Season 2, Episode 5

Host: Matt Hall

Guest: Carl Richards

Carl Richards (00:00): I think we're missing the fundamental sense of personal awareness, about our relationship with money. Where instead we're constantly trying to make it prettier, faster, cheaper, easier. We're always looking for hack, hack, hack. Instead of asking some questions like, "Well, wait, what really matters to me?"

Matt Hall (00:24): Welcome to Take The Long View with Matt Hall. This is a podcast to reframe the way you think about your money, emotion, and time. The goal, helping you put the odds of long-term success on your side. Carl Richards is one of the best in the world at connecting money and emotion in ways real people can understand. He is the creator of the Sketch Guy column, appearing weekly in, the New York Times since 2010. And Carl has over 800 simple sketches that will get you thinking and talking about what really matters in your life.

Matt Hall (01:02): Carl's also been featured on Marketplace Money, oprah.com and forbes.com in addition, Carl's become a frequent keynote speaker at financial planning conferences and visual learning events around the world. Through his writing, speaking and sketches, Carl makes complex financial concepts, easy to understand. His work also serves as the foundation for his two books, The One-Page Financial Plan: A Simple Way to Be Smart About Your Money, and The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money.

Matt Hall (01:33): His sketches have appeared in shows at the Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah, at Parsons School of Design in New York City, the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California, and an exhibit at the Mansion House in London. His commission work is on display in businesses and educational institutions around the globe. Carl currently resides in London with his family and is available for speaking engagements and conferences both nationally and internationally. What's more though, I count Carl as a long-time friend.

Matt Hall (02:02): And someone you'd want in the room if you're making an important decision and want a perspective you might not have on your own. This is just another way of saying, I think Carl, you're a visionary and I'm excited to talk with you today.

Carl Richards (02:17): Thank you Matt. Super excited about this, this is going to be fun.

Matt Hall (02:21): One thing I was thinking about to get us started is no one really does what you do, at least I don't know anyone else who does what you do. You have no competitors, at least from my perspective. And so you're at a party and someone says, "What do you do?" How do you answer that question?

Carl Richards (02:37): You've just touched on the kind of bane of my existence, is I don't know how to answer that question. But lately I've just simply been saying I'm an author. And then when somebody says, "What do you write about? I say, "Look, I write about the intersection of money in our lives," right? And really with an emphasis of trying to take complex things and make them simple using a Sharpie and card stock.

Matt Hall (03:04): So how did you decide that you were going to start using a Sharpie and card stock, to make this connection or create this intersection?

Carl Richards (03:14): Yeah, so it really was kind of an act of desperation. I mean, I was in a situation with some clients and I was trying to describe to them a very important concept, that I felt like they needed to understand, in order to make this decision they were considering. And these are smart, successful people. And I was just getting blank stares back. And that's obviously not their fault, because they're smart and successful people as mine. And I couldn't figure out how to get this across.

Carl Richards (03:44): I remember who the clients were, but I don't remember what the topic was exactly. And there was a whiteboard in the room that I'd never used as a conference room in the office I was in, and I had never used it before. And I jumped up and I was like, "No, like this." And I just drew. I have no art background, as will be obvious to anybody who looks at my work. I drew a box, and a triangle and an arrow or something. And I remember them saying, "Oh, I get it now." Right? And so that little moment hooked me.

Carl Richards (04:14): And it's not so much about sharping card stock versus graphic design, those were the only tools I knew how to use. I wasn't a trained graphic designer. So it was, can you take a problem that feels multifaceted and big and even sort of like, you dive into and it feels full of complexity and can you come out the other side with something that's simple, that you can do with a blunt instrument like a Sharpie and card stock. Like that's how I started doing. It was just that sort of pragmatic need to help somebody understand something.

Matt Hall (04:46): Yeah. So just to clarify, you used to be a practitioner, you met with clients and you were an advisor. Not that dissimilar from what I do, and my firm does in our world. And now you don't meet with clients, you really are spending most of your time trying to communicate with two audiences. One with is, I think you help a lot of professionals think about that intersection of emotion and money or behavior and money. But you're also through the New York Times, you're talking directly to the public.

Carl Richards (05:16): Yeah.

Matt Hall (05:17): How would you describe what your mission or purpose or the why of your work is with either of those groups or both of those groups?

Carl Richards (05:26): Yeah, it's really exactly the same. One is just a leverage point, right? Like the more financial professionals I can help by extension, the more people I... Because each of those financial professionals is helping a hundred to a thousand people. Right? And it's all the same thing though. It's helping people align their use of capital, with what's important to them. Right? And if I were to draw that, I've done a lot of art on the radio, right? If you were just to draw two circles with a little overlap, a Venn diagram, in other words, I like to call them circle sketches, but a Venn diagram.

Carl Richards (05:59): And you relabel one circle what's important to me. You could even label it, what I value. But I like what's important to me and you label the other circle, my use of capital. That overlap is what I'm trying... Like we're trying to get that overlap to be an increasing share of the Venn diagram if you will. And I use the align your use of capital, on purpose because I think there's more to capital than money.

Carl Richards (06:27): And I'm specifically interested in time, money, emotion and talent, but specifically time and money, because they are things we can measure and we can improve our alignment with what we say we want to be doing, and how we're actually using our money and time. So that's the mission, is to help as many people as possible, align their use of capital with what's important to them.

Matt Hall (06:52): Yeah. I heard you say one time, and I think about this myself, you said, "Show me your calendar and your checkbook and I'll tell you what's important to you."

Carl Richards (07:00): Yeah, there's an old saying, I can't really find the original source. At least my editorial team attributes it to anonymous because we can't find the original source. It's that, "The checkbook and the calendar never lie." Right? And that's exactly what it means. Like, I care what you tell me is important to you, I care. And in the academic work we would call that revealed preferences, right? Like your revealed preferences through how you spend your time and money, will really tell me a lot about you.

Carl Richards (07:28): And what's so interesting and would be fun to talk about it, because I don't get a chance to talk with very many people as thoughtful as you is, why is that so hard? Like, we have a record of how you spend your time and how you spend your money. And most of us will avoid that, I'm thinking of as a gap. Like if you take those Venn diagram and you split it apart so there's no overlap, that gap in the middle. Now what's important to me and what I'm actually doing, like up in the middle is really painful and I want to somehow change that. So we look at that as opportunity instead of pain.

Matt Hall (08:03): I really admire the way you do things. You just not long ago were living in New Zealand and now you're in London. What have your travels or more than travels, what is living abroad taught you either about you or your family or about the people you've met? What have you learned through these experiences over the last few years?

Carl Richards (08:25): Yeah, so much. I mean I could talk for hours about the specific things I've learned from the culture in New Zealand. I mean I almost want to cry when I think about how the impact that place had on my life and the life of our family. That's amazing. But now being in London, there's this sort of universal thread I'm starting to notice about the... And it seems funny to say in sort of a polarized world where online we see so much pull. What I'm remembering most fondly about New Zealand and here is the opposite.

Carl Richards (09:02): Like this unifying thread of like we're all human, the goodness of people is, what's been the most interesting and the universality of this exact struggle around how we use our money and how we become better people. And sorting out the stories versus the truth. It's like it's not an American problem it turns out. It's not a Kiwi problem. It's not a UK problem. I've spent time in Australia and South Africa, and it turns out it's a human problem. So I think it's just really interesting how universal the story seems to be.

Matt Hall (09:43): You know, this is a question I sometimes ask people in our office. What is your self-talk right before you need to do something really important? So for example, you give speeches in front of thousands of people sometimes. What do you say to yourself before you do something important? What's the self-message or What's the self-talk?

Carl Richards (10:05): It still goes on, it's just it's been transformed is the relationship I have with imposter syndrome. And that's the first thing that came to mind. There's a lot of things like be present, show up. I've been watching the Last Dance, Michael Jordan's documentary and in I think that second episode, Jordan talks about they violated the first rule, which was we'd never lose on... There's going to be one person in this crowd that's never seen me before, I'm going to give them their money's worth.

Carl Richards (10:35): And that really resonated with the idea of, "Wait, treat every opportunity as a chance to have an impact." But I think I also think about the imposter syndrome, which is just the sense, as soon as you said speak, I can remember going on stage in front of 3,500 people in Cape Town, South Africa, and walking out for the sound check and seeing 3,500 seats and thinking, "What am I doing here?" And so now I've transformed that experience of the imposter syndrome to like, "Oh, hey, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're back. Let's get to work."

Carl Richards (11:10): And so what I'm normally saying to myself before I do something, as you put it important is, "You've done this before. Just go do your thing." Right? Your thing is enough. That's why you're here. Your thing is enough. So go do that thing and forget about all the other stories that are playing.

Matt Hall (11:30): Yeah. My friend Marilyn Wechter, who's a psychotherapist who's been on this show a couple of times, she has a thing that she says where if you're out in the ocean and you don't know how to swim, you have a right to be scared. But if you know how to swim and you remind yourself that you know how to swim, you've been here before, you know how to do this, it's comforting. I thought about that quote as you were talking about your own self-talk.

Matt Hall (11:52): You know, one of the sketches you did early on that started a lot of conversations and is ultimately the name of one of your organizations is the Behavior Gap. You want to talk about what the Behavior Gap is and why it's important and what it means for those people who may not know?

Carl Richards (12:10): Yeah, so originally it had a very narrow meaning, which was there is a gap between the return, that the average investment earns and the return that the average investor earns. And that's like one of the original sort of problems of trying to describe that to somebody. It's kind of challenging to describe that there's a difference between an investment and an investor. And it was one of the first things that seeing it illustrated helps a lot. You know that picture is worth a thousand words.

Carl Richards (12:44): But that was the original gap was this gap between investment, return and investor return. But what it means more generally to me now, and what it's come to mean, is any well-intentioned behavior that produces a suboptimal result, right? There's a gap in our behavior and almost always it's well intentioned, right? The reason we're engaging that behavior is we think it's the thing we're supposed to do. If we use real quickly the example of investing, it would be, we think it's the job of any good investors to go find the best investment.

Carl Richards (13:19): That sounds totally reasonable, but once you engage in that behavior, the behavior produces like... Not only is the behavior not worth the energy you put into it, it actually produces a suboptimal result. You'd be better off if you didn't even engage. So that's a really weird dichotomy to pull apart and go, "Well wait, I thought..." So. I love those examples where you can understand there's a gap in my behavior. Using the broader version would be, I say this is really important to me.

Carl Richards (13:54): If you asked me immediately, I would say time with my family, mainly outside. But then if you go look at... And I've done this painfully, I've done this. I've got RescueTime installed on my computer, I left it there for a month. I looked at how I spent my time. I didn't have time to go on this hike with my daughter, and yet I was on Twitter for two hours that day. That's another example of a gap in behavior. So that's what it means generally.

Matt Hall (14:20): You're also passionate about simplicity. You have sketches about simplicity. Your books are about simplifying things. What gets you so fired up or motivated to help people understand the kind of simplicity you think we should all be after?

Carl Richards (14:45): I'm wired. I didn't even really realize this until maybe five years ago. So this is like 15 years into this sort of public work, but certainly five years of doing it at a relatively large platform, maybe one of the largest in the world. I finally realized I am just wired to... I love the process of diving into, and maybe I could do another little art on the radio thing. Imagine this is how it works in my head. Imagine you've got a piece of paper out, and you take a pen or a Sharpie and start on the left-hand side and just draw a line, right across the middle of the paper.

Carl Richards (15:24): And about when you get to the middle, just keep circling around, draw a ball of yarn, right? But keep going one continuous line and then come out the other side. That experience of going into a problem and being like, "Oh yeah, yeah, I got this. Oh wait." Right? And then considering the nuance and the edge cases, and asking people and making pros and cons lists, and when you get in the middle of that ball of yarn, it actually feels worse, right? There's a name for it now, the messy middle, right?

Carl Richards (15:56): You're trying to sort through all this stuff. It's like when you're trying to buy a simple project, like buying a new pair of running shoes, go try reading reviews. You don't come away with clarity normally, you come away with I love... And I used to think that was a sign I was doing something wrong. Now I realize that's part of the process because I love what you get to... Then you get to be quiet at some point you go, "Okay, what's the thing that matters?" And you get to come out the other side.

Carl Richards (16:24): And arriving at the other side is, "I love this." I just heard this quote, I can't remember who said it, but it wasn't me, this is beautiful. "Simplicity is complexity resolved," right? That's so good. So that's what it's about for me, is it's about getting to the thing that matters. The stripped away. It necessitates leaving some nuance out and some sort of edge cases and some obvious exceptions, but it still represents maybe 80, 90% of what you need to know, lives out there. It's that addiction, but it runs through like the skis I pick.

Carl Richards (17:06): We're doing a landscaping project on a house we have in Salt Lake, and I'm like God... It's obsessive in the sense of I either don't want to engage, or I want to go through that whole process and get to the simple answer.

Matt Hall (17:21): I'd also say for you it's permanent. It's been there since I've known you. I was trying to think back, not quite 20 years, but something close to that almost now. And you were talking about, I remember Tim Ferriss's four-hour workweek. You were one of the first people to mention it to me and you had a look at the sort of recipe or allocation that many advisors would create and had a totally different take on it from anyone else I knew. And it was with an eye toward simplicity. So at least as long as I've known you, it's been a permanent part of your mission.

Matt Hall (17:55): Let me ask you this, I heard you say on a show you do, that you sometimes like to be slightly irritating. What's that about?

Carl Richards (18:05): Yeah. You know what I mean by that, I got to figure out the right word to describe that. What I mean by that is I like to ask questions that, I'm not necessarily always trying to resolve. I think asking the question sometimes, and my editor at the New York Times sometimes pushes back on this. They're often asking me, they're like, "So what?" And I'm like, "No, there is no, so what?" So when I say irritating, I almost mean like the goal with the weekly letter, the behavior weekly letter, is to sense less, to work really hard to send less to people.

Carl Richards (18:41): And like I say, I want this to take two minutes for you to read, but I want it to sort of bother you all week. Right? And what I mean by that is I want you to be thinking about it, like a sliver just under the skin of your pointer finger, right? What's that? I'm really into that. And agitation is the right word if use as the definition. I just wanted to be a little agitating, and maybe the nice word would be thought provoking.

Matt Hall (19:11): What do you wish more people understood about the financial industry?

Carl Richards (19:19): I don't even know times, and I shouldn't put a number on it, but I want to say 95% of it doesn't matter. It literally does not matter. It's all hacking at the branches, at the root of this problem it's insanely simple. Not to be confused with easy, but the root of this problem is insane. It's so interesting to me, like what I just said. Insanely simple, not to be confused with easy. What's interesting to me is the reason it's hard, is also simple, right? Like the whole thing is simple.

Carl Richards (19:49): The reason it's hard is because it's about doing small, consistent things for a long period of time, right? Everything else is hacking at the branches and I think maybe the second answer would be one of the reasons I think none of it matters, 99% maybe doesn't matter, is because I think we're missing the fundamental sense of personal awareness, about our relationship with money. Where instead we're constantly trying to make it prettier, faster, cheaper, easier. We're always looking for hack, hack, hack. Instead of asking some questions like, "Well, wait, what really matters to me?"

Carl Richards (20:32): Those threads I think run through... certainly they run through the investing, I want to call it like media circus. They also run through the personal finance circus. Really, if we all got more clear about our relationship to money, and what we're doing with it, all of that stuff starts to fall away.

Matt Hall (20:54): I'm kind of tired of thinking and talking about the coronavirus, and the pandemic, and quarantine and work from home. It's been so difficult to escape thinking about it or having media coming at me about it. But I do want to ask you this question. What have you learned about yourself during the quarantine that will change the way you behave when this is lifted? What residue do you think will stick in a good way for you or for your family after this is over?

Carl Richards (21:30): That's such a good question. I noticed this in 2008 and 09, I noticed we were asking new questions. I remember hearing them even like at coffee shops or cafes, like overhearing people having conversations around like, "Who do you trust and what's important to you?" These moments give us a chance to ask new questions. It's not so much that they're new discoveries, it's just reinforced things I've always known, which is, without fail, time with my family. And I don't even mean time as much as I mean connection, and that that can happen anywhere. We don't have to be together.

Carl Richards (22:18): We've had amazing experience with our extended family by just doing a weekly Zoom. We spend 90 minutes together, we just talk, and chat and it's been amazing, and so that connection. I've also realized how important my own general resilience is. And I mean that really specifically, I don't mean specific resilience, because I didn't know this was going to happen, and I don't know what the next thing will be. What I mean is, my own and my family's general resilience, our ability to withstand shocks, unexpected shocks. It'd be awesome if I could become Taleb's Antifragile, but at the very least I'd like to be resilient generally.

Matt Hall (23:06): Is there anything you've observed during the pandemic that makes you feel either especially proud or grateful or anything that scares you?

Carl Richards (23:16): Yeah, both. I mean, I've been really impressed and grateful. I've just at least been very interested and kind of shocked or blown away by how quickly we can all rally behind a collective problem. That's pretty amazing. With the few little whatever, reasonable exceptions or noticeable exceptions, we've been able to rally behind getting through this together. That's super hopeful to me. I hope we could take that same energy and apply it to, equally as important problems that aren't quite as urgent. We could point to climate change and poverty and hunger as examples.

Carl Richards (24:03): So that's been interesting. The thing that troubles me is, how much energy we seem to be putting behind eliminating cycles and eliminating risks, and you can point to capitalist structures like capitalism on the way up and bail outs on the way down. And again, now's not the time to be necessarily... Because you kind of got to get through this, but it's the same thing we said in 2008 and 2009, where we got to get through this. But I would just hope at some level... I love capitalism.

Carl Richards (24:37): If I'm going to take the risk, I want the reward, and I think if I'm going to get the reward, I better be prepared to take the consequences if it doesn't work. And I also frankly look at countries like some of the Scandinavian democratic socialist countries that get it right and think that's cool too. But mixing the two, that doesn't seem to be working very well. So I hope we can... And maybe more importantly it's just this idea of trying to smooth out cycles. I guess cycles are an important part of any natural process. I get a little worried when we try to eliminate them.

Matt Hall (25:11): You know you have really gone beyond sketching and writing and speaking. You're kind of a thought leader when it comes to behavior and emotion, especially as it relates to money. And you've helped me with your guidance related to this idea of micro-actions. Will you share your thinking around the importance of taking the little step? Specifically I was thinking about something I saw from you. You're one of these people I think that likes to take these super cold plunges or baths or jump in cold lakes.

Matt Hall (25:42): And I heard you talk about how important the micro-action is for you to actually do the thing that you know you want to do, but sometimes don't really want to do.

Carl Richards (25:51): Yeah. So I mean we could talk all day about the benefits of cold water, but to stick to the micro-action idea. So I think of micro-actions... The definition, my definition of a micro-action is something so small that it doesn't even feel like it's worth doing. And you know, BJ Fogg calls those tiny habits and James Clear does some amazing work on Atomic Habits, right? And they're pointing to them as habits, which is a slightly different subject, but micro-actions, I mean the example I'd give you is, if I decide that it's good for me, and maybe I'll leave cold water out of it, just because it's a distraction. We can talk about it another time.

Carl Richards (26:33): But let me give you an example, like traveling. I know how important it is... If I get on a flight and I land in the evening and I go to sleep, I know how important it is to get in the gym the next morning. I've decided that, I've got a workout planned mainly around mobility. Right? Just to move after sitting on the plane and I know how important that is. But it's the last thing I feel like doing when I wake up that next morning, I know that's going to happen. And so the example where I noticed this and I wrote about it, was when you were reading was, I got up and I was like, "I don't feel like going to the gym."

Carl Richards (27:13): And then I thought, "Well, okay, why don't you just put your shoes on?" Like that's a micro-action. It feels so ridiculous. Put your shoes on? Seriously? Okay, your shoes are on seriously. Why don't you just like walk down to the gym? So that you can know where it is for tomorrow, right? Okay, get down. Okay, you're here, maybe you should just sit on the bike and pedal half a minute, a minute, three minutes. You know you're here. So I can see, and then what's interesting is that specific example, I finished the workout, I got back to the room, I took a shower, I went to go to breakfast. I felt like eating better.

Carl Richards (27:56): I guarantee if I hadn't done the workout, I would have had French toast and syrup, instead I had healthy protein and you know the things I needed. That little micro-action of just put on your shoes, led to these other things. So I think if we can establish beforehand what little micro-actions... And I think particularly depending on where we are, when people hear this, just any time we're in really volatile situations, we don't know what to do. The landscape is shifting so fast we don't know what to do.

Carl Richards (28:26): I think it's critical that you take a micro-action, because when you take that action, new information becomes available to you. Right? You have new perspective, just because you moved, just a little, you moved. When you get the new information, you'll be able to take the next micro-action. And until you take that step you... Like if you sit around your room right now and look as hard as you can, like look from where you're sitting, look at everything you can, look as hard, taking everything you can, now move one foot forward.

Carl Richards (28:55): You're going to notice a new set of information and no matter how hard you tried at the previous location, you couldn't have gotten that information. And I think with financial planning and making decisions around money, it's really clear to understand, especially in a volatile situation, where maybe your business or the restaurants are closing and you like shocks, you'd never... What do you do? Well, take a micro-action, reset. And in the academic literature they call this solving for the next local optimum, and then resetting. And it's the only way to navigate a complex adaptive system. So that's micro-actions.

Matt Hall (29:33): Feels to me in some ways, like we are definitely creatures of momentum. It's like in some ways it's about creating that forward momentum then it's hard to reverse. Once your shoes are on, I don't want to get back in bed. You know?

Carl Richards (29:46): Totally.

Matt Hall (29:47): I thought about you recently because I read a story in the New York Times about how rich the Mormon Church is, and I wanted to ask you about this, because I know your faith life is really important to you, or at least I think it is. But we've never really talked about this and when I read the article, it made me feel like proud for the church, that they have so much money. But it also made me think of you, because it's a connection between you and money and the New York Times. And I thought, I need to ask Carl what he thinks of this article or what he thinks about faith and money.

Carl Richards (30:24): Yeah, that's a really good question. There's a lot of pieces to that. I mean, I think the short answer to why is the church that way is really, really simple. Basic, simple, financial principles followed for a very long time, plus compounding. So there was a time in the church where the church was in debt and they made a decision like, we will not make that mistake again. So we're going to spend always, we're going to spend less than we bring in, and we're going to save that money for a rainy day.

Carl Richards (30:59): And when you start timesing that times 15 million members worldwide, the church takes in money in the form of a tithing and donations. And look, I'm speaking purely as an outside observer. I mean I'm a member of the church, but I'm not privy to any of these things. But my impression, and I know people who are, my impression is that they take the management of that money super seriously. I would use the word sacred, like the widow's mite would be a totally fair comparison. They take it really seriously and they're good at it, but it's not complex.

Carl Richards (31:39): Build a rainy-day fund, save, be wise steward. It's all basically biblical. So yeah. And then you add to that, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is officially referred to as the idea of industry and thrift, is just woven into the fabric. Right? So that's really why that happens. And yeah, I mean those numbers sounded really, really big, and there were some people who were like, "That's ridiculous". But when you understand the good that the church does that nobody talks about, because the church doesn't talk about it, they don't run around broadcasting it.

Carl Richards (32:16): And you understand that a rainy-day fund for one person needs to be so big, but a rainy-day fund for an organization this size, needs to be a lot bigger. And now given the current time we're talking, it looks really wise to have rainy day fund.

Matt Hall (32:33): What are some of the most important money lessons you've taught your kids?

Carl Richards (32:39): Man, I wish I would have been better about this to be honest. But I think the one thing that's come across, that I'm really proud of is their mother. My wife Corey is largely responsible for this is, that money is meant to be used for experiences and the benefit of others. And we've done a good job of that. There's a lot of stuff that we've sacrificed for that. Right? Like moving to New Zealand is not a cheap endeavor. Moving to London is definitely not a cheap endeavor. We would have more money in the bank if we didn't do those things. But we've made a conscious decision.

Carl Richards (33:19): It's not mutually exclusive, but we've made a conscious decision, that money is about experiences and helping others. And so yeah, I think all of our kids would tell you that, I think if you ask them without me prompting them.

Matt Hall (33:34): How do you define for yourself success or fulfillment?

Carl Richards (33:41): On a personal level, it's the love, safety and belonging of my immediate family. And then extension outward, right? Like immediate being my four kids and my wife, and then my mom and mother-in-law and then my dad, so that's on a personal level. On a professional level, I just want permission to keep doing projects I care about. That's all I want. Like the entire business is about giving me permission. I just think of it as a series of our projects, and I just want permission to do the next one.

Carl Richards (34:19): And the only way I'll get permission to do the next one is if the current one is successful and successful would be defined as impact and revenue. That would allow me to do... Because profit to me equals permission. That's what profit equals. It gives me permission to keep doing the thing. That's all I care about.

Matt Hall (34:38): One of my past guests said he defined success as being able to take a nap whenever you want to.

Carl Richards (34:44): Yeah. That's beautiful. That's really like super good.

Matt Hall (34:49): Let me ask you this. As you think about your best sort of long view example, where you made a decision that required immediate sacrifice, but over the long-term would pay off. What example from your life comes to mind?

Carl Richards (35:10): The one that comes to mind is this idea of moving to New Zealand. That required a huge, huge sacrifice. It changed my employment, it changed my business, it changed things for my kids. But I don't think any of... Or I know none of us will be the same because of it. And so that's probably the best example.

Matt Hall (35:39): How are you better or different?

Carl Richards (35:48): I guess the clinical word would probably be resilient, but all I mean by that is as a human, I'm way more centered. Just having had the opportunity to spend... I mean, it wasn't just New Zealand, it was the place we were in and the people we were around. And again, this isn't like, "Oh, New Zealand, they have..." That's not what it's really about. It's about having what I would define as an adventure. And that can take place in your hometown. It can take place in your backyard.

Carl Richards (36:20): In fact, some of my favorite adventures right now are my friends that have been all over the world and done everything and they're only interested in the internal adventure, right? Like dealing with their own emotions. And that doesn't require you to go anywhere. So the idea of getting outside of something you've become completely comfortable with and bumping up against the sharp bits. I think Pema Chödrön refers to it that way, the sharp bits. I think that's beautiful. Like bumping up against the... How come I have that assumption?

Carl Richards (36:55): And again for me that change of location really forced me to see some assumptions I was making about how I was living and really internal belief systems, the bits were sharp enough that I was like, "Wow, that's clearly not working. I better figure out a different thing." That's what made the big impact.

Matt Hall (37:18): Carl, how would you like people to learn more about you and what you're up to? Should they read your books, follow you in the New York Times? What should they do?

Carl Richards (37:27): The single best place, and it's where I devote 90% of my energy is my weekly letter. So you go to behaviorgap.com, scroll down to the bottom, there's a place to put your email address in. I will send you a letter every Thursday and again, and my whole team here, works massively hard to make it less distilled. The goal is that it will take you two minutes to read, but hopefully slightly irritate you all week.

Matt Hall (37:58): Yeah, I like the irritation point, Carl. I think that's a great thing because you're irritating in a super healthy way, at least that's been my experience. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that we should have from your perspective?

Carl Richards (38:16): No, I mean I think maybe just to emphasize that point, we spent a little bit of time around resilience and just this idea of, I think we all have these little whispers when we're quiet or maybe it's at a play, or you see a performance and there's this little voice that says, "Hey, remember me?" And it doesn't matter what age, it seems like the older we get, the better we get at ignoring it. But it still seems to pop up. And I think midlife crisis has pointed this, or it starts to pop up a little bit.

Carl Richards (38:53): And I just think the idea that... I mean resilience plays into this a little bit, but I think it's more along the lines of like, we need you. I mean everybody listening to this, we need you. And when I say we, I mean the world. And that little thing, that little voice, I just wonder if we could instead of cramming it down and ignoring it, I just wonder if we could engage it a little bit. I like to think of his dance with it a little bit. I'm not saying do anything, I'm not saying burn your house down. I'm not saying quit your job. It doesn't have to be heroic or dramatic.

Carl Richards (39:29): Just maybe next time just go, "Hey, I recognize that feeling," and just see where it takes you. Because I think this is a amazing time right now when you have this much kind of turmoil. There's this sort of opportunity for rebirth that I think is really, really intriguing. And what better time to allow that little voice that's whispering. Because I know we all have it. Like most of us get so good that we literally haven't heard it in a decade, but it's still there. And if we could just dance with it a little bit, would be the only thing that I would maybe wrap up with.

Matt Hall (40:08): Well thank you for doing this. I love what you do. I think one-time, long time ago someone said... Maybe it was Hugh MacLeod or someone who created images that were intended to be conversation grenades. When someone would see them, it would start a conversation instantly. My experience has been a lot of your work gets people to think, irritates in the right way, pushes them, asks them to listen to that voice. And so I really am grateful that you do this work.

Matt Hall (40:35): As I said in the beginning, I don't think you really have any competitors or anyone else trying to do this same thing, especially at the intersection of money and time and emotion. So thanks for everything you do. And I'm honored that you spent time with me on Take The Long View. We'll have people check out the Behavior Gap weekly. Do you call it a newsletter or just an email?

Carl Richards (40:58): No, it is the weekly letter.

Matt Hall (41:00): Weekly letter.

Carl Richards (41:01): Matt, let me just mention to you, thank you on behalf of me and all your listeners. We all know that you don't need to be doing this. It's a gift to the rest of us and I know you get a ton out of it and all that stuff. But look really, it's a gift to the rest of us. So thanks for the work you do. It's amazing.

Matt Hall (41:20): Thanks Carl, I appreciate that.

Matt Hall (41:29): What were the distinct money messages you received from each parent? Please note the information shared in this podcast is not intended as advice. The intent is to share meaningful experiences. I am likely not your advisor, nor wealth manager, nor financial planner. And my opinions are my own and not necessarily shared by Hill Investment Group. Investing involves risk, consult a professional before implementing an investment strategy. Thank you.