Standard Deviations with Dr. Daniel Crosby

Tune in to hear: What makes women so uniquely good as behavioral investors? Why have many thought of women as particularly risk averse for so many years and what systems, on the trading floor and elsewhere, have perpetuated this misconception? Some book recommendations on women in investing and its history. Examples of how insidious the bias against women in finance can be. What can we do to attra...

Tune in to hear: How might financial planning conversations need to change in light of the new longevity many will experience? How will the “100 year life” affect the 3 life stages (education, work and retirement) that used to be more clearly delineated? How might we be able to give more salience and power to our mental image of a future self? What does Dr. Mathar’s research around this topic sugg...

Tune in to hear: What did Philip’s research on the drivers of financial advice seeking uncover? Additionally, what might stand in the way of clients taking advice? What can the industry do to reduce economic barriers to entry for getting advice? What about reducing emotional barriers to entry for getting advice? What mistakes do advisors make when it comes to changing behavior and what could we be...

Tune in to hear: What lead Dr. Griner to focus his work and research around compassion specifically? When clinicians like Dr. Griner talk about compassion, what are they talking about exactly and how might this differ from the popular conception of compassion? How do we balance our desire to want to end someone’s suffering without falling into the trap of just wanting to fix everything or go direc...

Tune in to hear: What is the “Dumb Ways to Die” music video and why was it originally created? Was the above an effective behavioral intervention or did it fall short? Why is buy-in for employer sponsored retirement savings plans so low and what might be done to remedy this? Why might marketing campaigns with behavioral interventions outperform more overt, standard marketing approaches? What did C...

Tune in to hear: What were some of Nikola Tesla’s eccentricities? What is “The Spotlight Effect” that Morgan Housel observed when working as a valet at a high-end hotel in Los Angeles? What is Morgan Housel’s “Man in the Car Paradox” and what lessons can be learned from it? What is the psychological principle “The Anchoring Effect?” Why does ego driven spending do so little to sate our desire to b...

Tune in to hear: What strategy did Alexander the Great use to overtake Tyre in 332 BC? Why did this military victory leave Alexander feeling more grief stricken than triumphant in the end? Why did Hephaestion’s death mark a turning point for the Macedonian Empire? What are “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying?” What makes up Martin Seligman’s “PERMA” model of well-being and how can we apply this in...

Tune in to hear: What common ground, if any, can be found across nearly all spiritual and religious traditions on the globe? What does academic research have to say about the benefits that accrue to those who are generous? Why doesn’t spending money on ourselves bring about long-lasting joy and what role does the “hedonic treadmill” play in this? Why do the benefits of giving transcend economic an...

Tune in to hear: - With all of the possibilities out there, why has Jon landed on his current path and why does he think that pro bono work is so vital? - Jon’s organization just completed a very comprehensive study on pro bono financial planning. Were there any results that really stood out or surprised him? - What did Jon’s research unearth about the moral case for doing financial planning? - Wh...

Tune in to hear: - If so much of what accounts for our behavior is habitual, what hope do we have and how can we change that as we look to the New Year? - Why do such small bits of friction have an outsized influence on our behavior? - Does publicly stating your goals have any drawbacks or does it help you stay accountable? - What is the rhyme-as-reason or fluency effect and how might understandin...

Tune in to hear: - Why do overly linear, or bullet-pointy, stories tend to fall short? What are the risks of making your backstory too similar to a resume? - What is the psychological principle “peak-end rule” and how can it be applied to better your backstory? - Why is knowing your audience such an important part of effective storytelling? - Why “time of possession” is so important, especially in...

Tune in to hear: - Why will AI, automation and algorithms likely lead to an increase in human centered connection in the financial services industry and beyond? - What is one of Thomas Hobbes’ most famous remarks and how do people take it out of context? - Why loneliness has far reaching implications for longevity that exceed even obesity. - How did Volvo make their cars more safe for women in par...

Tune in to hear: - Why do only 13% of American millionaires describe themselves as wealthy? Why don’t we recognize our abundance for what it is? - What is wealth confidence and what are its broader implications within portfolio management? - Wealth confidence is definitely somewhat correlated with portfolio performance, but why is net worth alone not a sufficient measure for one’s wealth confidenc...

Tune in to hear: - Why does Daniel Staker call his new book “a book from a breakdown?” - Why is behavior such a fundamental building block of marketing? - How do we get to the bottom of what our clients really want when they are often so bad at articulating it for themselves? - What does Daniel Staker mean when he says that “people often fail to respect reality?” - How can we get people to accept...

Tune in to hear: - We frequently hear the term “emotional intelligence” thrown around pretty loosely, but what is a deeper dive into its definition? - Does Dr. McCarthy see people frequently using emotional intelligence towards Machiavellian ends or is this quite uncommon in her experience? - Why is EQ so important for leaders and individuals more broadly and why is it extra important in the conte...

Tune in to hear: - What is all weather investing and what are its behavioral underpinnings? - Does Eric strategically rebalance the all weather portfolios or are the allocations fairly static? If they are dynamic, what signals do they look for when making a change? - What is the trend-oriented global macro program that Eric implements? - How can one strike a balance between the realities of trying...

Tune in to hear: - What convinces Akhil that we can forecast markets with any level of precision when lots of highly intelligent people have tried and failed? - How often does Akhil think market cycles occur, on average, and how can we use that to our benefit? - Once novel market anomalies or truths are discovered, they tend to get arbitraged away to zero unless they have a behavioral element to t...

Tune in to hear: - What is the backfire effect and how can you get your prospects to drop their old fund manager without crushing their ego? - Why is solving an emotional problem with a rational solution rarely effective? How can we encourage behavior change while giving our prospects a chance to save face? - What is the blemishing effect and how does it relate to the Pratfall effect? - Why can em...

Tune in to hear: - Saundra really balances being warm and welcoming with a great deal of candor. How has this served her professionally over the years? - How do people find the strength of will and confidence to call their clients out on behavior that is incongruent with their goals if their designations alone don’t provide this confidence? - Saundra has created two certificate programs - Financia...

Tune in to hear: - Matt interviewed hundreds of advisors and leaders in their space to gather how they envisioned the future of financial advice. What themes or common threads started to emerge in these interviews? - How, specifically, might things become "more human" moving forward in the financial services industry? - Why does Matt believe that advisors should never lower their fees? - Matt publ...

Tune in to hear: - What is Amanda’s story about her “$19k haircut” and how did it lead her down the path she’s on today? - How did Amanda’s parents react to her financial situation when she finally decided to disclose it? Did this transform their relationship much? - Amanda thinks that all financial problems should be approached with two premises in mind. What are these and how did she settle on t...

Tune in to hear: - What are the 5 coaching dimensions that Jay uses to help advisors and how did he arrive at these? - What is “the protocol system” and how has Jay utilized it to better his mental and physical wellbeing? - What was it that allowed Jay to put himself back together after a bout of acute depression? - What role should leadership and accountability play in a great advisory practice?...

Tune in to hear: - How does salience work with respect to different advisory fee models? - How can we use social accountability to better help clients see through their plans? - As the “meat and potatoes” of financial planning gets automated away, what does the future look like for financial planners? Will they operate in a broader life coach type capacity or does this feel off base? - Why is AI p...

Tune in to hear: - What life journey brought Kathi to a place where she focused on grief professionally? - Why did Kathi experience guilt and shame around her lack of financial literacy in a moment of crisis? - People often say very inappropriate things when they are struggling to address the grieving, even if well-intentioned. Why is this the case and what can be done about it? - Why something as...

Tune in to hear: - What the landscape of financial planning looks like broadly in the United States. - How working with a financial advisor plays a prophylactic role that extends just beyond mere performance and into mental health and one’s interpersonal relationships. - Why money is an emotional hair trigger for so many people. - Whether or not you can take your clients further than you’ve taken...