build tribes. We need to find shelter. There's a number of things we need to do in those more primitive environments. Well, that's still our brain today. And so choice is central to how we feel about our lives. When we don't have independence, liberty, opportunity, freedom, we feel less than. Okay. Period. Absolutely. What the modern research has shown, Dave, though, is that when you get too much choice,

it becomes overwhelming. And that there's you. Fries you. There's a tipping point. It's called choice overload. It's called decision fatigue. And so that's a well understood. And I think intuitive idea to all of the people we know, listeners here as well. I just took that idea from Barry Schwartz, who did the pioneering research in it. He wrote a book called The Paradox of Choice. Actually, sent them, he was a stranger, but I'm a huge fan. I sent him an email when I was writing The The Investors Paradox. I said, hey, I'm going to use your book title from my book title. Is that okay? And by virtue of him not replying, I took it as negative consent that it was fine. I like that. The default. I ran into him at a conference like

eight years later and I told him that story and he kind of laughed, but then walked away. What was his first book? Remember, he had a huge book at one point. I can't. He's had a few books and he writes in social psychology. So the investor's paradox is that we crave investment choice because it gives us a sense that we got control over our financial futures. But the more choice we have, the more overwhelmed we become and the worst decisions we make. So it's really a be careful what you wish for type message. And let's see if we can level set back to simplicity. The line that a lot of people in our industry use, I don't know who said it originally.

Simple doesn't mean easy. To be able to do less, to choose from a smaller menu, to not trade, to not have any activity, to just stand there, not just for months, not just for years, but for decades, very hard to do. I saw an interesting example of this relatively recently an article by a real estate agent saying that when people come from out of state, I think it was to Arizona. And he shows them homes. He's learned that if he shows them 20, they won't buy one. If he shows them three, they will. Very much matching up to what you're saying.

They get overwhelmed by the amount of choice and they just get on their flight and think, we'll think about it later or when we get back home and no action ever takes place. To be honest with you, I'm a bit like that with the streaming services. I'll go to the homepage for the Netflix this of the world. There are so many options, I go, I don't watch anything. I just end up listening to baseball. It's true. And that's why choice architecture is not only a science, it's an art. How do you present choices to somebody in a way that makes them feel informed and empowered but not overwhelmed?

Right. That is a craft that many people can be better at. So what's the right number of choices? Hard to say. It's probably not one. It's probably not 100. So as it sets of three, well, it depends. It depends on the dimensionalities of the product. It's got a shape, but it's also got a color. So do you want to mix and match? Sometimes we love to see all the colors of the rainbow. And I want to, you know, when I'm going on Instagram for the 30th time to buy another t-shirt I don't want, you know, do I want brushed sage or burnt orange or yellow sunrise? I get all of those colors. And sometimes I want that. But there are better and worse ways for all of us in whatever line of work we're in. to present choices to others to absorb choice that's given to us where we're informed but not

overwhelmed. Yeah, you said that well. I mean, I fall into it a lot where you get choice fatigue, but really you get decision fatigue. So even now when you go to buy a car, you've made your choice finally, but then you've got to figure out, okay, do you want this feature? Do you want it just never stops coming at you. And after a while, I don't want to think about all of this. Well, like I just kind of want to buy a car.

It's not like the automakers are unaware of choice architecture. One reason that they're overwhelming you with feature after feature. Do you want the steering wheel to be warm? Do you want to be able to blink at the radio and change channels? Whatever the newest technology is, when they give you so much, they know you're getting exhausted. They know that your brain chemicals are draining. And you just say, fine. Yes.

You just acquiesce and say, you know what, just give me the whole platinum package. I've had it. That's me. Honestly, that's me right there. When you didn't choose was the platinum plus because there's always that choice out there. Right. That decoy that's there that no one buys, that bottle of wine on the menu that's $2,000 and the next one down is $700 and then you get into the $3,200s.

That $2,000 bottle sets the market for you. Well, that's ridiculous. Who in their right mind would do that? I'm going to buy something more reasonable like a $400 bottle of wine. That's true. Which if you started with the prices being 80 or 100, you'd be like, I'm not paying 4x. Well, you just paid 80% less than 2000. You anchor to that original number.

Yeah. And real estate agents, again, have become so adept at taking advantage of all of this. When you go to a foreign jurisdiction and look at high end vacation homes and you say my budget is X, they always take you to a 2.5x first. They know there's no, but that to your point is how they anchor you to a higher number and that everything seems like a relatively good deal after that. It heightens the odds of you saying yes. Yeah.

So what I and I, this is a fun conversation. It's actually not one that people bring up a lot. So I'm appreciative of that. And I think what it speaks to bigger picture is that investing really is a psychology problem. And that decision science, decision fatigue, choice architecture. is one of a number of different topics that with a little bit of insight. Like, I don't think I had, I doubt anybody was confused by the paradox of choice. And I explained it in less than a minute.

And even if you've never heard the term before, you kind of intuitive. Right. And when I think about what we build at shaping wealth, what's being coded into Lydia, what's been being integrated into conquest, it's just an extension of this thinking. Can we shed some warm light on sort of, the complexities of our mind and the quirkiness of our minds and how they're going to navigate complex, noisy worlds and do a little bit better. This isn't about going from being a D student to an A student. It's about being a little bit better, a little bit better prepared in terms of

understanding yourself, understanding what you're really choosing for. And I think net net that just raises the bar for financial success and well-being for a lot of people, because I will say on the investment side, they're really not here to help most of the time. There's good people at these firms. They're mostly all good people. That's not the point. The incentive is to sell you investment product. That's why I pivoted my career to some extent from investment management to wealth management, my engagement in the advice community. It's been a blast because here, when delivered in the right way in a fiduciary context,

an advisor as not just a technical expert, but as a guide and a coach, walks right alongside that individual or that couple or their whole family, and if well-trained and having the right perspective, they can make such a difference in people's lives. No, a huge difference. You know, I think you're right about everything you say

that there's a lot of selling in the industry, et cetera, but do not find the very high end of the industry has really gotten quite good in the last 10 to 15 years. Like when you think of the Jason Phrerrers and those types of people, holy smokes am I impressed. Like they are leagues above where the high end was 10 and 20 years ago. Yeah, I don't know how many will get the reference, but they call it the 50-year art from Gordon Gecko to Brunei Brown.

If you go back half a century, this was a brokerage industry. And Gordon Gecko and Bud Fox, they were, Bud Fox was a financial provider. He was a financial provider. He was putting his best clients into, his best products and low and behold. Anacott Steel, baby, Anacott Steel. Yeah, Blue Horseshoe loves Anacott Steel.

That was financial advice. Fast forward. Now, what are we talking about? Yes, we're talking about stocks and bonds. We're talking about estates and taxes. We're talking about selling a business. We're talking about all of the technical complexities, which is a lifelong skill and commitment.

And it's amazing to have that expertise. In the same way, it's amazing to have expertise in medicine or other or law or complex fields. But what are we also talking about? We're talking about empathy. We're talking about conversation style. We're talking about trust. We're talking about conflicts and relationships and how do you navigate those so that you can get to a better place while still showing respect to everybody. So it's not that there weren't empathetic good people offering financial planning 50 years ago. Just the scope of the offerings and the number of people who are now doing great work, like our Jason, like a number of clients of conquest, like thousands of clients at shaping wealth.

We're on six continents, Australia, South Africa, Europe, Asia. So we get to see, I have a bit of a privileged bird's eye perspective on the fact that people all over the world are almost going old school in trying to figure out how do I just more deeply connect to these other human beings. The technical expertise is going to take care of itself. I'm going to choose this fund versus that. I'm going to have this policy versus that. I'm going to write my will this way versus that.

And you hope those are the right decisions. And with an expert, they probably are. But then there's that human side of advice that isn't just being a people person. It's itself a set of skills because of what it means to make a better decision, to deepen trust, to process emotions, to navigate change, to pursue well-being. Those are all skills. Barry Schwartz invented the field of positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1990s. Positive Psychology is a clumsy term for the science of happiness.

We don't know much more conceptually about happiness now than Aristotle did 2400 years ago. What we do know now is that we have spent gargantuan amounts of money on proper scientific research into what drives a good life in terms of the experiences that we pursue, the relationships that we engage in. And so, you know, you walk into your airport bookstore now and like a third of the books in there are in the positive psychology. Some of them are a little bit self-healthy and a little bit woo. But a lot of them are sort of rigorous treatments. I think of Geometry of Wealth, my main book in this context, as, hey, let's take some of the research seriously. And then let's convert it into plain language so that regular folks leading busy, complicated lives can make some reasonable decisions about their financial future.

Well, honestly, you did exactly that. That's what I said off the top with the intro is that you took all of this and you made it very accessible. And the people I recommended read the book to a person enjoyed it immensely. And it's a relatively quick read. And there's a lot of good material. You used a line about five minutes ago when you said getting to a better place while treating everybody with respect along the way. What a great line. And that is something that we have to do with estate planning.

We see the challenges all the time. And that's just a great overriding thought. to have as you enter that process. That's what we're trying to do. How do we get to a better place? We're not going to be able to honor everybody's wishes. Obviously, there'll be tradeoffs and compromises, but we treat everybody with respect as part of the process. I really like that line. Yeah, thanks. I just made it up. So there you go. I'm using it. I'm saying I made it up and we're editing it out. It will not come out of your mouth when this show airs. That, that's absolutely fun. You could use technical dubbing or whatever. Yeah, it was funny. We were talking before we hit

record button. And my wife thinking about retirement. and we have three adult children now, and it's the next stage of life. And we've been doing some estate planning. And I'd say we're like 93% aligned. We have the same values. We're on the same page. There are some nuances where, huh, should we do this? Should we do that?

How do we think about gifting the kids? How do we don't have grandkids? How do we think about saving and gifting for that? How do we think about? When you said gifting the kids, I actually thought you were giving your kids away. I like that. I would consider that. Dave, take them.

Take them. Exactly. They're all yours. That's another offline conversation. No, they're wonderful. But having somebody on the other side of the table, or in this case the Zoom, the Zoom screen, who is showing both of us respect and being able to mediate that. And there's not conflict in that particular case. But I sometimes joke that financial planning is basically just marriage counseling.

And so having somebody who can show up and make everyone feel seen and heard and find. solutions that make everybody at least a little bit happy. That has nothing to do with whether you can choose the right venture capital fund or value your cryptocurrency or do something very particular in a tax form. No, and when you say it's marriage counseling, you don't even mean necessarily husband, wife, it could be one person sitting across from you, but you're dealing with their two personalities, their variety of interests and trying to strike the right balances, all of those things. Many times, I'm sure you've had the top advisors who've had some of their clients. They said, yeah, maybe you should speculate a little bit. I don't think it's going

to add value mathematically, but it seems like something that's important to you and it'll keep you on the up and up with the rest of your portfolio. These are all the types of things that come into play as you sit across from real people in real situations. Yeah, no, it's that, that very specific example is something that comes up in some of our programs from time to time, what I call cowboy accounts. But just sort of release facts. valve for people who want to scratch that expression. Yeah, love that release valve. And I have a lot of friends like that. It's just keeping it to a reasonable amount. Okay, as we wrap up here, I want to go to the book and just talk a little, I thought you had some great points in there.

And you do the same on stage. You'll often talk about this. A big difference being, being rich and being wealthy. Just expand on that because I love the way you phrase all this. Yeah, thanks. I think that's page one or page two. And it is literally, insurgatively, the way I start thinking about what are we really doing here? Where does money fit into a meaningful life? What are we trying to get done? So the fork in the road is rich versus wealthy. And in summary, rich is the search for more and wealthy is the search for enough. So the search for more is hardwired into us. You're never going to hear me give, when I give longer answers to any question, evolutionary psychology always slips in at some point because we are the outcome of a long, long evolutionary change. And so our push for more, for achievement to win all of those things come from the fact that we, our deep ancestors, lived on a sparsely populated and very dangerous planet.

And so if you weren't winning, you were losing. And so we as the inheritors of the winner's genes have that thing to push forward. The challenge. So we wouldn't accomplish. We wouldn't build. We wouldn't innovate if we didn't have. that push, but at the same time, that search for more has, that hard wiring for more has sort of a negative element too, which is that we can't stop or we don't know how to stop. And psychologists call

this hedonic adaptation or the hedonic treadmill. I'm sure people have maybe heard of the treadmill before. And it's the idea that no matter how fast you sprint toward your goals, you never really get there. Because when you get to the goal, you say you want more. So in my favorite shows, Madman, Don Draper says happiness is the feeling right before you want more happiness. That is our money life. You get a million you want two. You get two, you want four. You get four.

You want eight. And it just keeps going. And so we want to be cognizant of that because in that context, money really doesn't buy happiness. What it does is buy us fuel to win the next game. The other fork is true wealth. The term that I coined is funded contentment. The idea that true wealth is the ability to underwrite a lot of. life that's meaningful to you. However you define that and however you choose or compelled to update that

in the years and decades to come through life's up and downs. So funded contentment is the ability to underwrite a meaningful life. What I'd encourage people to think about is that funded contentment isn't just a concept, it's a tool. It's a process. It's a Swiss Army knife with two blades, funded in contentment. But unlike the way we're typically taught to think about money, we talk about money second, not first. We start on the contentment side. What is really driving joy and contentment for us? I don't mean just being in good mood in any particular day. That's relevant. That's an experienced happiness, but that more reflective step back when you or me or all the people we know say, is this the life I want? Am I happy with the life that I'm living? It ends up

that philosophy and theology and other disciplines have written infinite pages, on what the good life is. And so I spent some time giving my model of what I think the true underlying sources of contentment are. So once you as an individual or a couple or a family think about what's really meaningful to us, it's only then secondly, the discipline is to only then secondly ask, can we afford that? What do those things cost? How do I underwrite those things? How do I achieve or get them? And what we end up learning is that some of the things that drive The most joy in contentment for us are free, and they're right there, and others are unaffordable and always will be.

And it's our job if we really want to achieve funded contentment to take a little bit of time, and it really could be a walk around the block. The occasional just sitting by yourself on the sofa with a cup of tea or coffee and just thinking about it, or take a walk with your partner, or write in your journal, meditate. It's free and relatively easy labor to think of it. about what's really meaningful to me, and then what's the financial dimension to those. It ends up, what I've experienced as that concept has proliferated around the world, it ends up being a relatively, it could be heavy, but it's a relatively easy exercise for people

to truly come to terms where money fits into a meaningful life. And last point I'll make, if you're a financial advisor, that's a conversation that most of your clients want to have. They kind of don't care much about the stock market or your projections on inflation or other economic data. They'll engage in that theater with you if that's the play that you're putting on. So a lot of the financial advice is bad theater where everybody's playing a role they don't want to. Good financial advice is when you're having a real conversation about the things that really matter. For all of our listeners, I think you'll agree that was brilliant. said, you'll see why I loved his book, but also you can see how closely he and I are aligned

on all of this. I think funded contentment is one of the great expressions we've seen come out in finance. You must be very proud. You're a humble guy, but of the impact that particular ideas had, you hear it a lot now, you hear advisors talking about exactly that. It has changed the conversation in many cases. It's made people think, I loved it when I first came across I did that naturally. I'm lucky because most of the things that made me content cost almost nothing. I like my hockey pool, that type of thing. Like, I'm a very low-key guy in terms of spending, leading to it. But that was just a brilliant idea, really well phrased. You must be proud of the impact of TED. It's neat. Yeah, Dave. It's cool. I am. When I think about the letters or emails from strangers,

the opportunity to give speeches all around the world about what is funded contentment. How do we navigate this unbelievably noisy, complex, and fractious world and still focus on what's really important and to see firsthand, not just from advisors, but normal people and clients, just regular folks making their way through the world. Yeah, I'm real proud of that. No, you should be. It's been a big influence in our industry. Okay, and wrapping up, you know, my father's still alive and well. He'll never die. He's going to live to be at least 190. It's actually getting a little annoying. The guy just will not go. But he's got all kinds of great insights. And when he talks about happiness, he'll talk about some of the things like gratitude and how

important it is and, of course, social connection. But he's a big believer that to be truly content, at least in some areas in your life, you have to be growing. You have to be improving. That's a big part of what drives joy. Do you agree with them on that? Oh, yeah. That's one of our deeper instincts. When we're standing still without a sense that we can move forward, we feel less than. So the idea, so I think growth is the meat of it, but then there's this higher layer where I would put in the word hope. Where what we really, and my favorite movie of all time, Shashank Redemption, it's a brilliant movie about hope. And even when you're physically imprisoned, being spiritually and emotionally free to hope for something better. And so growth is the engine that moves you toward whatever you're hopeful for.

Your dad's spot on. That's why. And he also brings an insight into why defining enough is so hard. Because enough isn't a number. It's a mindset. And it's something that we work with and mess with and play with over time. It's not, hey, I need $2 million in the bank at a 4% withdrawal rate so that at 50K per year, I can afford the things that I want to do. Don't get me wrong. From a basic financial planning point of view, Sure, you need to look at it. You've got to do that. But the broader sense of funded contentment of do I have enough, that conversation is almost a gift you give to yourself because you can have it through your lifetime and it sounds like your dad's doing just that. But I would argue my dad hasn't figured out better than anybody because I fund his contentment. So he is really, yeah, he has really nailed this, Brian.

Like he might be the guy who should be writing the books. It's outside funding contentment. That's really where he's heading. He's going to steal your concept. and run with that. Look, this has been a great interview. I'm one of your biggest fans. You know that. We're thrilled to have you on. You're incredibly well spoken and just, I think, really brought a lot of positive ideas here that people can benefit from. So thank you so much for coming on. Dave, this is an honor. Thank you for everything you put in the world and I love this conversation. We'll do it again.

I hope so.