Standard Deviations with Dr. Daniel Crosby

Tune in to hear: - Is this an era of particularly anti-college sentiments? - How can we incentivize the shift to better align societal needs with colleges? - How should you think about and weigh the personal passion angle vs. the job security angle when counseling families on potential college paths? - On average, how does being college educated affect one’s life in a broader sense (e.g. divorce r...

Tune in to hear: - What is the role of personal myth making in ameliorating the psychological crisis of modernity that we find ourselves in? - Thinking about the current state of generalized despair at play in the world - are we consuming the wrong messages as we move through the world? - What is the 1st step in Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey? - Why aren’t we answering the call to adventure and,...

Tune in to hear: - Which of the ideas from ‘The Psychology of Money’ does Morgan find most useful in his own life? If he had to re-release the book today, what would he change about it or omit from the book? - What did Morgan expect readers to takeaway from the book and how does that contrast with the feedback he has received from readers? - How applicable does Morgan feel the lessons from his boo...

Tune in to hear: - Taylor was recently publicly criticized on social media. How did he think through how to thoughtfully craft his reaction to this and how did the community he's built help insulate him from this? - What role should community play for advisors and what can community provide that you couldn’t necessarily get through self-study or other means? - In setting up his podcast, what did T...

Tune in to hear: - What is “all duration investing” and what behavioral upside might this approach have for investors? - How can you better organize a bucketing approach to reflect those investments’ time horizons? - What about the tendency for all time horizons to become today in the face of behavioral pressure - how can we protect ourselves from this? - Why is the myth that “China owns the USA”...

Tune in to hear: - A lot of the best content creators in this industry are a bit edgy. How can very large companies create good content when they are almost, by definition, required to not be edgy? - If your brand wants to be honest about who they are - how do you begin to introspect and have that conversation? - What’s a potentially interesting brand collaboration for a fintech firm? - When is it...

Tune in to hear: - What can Alex share about his financial literacy startup, Futurvest, and what needs or gaps did he see in the financial literacy space?  - Knowing what we know about behavior, what does effective financial literacy education look like? - Is there a way we can take the fight of financial literacy to an institutional level? Also, is there any hope of having financial literacy win...

Tune in to hear: - What are some of the psychological mechanisms that make our vision of ourselves so cloudy at times? - If Melina hoped to draw out a deeply personal answer to the question “what are your financial goals,” how would she go about constructing the question? - What are the hallmarks of a psychologically sophisticated brand and what is the psychological impact of this authenticity? -...

Tune in to hear: - What does Ashvin propose as a better measure of investor success above risk adjusted returns? - What are the two main reasons why we invest? Ashvin thinks that, with a traditional portfolio, we will be disappointed with at least one of these two dimensions at any given moment - why is this the case? - What is the three-tiered investment approach that Ashvin came up with and how...

Tune in to hear: - Why is it often complicated to offer a simple and elegant solution for the common behavioral dilemmas that advisors face? - Why might psychological shortcuts potentially lead to gender bias in asset allocation? - Are there any salient differences between men and women, on average, in regards to risk tolerance? - How can we systematize the information gathering process during cli...

Tune in to hear: - What role does positive psychology play in financial planning? More broadly, what is positive psychology and how is it differentiated from the popular conception of behavioral finance as the study of bias? - What is the “three good things” intervention and why does it work? Is it applicable in a financial context as well? - What do you do when someone attributes the best things...

Tune in to hear:  - As one of the founders of the discipline of financial therapy, what light can Dr. Archuleta shed on the origin story of this unique discipline? - What are the lines of demarcation between financial planning, financial therapy and traditional therapy? Should financial planners look to make referrals, when necessary, for financial therapists or is this a largely academic discipli...

Tune in to hear: - How did Nick land on a kinder, more gentle approach, to personal finance? - What is the least conventional bit of financial advice that a reader may come across in Nick’s new book? - Nick’s new book states that most savings advice is problematic - where does he differ from the conventional wisdom with respect to savings advice? - How should we think about lifestyle creep from a...

Tune in to hear: - If Tim could personify himself as a guitar, what type of guitar would he be? - Tim thinks that engagement, performance and persuasion all begin with behavioral science and that behavioral science begins with the unconscious. What does this mean from a scientific perspective and how can we tap into these unconscious motivations? - The unconscious is pretty intensely guarded, and...

Tune in to hear: - When we narrow down the financial advisors to those who we would trust to manage our spouse’s or parent’s finances, Steve thinks that we do so largely on behavioral factors alone. Which behavioral considerations make someone a trusted advisor? - From the outside looking in (i.e. if you don’t personally know an advisor beforehand), how can one make a determination about whether a...

Tune in to hear: - Jeff is known on Twitter for his complex deep dives into the world of tax legislation - what got him interested in this in the first place? - What is keeping us from a more simplified tax code? Is it really as complicated as it appears or is there some subterfuge here where the complexity is just a feature and not a bug? - When Jeff hears politicians and everyday people talking...

Tune in to hear: - What was Drew’s experience studying under Richard Thaler like? - Drew thinks that you have to hold a willingness to be right and to be wrong in equal measure at all times - is this something that Thaler modeled in his behavior and how does he think about this in the context of his own firm? - What’s an analogy we can draw between Hank Aaron’s batting behavior and the act of pick...

Tune in to hear: - Where are we at, as an industry, in terms of the application of behavioral sciences to the world of work? Where does Jez see us headed next or what’s his outlook for the industry? - Compared to something like tech, where does the financial industry fall on the adoption curve of behavioral sciences?  - In what field might we have the next big, unexplored vertical jump for applied...

Tune in to hear: - What are some of the primary drivers of asset flows from a behavioral perspective? - Soft factors account for a lot more of clients’ decision-making process about their assets - what is the takeaway, for asset managers and financial advisors, from this revelation? - What are the three different types of trust that Herman breaks down in his book? - Interpersonal trust might be th...

Tune in to hear: - Has Kurt ever noticed a problem that isn’t ostensibly behavioral in nature that ended up being behavioral? - How can we craft a cohesive work culture without contributing to problems like group think? - From a leadership perspective, how can we open ourselves up to new ideas and not fall prey to confirmation bias? Also, if we are the person that’s going to question the status qu...

Tune in to hear: - How did Peter get started reviewing frozen pizzas? - What is it that most people misunderstand about investing? - How does Peter, as an advisor, go about crafting a vivid and salient personal vision for his clients? - How can you bring clients back to a vision of their future selves in a difficult moment? - How, practically, does Peter try to maximize anxiety-adjusted returns wh...

Tune in to hear: - How does technology shape the way we act? Sometimes we don’t even know the water that we are swimming in with regards to technology - how can this induce us to make good or poor decisions? - Is there a way that tech can facilitate some of the soft skills of client interaction (e.g. care, empathy and connection)? - What role should self-care, self-work and introspection play in a...

Tune in to hear: - How has Meb’s world, and domestic, travel shifted the way he thinks about investment? - What is Meb’s least popular idea about investing? - Why is it so important to codify and pre-commit to your own sell strategy? - What is Meb’s “red light, green light” approach? How does he think about market timing and tactical asset allocation? - Meb likes to give out free business ideas th...

Tune in to hear: - What are some of the flimsy tethers in peoples’ lives that keep them from achieving financial greatness? - If an advisor’s number one job is not to make you money, what might it be? - What are the 11 different dimensions of wealth that Seth’s firm lays out? How did he arrive at these? - How do these provide a helpful framework for clients during times of crisis? - How do you bal...

Tune in to hear: - How does Dr. Bookstaber think about and define risk in the most practical terms possible? - Does the way people like us talk about risk differ in an overly academic way from how people in the street think about it? - Which of the sort of commonly discussed current risks seem legitimate to Dr. Bookstaber and which might loom larger in peoples’ minds than they should? - Why aren’t...