Podcasts about tversky

In this episode of Nurturing Financial Freedom, we shift focus from the hard numbers and take a deep dive into the psychological side of investing. Specifically, we explore loss aversion—the human tendency to feel the pain of financial loss more intensely than the pleasure of gains. As we've all seen in our work and our own portfolios, emotional reactions to market swings can often lead to irrational decisions. That's where understanding behavioral finance becomes a powerful tool in making smarter financial choices.We start with Ed breaking down the origins of loss aversion, rooted in the research of Kahneman and Tversky. Their work in the 1970s, which led to the development of prospect theory, shows that the average person perceives a $100,000 loss as twice as painful as a $100,000 gain is pleasurable. This cognitive imbalance causes two major pitfalls: people either avoid risk entirely and park money in cash—letting inflation erode value—or they panic-sell during downturns and miss out on rebounds, effectively locking in their losses.Ed walks us through real examples, including the volatility of April 2024, the pandemic crash of 2020, and the 2008 recession. He explains how our amygdala, hardwired to detect threats, doesn't differentiate between a market dip and a life-or-death situation, making our emotional reactions feel justified—even when they're counterproductive.Alex builds on this by offering techniques to manage this psychological bias. First, we need to build a financial plan with a properly diversified portfolio aligned to our specific timeline and goals. He emphasizes reframing our perspective—looking at a portfolio not as a cash balance but as ownership in companies that will likely be around for decades. He shares the analogy of home values: we don't sell our house when its Zestimate dips; likewise, we shouldn't rush to sell stocks when they temporarily fall.Other actionable strategies include pre-committing to actions like rebalancing during downturns, increasing contributions when prices are low, and resisting the urge to act impulsively. He underscores the power of long-term thinking—"expand the graph"—to see that every crash looks like a blip over decades. And finally, he recommends examining past mistakes. Nothing hits home more than seeing the dollars lost from a past panic sale.We close by reaffirming that while we can't guarantee outcomes, we can plan for volatility. The market is emotional in the short term but logical in the long term. With the right mindset and tools, we can better navigate the emotional terrain of investing and avoid letting fear dictate our strategy.Books Mentioned:Thinking Fast and Slow: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds: https://www.amazon.com/Undoing-Project-Friendship-Changed-Minds/dp/0393354776 You can always email Alex and Ed at info@birchrunfinancial.com or give them a call at 484-395-2190.Or visit them on the web at https://www.birchrunfinancial.com/Alex and Ed's Book: Mastering The Money Mind: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Money-Mind-Thinking-Personal/dp/1544530536 Any opinions are those of Ed Lambert Alex Cabot, and Jon Gay and not necessarily those of RJFS or Raymond James. The information contained in this report does not purport to be a complete description of the securities, markets, or developments referred to in this material. There is no assurance any of the trends mentioned will continue or forecasts will occur. The information has been obtained from sources considered to be reliable, but Raymond James does not guarantee that the foregoing material is accurate or complete. Any information is not a complete summary or statement of all available data necessary for making an investment decision and does not constitute a recommendation. The examples throughout this material are for illustrative purposes only. Raymond James does not provide tax or legal services. Please discuss these matters with the appropriate professional. Diversification and asset allocation do not ensure a profit or protect against a loss. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. CDs are insured by the FDIC and offer a fixed rate of return, whereas the return and principal value of investment securities fluctuate with changes in market conditions. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index of 500 widely held stocks that is generally considered representative of the U.S. Stock Market. Keep in mind that individuals cannot invest directly in any index, and index performance does not include transaction costs or other fees, which will affect actual investment performance. Individual investor's results will vary. This information is not intended as a solicitation or an offer to buy or sell any security referred to herein. Future investment performance cannot be guaranteed, investment yields will fluctuate with market conditions. International investing involves special risks, including currency fluctuations, differing financial accounting standards, and possible political and economic volatility. There is an inverse relationship between interest rate movements and bond prices. Generally, when interest rates rise, bond prices fall and when interest rates fall, bond prices generally rise. Investing in small cap stocks generally involves greater risks, and therefore, may not be appropriate for every investor. The prices of small company stocks may be subject to more volatility than those of large company stocks. Securities offered through Raymond James Financial Services, Inc. Member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Raymond James Financial Services Advisors, Inc. Birch Run Financial is not a registered broker/dealer and is independent of Raymond James Financial Services. Birch Run Financial is located at 595 E Swedesford Rd, Ste 360, Wayne PA 19087 and can be reached at 484-395-2190. Any rating is not intended to be an endorsement, or any way indicative of the advisors' abilities to provide investment advice or management. This podcast is intended for informational purposes only.Links are being provided for information purposes only. Raymond James is not affiliated with and does not endorse, authorize, or sponsor any of the listed websites or their respective sponsors.Raymond James is not responsible for the content of any website or the collection or use of information regarding any website's users or members.

Ton rouge est différent du mien... Vous avez déjà surement entendu cette phrase. Que chaque personne au monde voit les couleurs de manière différente, que l'on ressent les émotions de manière différente et qu'en fonction de notre culture nous avons un comportement différent. Mais est-ce réellement le cas pour tout ? Dans cet épisode, nous explorons des élements qui laissent supposer qu'en réalité il y a beaucoup de similitudes dans nos manières de réfléchir, voir le monde et se comporter, mais que nous ne les remarquons pas. Vous verrez comment vous pourrez bien plus rapidement analyser les émotions, les intentions et les processus cogntifis d'autrui.Un épisode universel...Références : - Jonauskaite, D., Abu-Akel, A., Dael, N., Oberfeld, D., Abdel-Khalek, A. M., Al-Rasheed, A. S., ... & Mohr, C. (2020). Universal patterns in color-emotion associations are further shaped by linguistic and geographic proximity. Psychological Science, 31(10), 1245-1260.- Shepard, R. N., & Cooper, L. A. (1992). Representation of Colors in the Blind, Color-Blind, and Normally Sighted. Psychological Science, 3(2), 97-104. - Dittrich, W. H., Troscianko, T., Lea, S. E., & Morgan, D. (1996). Perception of emotion from dynamic point-light displays represented in dance. Perception, 25(6), 727-738.- Tversky, Barbara. Mind in motion: How action shapes thought. Basic Books, 2019.- Paunonen, S. V., Ewan, K., Earthy, J., Lefave, S., & Goldberg, H. (1999). Facial features as personality cues. Journal of personality, 67(3), 555-583.L'art du mentaliste, un podcast animé par Taha Mansour et Alexis Dieux, musique par Antoine Piolé.Retrouvez Taha Mansour :- Son site : www.tahamansour.com- Instagram / Facebook : @TahaMentalismeRetrouvez Alexis Dieux :- Son site : https://www.alexisdieux.com/- Instagram : @alexisdieuxhypnose

This is a big week for us, since we officially re-launched the newsletter on our gorgeous new web address Riskgaming.com, which we are now hosting on Substack. You'll find all of our archives there, as well as much easier tools to manage your subscription to our Dispatches, Event Announcements, our edited Interviews and after almost a decade, Lux Recommends.We've had thousands of new people subscribe and follow us over the past two years, and so I figured this re-launch week was also an opportune time to recirculate one of my absolute favorite episodes of the podcast from three years ago in May 2022. Daniel Kahneman, alongside his long-time research partner Amos Tversky, pioneered the field now broadly known as decision science, exploring the economics, incentives, tradeoffs and psychologies of humans making judgments in moments of uncertainty. Tversky would pass away in 1996, and Kahneman would win the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for much of the work they partnered together on.In the months after our recording, Kahneman made an extraordinary decision under uncertainty of his own. Concerned about his future risk for dementia, he decided to travel to Switzerland at the age of 90 to pass away through assisted suicide. It was an astonishing final decision by the master of decision-making, and he conducted his final act in secrecy before it was revealed in The Wall Street Journal in a column by Jason Zweig last month.I had the opportunity to host Kahneman alongside World Series of Poker champion Annie Duke, legendary investment strategist Michael Maubaussin of Morgan Stanley's Counterpoint Global and our own founding managing partner Josh Wolfe for a lunch debate on the current research and trends underpinning risk, bias and decision-making. We merged our four part original series down to two parts. This week, we cover the ideas of pre-mortem as well as dissonance reduction and what circumstances lead people to changing their minds at all.

In this class series, Rabbi Shmuly will explore the Torah of the mind. We will explore how Jewish thought intersects with modern psychological studies and theories by examining thinkers like Freud, Piaget, Maslow, Frankl, and so many others over 50 interactive sessions. Looking at consciousness, moral reasoning, ego, love, learning, and evil, how can we better understand why humans act as they do? Considering our relationships, traumas, memories, conflicts, and self-esteem, how can reflecting on the deep complexity of our minds help us live more meaningful lives? Further, how might Jewish ethics and Jewish philosophy help us ask not just “how do we live” but “how might we live?” Join us for a deep dive into the collective, individual, and Jewish mind.Attend these classes live over Zoom by becoming a member for just $18 monthly: https://www.valleybeitmidrash.org/become-a-member.------------------Stay Connected with Valley Beit Midrash:• Website: https://www.valleybeitmidrash.org• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ValleyBeitMidrash ★ Support this podcast ★

Precisamos de 75 mil euros para ser felizes? Neste episódio, Filipa Galrão e Diogo Mendes, professor de Finanças na Universidade de Estocolmo, conversam sobre a forma como nos relacionamos com o dinheiro – da infância à reforma. Um tema que desperta cada vez mais interesse, mas sobre o qual ainda há muitas dúvidas, como revela o 4.º Inquérito à Literacia Financeira da População Portuguesa. Com uma abordagem prática, ficamos a conhecer os três pilares fundamentais de uma vida financeira saudável e esclarecem-se conceitos-chave como o de «juro composto», que Einstein considerava a oitava maravilha do mundo.Além disso, fica claro um contraste: enquanto nos países nórdicos a transparência salarial é norma, em Portugal falar de dinheiro permanece tabu - algo que um novo diploma europeu pode transformar a partir de 2026.Mas e a educação financeira nas escolas? Será uma solução viável? O Diogo apresenta-nos dados surpreendentes de várias geografias. Não só resultados promissores de países que foram pioneiros, mas também casos, como o de Portugal, em que ainda é cedo para avaliar a eficácia de projetos-piloto.No final, há um desafio inesperado que mostra como as nossas decisões financeiras estão cada vez mais automáticas e, ao mesmo tempo, desmaterializadas. Não perca!Referências úteis Conselho da União Europeia. (2024). Transparência salarial: Conselho e Parlamento chegam a acordo provisório para combater a discriminação salarial. Conselho da União Europeia.Friedman, M. (1957). Uma Teoria da Função de Consumo. Revista de Economia Política, 65(6), 446-464.Jennings, J. (2024, 12 de fevereiro). O Dinheiro Compra a Felicidade Afinal. Forbes.OCDE. (2023). Resultados PISA 2022 (Volume IV): O que a Vida Escolar Significa para a Vida dos Estudantes. Publicações OCDE.Plano Nacional de Formação Financeira. (2023). Inquérito à Literacia Financeira da População Portuguesa 2023. Todos Contam.Powdthavee, N., Burkhauser, R. V., & De Neve, J. E. (2023). Rendimentos Elevados e Bem-estar Humano em Todo o Mundo. The Economic Journal, 133(651), 1147-1173.Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1986). Escolha Racional e o Enquadramento das Decisões. The Journal of Business, 59(4), S251-S278. BiosDiogo Mendes Professor de Finanças na Stockholm School of Economics. Doutorou-se em finanças pela Nova School of Business and Economics, tendo passado pela London School of Economics e Imperial College London. Tem investigação nas áreas de literacia financeira, finanças da empresa e economia do desenvolvimento. Faz parte da equipa de coordenação do programa “Finanças para Todos” com o intuito de promover melhores práticas financeiras em Portugal.Filipa Galrão A Filipa vive no campo, mas é à cidade que vai quando precisa de euforia, seja em festivais de música ou no Estádio da Luz. Estudou Comunicação Social e Cultural na Universidade Católica. Em pequena, gravava o diário em K7, em graúda agarrou-se aos microfones da Rádio. Depois da Mega Hits e da Renascença, é agora uma das novas vozes da Rádio Comercial. Já deu à luz 1 livro infantil - Que Estranho!- e 2 filhos.

Facing increasingly sophisticated attacks from external adversaries, networked systems owners have to judiciously allocate their limited security budget to reduce their cyber risks. However, when modeling human decision-making, behavioral economics has shown that humans consistently deviate from classical models of decision-making. Most notably, prospect theory, for which Kahneman and Tversky won the 2002 Nobel memorial prize in economics, argues that humans perceive gains, losses and probabilities in a skewed manner. Furthermore, bounded rationality and imperfect best-response behavior has been frequently observed in human decision-making within the domains of behavioral economics and psychology. While there is a rich literature on these human decision-making factors in economics and psychology, most of the existing work studying ​ security of networked systems does not take into account these biases and noises. In this talk, we show our proposed novel behavioral security game models for the study of human decision-making in networked systems modeled by attack graphs. We show that behavioral biases lead to suboptimal resource allocation patterns. We also analyze the outcomes of protecting multiple isolated assets with heterogeneous valuations via decision- and game-theoretic frameworks. We show that behavioral defenders over-invest in higher-valued assets compared to rational defenders. We then propose different learning-based techniques and adapt two different tax-based mechanisms for guiding behavioral decision-makers towards optimal security investment decisions. In particular, we show the outcomes of such learning and mechanisms on different realistic networked systems. In total, our research establishes rigorous frameworks to analyze the security of both large-scale networked systems and heterogeneous isolated assets managed by human decision makers and provides new and important insights into security vulnerabilities that arise in such settings. About the speaker: Dr. Mustafa Abdallah is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Computer and Information Technology (CIT) Department at Purdue University in Indianapolis, with a courtesy appointment at Purdue Polytechnic Institute. He earned his Ph.D. from the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in 2022 and previously served as a tenure-track faculty member at IUPUI. His research focuses on game theory, behavioral decision-making, explainable AI, meta-learning, and deep learning, with applications in proactive security of networked systems, IoT anomaly detection, and intrusion detection. His work has been published in top security and AI venues, includingIEEE S&P, ACM AsiaCCS, IEEE TCNS, IEEE IoT-J, Computers & Security, and ACM TKDD. He has received the Bilsland Fellowship, multiple IEEE travel grants, and internal research funding from IUPUI. Dr. Abdallah has extensive industrial research experience, including internships at Adobe Research (meta-learning for time-series forecasting), Principal Financial Group (Kalman filter modeling for financial predictions), and RDI (deep learning for speech technology applications), which led to a U.S. patent and multiple publications. He holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Cairo University, with a focus on electrical engineering and engineering mathematics, respectively.

How do we learn? Usually from experience, of course. Maybe we visit some new place, or encounter a new tool or trick. Or perhaps we learn from someone else—from a a teacher or friend or YouTube star who relays some shiny new fact or explanation. These are the kinds of experiences you probably first think of when you think of learning. But we can also learn in another way: simply by thinking. Sometimes we can just set our minds to work—just let the ideas already in our heads tumble around and spark off each other—and, is if by magic, come away with a new understanding of the world. But how does this happen exactly? And does it only happen in humans?    My guest today is Dr. Tania Lombrozo. Tania is a Professor of Psychology at Princeton University; she and her research group study learning, reasoning, explanation, belief, and more. In a recent paper, Tania outlines this puzzling alternative form of learning—learning by thinking, as it's known—and presents evidence that it happens in both humans and AIs.   In this conversation, Tania and I talk about her longstanding work on explanation, and how it led her to study this less- obvious form of learning. We zoom in on four flavors of learning by thinking—learning through explanation, through simulation, through analogy, and through reasoning. We talk about the evidence that machines also learn in this way, and we consider whether animals could, too. We discuss how to resolve the paradox at the heart of "learning by thinking": how it could be that reshuffling old bits of knowledge can actually lead to new understanding. Along the way, Tania and I touch on: chain of thought prompting in LLMs, the Reddit community 'Explain Like I'm Five,' the illusion of explanatory depth, the power of thought experiments, Darwin and Galileo, imagination and rationalization, how psychology and philosophy complement each other, and whether we can also learn—not just by thinking in our proverbial armchairs—but also by writing and talking.   So, happy 2025, friends! We've got some great stuff lined up for the coming year. If you like what we're doing with the show, we would—as ever—appreciate your support. And the main way you can support us is just by helping us get the word out—by telling a friend about us, or a colleague, or a student, or your thousands of social media followers.   Alright, without further ado, onto my conversation with Dr. Tania Lombrozo. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode will be available soon.   Notes and links 3:30 – An influential early paper on “chain-of-thought prompting” in Large Language Models. A recent preprint by a team, including Dr. Lombrozo, exploring the cases where “chain-of-thought prompting” actually impairs performs in LLMs. 8:00 – For some of Dr. Lombrozo's important earlier work on explanation, see here and here. 11:15 – The Reddit community ‘Explain Like I'm Five.' 13:00 – An early paper on the “curse of knowledge”—the difficulty of ignoring what you know. 19:00 – Dr. Lombrozo's recent review article on “learning by thinking” is here. Another article of hers on the same topic is here. 20:00 – The original report of the “self-explanation” effect. The original report of the “illusion of explanatory depth.” 30:00 – For a basic description of Galileo's falling bodies thought experiment see here. A discussion of this thought experiment by philosopher Tamar Gendler. 38:00 – For analysis of Darwin's analogy between artificial and natural selection, see here and here. 42:00 – A paper on rationalization by Fiery Cushman.  48:00 – A paper from Dr. Lombrozo's lab on “need for explanation.” The original paper describing the construct of “need for cognition.” 52:00 – The original report of “framing effects” by Tversky and Kahneman. 54:00 – A paper by Annette Karmiloff-Smith discussing “representational redescription.” 1:02:00 – A recent overview of issues surrounding “explainable” AI.    Recommendations Alison Gopnik, Andrew Meltzoff, & Patricia Kuhl, The Scientist in the Crib Frank Keil, Wonder: Childhood and the Lifelong Love of Science   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.   Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.    For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

This episode is about getting out of your comfort zone to realize your dreams, using the Oxcart Technique developed by Terry Fossum. The Oxcart Technique is based on the principles of prospect theory, developed by Kahneman and Tversky in 1979. This states that people are more motivated to avoid pain than to seek pleasure. Terry's method involves creating a failure scenario alongside a success scenario, thereby leveraging both positive and negative emotions to drive action. This dual approach ensures that individuals remain motivated even when the allure of positive outcomes is not enough. Where did this technique get its name? From a story about a farmer and an ox. How can the farmer motivate the ox to pull a cart? A carrot dangled in front of the ox provides motivation, assuming he's hungry. But if he's not, the ox needs an extra prod. A stick held by the farmer driving the ox and cart provides that motivation. And between the carrot and the stick lies motivation. Ready to take the first step to creating your own carrot and stick? Listen to the full episode now and start your journey towards achieving your dreams. Visit for more on Terry Learn more about Terry at     What they're saying:   “This is a beautiful book about life, its imperfections, its challenges, and its joys. It is a book of hope and wisdom for all of us facing a bump in the road.” –Pragito Dove   “Pat has woven together beautiful stories of life setbacks that have been transformed into spiritual growth. This book is a gift and a must-read for souls experiencing pain and yearning for growth.”   –Gary Hensel   Learn more at   Follow Bump on: ➡️  ➡️  ➡️  ➡️  ➡️   

In this compelling episode of the Stuck In My Mind Podcast, host Wize El Jefe welcomes the inspiring Terry Fossum for a profound discussion on mastering goal-setting and personal transformation. Titled "From Struggles to Success: Terry Fossum's Journey and Goal Setting Insights" the episode delves into key life lessons, touching on motivation, resilience, and the journey from adversity to success. Terry Fossum, a Wall Street Journal bestselling author and influencer with a top TED Talk, brings his rich background and genuine experience to the table. Growing up in McAllen, Texas, a region marked by crime and violence, Terry faced immense challenges, including the death of his father during his high school years. Despite a low point following his father's death and discouragement from a neighbor, Terry used these adversities as catalysts for motivation, eventually emerging as a beacon of success and personal growth. His story underscores the importance of resilience and effective goal-setting strategies, which he shares with the audience. Fossum and Wize El Jefe explore a range of topics, starting with the value of helping others as a source of joy. Terry advises listeners to engage in activities such as visiting pet shelters or nursing homes, emphasizing how these simple acts can uplift spirits and enrich personal well-being. They also discuss the importance of removing toxic relationships from one's life, stressing the need to surround oneself with supportive and positive individuals to foster a conducive environment for personal growth. The episode highlights the crucial role of self-improvement, a theme close to Wize El Jefe's heart as he recounts his journey of personal growth and the joy of sharing impactful stories through his podcast. A poignant anecdote enlivened the conversation, as Wize recounts releasing a podcast episode a year late, which miraculously had a timely impact on a guest grappling with self-discovery. This story emphasizes the power of storytelling in creating a ripple effect that can motivate and guide listeners toward finding their purpose. Terry introduces his renowned "Oxcart Technique," a practical and emotionally-driven approach to goal-setting that consists of three distinct steps: the "Failure Scenario," which outlines the consequences of failing to achieve goals; the "Daily Actions," which involves committing to SMART goals; and the "Success Scenario," which provides positive visualization to generate emotional motivation. By encouraging listeners to read these scenarios in the morning and night, Terry provides a clear blueprint for maintaining focus and enthusiasm toward achieving personal goals. The conversation takes a reflective turn as both speakers acknowledge the acceptance of imperfection. They express that everyone is on a learning curve, and mistakes are part of the journey. Terry underscores the importance of using time constructively by engaging with positive content, such as uplifting podcasts, to remain motivated. He also shares his experiences on a survival reality show, revealing how his Oxcart Technique aided him in preparation and ultimate victory, offering listeners a firsthand account of its effectiveness. Wize El Jefe adds depth to the conversation by sharing his personal narrative of overcoming adversity. Growing up in East New York, Brooklyn, Wize faced his own set of challenges, including the loss of significant loved ones, which left him feeling angry and lost. Determined to change his life, Wize sought therapy, learned about goal-setting and financial literacy, rebuilt his life, and eventually started the podcast to inspire others by sharing stories of overcoming hardships. Both Terry and Wize openly discuss the misconceptions surrounding goal-setting, debunking myths such as the fallacy of the Harvard goal-setting study and the mistaken belief that mere visualization can lead to success. They emphasize that tangible action is as crucial as positive thinking, ensuring the audience understands that real progress requires effort and persistence. The episode also touches on the concept of comfort zones and how fears—ranging from failure to success—can restrict personal growth. Through Terry's insights on the Prospect Theory by Kahneman and Tversky, listeners learn the psychological aspects of motivation, particularly how the desire to avoid pain often outweighs the pursuit of pleasure. In a heartfelt segment, the duo discusses the impact of small, positive interactions and the importance of kindness. Terry shares a poignant story about a housekeeper struggling with addiction whom he chose to help rather than prosecute, leading to her 14 years of sobriety. This story, included in Terry's book, exemplifies the power of compassion and its ripple effect on people's lives. As the episode draws to a close, Wize El Jefe reflects on the enriching experience of the conversation, expressing gratitude for Terry's valuable insights. The episode leaves listeners with a wealth of practical advice, inspiring stories, and a call to action—motivate yourself from within, take decisive action daily, and help others through kindness and support. Terry's promotion of his podcasts, including "The Comeback Chronicles" and resources like "comebackchroniclespodcast.com" and "terrylfossum.com," provide additional avenues for listeners seeking continued growth and inspiration. This episode of the Stuck In My Mind Podcast is more than just a conversation; it is a rallying cry for those at crossroads in life, encouraging them to embrace challenges, discard negativity, and create their own extraordinary paths to success.

Conceptual papers that offer new theories are hard to write and even harder to publish. You do not have empirical data to back up your arguments, which makes the papers easy to reject in the review cycle. We are also typically not well trained in theorizing, and there isn't even a clear process to theorizing we could learn or follow. Does that mean that we shouldn't even try to write theory papers? We ponder these questions, figure out what is so hard in writing conceptual papers – and share a few tricks that might help if you still wanted to write such a paper.  References Berente, N., Gu, B., Recker, J., & Santhanam, R. (2021). Managing Artificial Intelligence. MIS Quarterly, 45(3), 1433-1450. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Aldine Publishing Company. Watson, R. T., Boudreau, M.-C., & Chen, A. J. (2010). Information Systems and Environmentally Sustainable Development:  Energy Informatics and New Directions for the IS Community. MIS Quarterly, 34(1), 23-38. Lee, A. S., & Baskerville, R. (2003). Generalizing Generalizability in Information Systems Research. Information Systems Research, 14(3), 221-243. Tsang, E. W. K., & Williams, J. N. (2012). Generalization and Induction: Misconceptions, Clarifications, and a Classification of Induction. MIS Quarterly, 36(3), 729-748. Yoo, Y., Henfridsson, O., & Lyytinen, K. (2010). The New Organizing Logic of Digital Innovation: An Agenda for Information Systems Research. Information Systems Research, 21(4), 724-735. Yoo, Y. (2010). Computing in Everyday Life: A Call for Research on Experiential Computing. MIS Quarterly, 34(2), 213-231. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of Perception Routledge. Baldwin, C. Y., & Clark, K. B. (2000). Design Rules, Volume 1: The Power of Modularity. MIT Press. Weick, K. E. (1989). Theory Construction as Disciplined Imagination. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 516-531. Hevner, A. R., March, S. T., Park, J., & Ram, S. (2004). Design Science in Information Systems Research. MIS Quarterly, 28(1), 75-105. Sætre, A. S., & van de Ven, A. H. (2021). Generating Theory by Abduction. Academy of Management Review, 46(4), 684-701. Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263-291. Farjoun, M. (2010). Beyond Dualism: Stability and Change As a Duality. Academy of Management Review, 35(2), 202-225. Recker, J., & Green, P. (2019). How do Individuals Interpret Multiple Conceptual Models? A Theory of Combined Ontological Completeness and Overlap. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 20(8), 1210-1241. Jabbari, M., Recker, J., Green, P., & Werder, K. (2022). How Do Individuals Understand Multiple Conceptual Modeling Scripts? Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 23(4), 1037-1070. Cornelissen, J. P. (2017). Editor's Comments: Developing Propositions, a Process Model, or a Typology? Addressing the Challenges of Writing Theory Without a Boilerplate. Academy of Management Review, 42(1), 1-9. Recker, J., Lukyanenko, R., Jabbari, M., Samuel, B. M., & Castellanos, A. (2021). From Representation to Mediation: A New Agenda for Conceptual Modeling Research in a Digital World. MIS Quarterly, 45(1), 269-300. Haerem, T., Pentland, B. T., & Miller, K. (2015). Task Complexity: Extending a Core Concept. Academy of Management Review, 40(3), 446-460. Kallinikos, J., Aaltonen, A., & Marton, A. (2013). The Ambivalent Ontology of Digital Artifacts. MIS Quarterly, 37(2), 357-370. Ho, S. Y., Recker, J., Tan, C.-W., Vance, A., & Zhang, H. (2023). MISQ Special Issue on Registered Reports. MIS Quarterly, . Simon, H. A. (1990). Bounded Rationality. In J. Eatwell, M. Milgate, & P. Newman (Eds.), Utility and Probability (pp. 15-18). Palgrave Macmillan. James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. Henry Holt and Company. Watson, H. J. (2009). Tutorial: Business Intelligence - Past, Present, and Future. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 25(39), 487-510.  Baird, A., & Maruping, L. M. (2021). The Next Generation of Research on IS Use: A Theoretical Framework of Delegation to and from Agentic IS Artifacts. MIS Quarterly, 45(1), 315-341.

Did you know that when you spend time on an online platform, you could be experiencing between six to eight different experimental treatments that stem from several hundred A/B tests that run concurrently? That's how common digital experimentation is today. And while this may be acceptable in industry, large-scale digital experimentation poses some substantial challenges for researchers wanting to evaluate theories and disconfirm hypotheses through randomized controlled trials done on digital platforms. Thankfully, the brilliant has a new paper forthcoming that illuminates the orthogonal testing plane problem and offers some guidelines for sidestepping the issue. So if experiments are your thing, you really need to listen to what is really going on out there. References Abbasi, A., Somanchi, S., & Kelley, K. (2024). The Critical Challenge of using Large-scale Digital Experiment Platforms for Scientific Discovery. MIS Quarterly, . Miranda, S. M., Berente, N., Seidel, S., Safadi, H., & Burton-Jones, A. (2022). Computationally Intensive Theory Construction: A Primer for Authors and Reviewers. MIS Quarterly, 46(2), i-xvi. Karahanna, E., Benbasat, I., Bapna, R., & Rai, A. (2018). Editor's Comments: Opportunities and Challenges for Different Types of Online Experiments. MIS Quarterly, 42(4), iii-x. Kohavi, R., & Thomke, S. (2017). The Surprising Power of Online Experiments. Harvard Business Review, 95(5), 74-82. Fisher, R. A. (1935). The Design of Experiments. Oliver and Boyd. Pienta, D., Vishwamitra, N., Somanchi, S., Berente, N., & Thatcher, J. B. (2024). Do Crowds Validate False Data? Systematic Distortion and Affective Polarization. MIS Quarterly, . Bapna, R., Goes, P. B., Gupta, A., & Jin, Y. (2004). User Heterogeneity and Its Impact on Electronic Auction Market Design: An Empirical Exploration. MIS Quarterly, 28(1), 21-43. Somanchi, S., Abbasi, A., Kelley, K., Dobolyi, D., & Yuan, T. T. (2023). Examining User Heterogeneity in Digital Experiments. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 41(4), 1-34. Mertens, W., & Recker, J. (2020). New Guidelines for Null Hypothesis Significance Testing in Hypothetico-Deductive IS Research. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 21(4), 1072-1102. GRADE Working Group. (2004). Grading Quality of Evidence and Strength of Recommendations. British Medical Journal, 328(7454), 1490-1494. Abbasi, A., Parsons, J., Pant, G., Liu Sheng, O. R., & Sarker, S. (2024). Pathways for Design Research on Artificial Intelligence. Information Systems Research, 35(2), 441-459. Abbasi, A., Chiang, R. H. L., & Xu, J. (2023). Data Science for Social Good. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 24(6), 1439-1458. Babar, Y., Mahdavi Adeli, A., & Burtch, G. (2023). The Effects of Online Social Identity Signals on Retailer Demand. Management Science, 69(12), 7335-7346. Hevner, A. R., March, S. T., Park, J., & Ram, S. (2004). Design Science in Information Systems Research. MIS Quarterly, 28(1), 75-105. Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263-291. Benbasat, I., & Zmud, R. W. (2003). The Identity Crisis Within The IS Discipline: Defining and Communicating The Discipline's Core Properties. MIS Quarterly, 27(2), 183-194. Gregor, S., & Hevner, A. R. (2013). Positioning and Presenting Design Science Research for Maximum Impact. MIS Quarterly, 37(2), 337-355. Rai, A. (2017). Editor's Comments: Avoiding Type III Errors: Formulating IS Research Problems that Matter. MIS Quarterly, 41(2), iii-vii. Burton-Jones, A. (2023). Editor's Comments: Producing Significant Research. MIS Quarterly, 47(1), i-xv.  Abbasi, A., Dillon, R., Rao, H. R., & Liu Sheng, O. R. (2024). Preparedness and Response in the Century of Disasters: Overview of Information Systems Research Frontiers. Information Systems Research, 35(2), 460-468.

Send us a Text Message.This week we are discussing some of the common myths about gender differences in communication. From the misconception that women talk more than men to the reality of who interrupts more frequently, we sift through scientific studies and personal anecdotes to bring clarity to these contentious topics. With references to various studies, we reveal how both men and women speak approximately the same number of words per day, proving that context is crucial in interpreting communication patterns.  During the episode we journey through various cultural landscapes to uncover surprising similarities in human behavior, even in high-stakes environments. By focusing on commonalities rather than distinctions, we build a more nuanced understanding of how humans interact. Our discussion critiques the methodologies of psychological studies, exploring how oversimplification can lead to misleading conclusions. We also pay homage to the groundbreaking work of researchers like Kahneman and Tversky, emphasizing the importance of long-term data and meta-analyses for accurate insights.  Our exploration doesn't stop at verbal communication; we delve into nonverbal cues, hormonal influences, and societal constructs. Through real-life examples and personal stories, we demonstrate that empathy and clear understanding are crucial for successful interactions. Whether it's in everyday encounters or high-pressure scenarios, this episode offers valuable insights and practical advice for anyone looking to improve their communication skills.Thank you so much for tuning in, we hope you enjoy the episode and please check out our Patreon channel where we have a lot more content, as well as subscriber only episodes of the show. If you enjoy the podcast, I would kindly ask that you leave us a review and more importantly, please share it with a friend. Thank you for your time and don't forget that Training Changes Behavior!Support the Show.Website: https://thehumanbehaviorpodcast.buzzsprout.com/shareFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheHumanBehaviorPodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehumanbehaviorpodcast/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ArcadiaCognerati More about Greg and Brian: https://arcadiacognerati.com/arcadia-cognerati-leadership-team/

Riccardo Cosentino takes an ongoing LinkedIn debate with Ian Heptinstall live in this episode of Navigating Major Programmes for a fascinating conversation with one common goal: to elevate major programmes. The pair discuss the use of reference class forecasting, the predominance of strategic misrepresentation, and optimism bias during project estimation—both drawing on their practical and academic experiences to substantiate their points. “One of my concerns, if we think the problem with projects is that our estimates are too light and the answer is to increase the estimates, is that it is a vicious spiral. That just means expected costs will go up and up and up over time. If we separate the three elements of time, and think maybe we missed the target, not because the target was impossible, but our methods of execution were such that it made it very hard to achieve the target. That actually gives us an opening for a virtuous cycle because there are, so called, black swans that show that the same estimates are achievable and can be done reliably. ” –   Ian Heptinstall   Ian Heptinstall combines over 35 years of industry experience with academic expertise, to bring a unique perspective to CapEx & Construction Project Management and Procurement & Supply Chain. As an Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham, Ian focuses on practical methodologies like Theory of Constraints (TOC), critical chain, and collaborative procurement, which he advocates for practically improving performance in various industries. Key Takeaways:The importance of focusing on execution and preparation over quality of estimations  Tipping the Iron Law on its head with collaborative contracting, IPD and alliance contracting  Reference class forecasting in project management: advantages and limitationsImpact of strategic misrepresentation and optimism bias; the political influence on project estimates and management  If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. The conversation doesn't stop here—connect and converse with our LinkedIn community: Follow Ian Heptinstall on LinkedInFollow Navigating Major Programmes on LinkedInFollow Riccardo Cosentino on LinkedInRead Riccardo's latest at wwww.riccardocosentino.com Transcript:Riccardo Cosentino  0:05  You're listening to Navigating Major Programmes, a podcast that aims to elevate the conversations happening in the infrastructure industry and inspire you to have a more efficient approach within it. I'm your host, Riccardo Cosentino. I bring over 20 years of Major Programme Management experience. Most recently, I graduated from Oxford University Saïd Business School, which shook my belief when it comes to navigating major programmes. Now it's time to shake yours. Join me in each episode as I press the industry experts about the complexity of Major Programme Management, emerging digital trends and the critical leadership required to approach these multibillion-dollar projects. Let's see where the conversation takes us.   Riccardo Cosentino  0:53  Hello, everyone, and welcome to a new episode of Navigating Major Programmes. I'm here today with Ian Heptinstall, who is Associate Professor in Programme and Project Management at the University of Birmingham and he's joining me today from Birmingham, I assume. How are you doing, Ian?   Ian Heptinstall  1:09  Hi, Riccardo. Not quite Birmingham, I live in Cheshire. So I'm closer to Manchester or Liverpool than Birmingham.   Riccardo Cosentino  1:15  Okay.   Ian Heptinstall  1:16  But fortunately, most of my students aren't at Birmingham either, they're all over the world. Riccardo Cosentino  1:21  And I mean, maybe just for the audience, you and I connected a few times on LinkedIn exchanging views, exchanging comments on various posts on various topics. And so I think we finally, I think you finally prompted that we could have a more productive conversation on the podcast rather than on comments on LinkedIn, which is always helpful, but probably not the most conducive way of having a conversation. And so why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?   Ian Heptinstall  1:48  Exactly, thank you, Riccardo. I am Ian Heptinstall. I'm a late career academic, I've been working in academia at the University of Birmingham now for five years, primarily in a teaching role, although I've started to add some research elements to that. And I currently teach on an MSc program that's delivered to part-time students who study by distance learning. So my students are working in project organizations on projects all around the world. And they want to add to that master's level insight. And as we were chatting too before, our focus in the UK is that at master's level, the key component of that is critical thinking, critical analysis, critical thinking, understanding the evidence behind ideas. But before I joined academia, I had 35 years or so in practical experience. I qualified as an engineer. I started working in the chemical industry in the mid-80s, mostly in project-related roles, either managing small projects or manufacturing facilities, and managing larger projects, being a technical expert, often supporting projects. That was back in the days when project owners had a self-delivery capability, so they had their own engineering organizations. Interestingly, in the 90s, the company I worked for was known as ICI, which doesn't really exist anymore. But it was the third largest chemical company in the world, so-called bellwether of the U.K. business environment and the U.K. stock market. But during the 90s, it was one of the many organizations that started to sort of what Professor Stuart Reid calls "hollowing out," that in-house capability of employees was reduced with a view to what we can but that service in as and when we needed it. And actually, in the late 90s and early 2000s, client organizations could buy that in because the contractors and consultancies had ex-employees there who had got that 20 years of experience of how to think like a project owner and what impact that had on managing the project through its own lifecycle. So that gave me the chance to see projects from the owner's perspective and a supplier's perspective. Later in the 90s, I was involved in one of the first collaborative contracted project alliances in the U.K. that wasn't in the oil and gas industry. And now, I don't understand why all project procurement is not done collaboratively using project alliances. But that's not the topic for tonight's discussion.  Riccardo Cosentino  5:08  Yeah, that's another podcast. That's another long podcast. You and I exchanged on this a few times.   Ian Heptinstall  5:14  Yeah, definitely.   Riccardo Cosentino  5:17  So what are we talking about today, then? Ian Heptinstall  5:20  We, as you said, we had some chats on LinkedIn about the ideas of the use of reference class forecasting, the predominance of strategic misrepresentation, optimism bias during project estimation, all wrapped up into what I've started calling the optimistic estimate hypothesis. In the debts, a proposed way that project environments work. The idea being because the data shows that most estimates, sorry, most projects fail to achieve their targets, Flyvbjerg made famous as the Iron Law of projects, was the Iron Law of mega project management, but became projects, that is about over time, over budget, under benefits, over and over again. And I think there's a significantly strong range of data that says a large proportion of projects fail to hit their own targets. So my argument wasn't with that conclusion. What I'm calling the optimistic estimate hypothesis says the reason for that is that the targets themselves were always impossible to achieve. And because they're impossible to achieve, that's why we never hit them. And therefore, the solution to that is to stop impossible targets being associated with projects when they get approved. And then the proposed intervention is using a technique known as reference class forecasting or a variation of reference class forecasting. So not always based on absolute values but relative percentage performance, which is another concern of the implementation of the method. It basically says, let's make sure that the target is at least compatible to targets we've had in the past. And on face value, I've got no issue with that. If, like me, you've come up from fairly mature project management and engineering environments, one of the estimating methods that has always been used is based on past performance. Riccardo Cosentino  7:56  Benchmarking.   Ian Heptinstall  7:57  Yeah. It's not performance benchmarking in the true sense of the term, it's taking your own data and seeing how compatible it is. Parametric estimating is a method, so long as you've got the feedback cycles from actuals that keep your estimating databases up to date. Now maybe tying into the observation about the hollowing out of project-owning organizations, maybe that feedback loop of capturing actuals and feeding it back into estimating data was broken. I don't know, you're probably more closely associated with that than I am. Professional estimators should not be naive of real estimating data in the past. I can't see it just as being biased from professional estimators. Amateur estimators, I can understand how they would be naive and miss things, but not professionals. Riccardo Cosentino  9:02  Look, I'm a big subscriber of your theory. I am 100% in agreement with you. In fact, I think your theory or thesis has got a lot of strength and in fact.   Ian Heptinstall  9:21  Can we clarify which one because I don't think the optimistic estimate hypothesis is valid. I'm just describing what it is. We're here for me to fix some holes in it.   Riccardo Cosentino  9:31  So, I actually think it's, I think it's actually very valid. And the reason I think it's very valid, because in my experience, I have always looked at a project, you know I've 25 years experience in this industry, and I always wondered from a purely technical standpoint, if you had unlimited access to data or if you have a lot of data and you have a lot of experience and you have a lot of experienced individuals, you can approximate an estimate. However, historically, or my experience was that all of the projects I worked on were over budget, all of them. So I could not understand how very capable, very intelligent human beings, with great experience could not estimate a closer to the actual. Because statistically speaking, I mean, if it was random, it will be 50/50. Right? You know, sometimes.   Ian Heptinstall  10:33  Why? There's many phenomena in the world that are not normally distributed. So why would we expect it if it was really random? But I don't think it is random? I think it's (inaudible). Riccardo Cosentino  10:48  I don't think it is random either. But that's what I'm saying. It's like, if it was random, it would be 50/50. Right? So if he was really, if it was impossible to estimate something, or really, really, really difficult to estimate something, then it will be a random outcome, which will be a 50/50. But that's not a problem we have because the majority of the projects are over budget, right? It's not, or at least the mega project. Let me define it a bit, a bit better, it's not really the mega project that I have experience with.   Ian Heptinstall  11:25  Shall I give you a mega project that smashed the reference class?   Riccardo Cosentino  11:31  Yes.   Ian Heptinstall  11:33  Anyone who travels a lot long distances will know Embraer who work along with Bombardier, make the sort of medium-sized passenger jets, with Boeing and Airbus on the much bigger jet. The reference class for designing, developing and bringing to operations a new passenger jet was between 80 and 100 months. And in the new jets that have been produced the century since the turn of the millennium, many have estimated six years, but they've all taken about eight years. Embraer estimated five years and completed the project seven weeks early. So had they planned and achieved to the reference class, they'd have brought the second generation E-jets, the E2 jets to market just before COVID struck. As it is now, the E2 jets have had, for them, record sales performance and one of the most efficient in their class on the market at the moment. So they didn't follow the reference class. And it's extremely complex to about a four to $5 billion project. Riccardo Cosentino  13:08  And I don't, okay, I think, I think, I don't, I think we were saying, I think I was trying to explain why I believe that the, how do you call it, the optimism estimate hypothesis, because it resonates with, why it resonates with me is because I think there is something systemic in the way the estimates are put together. I couldn't put my finger to it before I started reading, got myself educated on the topic. And that sounds a fairly rational explanation that, you know, strategic misrepresentation and optimism bias play a role in that. The reference class forecasting, I think I need to clarify, because I would never make an estimate out of a reference class forecaste. Like, that's not how you estimate things. And I think when you don't have the certainty, when you're talking about things where you making assumptions, you're never going to be 100% correct. So the way, personally, I think you have to do it and this is done in other industry, you triangulate, you know, you start from a bottom up, then you do a top down and then you start layering on qualitative factors and then at the end, you make a decision on what number to pick, but it's a decision based on on multiple parameters. And to me, reference forecasts, you know, I give the example many times about the mergers and acquisition industry, right? In M&A, you start with the discounted cash flow, lets you bottom up estimate of how much your company's worth and then, but whenever you do a DCF you need to make assumptions you know, you got to predict what the revenue growth over the next five years is going to be, blah, blah, blah. And so those assumptions might or might not be right. So you have one data point, then you have another data point, which is your reference class forecast. So in the finance industry, it's going to comps ratio, comps analysis, where you're looking at similar companies. You're looking at how much they're worth on the stock market and you trying to draw similarity. And that's your second data point that will be different from your bottom up. It'd be your top, right? So now you got two data points on trying to identify what a company is worth, and the worth of a company is very subjective as well. So then you got to layer in your qualitative analysis. So to me, yeah, I'm not here to debate the reference class forecast. It is an estimating tool. I'm here to debate that there is optimism bias and the risk strategic measure representation. And so what do we do about that? Ian Heptinstall  15:56  I agree that those things exist. The optimism bias, I'm not sure. I'm still still thinking about that bit. Because if you, in reading the literature, a strong link is made to the work of Kahneman and Tversky and Daniel Kahneman's introduction of the term optimism bias and estimates. And what's interesting is if you look at, Kahneman use as an example that he was involved in developing a new educational course and textbook in Israel, and when you read it through, the bad with retrospect estimates were from the non-experts, the expert in the room knew it would take seven years and had the reference class in their head. But they were not, you know, they were in a support role. So actually, the expert estimate was quite good. It was the amateur estimate that was deemed to be optimistic. But when thinking about that, it seemed to me that when we're talking about time and money, either spent or estimated, they, an estimate will have three components. The first component is what it is feasible to do with it. The perfect position. Then there's another set of factors that relate to things outside your control, outside influences, unknowable risks and things that could emerge that have an impact on how long something will take. But there are two separate components. There's actually a third component particularly relevant when we're talking about projects, and that the whole collection of, of managerial practices of how we go about doing the thing, so that the time that we estimate and the time that it takes, I like to see us having at least those three major components. Now, the "iron law of projects" tells us that the total time estimate was less than it actually took us. I think we get much more insight, if we think okay, well, which of those three components had the biggest role to play? Was it, it being feasible or unfeasible? Was the estimate that bad it was physically impossible to do? Were there things that were unreasonable that professionals to have known about in advance? Were there the black swans, so to speak? And if there were, at least that explains to us where the issue arose? Or was it how we go about managing and implementing our projects? Are they inherently inefficient? Are they the reason that we struggle so much to deliver to our estimates? So, I'm questioning is it the feasibility of the estimate that's wrong? Or is it how we've gone about doing it? Because in the field of construction capital projects, the methods around the world are fairly consistent. You know, where I've done my straw polls over my career, I see great levels of similarity. People often, "How do you know so much because you've never been to our country before?" Colombia, you're not that different. How do you know African oil and gas industry? I've had the same conversations. Because I've said you're not as different as you think you are. But I think that third element is where the differences arise. Now, an analogy that I often use is if we think about the winning a marathon, world class athletes have no problem running a marathon in two and a half hours. Now, if I estimate that I will run my first ever marathon in two and a half hours, that estimate is not unfeasible. It's very unlikely. But it's unlikely because of the managerial aspects. Will I put the time and effort into the training? Will I do the preparation? Will I drink less and eat better food? Will I? So it's how I go about preparing for the marathon. One of my concerns if we think the problem with projects is our estimates are too light, and the answer is to increase the estimates, that's a vicious spiral. That just means expected costs will go up and up and up over time. If we separate the three elements of time and think maybe we missed the target, not because the target was impossible, but our methods of execution was such that it made it very hard to achieve the target, that actually gives us an opening for a virtuous cycle because there are so-called black swans that show that the same estimates are achievable and can be done reliably. We touched upon the area of collaborative contracting, IBD, project alliancing. This project from hundreds of real-life projects that have tipped the iron law on its head, you probably know, well know the Walker Hartley and Mills paper from 2013 from Australia, they had, 4% of projects went over budget, and about 20% went over time. So 90% were on or under budget 75% were on or under time. And all they changed was how the projects was procured. Riccardo Cosentino  22:13  So you're not going to get an argument from me on on that topic because I do believe, I, you know, another hypothesis, I do believe that collaboration is the answer when you're dealing with complex projects. However, just going back challenging a little bit on the is it the estimate was not feasible to begin with, is it actually the execution, if we increase the budgets to begin with, are we just to even cover the poor execution. I'm paraphrasing what you're saying. But, having said that, well, yeah, and this, this is more on the, you know, when you are dealing with lump sum, turnkey contracts rather than Alliance contract, where ultimately, a client comes up with an estimate, right, they have their own estimate, they have a budget, and especially for public sector clients, those budget are, even are fully disclosed and known in ballparks. And now you have a contractor trying to win the work. And, I think we talked about this, before we came online is you know, the contractor knows that in order to win the contract will have to be near or below the client estimate. And so now, the optimism bias, the strategic misrepresentation is perpetuated in the bidding process by the contractors because they need to secure the work. Right? So in in an environment where you have lump sum turnkey fixed price, I do think it matters to start with the right budget, because that dictates the behaviors of the parties in the following steps.   Ian Heptinstall  23:57  But what is the right budget? If you want a budget that is very feasible to be achieved? If people work in a particular way, yes. But then you risk just wasting lots of money because a fixed price lump sum contract is that what it will cost you whether it's needed or not. And yeah, if there weren't these high-risk pressures on the participants to sort of play games, hide things, not be totally open and honest. And one of my concerns with the idea of strategic misrepresentation and the term deception, these people are being deceptive, no, they're playing by the rules of the game that are set in. Now, as Eli Goldratt once said, "Tell me how you measure me, and I'll tell you how I will behave. If you measure me in a dumb way, don't complain about my behavior." And I think that's what we're observing in many of the practices in the construction sector where owners are using processes and then they're complaining when they don't win, or change the rules of the game or the approach they take is to get better at this adversarial aggressive game. So we see projects where the most experienced, the most capable and the most highly-salaried individuals are those trying to control and police the contractual loopholes and administrating and nail everything down, and the lawyers, the commercial managers, the senior (inaudible). Yep. A fortune is being spent on people who are not thinking about   Riccardo Cosentino  26:00  Solving problems. Ian Heptinstall  26:01  How do we get this hospital built quickly? How do we get this hospital built so that it's open and treating people 18 months sooner than we have in the past? Or that we can have 20 more beds, or that we can free up some money to employ so many more healthcare practitioners? It's focusing on the skills on the wrong thing. And actually, I think the industry is going to have a big problem if we get our way and collaborative contracting becomes the norm. What are we going to do with the hundreds of thousands of professionally qualified contract police? That's what a lot of people do. Riccardo Cosentino  26:46  Ian, again, I'm not gonna argue with you, because on that you and I agree, 100, like, to me, I think you said it and I always say it, like, there are resources on projects that add no value or solving problems for the success of the project. And so redirecting the the effort to those results, or redirecting those resources, to more meaningful, yeah, as I said, a lawyer, you know, a claim against the client does not make concrete being poured faster, you know? A schedule analysis in order to substantiate a claim does not make concrete being poured faster. Ian Heptinstall  27:29  And actually, the the issue with that is I think that the skills and the capability to manage the detail flow of work so that concrete is poured faster and worked on sooner, that sort of logistics flow management capability is also petrifying. Now, projects that are getting into techniques and methods like lean construction, are starting to work on that, or project production management are starting to bring in some of those skills and knowledge of how to how to manage the flow of work. But it's suddenly become a niche rather, whereas it should really be core. And the core skill is actually contract administering and locking up (inaudible).   Riccardo Cosentino  28:23  No value add, right? There is no value add to the ultimate goal, which is building infrastructure.   Ian Heptinstall  28:29  Back to the strategic misrepresentation, maybe. Riccardo Cosentino  28:30  No, I actually wanted to probe you on this, because I've had a few people in the past challenging me, and you and I have exchanged messages on this topic. But you know, one of the big criticism, and this is a small parenthesis because this is not what we're talking about today, but like the cost certainty, right? You know, I have people telling me, well, you know, if you don't have a fixed price contract, you don't have cost certainty. Ian Heptinstall  28:58  And they have got evidence that the contracted price is the final price. I have not seen that evidence. And whenever I ask experienced practitioners, they say none of the final price is always more than the tender price. So if you want cost certainty, put so much padding in there that everybody can fill their boots. But if you're in the public sector, that's almost malfeasance. Yeah, just just wasting taxpayers money just so that you can have an easy life. That's not what a professional job should be about, in my view. And I think the important point in there is focusing on reliability. Are you hitting our targets? The only thing that we can do is we take the target as sort of wherever it comes from that's the important thing and we've just got to match it. What about absolute value?  Why are we not focusing on what is the absolute value? Yeah, but by the reliability school of thinking, it's better if your company makes $10 million a year, having targeted $10 million, that's actually better than making $15 million of profit in the year, because your target was 18. The 15 is rubbish, because you were 18% underneath your target, it's much better to have 100% reliability even if the profit is lower. I don't buy that. There is a role for a stretch target. The idea of smart has caused a lot of damage to performance improvement. Now, if you're looking to strive to continuously improve the performance, you don't want to put too much pressure on the individual if they miss what they're trying to achieve. Now you need to be able to manage in different ways. You need to be able to, the accountability is about how somebody goes about doing the job. Not the trivial, easy to measure accountability of numbers on a spreadsheet. I don't need to know how they're doing the job, I just need to look at some numbers. Well, if you want a simple career, become an arm's length investor or go buy a casino in Las Vegas. Because then you don't care about the individual gamblers and who makes or less. You're managing by the average statistics of the organization. On project, we want to be the individual who knows what to do. We need to be striving for what is it we do to deliver a P-10 project? Not let's make our life easy, and plan for P-90. And that's my other concern about if we blame the estimate, we're taking the focus off our leverage improvements or improvement, our leverage opportunities for improvement rather, those are how we go about doing projects. And I actually believe that if we focus first on absolute performance, reliability will get better. Yeah, that I don't whether you play golf, I (inaudible). Riccardo Cosentino  32:45  Unsuccessfully. Yes. Ian Heptinstall  32:47  My son is very good at playing golf. And he's got a very low handicap, certainly much lower than mine. And his focus, the focus of low handicap golfers is getting better at golf. Their focus is absolute performance. And you know what comes with it? They're much more reliable, their variability of play also goes down. But if you focus on just playing to your handicap, yeah, you will do some very different things. And you might, you might play to your handicap, but you won't do very good rounds of golf. And I think on project, we should be focusing on how can we make your project performance significantly better? Yeah, I think if I was still operating in large, mega projects, I'd be frustrated that the Starrett Brothers and Eken could build the Empire State Building and formed it in 10 days in 1929 when we can't do anything like that today, and I don't believe it's because we have safety rules these days. It's nowhere near as simple as that. If the industry had started to perform like other industries have, the Ford was making the Model T around that time, yet cars are just as affordable these days, but you get much, much, much more for your money. Construction projects cost more and take longer.   Riccardo Cosentino  34:31  Yeah, I take your point. I mean, you know, absolutely, I mean, we should be focusing on measuring performance and focusing on the performance because ultimately, that's the stuff that gets things built. It's not, an initial estimate is not what gets things built. But unfortunately, stakeholders and shareholders focus on it.   Ian Heptinstall  34:57  They want to make more money. If you've only got a business, the idea of risk comes with any entrepreneurship and business. They know all their forecasts or estimates. Yeah, if sales come in on forecasts, somebody's been playing with the numbers. Yeah, nobody can see the future. So where do you think that comes from? Riccardo Cosentino  35:23  Again, I think cooperation and public, especially public company, by any corporation, has to deliver, has to provide indication of future performance.   Ian Heptinstall  35:37  Yeah. Let me give you an example. Because my other set of black swans that disprove the optimistic estimate hypothesis, so I've mentioned all the data on collaboratively contracted budgets, so all done. All projects are not overspending. It is possible to deliver and achieve the estimates. There's no evidence on those projects that the estimates have been done in any different way. And if they have, then that approach has helped avoid optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation. Which surely must also be a good thing. But one of my other set, and this is the Embraer example that I used earlier on, that's an example that have used the critical chain of both scheduling and execution management, which is, needs a collaborative team. But exploits that collaboration to identify issues much earlier on and overcome them. So it focuses on that doing the work. Even though from one perspective, it's just a way of scheduling and reporting. If it's done well, it helps to introduce a much higher frequency, a higher cadence of reporting and decision making at a much lower level. That is what achieves more efficient performance. So on critical chain, critical chain, scheduling and execution projects, hit their project-level commitments, very, very regularly. I know many organizations and I have talked to people in many organizations who have sort of moved from 20% projects on time in full to 95-100% in all sorts of project domains, simply from changing how they're scheduing and managing execution. They've also increased productivity as well. But if we're just looking, the reliability has gone up at the project level. What hasn't changed is the ability to predict how long individual tasks take. So that's the sort of strange dilemma, the individual tasks are nowhere near as predictable and reliable. But the overall project is, and I think if you're striving for reliable project level, cost and time is quite feasible, I think. I think it's quite feasible to live it. But if you pass the same mindset down at the detail levels of projects and try and get each individual task and activity to give an estimate, turn it into a commitment will hold you to accountable for it, that actually drives the behaviors that makes the project level achievement much worse. Riccardo Cosentino  38:56  Yeah and why is that? Ian Heptinstall  38:59  I think its inherent in the behavior of complex systems. Because the future is unknowable. And we all know that estimate is a fancy professional name for guests. So the important thing when you're working is to work efficiently and flag up issues that can have a consequence to the rest of the project as soon as you notice them without giving the boy who cried wolf signals that sort of says I've got a problem when it's not a real problem. And methods like critical chain, try and sort of do that damping. So individual tasks that are just taking a bit longer than normal the project to accommodate because we know that some projects, some tasks will have problems and some will go smoothly. But in advance we don't know which. So methods like critical chain and the costing equivalent for collaborative contracting, let's not worry about it. Because if we don't make those estimates into commitments, they will average each other out. That's one of the ironies of organizations that use Monte Carlo simulation to try and sort of aggregate up the numbers and produce and use the central limit theorem to get overall probability distributions at the project level. Because the the basic method of sorry, the basic algorithm for Monte Carlo assumes that the pluses balance the minuses. That's built into the maths. The trouble is, behaviorally, the managerial behaviors inhibit that, because the task estimates are commitment, what tends to happen is tasks get completed, on the due date or later. It's the managerial behaviors that inhibit a project or task saying ours finished three weeks early, the next task can start earlier. But that plus and minus is built into the maths of Monte Carlo. So when critics say well, Monte Carlo analysis is inaccurate, because the numbers never look like the analysis, and you know, a P-80, we never, we don't have 80% of the cases coming in, under or on that number. So the method must be wrong. Or actually, maybe it's giving us some insight into our managerial practices, or inhibiting the sort of pluses and the minuses. So I think that's what critical chain builds in. It allows and encourages the Task Managers to, so long as they're working in a focused way and they're reporting regularly, if it takes longer, it takes longer, because we know, there'll be other tasks in the project that go shorter than expected. And because we've removed the managerial obstacles to reporting admitting an early finish, nobody's going to come back and said, You must have added your estimate. We will reduce all of your other future estimates. We'll say, great, well done. Look who's with you. So in effect, you're embracing the inherent uncertainty, so that the central limit theorem will apply. And so that the project actually gets a tighter normal distribution. So the reason we don't get that in reality, in more common conventions, is that the management practices inhibit the pluses and the minuses averaging out. That's one hypothesis. That's the underpinning thinking.   Riccardo Cosentino  43:05  So if we link that back to the initial, at the beginning, you were talking about the three element of the hypothesis, right? Is a project over budget because of the inherent lack of feasibility of the initial estimate, poor, at the other spectrum, is the poor management, sorry the management practices we're not running these jobs properly and that's why we're late and over budget. And what was the middle one? The middle one was   Ian Heptinstall  43:34  Those are the true black swans and unknowable risks that come along with that, you know, they, that the the ground conditions on your chosen route, really were bad. Yeah, whether you do lots of geotechnical surveys before or after that is still at risk. Riccardo Cosentino  43:57  So your, one of your hypothesis, if I'm not mistaken, is that if we focus on the unfeasibility of the estimate, if we assume that is the unfeasibility of the estimate that is creating the delays we were hiding, that allows us to hide the true reasons why the project is going bad. Ian Heptinstall  44:20  Yeah, and it   Riccardo Cosentino  44:21  It could be the black swans or it could be poor performance.   Ian Heptinstall  44:24  Yeah, it hides it and it stops us focusing on getting our performance well. So yeah, back to my marathon running analogy. I had someone looked at some data from the London Marathon. So the P-90 duration for winning the marathon is six hours 15 minutes. And if I planned for the P-90, six hours 15, and managed to achieve it, great but no big thing counts a great winner. And to be honest, I will be dissatisfied myself. Because I know if you've, if you've put some time and effort in, it's quite feasible for average humans to hit the P-25 or the P-10 number. So it's not it's not the estimate, it's how we go about doing it. That's, that's my main concern. We've lost, we're blaming the estimate, and we're losing focus on execution. And there's so much actual strategic opportunity for executing differently. I, once we get the estimate, right, we turn the handle, turn the handle, churn out the railway easy.   Riccardo Cosentino  45:47  Okay, so now, the comments on LinkedIn are not very conducive to understand each other's points. So I think that's the conclusion I draw. And I agree with you, I 100% agree with you. My only note is that I also tried, the reason I'm a big defender of optimism bias, which is human representation is for very similar reason to yours, but I'm coming from a different perspective. You know, I am so fed up of seeing, especially in large, mega projects, sponsored by the public sector, they end up becoming political, in Canada will be a hockey puck, a political party, right? They just get tossed around. And, you know, there's a new government and an old government and you know, there's a blame game that happens. And the blame games is always around project over budget and late, right? And there is never a recognition of, you know, there's, the management of the project was very poor and that's why he's over budget. Well, you don't actually know that, Mr. Politician, or Miss Politician, you don't know that. You just, you're using that situation to your political to create political advantage. And so to me, I find that it's also disingenuous, right? It's both sides of the coin, it's two sides of the same coin, right? Where, you know, estimate could be used not to focus on the performance, but that performance being good or bad? Because a lot of time, my experience is that project leaders get blamed for project being late. And the analysis is never done why was the project late? And there's never an analysis around was it ran properly and you had a bad estimate? Or did you have a good estimate and and they were ran badly? I think I agree with you that the conversation should be about the project performance, always should be about the project performance. And I would, I, sometimes, you need a proper estimate to have a proper conversation. Ian Heptinstall  48:01  Oh, yes, you, you definitely need to have a decent estimate that in the same way, that the iron law of projects doesn't prove that the management was bad, it doesn't prove that the estimate was bad, either.   Riccardo Cosentino  48:16  Absolutely. Ian Heptinstall  48:17  You need to scratch below the surface. That's my concern about the optimistic estimate hypothesis is it's being used in many environments as the explanation for the iron law. And therefore we focus on the estimate. And there's promotion of reference class forecasting, which good estimates are always based on the reference class anyway. And if they're not, there's something sort of structurally strategic wrong with the organization that's delivering the projects. And that will touch upon your comment there regarding that. Where's the analysis being done? Where's the evidence being gathered from an individual project and fed back so that future projects at least don't suffer from those particular issues and problems? How's that being built in? When I started, we had such a system, this so-called double loop feedback, so that project managers on a project, the guidance was reasonably well up to date, whether it was estimates, methodologies, checklists, they were kept up to date. If you don't have that, it's very difficult for organizations to manage and continuously improve their performance. But, having said that, I see these so many execution, efficiency opportunities that I'm not sure why that's where we don't start. Yeah, there's some opportunities in that I've mentioned and discussed that there's also the idea, which also has a very strong evidence base, that projects that move into execution, before sufficient preparation has been done, the extensive data from IPA, Independent Project Analysis and the CII, Construction Industry Institute, in the U.S. Yeah, that sort of 30-year-old data, a strong correlation between the degree of preparation before execution is commenced. But how many projects today, the politicians want to talk, they talk about shovels up, get shovels on the ground. I want some shovel-ready projects. Okay. But that does mean we've spent seven to 10% of the capital value to get them to shovel-ready state. No, you can't do that. I know one of the Canadian public sector bodies has that, oh that's done on out of operating expenses. And we don't want you to spend more than 2% of the capital value, getting it to a final business case. Well, that's bonkers. Because as soon as the business case is approved, somebody's going to rush into execution. And that's going to be wasteful.   Riccardo Cosentino  51:35  Absolutely. Absolutely. Ian Heptinstall  51:37  So I think, once we've sorted those things out, then we can start using the once we've crossed the execution and the preparation things off the list, then we can start looking at the quality of the estimates, I think.   Riccardo Cosentino  51:54  I mean, as project practitioners, I mean, researchers in the U.K., I mean, there is, unfortunately, sometimes we discuss and discuss these topics with a certain amount of preassumptions in, there are some things that I assumed are understood, right? And so my starting point is always I assume that we have capable contractors and capable supply chain. So that's typically the starting point for my analysis, which is not always true, but that I want to, I always try to start from there. So if you start from there, then obviously I've already solved that problem. And then now I want to focus on the strategic misrepresentation and optimism bias in the estimate process, right? Because my starting assumption is that we have a capable supply chain. Ian Heptinstall  52:55  Let me give you just one example from my own experience, when I worked at a contractor. We had a probably one of our largest clients, we had a strategic relationship with actually the project owner that we did all the building services work on their projects, and they had dozens of projects every year. When we estimated, and interestingly, we put an estimate for the building services together when the conceptual design was put together. And this, although our pricing was through an agreed mechanism, this particular client had a fixed-price approach, I want to go to a main contractor, but your work will be sort of given to them on a platter, they will be told to use you etc. But we want single point of contact. That meant that when we estimated the amount of man-hours we put in on a job, it ranged from x to 2x. Simply dependent upon who we were working alongside. And that was not just competence. It wasn't even at the level of the company. Yet the people who came and the way they managed the worksite could double the demand on our resources. And that that's a significant impact. And strangely, it was the same number that I had when I was buying spray dryers in the chemical industry 20 years earlier. And one of the global manufacturers told me yeah, depending who the client is, some clients take two times the demand on our engineering hours than others with the questions they asked. They're all competent. So there's enormous differences with how you put competent people together. You can't just assume a team forms like putting a hockey team together.   Riccardo Cosentino  55:01  I said, I made that assumption and never said it was the correct assumption. But, you know, I need to simplify certain things in order to have certain conversation. But yeah, you're right. I mean, it's not the right assumption. Ian Heptinstall  55:15  And it's a common one. And the, particularly, if you tie it with this assumption that a competitive market force will drive innovation within your supply base. It may do but it won't necessarily, particularly since main contractors are basically, variable cost organizations. They're not high-fixed cost. They're not major upfront investment that they react and increase temporarily, their variable costs only after they've won a contract. I'm not sure that that sort of market will drive innovation, you, you just need to be similar or slightly better than your fellow competitors. You don't need to be world-class, you just need to beat the other guy or gal in the room. Riccardo Cosentino  56:12  That's the bear story, right? We have that. Ian Heptinstall  56:15  That's it. That's exactly the bear story. And I think there's many from back in my procurement days, there's many examples where owners facilitating supply-side innovation, drove significant improvements. But if they just sat there and waited for responses to tenders, nothing would have changed. They the whole topic of so-called reverse marketing, where it's the customer who encourages suppliers to enter new supply markets, or to work in different ways. It's a known technique that I wish I saw more of it amongst major project owners in the construction space. Riccardo Cosentino  57:07  Look, I mean, I might not have time to unpack this, but like, and it goes back to your alliance contract, right? I mean, that the reason and it's a very crude description, and you're probably gonna cringe the way I say it. But you know, when you have alliance contracting, especially the public sector clients have to be at the table, right? Now, the cost overruns are no longer somebody else's problem. They're our collective problem. And so you need to come to the table. So the, you know, for the contractor, it basically removes the unproductive resource, legal and commercial resources. And so now you have all of the resources, just focusing on problems. On the public sector, you actually create skin in the game, where now you don't longer have a command and control posture, because you have transmitted fixed price risk to somebody else, you're at the table, you need to contribute to problem solving, and you need to help, like you said, innovation. But that only happens if you have the legal and the right legal commercial framework that is associated with alliance, in my mind. I don't think you can achieve that through any other, because any other commercial contractual method, because the behaviors that those frameworks create, are not conducive to collaboration and innovation. Because exactly what you said, I mean, a contractor, a contractor will do what a contractor will do. Like it's a variable cost organization, they're not going to invest in R&D because the next project might not need the R&D you just developed for this project. And an owner wants to, as you said, there was an all-knowing how to most of the owners worldwide. And now the owner organization doesn't actually have the resources and the capability to be at the table, to be the informed or capable owner that is needed to run these projects. Ian Heptinstall  59:10  They got to have some of it. Because I think that input depends on what the project is about. I'd like to start thinking about the inherent project and forget who employs the people that you need in your project team. So doing a project is a team sport. And you need people around that table with the sort of operating experience for what the asset will be used for. And you need that mix of expertise. And very often the owner organization is the obvious place to provide that kind of expertise. Now, I'm less convinced that the owner has to be the one with the team facilitation syncronization skill. I think that depends on the individual you've got. And that can come from any, ideally, any one of the participants. And if you're short there, you might have to bring in an additional individual or party to manage that synchronization. But that could that could come from any of them, not necessarily the owner. But which is, you know, thinking lifecycle cost, an understanding of needs, regulatory environment, the political environment, those sorts of changes will probably come from the owner. So their representatives, there's a lot of value they can add, rather than being arm's length, and hoping that the, your contractors will sort that out by themselves is, as one of my friends would say that you're taking hopium. Riccardo Cosentino  1:01:01  The command and control posture right, I think you call it arm's length, I call it command and control posture. Anyway, I'm conscious of time. (Inaudible) Yeah, I mean, this has been a fascinating conversation that I want to thank you for, for joining me, thank you for suggesting that we do this. And honestly, I'd love to maybe, on another episode, to pick up the collaborative contracting versus lump sum debate, right? Because it's a very live debate right now in where I am in Canada, even in the U.S. a little bit. But Canada, or we are certainly now starting to enter the collaborative space and you can see, yeah, I love to have a conversation with you about that on another episode.   Ian Heptinstall  1:01:57  That sounds like a plan, Riccardo we'll work on it. Riccardo Cosentino  1:02:01  Great. Okay. Ian, on that note, again, thank you for joining me, and I look forward to further exchanges, both on another episode or on LinkedIn. Ian Heptinstall  1:02:14  Thanks, for the opportunity. And yes, this gets around the 125 or 1250 character limit of LinkedIn. Riccardo Cosentino  1:02:23  Absolutely. Ian Heptinstall  1:02:24  Thanks for the opportunity. I've enjoyed it. Thank you. Riccardo Cosentino  1:02:26  Thank you. Bye now.   Riccardo Cosentino  1:02:29  That's it for this episode of Navigating Major Programmes. I hope you found today's conversation as informative or provoking as I did. If you enjoyed this conversation, please consider subscribing and leaving a review. I would also like to personally invite you to continue the conversation by joining me on my personal LinkedIn at Riccardo Cosentino. Listening to the next episode, we will continue to explore the latest trends and challenges in major programme management. Our next in-depth conversation promises to continue to dive into topics such as leadership risk management and the impact of emerging technology in infrastructure. It's a conversation you're not going to want to miss. Thanks for listening to Navigating Major Programmes and I look forward to keeping the conversation going. Music: "A New Tomorrow" by Chordial Music. Licensed through PremiumBeat.DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the hosts and guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent or reflect the official policy, opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of Disenyo.co LLC and its employees.

Dive into the remarkable story of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, the pioneering psychologists whose friendship and collaboration defied the odds and reshaped our understanding of economics. This episode explores how their groundbreaking work on judgment and decision-making under uncertainty led them to become the first psychologists to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. Discover the power of interdisciplinary collaboration and how it can lead to world-changing insights. Key Takeaways: ✅ The friendship between Tversky and Kahneman was more than personal; it was a meeting of minds that revolutionized behavioral economics. ✅ Their collaboration highlights the importance of interdisciplinary work, merging psychology with economics to challenge traditional models. ✅ Kahneman's Nobel Prize in 2002, awarded in memory of Tversky, underscores the lasting impact of their theories on decision-making and risk assessment. ✅ The story of Tversky and Kahneman exemplifies how deep intellectual partnerships can drive innovation and lead to global recognition.

In episode 27 of Stocks Neat Co-Portfolio Manager Gareth Brown and CIO Steve Johnson discuss the recent performance of small caps and the psychology of investing. Understanding the psychology of ourselves and others can go a long way to helping us navigate through life. Markets and investing is no different. Understanding this can enable us to avoid biases and regulate emotions to make rational and effective investment decisions. In the episode, Gareth and Steve discuss the works of Kahneman and Tversky, and how their own personal experiences of investing have been changed and shaped over time. Listen to the full episode to find out why.“You could make money out of the stock market without ever looking at a balance sheet or PnL if you really understand investing psychology when people are behaving irrationally”

Assine o Café Brasil em https://canalcafebrasil.com.br  No início de suas carreiras, Daniel Khanenman e Amos Tversky trabalharam em diferentes ramos da psicologia: Kahneman estudou a visão, enquanto Tversky estudou a tomada de decisão. Em seus estudos, eles mostraram que, em ambos os domínios, os seres humanos dificilmente se comportam como se fossem estatísticos treinados ou intuitivos. Em vez disso, seus julgamentos e decisões se desviam dos modelos econômicos idealizados. As coisas não são como são, mas como as pessoas acham que são.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Assine o Café Brasil em https://canalcafebrasil.com.br  No início de suas carreiras, Daniel Khanenman e Amos Tversky trabalharam em diferentes ramos da psicologia: Kahneman estudou a visão, enquanto Tversky estudou a tomada de decisão. Em seus estudos, eles mostraram que, em ambos os domínios, os seres humanos dificilmente se comportam como se fossem estatísticos treinados ou intuitivos. Em vez disso, seus julgamentos e decisões se desviam dos modelos econômicos idealizados. As coisas não são como são, mas como as pessoas acham que são.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of our long-time subscribers recently said to us: “What I love about you is that you're regularly talking about things three years ahead of everyone else.” That inspired us to look back through our catalog of conversations to see which ones we think are most relevant now. Today, we're revisiting one of our most thought-provoking episodes, originally recorded in April 2022, featuring Barbara Tversky, the author of "Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought." This episode is great way to start 2024 because we are all about to experience what are known as Large Multimodal Models or LMMs, models which go beyond text and bring in more sensory modalities including spatial information. Tversky's insights into spatial reasoning and embodied cognition are more relevant than ever in the era of multimodal models in AI. These models, which combine text, images, and other data types, mirror our human ability to process information across various sensory inputs. The parallels between Tversky's research and Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) in AI are striking. Just as our physical interactions with the world shape our cognitive processes, these AI models learn and adapt by integrating diverse data types, offering a more holistic understanding of the world. Her work sheds light on how we might improve AI's ability to 'think' and 'reason' spatially, enhancing its application in fields ranging from navigation systems to virtual reality. As we revisit our interview with Tversky, we're reminded of the importance of considering human-like spatial reasoning and embodied cognition in advancing AI technology. Join us as we explore these intriguing concepts with Barbara Tversky, uncovering the essential role of spatial reasoning in both human cognition and artificial intelligence. Barbara Tversky is an emerita professor of psychology at Stanford University and a professor of psychology at Teachers College at Columbia University. She is also the President of the Association for Psychological Science. Barbara has published over 200 scholarly articles about memory, spatial thinking, design, and creativity, and regularly speaks about embodied cognition at interdisciplinary conferences and workshops around the world. She lives in New York. If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world's great minds. Subscribe to get Artificiality delivered to your email Learn about our book Make Better Decisions and buy it on Amazon Thanks to Jonathan Coulton for our music

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: [Valence series] 3. Valence & Beliefs, published by Steven Byrnes on December 13, 2023 on LessWrong. 3.1 Post summary / Table of contents Part of the Valence series. So far in the series, we defined valence ( Post 1) and talked about how it relates to the "normative" world of desires, values, preferences, and so on ( Post 2). Now we move on to the "positive" world of beliefs, expectations, concepts, etc. Here, valence is no longer the sine qua non at the center of everything, as it is in the "normative" magisterium. But it still plays a leading role. Actually, two leading roles! Section 3.2 distinguishes two paths by which valence affects beliefs: first, in its role as a control signal, and second, in its role as "interoceptive" sense data, which I discuss in turn: Section 3.3 discusses how valence-as-a-control-signal affects beliefs. This is the domain of motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, and related phenomena. I explain how it works both in general and through a nuts-and-bolts toy model. I also elaborate on "voluntary attention" versus "involuntary attention", in order to explain anxious rumination, which goes against the normal pattern (it involves thinking about something despite a strong motivation not to think about it). Section 3.4 discusses how valence-as-interoceptive-sense-data affects beliefs. I argue that, if concepts are "clusters in thingspace", then valence is one of the axes used by this clustering algorithm. I discuss how this relates to various difficulties in modeling and discussing the world separately from how we feel about it, along with the related "affect heuristic" and "halo effect". Section 3.5 briefly muses on whether future AI will have motivated reasoning, halo effect, etc., as we humans do. (My answer is "yes, but maybe it doesn't matter too much".) Section 3.6 is a brief conclusion. 3.2 Two paths for normative to bleed into positive Here's a diagram from the previous post: We have two paths by which valence can impact the world-model (a.k.a. "Thought Generator"): the normative path (upward black arrow) that helps control which thoughts get strengthened versus thrown out, and the positive path (curvy green arrow) that treats valence as one of the input signals to be incorporated into the world model. Corresponding to these two paths, we get two ways for valence to impact factual beliefs: Motivated reasoning / thinking / observing and confirmation bias - related to the upward black arrow, and discussed in §3.3 below; The entanglement of valence into our conceptual categories, which makes it difficult to think or talk about the world independently from how we feel about it - related to the curvy green arrow, and discussed in §3.4 below. Let's proceed with each in turn! 3.3 Motivated reasoning / thinking / observing, including confirmation bias Of the fifty-odd biases discovered by Kahneman, Tversky, and their successors, forty-nine are cute quirks, and one is destroying civilization. This last one is confirmation bias - our tendency to interpret evidence as confirming our pre-existing beliefs instead of changing our minds.… Scott Alexander 3.3.1 Attention-control and motor-control provide loopholes through which desires can manipulate beliefs Wishful thinking - where you believe something because it would be nice if it were true - is generally maladaptive: Imagine spending all day opening your wallet, over and over, expecting each time to find it overflowing with cash. We don't actually do that, which is an indication that our brains have effective systems to mitigate (albeit not eliminate, as we'll see) wishful thinking. How do those mitigations work? As discussed in Post 1, the brain works by model-based reinforcement learning (RL). Oversimplifying as usual, the "model" (predictive world-model, a.k.a. "Thought Generator") is traine...

In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, you'll join host Melina Palmer as she dives into the fascinating topic of the planning fallacy. Melina shares her personal experiences with underestimating the time it takes to complete tasks and projects, revealing that even she, an expert in the field, is not immune to this cognitive bias. But fear not, because Melina also provides valuable strategies to combat the planning fallacy and improve your planning accuracy. From seeking external perspectives to breaking tasks into smaller steps, she offers practical advice that you can implement in your own life. Whether you struggle with accurately estimating time or simply want to enhance your productivity, this episode is a must-listen. So get ready to tackle the planning fallacy head-on and start maximizing your time and efficiency. In this episode: Maximize productivity by understanding the planning fallacy and its impact on time estimation. Learn effective strategies to combat the planning fallacy and accurately estimate project timelines. Improve planning accuracy and avoid delays caused by underestimating the time needed for tasks. Unpack complex projects into manageable tasks for more accurate time allocation. Overcome the challenges of planning fallacy when dealing with large-scale projects. Show Notes: 00:00:00 - Introduction, Melina introduces the concept of planning fallacy and explains how it affects our ability to estimate the time and effort required for tasks. She also mentions her upcoming conversation with Nick Sonnenberg and how his book, Come Up for Air, inspired her to refresh this episode. 00:02:16 - The Foundations of Planning Fallacy Melina discusses how planning fallacy was first introduced by Kahneman and Tversky in 1979. They found that errors in judgment were systematic and not random, indicating a bias in the brain. Planning fallacy affects all kinds of people, even experts, and it can be difficult to overcome. 00:05:05 - Why We Fall Victim to Planning Fallacy Melina explains that the brain is naturally inclined to focus on success and underestimate the possibility of failure. We tend to believe that things will go smoothly and that we can do it all, leading to unrealistic expectations and missed deadlines. Even having deadlines and incentives doesn't necessarily help. 00:08:54 - Biases Contributing to Planning Fallacy Melina discusses several biases and brain tricks that contribute to planning fallacy, including the focusing illusion and fundamental attribution error. The focusing illusion causes us to allocate different amounts of time based on what we're currently focused on, while fundamental attribution error leads us to attribute external or internal factors incorrectly. 00:15:57 - The Myth of 8 Hours of Writing Writing for 8 hours straight is not actually 8 hours of writing. Taking breaks and getting distracted reduces the actual writing time. A suggested technique is to write for 25 minutes and then take a 5-minute break, repeating this cycle. This helps to combat planning fallacy and increase productivity. 00:17:43 - The Impact of Distractions and Breaks Distractions and breaks, such as emails and unexpected projects, further decrease writing time. Considering these interruptions, a planned 8-hour writing day may result in only 4.5 hours of actual writing. This means that the anticipated 32 pages would be reduced to only 18. 00:19:47 - Planning for Worst Case Scenario To overcome planning fallacy, it is crucial to plan for the worst case scenario. By allocating a realistic amount of time for productive writing and acknowledging potential distractions, you can avoid beating yourself up over unmet expectations. Celebrate achieving your planned writing time. 00:21:51 - Urgent vs Important Tasks The urgent vs important grid helps prioritize tasks. Determine if a task is important, urgent, both, or neither. This framework helps in dismissing distractions by asking if they are truly important and urgent compared to the planned task. Planning for distractions helps stick to timelines and overcome planning fallacy. 00:31:48 - Understanding the Planning Fallacy Launching a podcast involves various tasks that may seem quick and easy on the surface. However, breaking them down into subtasks reveals the true complexity of the process. Properly allocating time and planning for each subtask can help reduce stress and ensure completion without overcommitting. 00:33:48 - The Power of Unpacking Unpacking tasks into their smallest subcomponents is essential for complex projects like launching a podcast. Simple tasks may not benefit as much from unpacking, but for larger projects, it helps in understanding the full scope and allocating sufficient time for each task. 00:34:27 - Overcoming Planning Fallacy Planning fallacy is a natural tendency that affects everyone. Being aware of this tendency and using the tips mentioned in the episode can help overcome it. Having a trusted friend or colleague to keep you in check is also crucial in avoiding overcommitment and excessive work. 00:35:11 - Personal Experience with Planning Fallacy Melina admits to constantly struggling with planning fallacy despite her knowledge of it. However, understanding its existence and finding ways to manage it can prevent continuous overcommitment and excessive work. 00:36:22 -  Conclusion, Melina's top insights from the conversation. What stuck with you while listening to the episode? What are you going to try? Come share it with Melina on social media -- you'll find her as @thebrainybiz everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Android. If you like what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes and share what you liked about the show.  I hope you love everything recommended via The Brainy Business! Everything was independently reviewed and selected by me, Melina Palmer. So you know, as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. That means if you decide to shop from the links on this page (via Amazon or others), The Brainy Business may collect a share of sales or other compensation. Let's connect: Melina@TheBrainyBusiness.com The Brainy Business® on Facebook The Brainy Business on Twitter The Brainy Business on Instagram The Brainy Business on LinkedIn Melina on LinkedIn The Brainy Business on Youtube Learn and Support The Brainy Business: Check out and get your copies of Melina's Books.  Get the Books Mentioned on (or related to) this Episode: Come Up For Air, by Nick Sonnenberg Work Well. Play More! by Marcey Rader Indistractable, by Nir Eyal Subtract, by Leidy Klotz What Your Employees Need and Can't Tell You, by Melina Palmer Top Recommended Next Episode: Work Well. Play More! with Marcey Rader (ep 323) Already Heard That One? Try These:  Indistractable, with Nir Eyal (ep 290) Optimism Bias (ep 34) Time Discounting (ep 328) Loss Aversion (ep 316) Focusing Illusion (ep 330) Fundamental Attribution Error (ep 268) Bikeshedding (ep 99) Confirmation Bias (ep 260) How To Start and Grow a Successful Podcast (ep 108) How to Organize Your Brain with Behavioral Economics (ep 83) Expect Error, the “E” in NUDGES (ep 39) Anchoring & Adjustment (ep 11) Other Important Links:  Brainy Bites - Melina's LinkedIn Newsletter The Planning Fallacy: Getting Things Done Can the outside‐view approach improve planning decisions in software development projects? The Planning Fallacy: When Plans Lead to Optimistic Forecasts Exploring the Planning Fallacy: Why People Underestimate Their Task Completion Times A Nobel Prize-Winning Psychologist Explains Why We're Always Wrong About How Long Tasks Take The Planning Fallacy: Why You Miss Your Deadlines, And What to do About it Allocating Time to Future Tasks:The Effect of Task Segmentation on Planning Fallacy Bias Intuitive Prediction: Biases and Corrective Procedures Seattle tunnel construction avoided costly mistakes of Boston's Big Dig Visualization-Mediated Alleviation of the Planning Fallacy If You Don't Want to Be Late, Enumerate: Unpacking Reduces the Planning Fallacy Planning Fallacy

Kararlarımızı sandığımız kadar rasyonel veremiyor ve pek çok sefer kestirmeden giderek, çeşitli kısayollar kullanarak, farklı yanılgılara düşerek ilerliyor olabilir miyiz? Yaşayan en önemli psikologlardan Nobel ödüllü Daniel Kahneman'ın "Beklenti Teorisi"ne göre tam olarak bunu yapıyoruz.Salus'un desteğiyle hazırlanan bu bölümde "Karar Verme Süreçleri"ni ve bu süreçlere dair Kahneman ve Tversky'nin öne sürdüğü "Bekleti Teorisi"ni anlattım.Bu bölüme destek veren Salus bir kişisel sağlık uygulaması. Salus'a üye olarak psikolog, fizyoterapist ve diyetisyenlerle görüşebilir, online terapi alabilirsiniz. Tüm terapistlerinin klinik psikolog formasyonuna sahip olduklarını belirtmek isterim. Salus'a aşağıdaki linkten üye olabilir, bu hizmete YENIHALLER10 koduyla %10 indirimli sahip olabilirsiniz.https://salus.go.link?adj_t=179qe15n_17p9qbwd

Chapter 1 The digest of The Undoing Project content"The Undoing Project" is a nonfiction book written by Michael Lewis and published in 2016. It explores the lives and work of psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who revolutionized the field of behavioral economics. The book chronicles their friendship and collaboration, as well as their groundbreaking research that challenged traditional economic theories. Kahneman and Tversky's work focused on the cognitive biases and heuristics that influence human decision-making, shedding light on the irrational ways in which people assess risks and make judgments. Their collaboration led to the development of the prospect theory, which has had a significant impact on various disciplines, including economics, psychology, and finance. "The Undoing Project" also explores the personal lives of Kahneman and Tversky, delving into their backgrounds and the impact of their research on their friendship and careers. Overall, the book provides a fascinating account of their influential work and its implications for our understanding of human behavior.Chapter 2 Valuable elements inherent in The Undoing ProjectThe Undoing Project by Michael Lewis has received generally positive reviews and is considered a good book by many readers. It explores the groundbreaking work of psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the field of behavioral economics, delving into their unique friendship and collaboration. The book explores their research on decision-making and how their insights have influenced various industries. However, as with all books, the determination of whether it is good or not ultimately depends on personal preference and interests.Chapter 3 Recapitulation of The Undoing Project"The Undoing Project" by Michael Lewis is a non-fiction book that explores the partnership and work of psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The book delves into their groundbreaking research and its impact on the field of psychology and decision-making.Lewis begins by delving into the personal lives and characters of Kahneman and Tversky, acquainting the reader with their backgrounds, motivations, and personalities. He then proceeds to explore their collaboration, highlighting their unique abilities and the complementary nature of their partnership.The book delves deep into their research, focusing on their exploration of cognitive biases and heuristics. Kahneman and Tversky challenged traditional economic theory by demonstrating that human decision-making is often irrational and influenced by various psychological factors. They introduced concepts like the availability heuristic, anchoring bias, and prospect theory, which have since become foundational principles in behavioral economics.Lewis also covers the personal struggles and complexities of their relationship, including issues of power dynamics and resentment that arose as their influence and recognition grew. He captures the essence of their work and the intellectual journey they embarked on, delving into their theories and experiments with great detail and clarity."The Undoing Project" also highlights the wider impact of Kahneman and Tversky's work, including its influence on fields like medicine, finance, sports, and politics. The book explores how their insights have shaped our understanding of human behavior and decision-making, and how they continue to be relevant and influential today.Overall, "The Undoing Project" is a captivating exploration of the partnership between two brilliant psychologists and the impact of their groundbreaking research. It provides valuable...

Şarap koleksiyonları, sağlık sigortaları, müzayedeler, at yarışları, restoranlarda çay ikramı, organ bağışları ve pisuardaki sinekler... Bugün de psikoloji + ekonomi dolu bir bölümümüz var, ilime bilime doyacağız.Geçen haftanın merkezi figürleri Kahneman ve Tversky idi, bu hafta başrolünde 80'lerden beri araştırmalar yapan, 2008'deki Nudge kitabıyla ünlü olan ve 2017'de de Nobel kazanan Richard Thaler bulunuyor. Onun kariyeri ile davranışsal bilimlerin ciddiye alınma macerası epey paralel ilerliyorlar.Tüm kaynaklar aşağıda her zamanki gibi, patronlarıma patroniçelerime teşekkürler..Konular:(00:05) Lanetli laptop(01:45) Geçen bölümün özeti(02:20) Başrolde Richard Thaler(03:00) Sahiplik etkisi: Şarap koleksiyoncusu(03:50) Batık maliyet: Karda kışta konser(05:05) Pişmanlıktan kaçınma: Sağlık sigortası(06:35) Pişmanlık manipülasyonu: Müzayedeler(07:10) Pişmanlık tahmini: Kılpayı tren kaçıranlar(07:55) Thaler'in yükselişi(08:40) Zihinsel muhasebe: para "fungible" değil(12:15) Restoranlarda su ve çay ikram mı olmalı(14:02) Taksici bütçesi(14:55) Adalet duygusu(18:50) Nudge: Pisuardaki sinekler(21:45) Organ bağışı(24:00) Gelecek bölüm(24:50) Patreon kodamanlarına teşekkürler.Kaynaklar:Makale (PDF): TOWARD A POSITIVE THEORY OF CONSUMER CHOICE (1979)Yazı: The Making of Richard Thaler's Economics NobelMakale: Regret Theory: A Bold Alternative to the Alternatives (1982)Yazı: MENTAL ACCOUNTING PART 1Yazı (Fularsız Blog): Harcamalar ve Karar Süreleri Arasındaki Garip İlişkiMakale (PDF): Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking (1986)Yazı: Why Surge Prices Make Us So MadYazı (Fularsız Blog): Pisuardaki Sinek ve Nobel ÖdülüVideo: Rory Sutherland: Perspective is everything.------- Podbee Sunar ------- Bu podcast, Disney+ hakkında reklam içerir.Bu podcast, Odea hakkında reklam içerir.Odea'lı olmak ve yatırım fırsatlarından yararlanmak için tıklayın.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For many of us, planning can be an area of opportunity. We underestimate how much time something will take and how much time we will have available for something, particularly regarding project completion. However, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky explained why we do this, and we will tell you what we can do about it.  Kahneman and Tversky call this phenomenon the Planning Fallacy. Our optimism about our future selves and the abilities and resources available causes it. For this reason, it rarely occurs on a tight timeline; we are far less optimistic about our right-now selves. We know we can't do it right now. There are a few reasons besides optimism that cause this problem, too. For example, we tend to focus on certain details and ignore others (Focalism). Or we might be wishful thinking. We want to finish the project by then, so why not pick that date? In this episode, we explore why so many of us are victims of the Planning Fallacy and what we can do about it in our own work and the work of our organizations. If you listen to this podcast, your future self will thank you.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 04:02  We introduce the idea of the Planning Fallacy and explain what it is and how it affects us.  08:15  We discuss why it's different when considering something with a short timeline, meaning an imminent due date.  11:10  Colin shares an example he frequently encounters on Emotional Signature projects, and why it isn't his fault they miss their optimistic deadlines.  19:36  Colin points out that different departments organizationally can contribute to the problem and that these departments should learn The Power of Saying NO. 21:29  Ryan shares more contributing factors to why we victimize our future selves with the Planning Fallacy. 29:42  We share practical advice about what you can do to ensure that your past self doesn't get your future self in a bind.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Follow Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Sophie Tversky is this week's guest on the Moving Beyond Being Good Podcast. Gary Ryan first met Sophie in 2016 when she was a participant in a leadership program when a law student at Monash University. Sophie was curious then, and has created a career from her curiosity.A multiple award winner for numerous Law programs, Sophie has recently moved to Toronto Canada to pursue a career in creative problem solving and innovation.The full episode will be released Saturday 23rd September 2023 at 9 am GMT+10. In the full episode you will learn:Sophie's journey from Melbourne to Canada including her shift from working in Law to creative problem solving and innovationMultiple tactics that you can apply immediately to improve the quality of your team's creative problem solvingHow AI can be used to enhance creativity and innovation from a human perspectiveThe power of asking yourself Big Questions and then doing the work to answer themHow being intentional is empoweringThe value of being proactive and authentic when networkingand much more!Connect with Sophie on LinkedIn here.Watch this episode on YouTube here.Connect with Gary Ryan on LinkedIn here.Download Gary Ryan's #1 Amazon Kindle Bestseller "Disruption Leadership matters - lessons for leaders from the pandemic" in AudioBook and eBook formats for FREE here.Download Gary Ryan's eBook "Energy For Success - Seven steps to generate the energy you need for success" for the price of a coffee here.Discover Gary Ryan's Yes For Success Online Program for life harmony and fulfillment here. If you would like support in creating a high-performance culture based on treating people as human beings, please click here to contact Gary Ryan  If you would like support in creating a high-performance culture based on treating people as human beings, please click here to contact Gary Ryan

Hello and welcome back to Money Power Health.    “Think global, act local!” “Be the change you want to see in the world!” “Every little bit counts!” We can all get on board with such sentiments, right? Well, todays guest Grant Ennis, would question that. He is the author of the book "Dark PR: How corporate disinformation undermines our health and the environment". In this new book, drawing on his experience working in the environmental, philanthropy, and public health sectors, he lays out the costs of commercial efforts to influence citizen action and discourse, individually and cumulatively. The book offers a wide-ranging appraisal of the narratives that he feels hold us back, the costs of our approaches to issues such as subsidies and tax breaks ,and, argues for the need to think more structurally, to organise, and to unite in broader coalitions if we wish to improve health in foundational, structural ways. I hope you enjoy the conversation. The book is available from Dajara Press in print or ePub: https://darajapress.com/publication/dark-pr-how-corporate-disinformation-harms-our-health-and-the-environment and from Audible as an audiobook: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Dark-PR-Audiobook/B0CCT1WMQ2 The publication he mentions led by Mark Petticrew is available here: https://jech.bmj.com/content/71/11/1078 and our related paper on the pollution of discourse and the need for effective counterframing is here: https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj.o1128 Dr. Terry Lynn Karl is the researcher he mentioned from Stanford in relation to electorialism: https://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/people/Terry_L_Karl The asian disease experiment was published here: Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. "The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice." science 211, no. 4481 (1981): 453-458. The full quote from Arundhati Roy that he refers to is here: [the] whole idea of 'you have to be a saint first and then be political' is [a] way of making sure that a whole lot of people are not political.” (Roy, Arundhati. “Interview and Q&A with Arundhati Roy.” In Earth at Risk: Building a Resistance Movement to Save the Planet. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2013) Music in the podcast was composed and performed by Daniel Maani. You can find out more about his music here: https://www.danielmaani.com

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In the context of business messaging, frames play a crucial role in shaping the way potential customers perceive products and services. Different frames can evoke distinct emotions or reactions, as well as influence the customers' decision-making process. When applied effectively, framing can make a product or service more appealing, inspiring curiosity and generating positive associations in the minds of potential buyers. Framing can also demonstrate the benefits and value provided by a particular offering, ultimately increasing the chances of conversion.  In the podcast, Melina Palmer discusses the importance of framing in marketing and advertising. She emphasizes that the presentation of a message, including the choice of words and phrasing, can have a significant impact on the way it is received and acted upon by the target audience. As such, marketers should carefully consider the use of frames, always taking into account the context in which they communicate their offering. By doing so, they can maximize their chances of resonating with potential customers and increase sales. Insights in this episode will help you to: Grasp the power of framing and its influence on people's perception and communication. Master the art of employing framing tactfully in advertising and marketing campaigns. Adopt ethical framing practices to genuinely benefit consumers. Implement insightful techniques for effective framing in your business messaging. Show Notes: 00:00:00 - Introduction, Melina Palmer introduces the topic of framing and explains why it's essential for anyone looking to apply behavioral economics to their business. 00:03:24 - The Power of Frames, Melina explains how frames impact the way we perceive the world around us and how our subconscious brain evaluates everything very quickly. 00:09:23 - The Nail Salon Example, Melina uses the nail salon example from episode 2 to illustrate how framing can make a difference in how people perceive your business. 00:12:51 - Loss Aversion and Framing, Melina discusses how framing can impact loss aversion and how losses are actually twice as powerful a motivator as gains according to research by Kahneman and Tversky. 00:14:44 - Examples of Framing, Melina provides examples of how framing impacts the way we perceive things, such as labeling food as "90% fat-free" vs. "10% fat" or saying "Serena lost" vs. "Osaka won" in the context of the US Open. 00:17:16 - Importance of Context in Framing, The way a message is framed can impact how someone reacts to it, based on their individual context. For example, promoting a credit card bonus offer may annoy existing cardholders who are not eligible. Therefore, it's crucial to consider the context and placement of messaging when developing marketing strategies. 00:18:15 - Tversky's Studies on Framing, Tversky conducted several studies on framing, including one on the impact of framing on doctors' decisions about lung cancer treatment options. The study showed that framing the same information differently can lead to significantly different outcomes. 00:20:07 - The Disease Problem, The Disease Problem is a classic example of the impact of framing on decision-making. In the study, participants were more likely to choose a risky option when the information was framed positively, as opposed to when it was framed negatively. 00:25:33 - Examples of Verbiage Using Framing, Verbiage such as "Chevron with Techron" or "America's best selling brand" are examples of framing in marketing. The way a message is presented can impact how it's received by the audience, and it's crucial to choose the right framing to achieve desired outcomes. 00:29:43 - The Impact of Naming on Framing, Choosing the right name for a business can impact its success. A poorly framed name such as "Avg Daycare" can negatively impact business, whereas a well-framed name can have a big positive impact. 00:35:39 - The Impact of Framing on Consumer Behavior, Framing can impact the way consumers feel about a product or service. A well-worded frame can help someone appreciate a product or service, while a poorly worded frame can repel them from it. It's important to use framing in a way that helps people see the benefits of a product or service without tricking them. 00:39:27 - The Power of Claiming Ownership, When a company makes a claim, even if it's something their competitors could also claim, it becomes associated with their brand. The power of claiming ownership is evident in BECU's marketing campaign, which made it difficult for other credit unions to use similar messaging (even though it was true for them as well). 00:43:38 - Implementing Framing Strategies, Melina's top three framing strategies to try right now: replacing "if" with "when," using "everyone" instead of "anyone," and ending with a question. Curious why? Listen in... 00:47:22 - Conclusion Melina's top insights from the conversation. What stuck with you while listening to the episode? What are you going to try? Come share it with Melina on social media -- you'll find her as @thebrainybiz everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Android. If you like what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes and share what you liked about the show.  I hope you love everything recommended via The Brainy Business! Everything was independently reviewed and selected by me, Melina Palmer. So you know, as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. That means if you decide to shop from the links on this page (via Amazon or others), The Brainy Business may collect a share of sales or other compensation. Let's connect: Melina@TheBrainyBusiness.com The Brainy Business® on Facebook The Brainy Business on Twitter The Brainy Business on Instagram The Brainy Business on LinkedIn Melina on LinkedIn The Brainy Business on Youtube Join the BE Thoughtful Revolution – our free behavioral economics community, and keep the conversation going! Learn and Support The Brainy Business: Check out and get your copies of Melina's Books.  Get the Books Mentioned on (or related to) this Episode: How Minds Change, by David McRaney What Your Employees Need and Can't Tell You, by Melina Palmer What Your Customer Wants and Can't Tell You, by Melina Palmer Getting Along, by Amy Gallo Both/And Thinking, by Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis Top Recommended Next Episode: The Top 5 Wording Mistakes Businesses Make (ep 2) Already Heard That One? Try These:  Priming (ep 252) Loss Aversion (ep 9) Herding (ep 264) Unlocking the Power of Numbers (ep 17) The Truth About Pricing (ep 5) Change Management: It's Still Not About The Cookie (ep 226) Your Guide to Create a Brainy Brand (ep 230) Rebrand, Refresh, or Reinforce? (ep 44) Present vs Future Biases (ep 246) Counterfactual Thinking (ep 286) Prefactual Thinking (ep 232) The Littery (ep 75) How To Become Indistractable, with Nir Eyal (ep 290) Focusing Illusion (ep 89) Confirmation Bias (ep 260) The Hype Handbook, with Michael F. Schein (ep 143) What Your Customer Wants and Can't Tell You (ep 147) Other Important Links:  Brainy Bites - Melina's LinkedIn Newsletter

Questions From The Flight Deck:  What the heck is ChatGPT, and what jobs will most be impacted? What is it...? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT What jobs are at risk...? https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/which-jobs-artificial-intelligence-gptimpact/ What about ChatGPT from an investing perspective? ETFs: AIQ, BOTZ, ROBT, AIEQ – see Kwanti. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-smart-is-chatgpt/ AI in the Cockpit? https://theaircurrent.com/technology/natural-language-processing-aviation-atccockpit/   Optimism – It's NOT cool! Have we always been pessimistic? Or is it a new phenomenon? “The preacher man says it's the end of time and the Mississippi river, she's goin dry...the interest is up and the stock market's down and you only get mugged if you go downtown...” Great survival story...Hank Williams Jr. If Everything is Getting Better, Why Are People So Pessimistic? “...Those are three emotional biases toward pessimism. We also have cognitive biases that incline us that way, foremost among them being the “availability heuristic.” This is a feature of the psychology of probability also documented by Tversky, in collaboration with the Nobel Prize–winning economist Daniel Kahneman. Forty years ago, Kahnemanm and Tversky argued that one of the ways the human brain estimates probability is by using a simple rule of thumb: the more easily you can recall an example of something, the more likely you estimate it to be. The result is that anything that makes an incident more memorable will also make it seem more probable. The quirks of the brain's ability to retain information will bleed into our estimates of a risk's likelihood.” “...The bad‐ dominates‐ good phenomenon is multiplied by a second source of bias, sometimes called the illusion of the good old days. People always pine for a golden age. They're nostalgic about an era in which life was simpler and more predictable. The psychologist Roger Eibach has argued that this is because people confuse changes in themselves with changes in the times. As we get older, certain things inevitably happen to us. We take on more responsibilities, so we have a greater cognitive burden. We become more vigilant about threats, especially as we become parents. ...At the same time, we see our own capacities decline. As we get older, we become stupider in terms of the sheer ability to process and retain information. There's a strong tendency to misattribute these changes in ourselves to changes in the world. A number of experimental manipulations bear this out. If you have people try to make some change in their lives — say, to eat less fat — often they become convinced that there are more and more advertisements for fatty foods.”   Ten Reasons Clients Should Be Optimistic About The Future: https://www.fa-mag.com/news/ten-reasons-clients-should-be-optimistic-about-the-future-72935.html?section=68&utm_source=FA+Subscribers&utm_campaign=d580b67712-FAN_IP_Next_Chapter_Parnassus_050422_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6bebc79291-d580b67712-240228216  The US is a net oil exporter. Higher short-term interest rates. Inflation is moderating Companies are great at passing along costs. Now is the time to seek out lower cost providers/products. The Federal Reserve is not a bunch of dummies. Companies know how to cut expenses to boost profits. The stock market has been the best way to make money consistently for decades. The US dollar is the world's reserve currency. Riding High...   Some Alternatives: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/how-is-the-economy-doing-right-now-inflationinterest-rate-hikes-rcna73613 Inflation cooling – 4.9% in April – announced today – 10 May 2023. The Fed doesn't have as much control as you think. And no more, QE! https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2023/05/some-things-the-fed-doesnt-control/ US households are in excellent shape, the ratio of liabilities to net wealth has declined 50% since the 2008 financial crisis, and household leverage is currently at levels last seen in the early 1980s; see chart below. If the unemployment rate rises, consumer spending will slow down, but the starting point for US households is very strong. Balance Sheets Are Barriers Against Contagion...Household, corporate and bank balance sheets are more resilient today than during past crises.   Factfullness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World—And Why Things Are Better Than You Think. https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-ThingsBetter/dp/1250123828/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Author Hans Rosling   Quotes The first is from philosopher, historian, psychologist, William James: “Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.”  The second from the late former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Colin Powell: “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.”   Resources https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/09/bill-melinda-gatesfoundation-goalkeepers-report-poverty/671415/ https://www.morningstar.com/articles/1103776/why-optimism-is-a-secret-weapon-ininvesting https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58612#:~:text=In%20CBO%E2%80%99s%20projections%2C%20the%20U.S.%20population%20increases%20from,accounts%20for%20all%20population%20growth%20beginning%20in%202042 https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/is-inflation-good-or-bad/ https://www.reference.com/world-view/inflation-good-bad-5bcd09b085e0a85d

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Lionel Page about rational decision-making and behavioral economics. They discuss the history and contours of behavioral economics, work of Kahneman and Tversky, and why an evolutionary framework is important for behavioral economics. They also talk about heuristics, cognitive biases, gains and loses, game theory, Nash equilibrium, cooperation, belief systems, and many more topics. Lionel Page is an economist and Professor of economics at The University of Queensland in Australia. His research interests are in decision-making, game theory, and economics. He has been widely-published in economic journals and is the author of the book, Optimally Irrational. Substack: Twitter: @page_eco This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit convergingdialogues.substack.com

In this episode of High Theory, Eli Cook tells us about choice architecture. The term was invented by behavioral economists in 2008 who proposed it as a soft-power model of “libertarian paternalism” to influence consumer choice. Eli traces their concept through a twentieth-century history of structured choices, from personality tests and the five-star rating to the swipes and likes of platform capitalism. He shifts our attention from the rhetoric of consumer choice as freedom to the power of “choice architects” who determine the options for us. Eli takes the term “choice architecture” from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Yale UP, 2008). He mentions the industrial psychologist Walter Dill Scott and the inventors of behavioral economics, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Amusingly, there is a New Yorker article about Tversky and Kahneman written by Thaler and Sunstein, called “The Two Friends Who Changed How We Think About How We Think.” (New Yorker 7 Dec 2016). In the full version of our conversation, Eli referenced the work of Sophia Rosenfeld on the longue durée history of choice. Eli Cook is a historian of American capitalism. He works as a Senior Lecturer in History and as head of the American Studies Program at the University of Haifa in Israel. His first book The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life was published by Harvard University Press in 2017. Last year, he was a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center where he worked on his new book about choice architecture. Image: © 2023 Saronik Bosu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode of High Theory, Eli Cook tells us about choice architecture. The term was invented by behavioral economists in 2008 who proposed it as a soft-power model of “libertarian paternalism” to influence consumer choice. Eli traces their concept through a twentieth-century history of structured choices, from personality tests and the five-star rating to the swipes and likes of platform capitalism. He shifts our attention from the rhetoric of consumer choice as freedom to the power of “choice architects” who determine the options for us. Eli takes the term “choice architecture” from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Yale UP, 2008). He mentions the industrial psychologist Walter Dill Scott and the inventors of behavioral economics, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Amusingly, there is a New Yorker article about Tversky and Kahneman written by Thaler and Sunstein, called “The Two Friends Who Changed How We Think About How We Think.” (New Yorker 7 Dec 2016). In the full version of our conversation, Eli referenced the work of Sophia Rosenfeld on the longue durée history of choice. Eli Cook is a historian of American capitalism. He works as a Senior Lecturer in History and as head of the American Studies Program at the University of Haifa in Israel. His first book The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life was published by Harvard University Press in 2017. Last year, he was a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center where he worked on his new book about choice architecture. Image: © 2023 Saronik Bosu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of High Theory, Eli Cook tells us about choice architecture. The term was invented by behavioral economists in 2008 who proposed it as a soft-power model of “libertarian paternalism” to influence consumer choice. Eli traces their concept through a twentieth-century history of structured choices, from personality tests and the five-star rating to the swipes and likes of platform capitalism. He shifts our attention from the rhetoric of consumer choice as freedom to the power of “choice architects” who determine the options for us. Eli takes the term “choice architecture” from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Yale UP, 2008). He mentions the industrial psychologist Walter Dill Scott and the inventors of behavioral economics, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Amusingly, there is a New Yorker article about Tversky and Kahneman written by Thaler and Sunstein, called “The Two Friends Who Changed How We Think About How We Think.” (New Yorker 7 Dec 2016). In the full version of our conversation, Eli referenced the work of Sophia Rosenfeld on the longue durée history of choice. Eli Cook is a historian of American capitalism. He works as a Senior Lecturer in History and as head of the American Studies Program at the University of Haifa in Israel. His first book The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life was published by Harvard University Press in 2017. Last year, he was a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center where he worked on his new book about choice architecture. Image: © 2023 Saronik Bosu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In this episode of High Theory, Eli Cook tells us about choice architecture. The term was invented by behavioral economists in 2008 who proposed it as a soft-power model of “libertarian paternalism” to influence consumer choice. Eli traces their concept through a twentieth-century history of structured choices, from personality tests and the five-star rating to the swipes and likes of platform capitalism. He shifts our attention from the rhetoric of consumer choice as freedom to the power of “choice architects” who determine the options for us. Eli takes the term “choice architecture” from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Yale UP, 2008). He mentions the industrial psychologist Walter Dill Scott and the inventors of behavioral economics, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Amusingly, there is a New Yorker article about Tversky and Kahneman written by Thaler and Sunstein, called “The Two Friends Who Changed How We Think About How We Think.” (New Yorker 7 Dec 2016). In the full version of our conversation, Eli referenced the work of Sophia Rosenfeld on the longue durée history of choice. Eli Cook is a historian of American capitalism. He works as a Senior Lecturer in History and as head of the American Studies Program at the University of Haifa in Israel. His first book The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life was published by Harvard University Press in 2017. Last year, he was a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center where he worked on his new book about choice architecture. Image: © 2023 Saronik Bosu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

In this episode of High Theory, Eli Cook tells us about choice architecture. The term was invented by behavioral economists in 2008 who proposed it as a soft-power model of “libertarian paternalism” to influence consumer choice. Eli traces their concept through a twentieth-century history of structured choices, from personality tests and the five-star rating to the swipes and likes of platform capitalism. He shifts our attention from the rhetoric of consumer choice as freedom to the power of “choice architects” who determine the options for us. Eli takes the term “choice architecture” from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Yale UP, 2008). He mentions the industrial psychologist Walter Dill Scott and the inventors of behavioral economics, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Amusingly, there is a New Yorker article about Tversky and Kahneman written by Thaler and Sunstein, called “The Two Friends Who Changed How We Think About How We Think.” (New Yorker 7 Dec 2016). In the full version of our conversation, Eli referenced the work of Sophia Rosenfeld on the longue durée history of choice. Eli Cook is a historian of American capitalism. He works as a Senior Lecturer in History and as head of the American Studies Program at the University of Haifa in Israel. His first book The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life was published by Harvard University Press in 2017. Last year, he was a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center where he worked on his new book about choice architecture. Image: © 2023 Saronik Bosu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In this episode of High Theory, Eli Cook tells us about choice architecture. The term was invented by behavioral economists in 2008 who proposed it as a soft-power model of “libertarian paternalism” to influence consumer choice. Eli traces their concept through a twentieth-century history of structured choices, from personality tests and the five-star rating to the swipes and likes of platform capitalism. He shifts our attention from the rhetoric of consumer choice as freedom to the power of “choice architects” who determine the options for us. Eli takes the term “choice architecture” from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Yale UP, 2008). He mentions the industrial psychologist Walter Dill Scott and the inventors of behavioral economics, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Amusingly, there is a New Yorker article about Tversky and Kahneman written by Thaler and Sunstein, called “The Two Friends Who Changed How We Think About How We Think.” (New Yorker 7 Dec 2016). In the full version of our conversation, Eli referenced the work of Sophia Rosenfeld on the longue durée history of choice. Eli Cook is a historian of American capitalism. He works as a Senior Lecturer in History and as head of the American Studies Program at the University of Haifa in Israel. His first book The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life was published by Harvard University Press in 2017. Last year, he was a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center where he worked on his new book about choice architecture. Image: © 2023 Saronik Bosu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Mark Burgman is Director of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conservation Biology. He is author of Trusting Judgments: How to Get the Best Out of Experts. Previously, he was Adrienne Clarke Chair of Botany at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He works on expert judgement, ecological modelling, conservation biology and risk assessment. He has written models for biosecurity, medicine regulation, marine fisheries, forestry, irrigation, electrical power utilities, mining, and national park planning. He received a BSc from the University of New South Wales, an MSc from Macquarie University, Sydney, and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked as a consultant ecologist and research scientist in Australia, the United States and Switzerland during the 1980's before joining the University of Melbourne in 1990. He joined CEP in February, 2017. He has published over two hundred and fifty refereed papers and book chapters and seven authored books. He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2006.“The idea of expertise and expert judgment has been around and has been something that society depends upon for a long time, but there have been no serious empirical explorations of who's an expert, what a domain of expertise is, and what sort of frailties are experts susceptible to. Those things haven't been addressed in an empirical way until the last 30 years. Some of this work began in the fifties with Kahneman and Tversky. They began to explore the things that make people misjudge risky situations, and that led to a body of research on who makes good judgments and under what circumstances for things that might affect us in various ways. But these were typically judgments about the probabilities of events and the magnitudes of the consequences. There's a domain in which we use experts to make judgments about future events, the quantities of things that we will see at some time in the future, or things that currently exist, but we don't know what they are. We don't have time yet, to compile the data that we need, and we rely on expert judgments in law courts, but also relied on them for example, we have a new disease like COVID, and we didn't know yet its transmission rates and yet we have to guess at its transmission rates to make judgments about how best to manage the population to protect ourselves. And we rely on expert judgments of all of those circumstances. And yet we don't know who the best expert is. Who should we ask? Is it the best-credentialed person? Is it the person that most people trust? If you ask two experts and you get two opinions, which one should you use? And so on and so forth. Now, that has been the focus of research over the last 10 or 15 years, and I've learned some really important things that run contrary to our intuition about some of those things.”www.imperial.ac.uk/environmental-policy www.conbio.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“The idea of expertise and expert judgment has been around and has been something that society depends upon for a long time, but there have been no serious empirical explorations of who's an expert, what a domain of expertise is, and what sort of frailties are experts susceptible to. Those things haven't been addressed in an empirical way until the last 30 years. Some of this work began in the fifties with Kahneman and Tversky. They began to explore the things that make people misjudge risky situations, and that led to a body of research on who makes good judgments and under what circumstances for things that might affect us in various ways. But these were typically judgments about the probabilities of events and the magnitudes of the consequences. There's a domain in which we use experts to make judgments about future events, the quantities of things that we will see at some time in the future, or things that currently exist, but we don't know what they are. We don't have time yet, to compile the data that we need, and we rely on expert judgments in law courts, but also relied on them for example, we have a new disease like COVID, and we didn't know yet its transmission rates and yet we have to guess at its transmission rates to make judgments about how best to manage the population to protect ourselves. And we rely on expert judgments of all of those circumstances. And yet we don't know who the best expert is. Who should we ask? Is it the best-credentialed person? Is it the person that most people trust? If you ask two experts and you get two opinions, which one should you use? And so on and so forth. Now, that has been the focus of research over the last 10 or 15 years, and I've learned some really important things that run contrary to our intuition about some of those things.”Mark Burgman is Director of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conservation Biology. He is author of Trusting Judgments: How to Get the Best Out of Experts. Previously, he was Adrienne Clarke Chair of Botany at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He works on expert judgement, ecological modelling, conservation biology and risk assessment. He has written models for biosecurity, medicine regulation, marine fisheries, forestry, irrigation, electrical power utilities, mining, and national park planning. He received a BSc from the University of New South Wales, an MSc from Macquarie University, Sydney, and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked as a consultant ecologist and research scientist in Australia, the United States and Switzerland during the 1980's before joining the University of Melbourne in 1990. He joined CEP in February, 2017. He has published over two hundred and fifty refereed papers and book chapters and seven authored books. He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2006.www.imperial.ac.uk/environmental-policy www.conbio.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Mark Burgman is Director of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conservation Biology. He is author of Trusting Judgments: How to Get the Best Out of Experts. Previously, he was Adrienne Clarke Chair of Botany at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He works on expert judgement, ecological modelling, conservation biology and risk assessment. He has written models for biosecurity, medicine regulation, marine fisheries, forestry, irrigation, electrical power utilities, mining, and national park planning. He received a BSc from the University of New South Wales, an MSc from Macquarie University, Sydney, and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked as a consultant ecologist and research scientist in Australia, the United States and Switzerland during the 1980's before joining the University of Melbourne in 1990. He joined CEP in February, 2017. He has published over two hundred and fifty refereed papers and book chapters and seven authored books. He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2006.“The idea of expertise and expert judgment has been around and has been something that society depends upon for a long time, but there have been no serious empirical explorations of who's an expert, what a domain of expertise is, and what sort of frailties are experts susceptible to. Those things haven't been addressed in an empirical way until the last 30 years. Some of this work began in the fifties with Kahneman and Tversky. They began to explore the things that make people misjudge risky situations, and that led to a body of research on who makes good judgments and under what circumstances for things that might affect us in various ways. But these were typically judgments about the probabilities of events and the magnitudes of the consequences. There's a domain in which we use experts to make judgments about future events, the quantities of things that we will see at some time in the future, or things that currently exist, but we don't know what they are. We don't have time yet, to compile the data that we need, and we rely on expert judgments in law courts, but also relied on them for example, we have a new disease like COVID, and we didn't know yet its transmission rates and yet we have to guess at its transmission rates to make judgments about how best to manage the population to protect ourselves. And we rely on expert judgments of all of those circumstances. And yet we don't know who the best expert is. Who should we ask? Is it the best-credentialed person? Is it the person that most people trust? If you ask two experts and you get two opinions, which one should you use? And so on and so forth. Now, that has been the focus of research over the last 10 or 15 years, and I've learned some really important things that run contrary to our intuition about some of those things.”www.imperial.ac.uk/environmental-policy www.conbio.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“The idea of expertise and expert judgment has been around and has been something that society depends upon for a long time, but there have been no serious empirical explorations of who's an expert, what a domain of expertise is, and what sort of frailties are experts susceptible to. Those things haven't been addressed in an empirical way until the last 30 years. Some of this work began in the fifties with Kahneman and Tversky. They began to explore the things that make people misjudge risky situations, and that led to a body of research on who makes good judgments and under what circumstances for things that might affect us in various ways. But these were typically judgments about the probabilities of events and the magnitudes of the consequences. There's a domain in which we use experts to make judgments about future events, the quantities of things that we will see at some time in the future, or things that currently exist, but we don't know what they are. We don't have time yet, to compile the data that we need, and we rely on expert judgments in law courts, but also relied on them for example, we have a new disease like COVID, and we didn't know yet its transmission rates and yet we have to guess at its transmission rates to make judgments about how best to manage the population to protect ourselves. And we rely on expert judgments of all of those circumstances. And yet we don't know who the best expert is. Who should we ask? Is it the best-credentialed person? Is it the person that most people trust? If you ask two experts and you get two opinions, which one should you use? And so on and so forth. Now, that has been the focus of research over the last 10 or 15 years, and I've learned some really important things that run contrary to our intuition about some of those things.”Mark Burgman is Director of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conservation Biology. He is author of Trusting Judgments: How to Get the Best Out of Experts. Previously, he was Adrienne Clarke Chair of Botany at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He works on expert judgement, ecological modelling, conservation biology and risk assessment. He has written models for biosecurity, medicine regulation, marine fisheries, forestry, irrigation, electrical power utilities, mining, and national park planning. He received a BSc from the University of New South Wales, an MSc from Macquarie University, Sydney, and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked as a consultant ecologist and research scientist in Australia, the United States and Switzerland during the 1980's before joining the University of Melbourne in 1990. He joined CEP in February, 2017. He has published over two hundred and fifty refereed papers and book chapters and seven authored books. He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2006.www.imperial.ac.uk/environmental-policy www.conbio.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“The idea of expertise and expert judgment has been around and has been something that society depends upon for a long time, but there have been no serious empirical explorations of who's an expert, what a domain of expertise is, and what sort of frailties are experts susceptible to. Those things haven't been addressed in an empirical way until the last 30 years. Some of this work began in the fifties with Kahneman and Tversky. They began to explore the things that make people misjudge risky situations, and that led to a body of research on who makes good judgments and under what circumstances for things that might affect us in various ways. But these were typically judgments about the probabilities of events and the magnitudes of the consequences. There's a domain in which we use experts to make judgments about future events, the quantities of things that we will see at some time in the future, or things that currently exist, but we don't know what they are. We don't have time yet, to compile the data that we need, and we rely on expert judgments in law courts, but also relied on them for example, we have a new disease like COVID, and we didn't know yet its transmission rates and yet we have to guess at its transmission rates to make judgments about how best to manage the population to protect ourselves. And we rely on expert judgments of all of those circumstances. And yet we don't know who the best expert is. Who should we ask? Is it the best-credentialed person? Is it the person that most people trust? If you ask two experts and you get two opinions, which one should you use? And so on and so forth. Now, that has been the focus of research over the last 10 or 15 years, and I've learned some really important things that run contrary to our intuition about some of those things.”Mark Burgman is Director of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conservation Biology. He is author of Trusting Judgments: How to Get the Best Out of Experts. Previously, he was Adrienne Clarke Chair of Botany at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He works on expert judgement, ecological modelling, conservation biology and risk assessment. He has written models for biosecurity, medicine regulation, marine fisheries, forestry, irrigation, electrical power utilities, mining, and national park planning. He received a BSc from the University of New South Wales, an MSc from Macquarie University, Sydney, and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked as a consultant ecologist and research scientist in Australia, the United States and Switzerland during the 1980's before joining the University of Melbourne in 1990. He joined CEP in February, 2017. He has published over two hundred and fifty refereed papers and book chapters and seven authored books. He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2006.www.imperial.ac.uk/environmental-policy www.conbio.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Mark Burgman is Director of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conservation Biology. He is author of Trusting Judgments: How to Get the Best Out of Experts. Previously, he was Adrienne Clarke Chair of Botany at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He works on expert judgement, ecological modelling, conservation biology and risk assessment. He has written models for biosecurity, medicine regulation, marine fisheries, forestry, irrigation, electrical power utilities, mining, and national park planning. He received a BSc from the University of New South Wales, an MSc from Macquarie University, Sydney, and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked as a consultant ecologist and research scientist in Australia, the United States and Switzerland during the 1980's before joining the University of Melbourne in 1990. He joined CEP in February, 2017. He has published over two hundred and fifty refereed papers and book chapters and seven authored books. He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2006.“The idea of expertise and expert judgment has been around and has been something that society depends upon for a long time, but there have been no serious empirical explorations of who's an expert, what a domain of expertise is, and what sort of frailties are experts susceptible to. Those things haven't been addressed in an empirical way until the last 30 years. Some of this work began in the fifties with Kahneman and Tversky. They began to explore the things that make people misjudge risky situations, and that led to a body of research on who makes good judgments and under what circumstances for things that might affect us in various ways. But these were typically judgments about the probabilities of events and the magnitudes of the consequences. There's a domain in which we use experts to make judgments about future events, the quantities of things that we will see at some time in the future, or things that currently exist, but we don't know what they are. We don't have time yet, to compile the data that we need, and we rely on expert judgments in law courts, but also relied on them for example, we have a new disease like COVID, and we didn't know yet its transmission rates and yet we have to guess at its transmission rates to make judgments about how best to manage the population to protect ourselves. And we rely on expert judgments of all of those circumstances. And yet we don't know who the best expert is. Who should we ask? Is it the best-credentialed person? Is it the person that most people trust? If you ask two experts and you get two opinions, which one should you use? And so on and so forth. Now, that has been the focus of research over the last 10 or 15 years, and I've learned some really important things that run contrary to our intuition about some of those things.”www.imperial.ac.uk/environmental-policy www.conbio.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“The idea of expertise and expert judgment has been around and has been something that society depends upon for a long time, but there have been no serious empirical explorations of who's an expert, what a domain of expertise is, and what sort of frailties are experts susceptible to. Those things haven't been addressed in an empirical way until the last 30 years. Some of this work began in the fifties with Kahneman and Tversky. They began to explore the things that make people misjudge risky situations, and that led to a body of research on who makes good judgments and under what circumstances for things that might affect us in various ways. But these were typically judgments about the probabilities of events and the magnitudes of the consequences. There's a domain in which we use experts to make judgments about future events, the quantities of things that we will see at some time in the future, or things that currently exist, but we don't know what they are. We don't have time yet, to compile the data that we need, and we rely on expert judgments in law courts, but also relied on them for example, we have a new disease like COVID, and we didn't know yet its transmission rates and yet we have to guess at its transmission rates to make judgments about how best to manage the population to protect ourselves. And we rely on expert judgments of all of those circumstances. And yet we don't know who the best expert is. Who should we ask? Is it the best-credentialed person? Is it the person that most people trust? If you ask two experts and you get two opinions, which one should you use? And so on and so forth. Now, that has been the focus of research over the last 10 or 15 years, and I've learned some really important things that run contrary to our intuition about some of those things.”Mark Burgman is Director of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conservation Biology. He is author of Trusting Judgments: How to Get the Best Out of Experts. Previously, he was Adrienne Clarke Chair of Botany at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He works on expert judgement, ecological modelling, conservation biology and risk assessment. He has written models for biosecurity, medicine regulation, marine fisheries, forestry, irrigation, electrical power utilities, mining, and national park planning. He received a BSc from the University of New South Wales, an MSc from Macquarie University, Sydney, and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked as a consultant ecologist and research scientist in Australia, the United States and Switzerland during the 1980's before joining the University of Melbourne in 1990. He joined CEP in February, 2017. He has published over two hundred and fifty refereed papers and book chapters and seven authored books. He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2006.www.imperial.ac.uk/environmental-policy www.conbio.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Mark Burgman is Director of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conservation Biology. He is author of Trusting Judgments: How to Get the Best Out of Experts. Previously, he was Adrienne Clarke Chair of Botany at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He works on expert judgement, ecological modelling, conservation biology and risk assessment. He has written models for biosecurity, medicine regulation, marine fisheries, forestry, irrigation, electrical power utilities, mining, and national park planning. He received a BSc from the University of New South Wales, an MSc from Macquarie University, Sydney, and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked as a consultant ecologist and research scientist in Australia, the United States and Switzerland during the 1980's before joining the University of Melbourne in 1990. He joined CEP in February, 2017. He has published over two hundred and fifty refereed papers and book chapters and seven authored books. He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2006.“The idea of expertise and expert judgment has been around and has been something that society depends upon for a long time, but there have been no serious empirical explorations of who's an expert, what a domain of expertise is, and what sort of frailties are experts susceptible to. Those things haven't been addressed in an empirical way until the last 30 years. Some of this work began in the fifties with Kahneman and Tversky. They began to explore the things that make people misjudge risky situations, and that led to a body of research on who makes good judgments and under what circumstances for things that might affect us in various ways. But these were typically judgments about the probabilities of events and the magnitudes of the consequences. There's a domain in which we use experts to make judgments about future events, the quantities of things that we will see at some time in the future, or things that currently exist, but we don't know what they are. We don't have time yet, to compile the data that we need, and we rely on expert judgments in law courts, but also relied on them for example, we have a new disease like COVID, and we didn't know yet its transmission rates and yet we have to guess at its transmission rates to make judgments about how best to manage the population to protect ourselves. And we rely on expert judgments of all of those circumstances. And yet we don't know who the best expert is. Who should we ask? Is it the best-credentialed person? Is it the person that most people trust? If you ask two experts and you get two opinions, which one should you use? And so on and so forth. Now, that has been the focus of research over the last 10 or 15 years, and I've learned some really important things that run contrary to our intuition about some of those things.”www.imperial.ac.uk/environmental-policy www.conbio.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Did you read Little House on the Prairie when you were a child? I didn't, but I know it's a common American rite of passage. My guest in this new episode, Dr. Dolly Chugh, got entirely immersed in the story with her two young daughters - so much so that they took a vacation to the places depicted in the story, and her daughters danced around in prairie dresses. Dr. Chugh didn't realized until afterward that there was something missing from both Little House on the Prairie and from her family's exploration of the Midwest: settlers didn't arrive to find unoccupied land ready for farming; the government actively removed Native Americans from the land so it could be occupied by 'settlers.' Dr. Chugh studies issues related to race as a professor, and yet she completely missed this aspect of our country's history. In her new book, A More Just Future, Dr. Chugh asks why so-called Good People act in ways that are counter to their beliefs because we don't have all the information we need, or we prioritize some information over others. In our conversation we discussed this research, and what we can all do to take actions that are aligned with our values - even when we're new to working on social justice issues. Affiliate link to A more just future: Reckoning with our past and driving social change by Dr. Dolly Chugh: https://amzn.to/3D8adV7 Shownotes: (09:13) 3 ways that we tend to perceive ourselves. (12:02) People who are trying to avoid a loss are more likely to make less ethical choices than people trying to make a game. (14:35) Kahneman and Tversky's work that says how you frame something can have meaningful consequences, even if the thing you're framing is exactly the same. (15:06) So that's all the research of Framing says, and the gain versus loss piece of it says that you can have identical situations. But what the research, Molly Curran and I have shown us that if you frame it as a loss, people are more likely to cheat. (28:51) James Loewen has done some, some deep analyses of textbooks where he's, you know, God bless him spent two years he took like the 20 most popular history textbooks used in American high schools.

Acclaimed psychologist and longtime Stanford University professor Barbara Tversky calls on her nearly 50 years in the field of cognitive psychology for an in-depth discussion about how your brain works, and offers practical approaches to get it working even better. Tversky examines the Nine Laws of Cognition, why action shapes thought, how the language use changes what we think, tactics to communicate better on Zoom, why she dove into the work of Leonardo da Vinci, the importance of perspective taking, learned knowledge vs. earned knowledge, and so much more. Tversky joined the faculty at Stanford University in 1978, and she is currently an active Emerita Professor of Psychology. She is also a Professor of Psychology at Columbia Teachers College and the author of the 2019 book Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought. Her work focuses on the relationship between the spaces we inhabit and the actions we perform and how we think, create, and communicate. It's time to Listen and Learn! -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish

I was reading the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance edited by K. Anders Ericsson yesterday, and after going through a chapter on medical experts, something struck me about the nature of expertise, automaticity, and Kahnemann and Tversky's System 1 vs. System 2 (also known as dual-process theory, popularised by their book Thinking, Fast and Slow), which joined together what I know about chess players, doctors, and how literacy works. I'm excited to share it with you today. Enjoy the episode. *** RELATED EPISODES 11. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann 17. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell 24. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell 52. How We Learn by Benedict Carey 79. What learning is 95. The Reading Mind by Daniel Willingham 114. Philosophy of Science - the good bits 124. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences SUPPORT To support Education Bookcast and join the community forum, visit www.buymeacoffee.com/edubookcast.

Ben Lapidus is a partner and Chief Financial Officer for Spartan Investment Group LLC, where he has applied his finance and business development skills to construct a portfolio of over $300M assets under management from scratch, build the corporate finance backbone for the organization, and organized over $100M of debt capital from the firm. Ben is also a co-founder and host of the Best Ever Conference and the managing partner of Indigo Ownerships LLC, where he sponsored 40+ single family and multifamily Real estate transactions. In this episode we talked about: * Ben's  Bio & Background * Spartan Investment Group  * First Steps in Real Estate Space * Transition from Single Family Houses to Real Big Deals * Best Ever Conference Evolution and Partnership * First Deal Details * Money or Wisdom? * Building a Team * Risk Navigation * Real Estate Market Outlook * Mentorship, Resources and Lessons Learned Useful links: Carlo Rovelli books Ben@spartan-investors.com Transcriptions: Jesse (0s): Welcome to the working capital real estate podcast. My name is Jesper galley. And on this show, we discuss all things real estate with investors and experts in a variety of industries that impact real estate. Whether you're looking at your first investment or raising your first fund, join me and let's build that portfolio one square foot at a time. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to working capital the real estate podcast. My guest today is Ben Lapidus. Ben is a partner and chief financial officer for Spartan investment group, LLC, where he has applied his finance and business development skills to acquire the company's current portfolio, build the corporate finance backbone for the firm and organize hundreds of million dollars of debt capital.   Ben is also the founder and host of the nation, the national best ever real estate investing conference and managing partner of indigo ownerships, LLC, where he sponsored 40 plus single family and multifamily real estate transactions. Ben, how you doing today?   Ben (56s): Doing awesome. Thanks for having Jesse.   Jesse (58s): Well, thanks for coming on. And before we jump into kind of the background and where you're working right now, for those that don't know, I think a lot of our listeners do know, but the best ever real estate investing conference, can you just let listeners know what you did the best ever? I guess it's now not just a conference, it's kind of a whole company in general, but if you could just let listeners that don't know what that is. Just kind of give a little bit of a bio there.   Ben (1m 20s): Yeah. The best ever conference it's turned into a world and an experience, a Disneyland, all of its own for real estate investors. It brings together over 1500 real estate investors, syndicators and operators. Every year. It matches over half a billion of unplaced capital and over 50 billion of assets under management from active operators, 96% of attendees have done at least one commercial deal in the last six months. So it's a really frothy, active community. If people come together at the beginning of every year to learn about what's ahead in the economic conditions to network with each other, learn from each other, get deals done and party with each other.   It's an awesome time.   Jesse (1m 53s): That's awesome. So the, the last one that you had, when was that and where was it?   Ben (1m 58s): Yeah, it was in February this year, 2022 in Denver, Colorado, as it's been for the last six years, we are picking up our roots and next year it's gonna be March 8th through 10th in salt lake city, first time outside of Denver.   Jesse (2m 11s): Awesome. That's great. Well, thanks for coming on. Like I said, at the outset, so you, in your current role right now, our CFO of Spartan investment group and what are you guys typically doing there? I think we talked a little bit before the show and I've listened to you on other podcasts, but a lot of it correct me if I'm wrong is self storage syndication. Is there a multi-family as well in that what's that company all about?   Ben (2m 34s): Yeah. So we started off as an opportunity to stick commercial real estate investor, meaning that we were more into the business of real estate. Then we will set class. However, we found ourselves through a very intentional decision making process, being proactive as opposed to reactive with self storage assets. So along the way, we did pick up some workforce housing in RV camps. Specifically, we have some retail, we have some industrial, but that's all minor compared to our growing self storage portfolio. At this stage, with that half a billion assets under management self storage is our main focus.   It just so happens that where we buy what we buy typically conveys with other types of asset classes, we've owned a carwash before as an example. So yeah,   Jesse (3m 15s): I was just watching the last season of breaking bad. So the carwash, the carwash aspect of it, it's funny because I'll, I'll look out on like different cash businesses that are tangentially related to real estate and car washes and laundromats seem to come up time and time again.   Ben (3m 30s): Yeah.   Jesse (3m 31s): So you, you did when you're in school, you're at Rutgers finance and economics. Take us back for, from that time in your life and going into what you're doing right now. Was it a fairly logical step to go into real estate? How did you move into the space?   Ben (3m 47s): Yeah, no, not at all. Do you want you all to short the 32nd answer Jesse or the three minute answer   Jesse (3m 51s): You can give the three minute answer. All   Ben (3m 53s): Right. All right. Cool. So yeah, Rutgers, I went into finance thinking that I was going to be an investment banker or some other type of front office wall street, Jackie, you know, I grew up in north Jersey. So I thought that was the only path laid out for me that came to a head in 2009. I had offers from Goldman Sachs and Citibank and crap. I can't even roll UBS. And then 2009 happened and they all disappeared. And the only thing that was left was Barclays capital just bought Lehman brothers. So I went to go work for their fixed income business, doing credit, exotic credit derivatives as an intern.   I still hadn't finished school yet and found out that that life was not for me. It was not fun. And I tried every which way to try to make it fun. I shadowed wealth management, I'd shadowed FX and commodities and equities and research, both debt and equity, investment banking. I shadowed every type of front office investment banking job I could find. And I could not find any place that I enjoyed outside of the quantitative aspects. I didn't enjoy the culture. I didn't love the significance of the work.   So I quit. And I went and started the study abroad company in Costa Rica, which has a huge about face. I'll just kind of gloss. Over that three years later, we were doing $2 million a year in revenue, bringing environmental engineering, renewable energy engineering students from 10 different countries, 80 different universities to Costa Rica to learn about sustainability, renewable energy engineering. We were doing about $2 million a year in revenue until hormones and ego got in the way things fell apart. And I had to move on. So I took my winnings, my small winnings from that business, got myself a job in ad tech where I learned about big data.   And along the way, started investing in single family houses. The company that I worked for was one of the very first unicorns a decade ago, and it made a lot of VPs close to me millionaires overnight when it IPO at six months after I started. And so they heard about what I was doing. He started throwing cash at me. I started accidentally syndicating when I was 23, 24 years old, and I acquired several million dollars, a single family multifamily real estate. I took my net worth from 800 bucks to half a million dollars using other people's money in about two years, which was an accident, but it was hugely meaningful because I was able to take that net worth balance sheet and start doing significant things with it.   So when I realized that I was talented at real estate components of it, not all things real estate, certainly just components of it. And I met my wife and I wanted to leave the city to move out to Denver. I knew that the work that I had built up in ad tech was not going to last in this city. And so I wanted to commit myself to what I was good at, which was this real estate investing world. So in 2016, I started the best ever conference to make a name for myself by way of that, I found my current business partners and the three of us have built a awesome self storage syndication and development engine.   That is smart enough, I believe to navigate the world to have   Jesse (6m 37s): So not dissimilar from a lot of people that get into real estate. Usually typically not a straightforward path as sounds like some somewhat similar here. How was that transition from going and being into the world of single family housing to actually doing larger deals? Was there one thing that led to another in terms of it was one big deal, one opportunity, or was that a process that kind of developed over time?   Ben (6m 59s): Yeah, I would say it was a light switch, which is, there is no path to commercial real estate. There is no barrier to entry, artificial or preexisting barrier to entry. The barrier to entry is artificial and it's in your mindset. So I, I had acquired for single families when I had a buddy at my work when I was 22, 23 years old, it was like, Hey, I have a friend that's doing a skill share class here in New York city about how to buy a $7 million building for $15,000. I was like, that's a catchy title. I'm going to check that out. This is back in the day when Skillshare was in person, like it wasn't digital is like their early business model.   So I went and I was one of like five other people. And the guy giving that class was Joe Fairless in 2012. If you're familiar with Joe Fairless has got one of the top three podcasts in commercial real estate investing due to acquired a 2 billion multifamily portfolio in the last five, five or six years, he's got an awesome business. And so I took that class and the one thing that I walked away from it was, oh, I can go do this right now. I don't have to build up to this. There's no difference in figuring this out versus what I've already done other than scale. That's the only thing. And I can scale. I have that. I have that, you know, confidence that's typically associated with white men who haven't had any adversity presented to them.   I, I can figure this out. So that's, that's what I took away from that interaction. And Joe and I have become good friends. We started the best ever conference together in, in 2016. So that, that was the biggest thing was just that mindset switch.   Jesse (8m 21s): So for, I mean, there'll be a number of listeners that know what the best ever is or best ever conference. How did that partnership? You said there was two other partners. So yourself with Joe, you know, I remember seeing the YouTube videos years ago. So I was curious what started first? Was it the conference that started first? Was it the, the content that was uploaded to social media? How did that kind of become what it is today? Cause it's, it's massive today.   Ben (8m 47s): Yeah. So let me clarify. I've got two partners in Spartan investment group that have nothing to do with best ever conference. The three of us run smart investment group best ever as a is a hundred percent owned by Joe Fairless. We, he started that in 2013. The very first thing was the podcast and the podcast was the nucleus of his entire economic engine in all of the values. He supplies that the community and, and other investors from that, we had been friends since 2012. When I moved to Denver, I said, Hey, Joe, you've got this podcast, you've got this blossoming syndication business.   I'm trying to make a splash for myself. I've got this experience running study abroad companies. I can, I can build good event experiences. So we decided to marry it together. It's his brand, but specifically on the conference, we, we run that together. So the, the podcast for Joe came first for me, the conference came first for both of us. The thought leadership platforms came before the successful syndication company. Joe found his partner at Ashcroft capital because of a direct result of all the work he had been doing prior to meeting his partner and same for myself.   Jesse (9m 51s): So for yourself and your two other partners in your current business, what, I'm the first deal that you did, where you had to, it wasn't bootstrapped and you had to raise outside capital or syndicate the deal. What did that deal look like? And you know, w what was the, you know, high-level details of that, that first deal?   Ben (10m 7s): It was awful. I was 24 years old. It was 2000 late, late 2013, close early 2014. I pursued a 34 unit 38 unit $1.3 million building in Richmond, Virginia, not even a building. It was five buildings on five separate parcels, not all contiguous, which made the lending environment very gnarly. As for my first deal. I had a lot of expectations that did not turn out to be reality. And I was definitely one of those frustrated, entitled young millennials, trying to try to get my cash.   The syndication process was interesting. I learned that when you ask for wisdom, you get money. When you ask for money, you get wisdom. That was pretty cool to learn about that, but I successfully raised all of the cash for that first, for that first deal. And I learned that I'm really good at real estate transactions, capital markets, underwriting, feasibility, due diligence. And I turned what was a decent deal, not an extraordinary deal, but a decent deal into a bad outcome because I'm not a great operator. At least I wasn't a great operator. I don't really like kind of using these identity claims that last forever at the time, I wasn't a good operator.   I wasn't great at construction management. I wasn't great at property management and I didn't put enough energy into asset management to kind of cover over those deficiencies. I didn't have a team. I didn't have a business. I was just doing a hustle on the side of a full-time job with another side hustle business along the way. So I made lots of mistakes and I was lucky, frankly, not skilled at getting out of that investment three years later, where my investors got an annualized return, just shy of 7%. And I made nothing over the course of three years, all that work. And I made nothing, which was a great learning lesson, not as much of a learning lesson is when I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars of my investor money, which is a much better story, but that was a great lesson as to like, don't get yourself into something, unless you plan making money.   It was a great learning opportunity, but it didn't do much else other than send me to school.   Jesse (11m 58s): So I want to go into that second quotations, better story. But before you do, can you unpack a little bit of the ask for wisdom, get money, ask for money, get wisdom piece.   Ben (12m 7s): Yeah. Yeah. I think when you're, when you're young, especially, and you don't have a track record, right? A lot of people like to tell you how it is or how it's going to be. And so I think the best way to play into that when you are looking for something substantial, when you're trying to sell something, you're trying to, you're selling a security in exchange for cash, right? And that's the same thing as selling a widget in exchange for cash. You're trying to sell something when you are learning, you want to show that I've learned, you can play that youth card very, very well.   People like to invest in young people because they know that they're going to last a very long time. A, it makes people feel good that they can, they can drive the direction of somebody so young and somebody so impressionable. It it's, it's kinda like that fulfilling mentorship quality. So when you get an investor, I did not shy away from them. You know, wanting to feel like my mentors, even though I might have taken a lot of their wisdom with a grain of salt and, and not as substantially as they would've liked, but also they just like to share their wisdom and feel like they know what they're doing.   Even as the world is rapidly changing. What I've seen is that if you're out of something or not in something at all for the last five years, you're irrelevant. It doesn't matter how much experience you have. If you have 30 years experience and you retired five years ago, you have less experience than the person who's been doing it for the last two years, as far as I'm concerned, that being said, when you're young play that youth card. So people want to tell you where you're wrong and how you could do better. And there's a bit of an Oliver twist component to that. Like, thank you, sir. Can I have some more, can I have some more of your input, even if I'm not going to take it, can I just hear you out?   I want to know more about what you have to say, and when somebody shares a part of their wisdom, they're sharing a part of themselves, and now they're invested into what you're doing. So when you ask for wisdom, you are already getting an investment from that person. You're getting an investment of their time, their knowledge, their wisdom, their energy. And so you've already started that process of them saying yes, because they're already making that investment to you. When you come out of the gate saying here's a terrible deck that nobody has audited, and that has not gone through the, the, the, the cadence of 50 iterations of past failures.   You know, here's my first try. They're going to give you that wisdom, whether or not you like it. So you might as well ask for the wisdom as opposed to asking for the cash.   Jesse (14m 20s): No, that makes a lot of sense. And if you go back, so this story where you've lost hundreds of thousands, I'm always curious about this. Cause, you know, I'm not sure one of my favorite books in the last five years of me reading in the last five years, I think it came out probably 10 or 12 years ago was thinking fast and slow. Danny Kahneman and Tversky, where it was this idea of loss, aversion, you know, gaining 20 bucks versus losing five. The loss always is more amplified. So can you talk a little bit about that, that story of, you know, you, you lost hundreds, hundreds of thousands.   This was one deal.   Ben (14m 54s): It was a few, but it was one play that I was making. So I had gotten 40 50 cashflowing units under my belt. Let's say two thirds of the multi-family a third of them, single family, small, multi kin. And all of them were going well on average, I was cashflowing over 20% with 15 year mortgages, which is like impossible today. But back in 13, 14, 15, 16 was feasible if you bought, right. In fact, I should have just bought wrong and bought a lot more stuff back then. Cause it'd be worth so much more than what it is today, but the hubris set in, right.   You know, when you're in your mid twenties and you've done this well, 20, 30 times, you start to think you can do kind of anything and it must be you again. So I, I made a decision to invest in flips instead of cash flowing assets, which is the only thing that I'd been doing at the time. But it was just too slow. I was making a hundred, 200, $300 per month per unit. And it just felt like a very slow aggregation of wealth from a cash standpoint, I was doing great on my balance sheet, but my pocket book wasn't really fattening up too much. So I wanted to, I wanted to get into flipping cause I was getting jealous of people making 2050, a hundred thousand dollars margins on one house.   So I tried a couple out and I made 20, $30,000 margins on those couple, but I had done so in a way where I had identified a turnkey model where I outsourced basically everything acquisitions, con construction, leasing design, like everything, I'd outsource everything. And so I was like, all right, well, cool. Let me go raise a fund. Now that I've tried this out with my own money and go buy three, five of these at the same time, which I did. And I made acquisition mistakes. I just, I, I, I was in Chicago land in cook county specifically, which is one of the most corrupt places.   I had one house that they had me go through 13 certificate of occupancy inspections, all of which failed every time they came up with new something new that I had to do, even though it wasn't on the original list that they had presented. When I purchased the asset, I just, I didn't know how to navigate cook county. One of the most difficult bureaucracies in America, I, I ended up selling it without the certificate of occupancy for a hundred thousand dollars, less than I planned on a hun $250,000 estimated value. So it's like a significant percentage and I had put $30,000 more into it than I had anticipated.   So I lost 120, $130,000 on that one flip. I had another flip in the same area that I lost 15 grand on. I had another flip at the same time in Richmond, Virginia, that I lost 30 grand on all at the same time. So when you tally that up, it was over 150 grand. I had lost not only a hundred percent of the capital that I had raised from an equity position for that flip fund, which I was trying to scale up to five at a time until I realized very quickly I was terrible at this, but I had also had to throw my own money, another 60 grand into it that I lost. So I lost everybody else's money and my money along the way.   I think the, the thing that was formative for me in that experience was the decision that I was going to take one of the houses that I've worked so hard to pay down to zero and get a hilar on it. Fortunately, I had done that and not only pay off a hundred percent of the capital that I lost to my investors, which I didn't have to do because it was an equity position, not a deposition, but also an annualized eight and a half percent. So all of the investors at least got their money back and beat the S and P so that the taste in their mouth was left.   Very good, better than if I had just done well from the get go, because now I've proven, even when I don't have to, I'm going to find a way to do the right thing and what matters with a good operator, a good sponsor of a deal is how do they behave? How do they act in the trying times and the difficult times when the gamma risk, the environmental risk, which has nothing to do with the operator in this case? That was me. It was, I was, I was the problem, but when the environmental risk is it, it is making it so difficult to make the ask perform. How does the sponsor perform in those trying times, not what are they doing in the good times, or the easy times when they're riding the wave, but how are they behaving in those trying times?   That's what I learned through that experience.   Jesse (18m 52s): Yeah. I think it's part of the reason that there are investors right or wrong out there. There are investors that will only invest with people that have been through some sort of downturn, whether it's, you know, now that in 2022, whether it was a pandemic, oh 7 0 8, 2001, early nineties in commercial real estate. And, you know, the list goes on where they want to have some trial and tribulation. But I really like what you said earlier about the fact that somebody that has doing or is immersed in an environment could be legal, real estate accounting for the last two, three years is going to have more subject matter expertise than somebody that has been doing it for 30 years has been out of the game for 5, 6, 7 years.   It's not to discount the fact that that person has built up a great amount of knowledge over that time. But as you know, our businesses a month to month, quarter to quarter, sometimes obviously it's a longterm business, but you need to really be into the thick of the details of, of what's going on in the market and what, you know, what's happening and what's relevant as of today.   Ben (19m 47s): So   Jesse (19m 48s): In terms of that risk, that piece there, so that environmental risks, the, the aspect of controlling the controllables, just kind of leading into how you built your team up today, so that you can kind of not only ameliorate some of the external risks, but the risks as associated with the fact that you said you were certain aspects of the deal that you were very good at others, that you're not, you were not so good at what was the plate of there to learn to shore yourself up in other areas or to hire expertise in those areas.   Ben (20m 17s): Yeah. So, so for the sake of answering this question, let's get your listeners on the same page. When, when, when you study institutional commercial real estate investing, there's three types of risks that you learn about alpha beta and gamma. I always forget which one's, which, but one of them is, has, has to do with the deal itself conditions of the specific deal. The second is the conditions of those that control the investment, the team, the operator, the sponsor, and the third is, is those risks that you can't really control as in, in the environment, the economic conditions or whatever, like jurisdiction, legal bureaucracies, whatever it might be.   So we go through a lot of different risk mitigation strategies. One of them is called a pre-mortem, which is like a post-mortem, but you pretend like you've already failed. And you come up with all of the reasons why you failed and you kind of work backwards as to what caused those things. And then we look at what are the ways to mitigate each of those failures, each of those things that cause those failures, and sometimes you can't, sometimes you have to accept them. And there's different things that you can do with risk. You can mitigate the risk by doing something active, to make that risk lessened or gone away all altogether.   And if it's gone away altogether, that's called eliminating the risk. You can also transfer the risk. You can hire somebody that can take on that risk for you. That's like hiring a securities attorney to put, put your PPM together so that you don't have securities risk. Your attorney has securities risk. We've transferred the risk in exchange for feet. The last thing you can do is you can accept that risk mitigate, eliminate transfer accept, and you can accept that risk. That's the whole point of doing your due diligence and having an underwriting file. And underwriting file is your best guest estimation of what risks might be costly to you that could cause volatility to your target returns.   When you accept those risks, it's fine to accept the risk. Just what is the, the, the, the, the spectrum of costs associated with that risk that could affect your returns. If you are aware of those risks, you package them into your underwriting and you make them transparent to your investor community. Then what's the harm in the risk being there altogether. In fact, the risk is really what brings opportunity. We shouldn't be afraid of the risk, right? We should be looking for that risk. As long as we have the rains to tame that bull, we should be looking for that risk as much as possible.   Jesse (22m 30s): So if you'd give a couple examples or say there's a couple items, so CapEx reserve, for instance, the idea of actually keeping a certain amount of capital for longer term expenses, as one say, risk mitigation tool. And then another being, let's just say, going with fixed rate, a fixed rate debt for one of your investments. So you would categorize those and you would figure out which type, which type of risk that is first of all, trying to mitigate, and what is it actually doing? So for instance, if we take fixed, you know, if we take fixed debt, you're basically saying at that point, we have the ability to have less volatility into, into our debt payments at a price, usually a higher rate.   And that would be in this case, you wouldn't be, well, I guess you would be eliminating the risk for a period of time. Is that how the kind of the framework that you would look at?   Ben (23m 22s): We, we would, we would work. We would work it a little bit more downstream from there and go backwards. So we would start with the failure. The failure would be, we are not able to hit our target returns, why debt service was higher than we expected. Why? Because interest rates went up and we got a floating rate loan. Okay. How do we either mitigate, eliminate or transfer that risk if we don't want to accept it? Well, we mitigate it by not getting a floating rate loan. We get a fixed rate loan that would be eliminating the risk altogether. We call that interest rate risk.   The other thing that we could do is we could purchase an interest rate cap. So three months ago, interest rate caps were affordable for two or three years. Now they're not. So interest rate caps are just not really a economically feasible thing to do. So that's not an option anymore. The, so here's an example. We just locked in a two 60 Sofer spread on, on a, on a loan, which with a 40 basis point floor. So it's at 3% basically today. And it will be at 3% probably until we get like more than an eighth of a point hike going on, but it's definitely gonna go up.   However, we're looking at alternatives that put our fixed rates anywhere from 4.75 to 5.5, which is much higher than it was a year or two ago. So the fact that we get to start with 3% with interest only into perpetuity, with limited recourse, with all of these other benefits, there's no interest rate cap requirements. There's no lock box. There's all these other things that are soft costs that investors just don't care about, but make it easier to operate the actual deal, because you're not focused on the administration of the nonsense that these institutional banks require.   Even though we've got floating rate interest rate risks, we're starting at 3%, which is two and a half percent of our, of our fixed rate alternative. And even if the interest rate goes above what we anticipated it to be, we've got two, three, I don't know, 12 months, 18 months, pick your, pick your prediction of having a benefit of however much cashflow along the way. So we're okay with our floating interest rate going above our fixed rate in month, 18 or month 36, or month 40, whatever it might be, however long it takes to get there because our best economic predictions and our model suggests that rates will come back down.   Eventually just will take three years, five years, six years. We're not sure, but we can go up as high as four more points. And we are satisfied with how bad things can get. Now, if we go up more than four points, we might be in a little bit of trouble, but I think a lot of folks would be in a lot of trouble, which is not a good way to, to, to, to say like, that's okay. A lot of folks are going to be in trouble, but we also have a very low debt ratio. So we're, we're comfortable that we can pay off a significant percentage of the debt to make it more, make it more palatable. If it does go up four points, it just wouldn't be ideal, but it's manageable.   Jesse (25m 60s): Yeah. No, that makes sense. So if we move over to the investor relations side of your business, what you have created today, is this more of an asset specific type of syndication that you, that you typically do? Or is this a fund model where you're having people come in and come out on a regular basis?   Ben (26m 17s): Yeah. So up until last month, it was, you get to pick your, the placement of your, of your capital. Here's one deal. You can invest into it. Here's another offering. It's a separate deal. You can invest into it. It would be based off of our acquisitions pipeline. So if we were buying a four property portfolio, we were selling securities for that for property portfolio. If we were buying one one-off investment location address, you'd be, we'd be selling a security to invest in that one deal. Today, we have produced the amount of demand for the investment vehicle and have a enough verifiable deal flow that we are comfortable with the fund.   And so we now offer a fund.   Jesse (26m 55s): Hmm. Yeah. And it seems like a logical transition for most individuals. But I find that there are, you know, you talk to investors, even listeners on the, the podcast where they were, that person that had that full-time job and kind of side hustling, even on the syndication side where you're trying to figure out where's that inflection point where you move, you leave the current job you're having, and you can do this. Full-time because it's usually from my experience, it's not like one perfect. Oh, here's the deal. That's big enough for me to leave everything. It's always a, it's always a question mark. And it's a uncomfortable decision that people do make if they do make it at that point.   Ben (27m 30s): Yeah. So it was the question like, when is it the right time to   Jesse (27m 33s): When I mean, I, my, my gut always says, it's never really the right time. It's you make a decision with the best facts that you have, but what would you answer if, you know, if somebody is out there asking, saying I have what you had back a few years back where they're trying to figure out, I want to go this way with my life. I want to actually go into the investment side of it and leave the day job, but trying to figure out what, when the right time is.   Ben (27m 57s): Yeah. I, I think to your, to your point, I think everybody's position is different. Circumstances are different. And I don't want to dictate, you know, if you have three kids versus zero kids, you're in a completely different life situation, right? So your calculus, your cost benefit analysis is going to be different, but high level, I've got two different answers. Number one, I don't believe in the burn, your boat mentality, where, you know, you burn your boat, you put your back up against the wall and you'll figure a way to fight it out. In fact, I think it's different. I think Hungary's make bad decisions. So there's a little sound for you. It don't burn your boat. Hungary's make bad decisions.   When you get hungry, you start to flail and you start to get a little bit erratic. And at least for me, when somebody said that, I was like, heck yeah, that's what I've had. That's, that's how I've behaved. When I've gotten hungry. You know, I like bought into this burn, your boat mentality. I started to make bad decisions. I started to think in the short term, not in the longterm and I wasn't playing a chess. I was playing checkers. You know, I was like trying to win today, not tomorrow. On the other hand, if you've created something comfortable enough, the idea that managing both is, is supplementing yours or your family's income.   I think it could be faulty. So if you're able to produce enough that you're not going to be hungry when you burn your boat, your W2, I think that the mental load of the distraction in and of itself is enough to limit your creativity, to limit your capacity, your bandwidth, to be more and to do more. So, but all three of us, when we got started, you know, I had a New York city gig that I had gotten to be pretty well-refined. I was only putting in like 10 hours a week into it out here in Denver, Colorado, another partner, you know, flies for an airline.   And so he's able to just like request leave. I mean, he's still like on payroll, you know, he hasn't, he like flies once a quarter, you know what I mean? And then the third guy worked for the government and the government is pretty inefficient. He was able to fly under the radar two hours a week. But for two out of the three of us, we realized that the mental load alone, not the hours committed, but the mental load alone, the distraction, the requirement of having to give yourself to somebody else at a moment's notice in exchange for paying, spending time with the people that you're collaborating with to build this thing is not worth the income.   Yes, you will be taking a step back today, but the potential of where you'll be three years from now is so much more valuable.   Jesse (30m 16s): Yeah. I couldn't agree with that more. It is interesting. And, and kind of eyeopening that when you're talking, especially when you're raising outside capital, that when something happens, you literally drop everything mentally and, and usually physically as well. But it is definitely a tool that even in my business, you know, we have clients that are pretty active and demanding, but brokerage, same thing. That's I don't think that it's the same amount of kind of mental, the mental workout you get when something really crazy happens with the investing side and you have to attend to it. So I couldn't agree with that more.   I want to be mindful of the time Ben, we have four questions. We ask every guest that comes on the kind of rapid fire. But before we get there, I ask every guest, when we come to the end here is just kind of your general outlook right now at the market. We're coming into a new year. Hopefully we're past fingers, crossed some, some pretty tumultuous times that we've had in the last 24 months. What's your general philosophy or outlook for the short to midterm? You know, whether that's opportunities you're seeing, or just generally what your thoughts are on where we're headed.   Ben (31m 15s): Yeah. It's a complicated question because it depends on where you're what asset class you're in, what your, your investment thesis is. But, you know, I like, we just had Spencer levy, who's the, it's got another title, but I'm gonna call them the global chief economist of, of CVRE, just present at, at both best ever conference. And to my company's part, investment group to the whole team. And, you know, he's all over the place. When you ask him economics based questions, he's got answers for everything, but they, they they're all over the place. So in storage, I'm just gonna speak to storage. If that's all right and storage, there's still lots of opportunity.   And, and I will explain why the first is, is everybody's scared of two things, inflation and interest rate risk inflation has more of an impact on pre negotiated contracts that lasts a lot longer. So if you've got a retail lease, that's five years with 3% packaged increases, but rate of inflation is 10%. You're going backwards by 7%, every year locked in for five years, right? You've got a multifamily contract that lasts 12 months for a lease, but inflation is going up by 1% every month.   The value of that contract is being diluted by 1%. Every month, self storage is a month to month situation. So we can change our rents whenever we want, even if we just changed them last month might not be beneficial from a business operation standpoint, but from a, a pricing elasticity standpoint, it's one of the most beneficial asset classes to be in to hedge inflation. All asset classes typically end up catching up with interest rates eventually because inflation is, is, is linked to interest rates and inflation pushes rents up, right? Like in theory, w there's more wages as a result of inflation, people have more money.   The price of goods goes up. The price of services goes up. The price of rent goes up. So it's just a matter of how fast prices adjust relative to interest. We see self storage adjusting much faster than industrial office retail and even multifamily. So that's our, that's my, my soapbox on inflation on the interest rate side, I think as long as your spreads between interest rate and cap rates still make sense, there's a play. So in retail, retail is not down for the count. Retail has a lot of opportunity and they're trading at 7%. Now there's a lot of lenders that won't lend on retail, but if you can find the debt at five, five and a half percent, there's a spread there.   So in self storage, when we've, when we got started, we were in the six, six and a quarter six and a half percent cap rate, which is, sounds really juicy today. Now we're looking at cap rates in the four, four and a half, sometimes 5% range. And when interest rates were at three and a half, 4%, there was spread. Now that the interest rates are at five, five and a quarter five and a half, sometimes under five, there's no spread. So how do you make that work? And we're starting to answer that question. Well, we're getting more aggressive with our rent growth assumptions because of inflation. We're looking at cap rate compression, but there's only so much risk you want to take on in the aggression aggressiveness of your underwriting model.   So we're, we're starting to look for other strategies. We have not paid as much attention to raw land development. Even though we have that capacity, we've done it a few times. We've never done a conversion at Spartan investment group, but there's more margin in those things. And the short term interest rates are still attractive enough in this very, very small window of time that we can make that work until we start to see things plateau. And we can figure out where, how, if, how cap rates are going to adjust relative to interest rates to see if that spread comes back. I don't   Jesse (34m 32s): Know. Yeah, no, that's a long   Ben (34m 34s): Winded answer.   Jesse (34m 35s): Yeah, that's pretty tight. Okay. So four questions. I'll kick it off right now. What is one book or resource that you could recommend for listeners that, that you've been recommending recently?   Ben (34m 46s): Everybody's talks about real estate economics business books. So I'm going to throw something else out there because I think the best investors have like a very, very they're Renaissance, men and women. So I'm going to go with the order of time by Carlo Rovelli. He is a gravitational loop theorist, and he makes physics accessible to the layman, the boundaries of physics. And I think that studying physics helps widen the creativity and the capability of an investor's mindset.   Jesse (35m 10s): That's great. I haven't heard about that. One. Love the topic though. Big Brian Green fan. Okay. So what would you tell a younger individual that's trying to get into the industry, whether it's specifically on the investment side or just real estate in general, what would be some advice you'd give them from just a mentorship perspective?   Ben (35m 32s): It depends. It depends on who they are, what they've asked me, where they're, where they're at in their life, but collaboration, beats competition. Don't try to be a hero. Don't try to be something that you're not embellish yourself, put yourself out there, have hubris, but don't let others tell you how it is either. You can recreate everything. Don't assume that just because people have doctorates or pilot certifications that they know what the heck they're doing, everybody has an adult has imposter syndrome. Everybody's figuring out their lives because if they weren't, they would get bored and they would quit.   So if they're engaged in what they do, it means that they're also figuring out what they do. So don't be intimidated, but also have a humility and learn. I don't know, here we go.   Jesse (36m 18s): There's usually a couple answers for this, but if one sticks out in your head, something that you didn't know when you first got into our industry, that you know now, and you know, you'd like to share with your younger self or again, people that are, that are breaking into the investment side of our business,   Ben (36m 34s): The investment side of our business, be intentional about your investment thesis experiment with it upfront. And then once you find something that works, eliminate all the distractions and go all in.   Jesse (36m 46s): All right, last question. This might be a, a wasted one if you're in New York for a long period of time, but a first car make and model   Ben (36m 53s): First car, man, I don't know. My car is a Ford Taurus. Is that a thing?   Jesse (37m 0s): That is a thing that, that was my family car growing up. That was our drive to Florida car for 20 hours trip. Awesome. Well, Ben, for those that would kind of want to reach out or connect with you aside from a Google search, where would you point them to?   Ben (37m 16s): Yeah, you can reach me at Ben at Spartan, hyphen investors.com.   Jesse (37m 21s): My guest today has been Ben Lapidus. Ben, thanks for being part of working capital.   Ben (37m 25s): Awesome. Thanks Jesse.   Jesse (37m 34s): Thank you so much for listening to working capital the real estate podcast. I'm your host, Jesse for galley. If you liked the episode, head on to iTunes and leave us a five star review and share on social media, it really helps us out. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, Jesse for galley, F R a G a L E, have a good one. Take care.