What are financial advisors (measurably) useful for? (EP.249)

28:31We're back to that topic. In addition to that, and this is moving on other research now, delegation can have benefits in removing stress and mental overhead. So there's one paper that looks at a decision delegation when the decision affects other people. People are more likely to delegate decisions when they affect more than just themselves. And again, just totally anecdotally, that's something that we've certainly seen where there may be a spouse in a relationship who's perfectly capable of managing the family's wealth, but because they have a spouse who they're also making decisions on behalf of, they decide that they're not comfortable holding that full burden.

29:16The last one on that is that expert financial advice neurobiologically offloads financial decision-making. The actual firing in the brain required to make financial decisions about lottery payoffs turns off when people defer to an expert. So in terms of actually reducing your cognitive load, that appears to be a thing too. So to summarize all that, despite conflicts of interest and often suboptimal advice, households benefit, like despite that, I think that's important. We know these issues exist, but in the face of those, households can still benefit theoretically and empirically from an increase in self-control, a reduction in biases that affect long-term decision-making and higher equity market participation due to trust in an advisor and investors with a high opportunity cost of time or declining cognitive ability theoretically derive benefits from delegated advice.

30:19Now, if we've removed conflicts of interest and control for advisor competence. I think that there's a pretty good case for financial advice for some households. It's a big problem though, that there's a lot of, and this is a regulation issue, I think. There's a ton of heterogeneity in financial advisor quality and compensation models. That poses a problem because people still need to be able to identify the need for advice and assess the quality and incentives of an advisor for them to be most useful. Like as we've seen, even when there are conflicts and even when advisors aren't perfectly competent, they can still be useful.

31:05But I think it's fairly obvious that they're much more useful if we can control for those things or remove those variables. And a couple other interesting obstacles, I guess, is the Dunning-Kruger effect. People with inflated perceptions of their own financial literacy are more likely to make mistakes and less willing to accept financial advice. That's interesting. More knowledgeable investors are more likely to seek and benefit from financial advice, which is also interesting. Less financially literate consumers are less likely to seek financial advice. There's all sorts of interactions there.

31:46They may have less wealth, for example, but still interesting. As super simple rules to follow, I think that investors can avoid advice that's associated with a commission, which means what questions should you ask if you're going to be getting financial advice from someone? We've said this before. you have to know how they're being paid. You have to know what the advisor's incentive is and to what extent it aligns with your own. I think you have to demand commitment to a fiduciary standard or some similar level of commitment. There are all kinds of different ways to approach that, I guess. In Canada, we have the portfolio manager registration category, which implies that level of commitment.

32:36But then there are also people who are CFP professionals and people who are CFA charterholders, they commit to that level of a standard. But I think the hard part is one of those last points that I made is that the people who would probably benefit from financial advice the most are less likely to seek it out. You have to have a baseline level of financial literacy to know that you need advice, to know what you don't know, and to benefit from the financial advice that you receive. I don't know if financial advice solves the need for financial literacy. I think that there's still a need for people to educate themselves.

33:19But given that, I think financial advice does have some interesting qualities in in debiasing, acting as a commitment device, building savings plans. And yeah, I guess that's it. I'll quote on a limb and say that was one of your finest deep dives. Really? Absolutely. I thought that kind of wraps up so many concepts and ideas and is very useful to the end consumer. 100%. Well, I'm glad to hear it. And maybe we'll get feedback that agrees or disagrees with your work in my assessment. This was the worst episode ever. I want my money back. All right. Did you want to go to the quick review of a past episode?

34:06Yep. All right. As people know, this is where newer listeners can learn about a past episode that they may want to check out. So I'll give a bit of a backstory. Four years ago, almost to the day I think I was invited to it. That was four years ago. Come on. Four years ago, I was invited to a conference in Sydney, Australia, and got a chance to sit down with the co-CEO of Dimensional Fund Advisors. That was our second episode where only one of us did the interview. The first one was you and Shane Parrish, and this was Dave and myself. Every other one we've done together. For those who don't know, Dimensional is an asset management company that creates portfolio solutions based on the kind of stuff that you talk about in your deep dives.

34:45Founded in 1983. They currently manage about 800 billion Canadian or so. And it's one of the great storied firms in this whole index fund revolution that's been happening for decades. Full transparency, we've been working with Dimensional, as people know, for client solutions since they came to Canada 20 years ago this fall. So you talk about time flying. It's unreal. Anyways, so with that set up, here's the quick review. so episode 43 from 2019 is a great place to learn about an important player in the index fund revolution dimensional fund advisors what makes them particularly interesting is that they're at the intersection of some of the great academics of the past 50 years along with the implementation of these great ideas so dave butler the co-ceo of dimensional has had a front row seat to this evolution over the past 25 years and has worked alongside you know such great people as david Booth, Eugene Fama, Rex Singfield, Mac McQuown, and of course, Gerard O 'Reilly, his co-CEO.

35:43But ideas about clients are of little value. Dave's story is interesting in that he was part of a small determined team that brought this message to financial advisors. This is a whole new time for Dimensional as they had only worked with institutions prior to then. Dave was one of the first hires by Dan Wheeler, who we pay tribute to a few weeks ago. The interesting thread in this conversation with Dave is the company's concern and care for the ultimate client, the goal to improve the client investment experience, use research and technology to embrace indexing, then create products that investors can use in building portfolios.

36:17Anyways, the conversation was full of great stories, how he almost joined the NBA to how his first interview with Dimensional ended up at lunch with Nobel laureate Merton Miller, which is just a terrific story. We talked about operating as a co-CEO, some lessons about leadership and working alongside academic giants such as FAMA and French. So such an interesting episode. And that was episode 43 with Dimensional Fund Advisors Co-CEO Dave Butler. Okay, let's move to the book review section and try something different this week. Ben, if it's good with you, as listeners can imagine, learning is a big part of the life and culture here at PWL.

36:53So I thought for fun this week, we would invite our colleague, Lucas Fleck, to join us to participate in the book review and then to also talk about the 23 and 23 challenge. Lucas, so great to have you on the podcast. Thanks for having me on. Long-time listener. Excellent. Long-time listener, first-time visitor. Exactly. So you joined the firm, Lucas, five years ago as an investment advisor based here in Ottawa, and you also recently became a CFA charter holder. Congratulations. Thank you. And you're also the coordinator of our company book club, which we'll talk more about later. But the book we wanted to review this week is the book that we discussed at our March book club.

37:30I'll let you cue it up. For sure. So the book is The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. So how do we choose that book in the book club? Yeah. So we operate sort of on a rotation basis for choosing books. It's a little bit random. This book was recommended to us by Tessa. She's our people and culture lead. And it was a great read. And Tessa, I think many listeners know is Ben's sister. Fantastic team member. Anyway, so we like to kick it off with a bit of background. So can you just share who Ryan Holiday is? For sure. So Ryan's a writer, media strategist, and a bestselling author. He's best known for his books on stoicism primarily.

38:10So that includes this book, The Obstacle is the Way. Also, Ego is the Enemy and The Daily Stoic. He's also got a website. It's called Meditations on Strategy and Life. This is what he's really sought out to do in his career is write about things that he felt people don't talk about enough. So life, how to be self-critical, self-awareness, philosophy, and strategy. So what was the basic premise, quickly, the basic premise of the book? Yeah, so the book really is a formula or a headspace for overcoming really any negative situation that you might encounter in life. So the big takeaway is to thrive, not just in spite of whatever happens, but because of whatever happens.

38:49So obstacles aren't something to be feared or avoided, but rather it's an opportunity to grow and become stronger. So our actions may and will be impeded by obstacles, but you can't impede our intentions. So we can always accommodate and adapt and overcome those impediments. And this impediment to action actually advances action. So in other words, what stands in the way becomes the way. And that was repeated a lot in the book. I didn't realize this is a book we're going to be talking about. And it's funny because a really good friend of mine two weeks ago, it's actually the guy that people who have listened for a long time know that I went hiking in Newfoundland with.

39:30He was texting me that I have to read this book. It changed his life and that I absolutely have to read it. It's like, all right, I'll read it. I haven't read it yet, but it's just kind of neat to see it come up here too. Wow. It was a cool book and the topic really is what it's about. It's about using the obstacle to show you the way and to take that as a challenge, which is super interesting. What were your main takeaways from the book, Lucas? Yeah, my main takeaway is the author really highlighted three key disciplines. And those three that he highlighted were perception, action, and the will.

40:02So perception is how we perceive a situation and it shapes how we respond to it. We can't control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond. And so by choosing to see obstacles as opportunities for growth, rather than just a negative thing in the way of where we're trying to get to, we can approach challenges with a much more positive attitude. And then actually overcoming those challenges obviously takes action, which is that second discipline. So we need to be willing to put in the work to actually overcome obstacles. And then the last one is will, which is the willingness to keep going and keep trying in the face of adversity.

40:38And sort of building off that discipline of will, the book made a couple of key distinctions between perseverance and persistence that I found really interesting. So perseverance, that involves the willingness to adapt and change our strategy when we're faced with an obstacle. So it's realizing that the path isn't necessarily a straight line. Persistence, on the other hand, that's sort of trying something over and over, even when it's not working. And the author definitely portrayed perseverance in a much more positive light. Another cool takeaway I thought, Cameron, I think you highlighted this, was that many of our problems actually come from having too much.

41:16So great times can be great softeners. Abundance can be its own obstacle. And so scarcity has bred some of the world's greatest ideas and innovations. And the author gave some really good concrete things to keep in mind when we're facing an obstacle. So I'll go through those. And that's to be objective, to control emotions, to keep an even keel, to choose to see the good in a situation, to steady our nerves, to ignore what disturbs or limits others, to place things into perspective, to revert to the present moment. And a big one is to focus on what can be controlled. So I really liked that sort of list of actionable items to keep in mind.

41:56So as you think back in the book, did anything really particularly ring true to you? Yeah, a big one for me is that perceptions are the problem. So when we're faced with an issue or an obstacle, it's easy to get tied up in emotions when really we should be dedicating that energy to actually solving the problem that's in front of us. So not wasting time on our emotions or perceptions and just focusing on the actual end goal and moving forward. And a huge one for me is focusing on what can be controlled. This is so applicable to all aspects of life, investment philosophies included. It's been a mantra that I've definitely lived with for the past little while, especially studying for exams.

42:42It's something that I had to keep telling myself is just focus on the inputs. That's all I can control is building good study habits, staying adamant about progressing towards that goal. And the output is just a byproduct of those inputs. So that really helped me. And a good line that I made note of was nice and simple, and it's listen to failure and learn from failures. That just kind of speaks to that notion of failing forward, always learning from mistakes or issues that you face. And I really like that. The one line that jumped out at me that I've heard others say is how you do anything is how you can do everything.

43:21And we can always do what's right. So love that line. Yeah, I like that. It's a pretty good line. So I guess I'm gonna have to read this book now because it's coming at me from all angles. Was there anything, Lucas, that you didn't like about it. There wasn't much that I didn't like, but I really enjoyed the book. I think the one thing that I would tell people going in is that I wasn't wowed by any sort of new novel ideas. I think the way that the author organized some of these thoughts was really good. And it solidified a lot of things that I think I've thought about a lot or that our team is already doing.

43:53So it was more of a book of like, reiterating those good practices rather than wowing me with a novel idea that I haven't thought of before, but I don't think there's an issue with that. I actually get a lot out of reading books that confirm habits that I've been doing. It's nice to have that confirmation, but I think just something to keep in mind. That was just my experience. So what's your overall recommendation on the book? I would recommend it for sure. It's a fairly quick read and a lot of really good takeaways that I think are broadly applicable to life. There you go, Ben. You are surrounded, it.

44:28So I guess you have to read it. So Lucas, you're part of the 23 and 23 challenge, which people who are not part of that can join at rational reminder.ca. How far long are you towards the objective? Yes, I'm about halfway through now. I think I'm working on books 12 and 13. So just over halfway. So I'm tracking well for me. That's good. I know a lot of the guests who have been on here are probably through about 100 books this year, but I'm proud of what have been able to do and my reading goals. That's awesome. So what are your reading habits? Yeah. So, I mean, I'll start this off by saying that I by no means think that the way I do things is the best.

45:06Honestly, I've been constantly jumping around, changing my habits, trying to find what works for me, but I'm happy to share what I have found throughout that journey and hopefully it's applicable to some people. So I only started reading more heavily about a year and a half ago. So going through university, going through a lot of industry exams after the fact that just became my excuse. I'm not saying it's a good excuse to not read for personal growth or for pleasure. And I was just so focused on getting through the technical side of my growth and knowledge that I didn't read a ton of books. And so I kept telling myself, as soon as I'm done this, I'm going to dive into it.

45:45And that reading list kept growing and growing. And I had a huge pile of books ready to go as soon as I was done. And so I started building that habit after I was done writing my CFA exam. And I found it very easy to build that habit and keep that habit. It's quite enjoyable. So I tend to have one text-based book. So that could be physical copy or Kindle on the go. And one audiobook on the go at all times. So I enjoy both differently. I go through audiobooks much, much quicker because I can mix it into my everyday routine. So if I'm walking my dog, shoveling, going to the gym, I can listen to an audio book.

46:22I try to save books with a lot more data or diagrams for text. A good example of this is The Behavior Gap by Carl Richards. I read that earlier this year. And he has this amazing way of simplifying complex topics down to like a back of the napkin type drawing. And you'd just be missing so much of that book if you listen to it rather than reading it and actually seeing these diagrams. exams so i do try to select my books or how i read my books a little bit based on the content but other than that i just try to read every day even if it's just 20 minutes it's just like any habit it's about repetition i remember after finishing the cfa exams feeling like a like i could learn anything i think that's part of it too for sure because all of a sudden you have you know all of your evenings are freed up to do whatever and i'm used to sitting down and studying for hours on end.

47:13I was like, why not learn something else? And so, yeah, I've been enjoying just broadening that scope of knowledge. Yeah. I remember that. It's like you build the, I don't know, exercise the muscle of just sitting down and studying and learning stuff. And then CFA is gone. It's like, you have a gap to fill. Yeah. And I don't know about you, but I have that like paranoia of losing that skill. I'm like, I just got to keep the momentum going. Like it is nice to take breaks, But I think it's important to try to keep that momentum because it's not easy to pick up that skill and kind of force yourself back into the study regime.

47:49Yeah, definitely. How do you capture stuff from what you read? Yeah, I've tried a lot of different tactics because I've struggled with this for sure. But for audiobooks, I use Audible. And on Audible, you can snip clips of the book. So if I'm driving or something, it's very easy to just take a quick snip. And then what I do, I just re-listen to those. either when I'm done the book or through a large chunk of the book, I'll go back, listen to my snips and just write them down into notepad on my phone. I keep all those notes in a folder. I also use read wise when I'm using Kindle. So I have the Kindle app on my phone and iPad.

48:25And I read off of that. And it's awesome because you can go through and review a bunch of your highlighted texts as cue cards sort of in random order. So you start picking up things that you read a year ago. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. And then something I've recently started doing is, I don't know if this is a term, but retention journaling is what I'm calling it, where I've heard that journaling is extremely important. I've never really tried it. So I thought, you know what, I'm just going to start writing down interesting things that I read or learned throughout the day. And it's not structured at all.

49:00I just sort of before bed, I try to download some interesting things that I either read, listened to, covered in a webinar, just throughout a conversation I had with somebody. And it's been working well so far. Like I said, I just started it. So maybe I'll have to report back in a bit. But just trying to build that new habit and see how that goes. So are these handwritten into a journal book or typed? No, I'm typing them. Okay. I'm typing them into Notepad on my phone. I just find my phone's always with me. So pretty easy to write stuff down. So where do you get your reading ideas from? Oh, that's the easy part is finding books to read.

49:36My wishlist is extremely long. I can't keep up with it. Coworkers, clients often have really good book recommendations. And it's great to read the same books as clients. It gives you something to like a common thing to talk about and discuss. And the podcast, obviously, I think probably most of the books that I read have either been discussed on the podcast, either prior to me reading it or after. What are your favorite recent books that you've read? One that stood out to me was Deep Work by Cal Newport. That was an amazing read. It resonated with me a lot because as an advisor, your day-to-day can be quite hectic and it's difficult.

50:14You actually have to go out of your way to create this deep workspace and get focused work done. And that book gave me some really concrete takeaways to apply and I have applied. So that was a great one and probably recency bias, but the book I'm reading now, It's called Making Numbers Count. Both of these books have been reviewed on the podcast. So going back to where I find my book ideas from, I think this is making it pretty obvious. But Making Numbers Count is great for anybody that's trying to display information with numbers or tell stories with numbers. It's a really, really good book. So you mentioned our book club and you're the coordinator of our company book club.

50:52What tips might you have for others that might be thinking about a book club in the workplace? Yeah. So I would highly recommend do not overthink it. Don't over-engineer it. Just find some willing people. It doesn't matter how many people and just start discussing books. I think it's huge going back to how I capture ideas and action. I was like talking about it with somebody is a really good way to solidify what I've learned from a book. And you get all these different opinions. People see things in different ways through a different lens. And it's so interesting to hear that. And Cameron, you're part of these discussions.

51:30It's amazing the takeaways that we get from it and where the discussion goes. So I would also recommend it's good to have a moderator in place, somebody that's ready to come to the meeting with questions and keep the discussion going. But just remember that the moderator's duty isn't to present. You don't want a slide deck and going through and reviewing a book like with a slide deck. I think the point of it is to discuss and get other people's thoughts. I agree. And it always goes in a direction you kind of didn't see ahead of time. You learn a lot about your colleagues. And then we've done a lot of discussions during those times about applying what we learn to our day-to-day work lives.

52:09So it's a very productive use of time and a lot of fun actually. You guys are selling me on the book club. I haven't participated. You should join. It's an open invite. Open invite. Right. Lucas, you're known around the office with air quotes for people listening because we don't really go to the office anymore, but around PWL for your life hacks, what reading hacks do you have to share? Yeah, I knew this would come up. It's hard because reading isn't like often hacks are to kind of find shortcuts and cheat the system a little bit. And reading isn't really one of those things for me. Like one of the big benefits of reading is sort of the long form content.

52:47It's not something I'm looking to, to cut corners on. But that being said, I did think of a couple life hacks for reading. And one of them is, I think it's good to have a good book summary provider. So I use the app Headway. I have no idea if it's a good one or a bad one. It's just the first one I tried. It has been working for me. What this allows me to do is I can preview books before I read it. So you can get a quick seven minute summary of a book before diving in and seeing if it's something you want to dedicate some more time to. But then I think even more importantly than this, after the fact, after I've read a book, it's really interesting to go back and re-listen to a summary.

53:23And it kind of brings you back into when you were reading the book. And it can be a book from a year ago. And you just remember a whole lot of details that you would have otherwise forgotten. And it's a little bit different than just taking notes, because when you take notes, you're highlighting what you think is important then. but in a year from now you've gone through a lot of different experiences and sometimes items that you didn't highlight now stand out so i've been enjoying that there's also infographics for visual learners so you can see like a book summary as like an infographic format which i find really interesting and then another quick little hack is for anybody using audible leverage your wish list so if you add everything to your wish list basically every month they release a couple included books, actually a lot of included books that are included in the subscription.

54:09So you don't need to go out and use a credit to pay for it. And if you have everything in your wishlist, then you can see the little orange logo saying included. And oftentimes, I've been surprised with how often something in my wishlist is included that month. So if you're going through more than your one credit a month, it's a good way to move things up your reading list if it happens to be included. That's a good hack. Awesome. Lucas, great to have you on. I know you know a lot of the listeners you meet a lot of people but it's great to introduce you to the audience yeah thanks so much for having me all right ben time with three listeners and us to talk about the after show you sent me a picture on the weekend of your new basketball hoop you've got the most unconventional shall we say and i love it i haven't been there but i've seen pictures of your setups.

55:02You got to tell. Oh yeah. So people got a kick out of the fact that we had this gigantic trampoline in our house. So I had to get rid of that, unfortunately. Kids weren't too happy, but they'll be okay. But yeah, I got a regulation 10 foot basketball hoop up in the equivalent of our living room, I guess. It's not really a living room. Now you have cement floors, so it bounces. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. When we looked at this house, it's a bit sketchy. It was never finished completely. The parts that matter were finished, but the interior finishes were never done. But when you walk in, there's this kind of main room in the house that has a really high ceiling and a concrete floor.

55:42As soon as I saw it, I was like, oh my goodness, you could put a basketball hoop in there. And I've been dreaming about it ever since. So I did it. Pretty cool. For those who watch Succession on HBO, I don't know Ben if you're a watcher or not, but the episode on Sunday, I'm not going to spoil anything. But if you're watching Succession, have not watched this week's episode, this will be last week when it's released, you got to watch it. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Okay. Let's jump into this conversation about hot sauce. I got dragged into this. I'm in the crossfire of hot sauce with a bunch of our friends, a bunch of our FinTwit friends.

56:17Are you a big hot sauce guy, Ben? I am a big consumer of hot sauce as is my wife. Do you have preferred brands? No. Tabasco? We have Tabasco in the fridge, yeah. But you don't deem Tabasco to be your favorite? No, it's definitely not my favorite. Okay, so you're going to be against Mark McGrath and I. I never said for the record that it was my favorite. So Mark, who was our guest a month or so ago, was a big fan of Tabasco, put that on Twitter. And of course, other friends of ours jumped all over him to say it's terrible. You should be trying these other sauces. And I jumped in saying, well, I kind of like it.

56:51I don't say it's the best, but I kind of like it. Anyways, the passion that people have around hot sauce makes the debate over the relevance of dividends seem mild, which is quite something. Anyways, they said, how could I stoop to such a level? I like Tabasco. It's part of the rotation. Anyways, well, Jason Pereira finds it completely unacceptable then that we actually have Tabasco in our approach. I'm sorry. Sorry, Jason. The one that I just finished a bottle of like really, really hot ghost pepper hot sauce. It was incredible. I got a bottle at a farm store that I was at and we finished it in like three days.

57:27Did you have to sign because the kids got me one for Christmas last year? They had to sign a waiver to buy it. It was so hot. Yeah, no, it's not that kind of hot sauce. It was still very, very, very hot, but it wasn't the like, yeah, not the waiver, not the waiver kind. And these guys even got a cameo done by Alton Brown, who I guess is a foodie on some food network. I don't know who he is, but I saw this video and they've gone all to town. Anyway, so Mark and I are alone on one side and we got Aaron and Aravind and Jason on the other side. So anyways, guys, it's a fun debate. So now I've been introduced to Jason sent me a bunch of hot sauce providers here in Ottawa.

58:05So I'm going to check them out and try out my hot sauce game. That's what I usually do. I usually get one-off hot sauces that I find around. That's why I don't have a favorite brand, really. It's just try different hot sauces. I do like really, really hot hot sauces, though, which Tabasco is not. No, no, it's easy. Plus, the bottles are so cute in your fridge. Really, it's not that big a deal. Anyways, some recent reviews came in, which is very kind of people. So Growing the Valley podcast from the state said, my favorite personal finance podcast. Ben and Cameron have the perfect combination of investing nuts and bolts together with great social science findings, kind of like the bogle heads on investing in the hidden brain podcast, How to Baby.

58:45Super appreciate that they dig into the academic literature for us. Also enjoy the advanced basics episodes. Tony smiles from Canada. Don't know how you keep producing such quality content so regularly. The work that goes behind your podcast is monumental. It's superhuman. Keep it up. Very inspiring. I did almost die today trying to write the episode before we started recording, which is why I said a couple of times that I hadn't seen it yet because I was head down writing for many hours before we started recording. Nice feedback from Travis in Canada. He said, this is a valuable addition to your week.

59:21I've enjoyed the podcast for a few months now. Ben Cameron and guests provide excellent financial and life advice. Already taking away a few life pearls and feeling rich. One of my takeaways, the ideal financial decision isn't always the best life decision. A better appreciation of the value of my time. I, for example, hired someone to install a new dishwash this week rather than doing it myself. The cost is well worth it and the time gained with my kids and lack of stress over doing something I'm not knowledgeable about. I reviewed the costs I pay for financial advice and will be making changes that should save me thousands of dollars over the years.

59:53I'm more aware of my own biases and how they influence my decision making. I'm contemplating a change in my work structure to make me more time rich as opposed to money rich. There hasn't been another podcast so applicable to my daily life. Thanks guys and please keep up the good work. P.S. My son has a worm farm. We've been using it for fishing bait and I've been inspired now to use it to help teach him some business and financial lessons. Very kind of Travis. Thank you. Very nice. Alpo100 from the United States says that it's an incredible resource for the financially curious. Cameron and Ben do a phenomenal job taking the leading thinking in finance and distilling the information to something palatable for anyone curious about money.

1:00:35Thank you both. Chris reached out on LinkedIn and asked if we're going to be doing a meetup at the IAFP conference in Edmonton in September. I can't make it. Are you going, Ben? Well, we're going to be in Toronto, you and I. That's going to overlap with that. So if I am going to go, it's going to be like from Toronto to there. So I'm undecided. Yeah. But if I go, we can do a meetup, sure. As long as there are snacks. I only go to meetups with snacks. We can make sure there's snacks. And speaking of events and meetups, Daniel's going to the IWI Ace Academy in San Diego in a few weeks. I'm going to be there if you want to meet up.

1:01:14If you're going to Future Proof Festival in September in Huntington Beach, we will be there. We're doing a live recording and thinking about hosting a Canadian breakfast for fellow Canadian advisors. So you can reach out to info at rationalreminder.ca. Also thinking about a meetup in the LA area on Saturday night, September 9th, and also in Toronto on September 20th. And I'm kicking around the idea of going to Chicago this summer. So might do a meetup in Chicago. If anyone's interested, you can reach out. In the store, you know, we've had almost 800 orders in the store. Like in total forever? Yeah, in total forever.

1:01:53Only been doing it a couple of years, right? But summertime is koozie time. Yes, your favorite word, Ben, koozies. You get a free koozie, a free pair of socks. So buy a hoodie. They're super soft, super comfortable. So you buy a hoodie for 45 bucks. And if you're in North America, you get free shipping and socks and a koozie. So again, that's all on rational reminder.ca site. So you can go there, shop, join the challenge. Can I ask you, why do we have the store? Because we don't make money off it. Is it just fun? Why don't we actually lose money off it, Ben, just to be clear? It's just fun to get the merch out there and get retweets.

1:02:25No, we don't make money. We lose money in every order. And then when I go and get motivated and do my giveaways, which gets everyone inspired, like we're shipping like$8 socks with free koozies across the continent for free, whatever we did. Do you get joy out of knowing people are wearing Rashford Reminder swag? I do. That's cool. Love connecting with people. So reach out on all the different platforms. I said this a couple of weeks ago, if you're a financial advisor in Canada and are considering options for the succession of your practice, please reach out. As we said earlier, next week's guest, incredible, Professor Campbell.

1:03:01Also coming up in a few weeks will be our conversation with Burton Malkiel, author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street, which just released its 50th anniversary edition. It's phenomenal. I'm halfway through it now. So, we want to get a head start on that. We have lots of books coming up. We got Nick Majuli coming up, Just Keep Buying. Robin Powell and his co-author coming up. Jill Schlesinger just released that book. She's coming up also. So, got a lot of good books coming up. So, this is a new thing we're doing now. It's like a new segment. You kind of briefly mentioned it last time we did an episode, but I don't know Well, it's part of advanced basics, right?

1:03:34We're going to be doing more books on the financial basics, having the authors on to talk about their book and we'll talk about the reading habits as well as to put it all together. Anything else this week, Ben? I wanted to leave something at the end here. I don't know if we'll be able to show the video or not because it's not ours, but the AMF in Quebec, which is the securities regulator in Quebec, what does AMF stand for? Autorité de marché financier, I believe. Yeah, I knew that too, but I can't say it as well as you. Not that you did it very well, but I would have been worse. They have these ads that I see on Reddit and I think that they're so funny.

1:04:13So I'll describe it, but if we can show a clip of it, that would be even better. So they have videos of ridiculous activities. They have one of a woman trying to walk over like an icy river and falling on her face. And they have one of a guy doing a jump on a bike over like a piece of plywood trying to jump over four of his friends. And they have these just ridiculous things happening. And then they say, see the risk? It's just as obvious with crypto. It's just hilarious because they're trying to protect consumers in Quebec from crypto. but I haven't seen protection that overt from other regulators.

1:04:54And this is a recent series of ads? Fairly recent, yeah. I've only noticed it for the last couple of weeks probably. I don't know when they started. But the posting them on Reddit as promoted posts is just funny. But you don't know if they were out there at the peak of the crypto craze last year. I don't know that. Yeah, too late maybe. But better late than never maybe. I guess. They're in French too. so they don't probably appeal to everybody i live in quebec so i got them in french cool all right anything else uh no that's it all right everybody thanks for listening