Standard Deviations with Dr. Daniel Crosby

Latest Episodes:

Amy Mullen - 5 Essential Steps for Crafting a Values-Driven Financial Strategy Jun 08, 2023

Show notes

Tune in to hear:

- What role did Amy’s mom play in her professional journey and what drives her to do what she does?

- What are the 5 steps of Amy’s process for providing effective guidance to advisors while leaving a bit of wiggle room for client personalization?

- Her 1st step, “to establish and define a client, planner relationship,” aligns with the CFP’s 1st stage. What does she teach advisors in this stage that might look a little different than folks might expect?

- How can we help facilitate a good discovery process, which encourages clients to dig deep, without putting our own fingerprints all over this in the process?

- How can you clarify your client’s values and assure that they aren’t being unduly influenced by outside influences?

- The 2nd part of Amy’s discovery stage is called “envision.” How does she help her clients’ vision of their future selves be as salient and real as possible?

- What are some of the mistakes advisors make when presenting their client with a financial plan and what can we do better as an industry?

- How can we share that “there’s more to life than money” with our clients in an authentic and non-cynical way? Also, how can we implement this thinking in our own lives?

https://www.moneyquotient.com

Compliance Code: Code: 1150-OAS-4/24/2023

Brendan Frazier - 10 Essential Rules for Providing Human-First Financial Advice Jun 01, 2023

Show notes

Tune in to hear:

- What makes up Brendan’s list of the 10 guiding principles of financial psychology?

- Brendan says that “goals shift, but values persist.” What does he mean by this and how do we move from illuminating values to tying those back to specific goals?

- Brendan recently interviewed a “question expert” on his own podcast. What was the biggest takeaway from their conversation and how can we craft better questions?

- Brendan’s third tenant is that “the more vivid your future, the more likely the behavior change.” How can we make our future selves more salient and vivid?

- Reflective listening, where you hear your words spoken back to you, has a lot of benefits. How can advisors take advantage of this phenomenon without merely parroting back what their client’s are expressing?

- Why are discovery meeting recap emails so important and what should they look like?

- How can advisors “move from being an advice giver to being a thinking partner?”

- In an industry so focused on the present day and the future, why is looking back on the past so important? What impact might this have on individual investor behavior?

- What does Brendan consider to be the most important skill in financial advice?

https://www.wiredplanning.com

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-human-side-of-money

Compliance Code: 1112-OAS-4/19/2023

Kelsey Willock - Transforming Financial Education: The Power of Gamification in Learning May 25, 2023

Show notes

Tune in to hear:

- What was the spark or impetus that led Kelsey down the path to found Aura Finance?

- Why is it so crucial to help people get in the right mindset to invest and how can we begin to do so?

- What are some of the specific features of the Aura app that help promote financial mindfulness?

- How has Kelsey tried to hone the gamified elements in the Aura app to bring out the best possible behaviors in its end users?

- What are Kelsey’s thoughts on building a community within the app and having people self-report their income on the app?

- What hope do young people have in the face of some of the stark financial realities they face?

- How does Kelsey think about self-deception and try to encourage her customers to avoid it?

https://www.aurafinance.io

Compliance Code: 1108-OAS-4/19/2023

Heather Fortner - The Future of Financial Advising: Building a Human-First RIA Firm May 18, 2023

Show notes

Tune in to hear:

- How has Heather’s background in mental health shifted the way she leads and the way she goes to market?

- What advice, skills or resources does she try to imbue her advisors with to inoculate them against taking on too much of the stresses they help their clients work through?

- As practically as possible, what does “net worthwhile” look like and how does SignatureFD make it more than just a tagline?

- What led Heather to start using a bucketing strategy in the first place and what makes her approach unique?

- Why is SignatureFD's client retention rate so incredibly high? What do they do differently from their competition?

- Where does she think financial advice is headed in the next 10-20 years and how do the Tim Maurer’s of the world figure into this transition?

https://signaturefd.com

Compliance Code: 1088-OAS-4/18/2023

Jen Clinehens - The Power of Consumer Psychology: What Top Global Brands Do Differently May 11, 2023

Show notes

Tune in to hear:

- What are some of the psychology principles that Costco gets right as a brand?

- Is it better to make customer onboarding super fluid and effortless or to make it a bit more arduous and engage with the "sunk cost fallacy?"

- What is the “pratfall effect” and how was it used with great effect by brands like Apple, KFC and Domino’s?

- What is the “cocktail party effect” and how can we use it to our advantage?

- What does Nike do particularly well and how do they induce a sense of artificial scarcity?

- How can your average person in a consulting or advice type role leverage this concept of scarcity?

- Who distilled Cialdini’s 7 Principles of Persuasion down to just 3 and how are these best applied in practice?

Compliance Code: 0963-OAS-4/5/2023

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenclinehens

https://www.choicehacking.com

Dr. Michael Thomas Jr. - How Financial Empathy Can Transform Your Money Management Approach May 04, 2023

Show notes

Tune in to hear:

- Why does discussing money remain such a persistent taboo in our culture?

- Why is financial intimacy so critical and how can we work towards achieving it in our lives?

- How does financial intimacy, or intimacy more generally, relate to “feeling seen?”

- How can financial intimacy allow us to better see ourselves and unearth our personal money stories that have gone under our radar?

- We have a cognitive understanding that we can’t take our wealth with us when we die, but why is this so hard to understand in practice?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/MoneyandWellness

https://www.instagram.com/modomsolutions

Compliance Code: 0879-OAS-3/27/2023

Dave Nadig - Understanding Financial Futurism: Key Innovations Transforming Wealth Management Apr 27, 2023

Show notes

Tune in to hear:

- Dave is a “financial futurist.” What in the world is this and what does it look like practically in his day-to-day work?

- What “behavioral hacks” does Dave bring to bear in his own practice when he tries to look out beyond 2 years and how does he try to stay out of his own way when thinking about what the future might look like?

- Can the past be used as a vehicle for better understanding the future or is there not much to learn there and we are forecasting in ineffective ways by relying so heavily on the past?

- What is the place of innovation and cutting edge thinking in an industry that is often at its best when it's at its stodgiest?

- In the recent past we have socialized business failure while individualizing business success. What is it going to take for this Zeitgeist to change?

- Which financial innovations does Dave think hold the most promise? On the flip side – what financial innovations does he think are overrated?

- Learn how Dave connects the dots between the overall lack of institutional trust, “polycrisis” and the crisis of meaning.

- Things like the climate crisis can’t be solved on an individual level. How do we take our institutions back and have an appropriate amount of trust in them as a way to solve some of the biggest problems we face?

- What does the research say about whether or not the current flows into passive vehicles perturbs overall market functioning?

https://www.etftrends.com/author/davenadig

https://twitter.com/DaveNadig

https://twitter.com/Vetta_Fi

Compliance Code: 0850-OAS-3/24/2023

Mac Gardner - Teaching Kids About Money: Essential Tips for Building Financial Literacy Early Apr 20, 2023

Show notes

Tune in to hear:

- What life experiences gave rise to Mac Gardner’s mission to improve financial literacy particularly among children?

- What is Mac’s book, The Four Money Bears, all about and how has his experience been when sharing it with others all over the globe?

- Does Mac have any particularly memorable anecdotes about sharing the book in a classroom setting, or elsewhere, where he learned something unique from kids' reactions?

- Where are we falling short as a society and industry that’s allowing people to have such a huge gap in their financial education?

- Financial literacy education efforts often show lackluster results. How can we make financial literacy work for us in practice and not just in theory?

- What does Mac think the future of gamification will look like with respect to financial literacy?

- How can we properly use allowance to better teach our kids about the value of a dollar?

- How can parents with privilege help their kids gain some perspective on things?

https://www.thefourmoneybears.com

https://finlittech.com

Compliance Code: 0915-OAS-3/31/2023

Manish Khatta - On Markets and Marketing Apr 13, 2023

Show notes

Tune in to hear:

- Can Manish give a bit of background on Potomac and what has changed since he took the helm?

- Potomac is very committed to transparency and the idea of building in public. What has this process been like and what benefits have they seen from this approach? When have they had to follow through on their commitment to being honest about their shortcomings?

- Has there ever been a weakness or failing that sort of tested his willingness to be transparent about it?

- How does Manish balance his desire to be approachable and genuine with not wanting to appear unserious about a very serious thing?

- Of all the marketing campaigns Potomac has done, which one does Manish think was the most compelling?

- Can the literal construction of a portfolio help clients to stay the course? What is the role of product design in bringing about positive behavioral outcomes?

https://potomacfund.com

Compliance Code: 0824-OAS-3/20/2023

Rusty Vanneman (Live at Ascent in Orlando, FL) Apr 06, 2023

Show notes

Tune in to hear:

- What is the philosophy of investing Rusty grounds himself in and how does it keep his head on straight when he makes investment decisions?

- For someone who is in a position to make material decisions about others’ money - what responsibility do they have to “do the work” around understanding their own values, biases and behavior?

- What steps does Orion, as an institution take, to try to avoid falling prey to behavioral missteps?

- How do you make the distinction between being flighty about your investment philosophy and having the maturity to change your mind when the facts change?

- How does Rusty think about maximizing anxiety-adjusted returns and creating human first, bespoke portfolios?

- If Daniel was getting paid to consult a mutual fund PM what would his one key takeaway be?

- Does Daniel have any good tips for investment committee members?

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/orions-the-weighing-machine/id486850755

Compliance Code: 0737-OAS-3/13/2023