In this episode, we are trying something different. Recorded live at the CFA Society’s Toronto Annual Wealth Conference, we take an exclusive look at the origins and evolution of the Rational Reminder Podcast through an interview with Ben and Cameron. From motivations for starting the podcast to favourite episodes and guests, we delve into the behind-the-scenes of the show. Discover how the podcast has grown, the impact it's had on listeners, and the exciting global reach it's achieved. Get an exclusive look at the challenges, regrets, and valuable lessons learned along the way. Then, we are joined by Mark McGrath to explore common pitfalls of ITF accounts, providing listeners with valuable information to help them make the right decisions for their investments. Finally, we welcome special guest Brittany Hodak, author of Creating Superfans, which unpacks the concept of turning customers into passionate fans of your brand. Brittany shares her insights on the power of storytelling in business and how to create Superfans who will champion your brand. We explore the concept of the experience economy, the right approach to investing in marketing for your business, and much more! Join us for this extraordinary episode that blends wealth management insights, podcasting wisdom, and the secrets to cultivating Superfans. Whether you're a long-time Rational Reminder listener or a business owner seeking to supercharge customer loyalty, this episode has something for everyone. Tune in now!
Key Points From This Episode:
(0:04:32) Introduction to Ben and Cameron’s interview at the 2023 Annual Wealth Conference.
(0:07:15) Learn about the average listener base for the show, the active Rational Reminder community, and how the podcast has grown over time.
(0:10:08) The global reach of the podcast, how it has benefitted business, and a look back at the first episode of Rational Reminder.
(0:13:19) What Ben and Cameron originally envisioned, how they met, and what motivated them to start a podcast.
(0:15:17) Insights into the cost of the show, the shift from audio only, and the appetite for long-form content.
(0:18:18) Their favourite episodes and guests, keeping content balanced, and how the reading challenge was started.
(0:25:25) Attracting big industry names to the podcast, their dream guests, and the episodes that did not go to plan.
(0:31:28) Advice for aspiring podcasters, the amount of work the show takes, and their biggest lessons so far.
(0:37:02) Ben and Cameron share their reading habits and the books they think everyone should read and why.
(0:40:14) Why they work so well together, plans for the future, and what they wish they knew before starting the podcast.
(0:43:14) Ben and Cameron each share their definition of success, and final words of advice for listeners.
(0:45:46) Mark to Market: exploring the ins and outs of ITF accounts to avoid common mistakes.
(0:55:04) Introducing today’s guest, Brittany Hodak, and her fascinating book, Superfans.
(0:56:51) Brittany explains some basic definitions and the power of storytelling for your business.
(0:59:50) Why storytelling has become a potent marketing technique, and why Superfans are important to building a successful business.
(1:02:53) Unpacking the Superfan personality, how they can be created, and identifying your customer’s story.
(1:08:47) Defining the experience economy and its impact on customer expectations.
(1:12:38) Recommendations for how businesses should approach investing in marketing.
(1:14:11) The after-show: trip highlights, listener reviews, and more!
Read The Transcript:
Ben Felix: This is the Rational Reminder Podcast, a weekly reality check on sensible investing and financial decision-making from two Canadians. We're hosted by me, Benjamin Felix, and Cameron Passmore, Portfolio Managers at PWL Capital.
Cameron Passmore: Welcome to episode 274. This is a different kind of episode. And, honestly, Ben, it's kind of a different kind of season for us recording. We've been so busy travelling and doing a couple of live events. But today we get a chance to release the live event that we recorded in Toronto at the CFA Society Toronto's Annual Wealth Conference, which was fun. And we'll talk more about that in the actual episode.
Mark McGrath of course will join us again for Mark to Market. And we get a chance to talk to Brittany Hodak, who wrote the excellent book Creating Superfans: How to Turn Your Customers into Lifelong Advocates. Of course, after that, we'll jump into the after-show.
Anything else you want to tea up, Ben?
Ben Felix: I think that's a pretty good introduction. It's definitely a unique episode. I mean, we'll talk more about it when we get into introducing the segment, but it was a unique experience for us. We recorded this thing live. And it was a little bit about what we've learned in the podcast and then a little bit about what we've learned about podcasting from doing the podcast. Anyway, we'll talk more about it in the episode.
Cameron Passmore: All right. Let's go.
***
Cameron Passmore: All right. Let's jump into episode 274. Do you want to kind of queue up first part, Ben?
Ben Felix: Yep. In September, we were invited to be part of the CFA Society Toronto's Annual Wealth Conference. And it was incredible to be invited to that and incredible to actually participate in it. It's funny, I would never have guessed when we started doing this podcast that we would be invited to do something like that. This is an event that was in downtown Toronto. There's probably a hundred or so people in the crowd. All members of the CFA community. All people working in wealth and wealth adjacent fields or wealth service fields.
Cameron Passmore: And a very well-run event. The other speakers and topics were very, very good. Very interesting topics. I thought the day flew by for me. I thought it was just an exceptional event.
Ben Felix: Yeah, that's right. We sat through all of the other speakers, which were phenomenal. And, actually, funny offshoot story. One of the speakers was the guy who writes the private equity chapter for the CFA curriculum. He did an excellent session on private equity. And I talked to him afterwards. It turned out he'd actually listened to our episode with Ludovic Phalippou. And I told him we had done a couple of other episodes on private equity.
Now this is a guy whose business is educating people about private equity, but he's not selling private equity funds, which is like that's pretty rare to find somebody with that level of expertise in private equity who doesn't want to sell you products.
Cameron Passmore: I mean, he loves teaching. He was very good.
Ben Felix: Yeah, Ludovic was an amazing episode on private equity for the same reason. An expert in the field who doesn't have anything to sell. I asked – Steve Balaban is his name. I asked him if he would listen to our past episodes on private equity that he hadn't listened to yet, because he'd already heard one, and then come on as a guest to kind of offer his counterpoints, and critiques, and whatever, whatever, and additional points we may not have thought about. He agreed to that. So, in future episode, we're going to have him on. And that's going to be really, really cool. But total side story, but that just came out of being at this event and hearing him speak and then talking to him afterwards.
Anyway, back to the thing we're talking about here. What we did for this event is that Scott Dickinson, who was on the organizing committee for the conference and is a listener of the Rational Reminder Podcast, and he's also a principal at Northwood Family Office, he actually interviewed us. He sent his questions to ponder over and then we answered them on the stage in front of a bunch of people.
It was stuff like, I mean, how did we meet? We talked a little bit about that. Where did the idea for the podcast come from? What were the early days of the podcast like? What else was there? Our favourite guest, favourite episode.
Cameron Passmore: Favourite books or recommended books.
Ben Felix: Biggest lessons learned and takeaways after five years of interviewing. These are all really fun to think about, honestly. Regrets. That was an interesting one. Reflecting on the podcast. What do we wish we'd done differently? Anyway, I won't say all the questions because you're going to hear Scott ask them in a minute here. But it was neat. Neat to do. Neat to be a part of. Neat to think about the questions that Scott asked for us. I mean, that's it. I guess we'll go and play that interview and hope people enjoy it. As always, we appreciate any feedback.
***
Scott Dickinson: All right. Welcome back, everyone. Our next session is going to be a little bit different. There's the standard financial conference PowerPoint presentation for 30 minutes and then 15 minutes of Q&A. This next session, we are going to try and record a live podcast episode on stage. Our next speakers are Cameron Passmore and Benjamin Felix, who are both Portfolio Managers at PWL Capital. And they are also the co-hosts of the Rational Reminder, which is one of the most popular finance and investing podcasts in the country.
For the past five years, Cameron and Ben have educated their listeners, including myself, on a wide variety of topics. They've released hundreds of episodes. And they've interviewed some of the biggest and brightest minds in finance. And I'm going to use my sheet here so that I don't miss anyone.
But some of the guests that they've interviewed over the past five years include financial writers Morgan Housel, Daniel Pink, Charlie Ellis, Annie Duke, and especially for the people in the room, Michael Kitces. Personal finance experts Preet Banerjee and Rob Carrick. Professors like Burton Malkiel and Eugene Fama. Business leaders like Harley Finkelstein and Heather Reisman. Hedge fund managers Cliff Asness and Ted Seides. Everyone's favourite Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield. And last but not least, the mayor of Ottawa, Mark Sutcliffe, who they knew long before he was the mayor of Ottawa.
Today we're going to do something a little bit different. They've had this podcast for five years and they've always been directing the questions at other people. The goal of today is to reverse that and direct the questions back at them and hear about what they have learned over the past five years of conducting all these interviews and diving deep into so many subjects.
Without further ado, let's play the theme music and give them both a warm welcome.
Scott Dickinson: Thank you both for being here today. We really appreciate it. How are you enjoying the conference so far?
Ben Felix: Great so far. We're really happy to be here. Thanks a lot for inviting us. The CFA program and the local CFA Society in Ottawa have been important to me in my journey in financial services. Being asked to be here is great. Appreciate it.
Cameron Passmore: And I thought Wally did a perfect setup for us talking about the next 50 years. Because, really, what the podcast is about is about helping people tell their stories for the next possibly 50 years. I thought that was a perfect setup.
Scott Dickinson: Great. And as I said, they are both from Ottawa. We really appreciate them taking the time to be here. I know you in particular do not like to get on airplanes for obvious reasons.
Ben Felix: That's changing though.
Scott Dickinson: Oh, yeah?
Ben Felix: It's changing.
Scott Dickinson: They're changing the design of airplanes to make them more –
Ben Felix: No. No. I still don't fit on the airplane though.
Scott Dickinson: But, yeah, really appreciate you guys coming. Why don't we just jump right into it? To set the stage for people in the room that maybe are not familiar with you or as not as familiar with the podcast, how many people are tuning in to an average episode of the Rational Reminder?
Ben Felix: We estimate it's around 30,000 listeners. That's based on our downloads and YouTube views. It's somewhere around there. Although, it's probably a little bit more than that. There're 25,000 subscribers on our YouTube channel. Audio podcasts don't work the same way in terms of the data that you can collect. But probably between 30,000 and 50,000 individual listeners on a regular basis.
Cameron Passmore: But what is interesting, people will often discover a recent episode and then go back through time. Even our early episodes still have quite a high number of downloads. You can tell people are going back. And as you know, we mentioned highlight prior episodes recently to kind of help people find. Because now – today, number 271 dropped. So, to help people decide what they might want to go back and listen to. Those are getting lots of spikes if we highlight an episode from four or five years ago.
Scott Dickinson: And you also have a very engaged community on the Rational Reminder website. How many people are active contributors or members of that community?
Ben Felix: Yeah, that's a good question. We have an online community with around 8,500 users. And on a regular basis, there are about 500 people who are actively discussing topics related to things we've discussed in the podcast.
Cameron Passmore: But the monthly visits are how many? Half a million?
Ben Felix:Monthly page views are around half a million on that website.
Cameron Passmore: And I think you said you recently crossed six million downloads for the podcast. Is that correct?
Cameron Passmore: Pretty close to that. Yeah. It's about two million a year now. I think it's growing 10%, 11% per year.
Ben Felix: And, Ben, you also have a YouTube channel. Do you want to talk a little bit about what that is and kind of the growth that you've seen on that front?
Ben Felix: Yeah. Maybe just real quick. Because of the context of the conference, what we hope you will all take away from this conversation is that these social media properties between our podcast and the YouTube channel that Scott just asked me about have been super impactful to our business in the way that we communicate with clients and what we've learned for what we're able – the service that we provide to clients.
So that YouTube channel, I started six years ago, around there. And it's at 330,000 subscribers now. And that started to see a little bit of success five years ago, which when we started our podcast. And because of that success we kind of thought, "Why don't we try doing something like a longer-form podcast?" My YouTube videos are around 10 minutes long. Different format.
Cameron Passmore: Well, we were listening to Animal Spirits, which I'm sure a number of people here know, and we're like, "Those are two guys that talk into microphones. We talk all the time. So, why don't we just try it?" It was nothing more complicated than that. Got a couple of mics and just tried it. Had no idea what we were doing.
Scott Dickinson: And I know there's one particular video, which maybe it's the kind of clickbait title that helps, but renting versus buying a home. The 5% rule has 4-something million views on YouTube?
Ben Felix: Yeah, that one got a lot of views.
Scott Dickinson: Just wanted to put that out there. These are not just two guys recording a podcast in their garage, in their basement in Ottawa. There has been a global reach to this. And I think that's worth talking about too. Obviously, you're both Canadians. But as a listener to the podcast, there are people that it seems you have reached around the world. Do you want to just talk about some of the different countries or the different people that you've heard from past episodes?
Cameron Passmore: Well, as you know, Scott, I put it out there to listeners to reach out on LinkedIn. And every week, I hear from five to 10 people every week from all over the world. It's unbelievable. Different roles. Different experiences. Different ages. It's incredible who it connects with. And we see that in the – we have a merchandise store. So, we get orders for our hoodies, for example. We've shipped many to Australia as one example.
Ben Felix: It's only about 40% of our audience now is Canadian, which is actually not ideal from our perspective. Because one of the reasons we wanted to do it is to market to Canadians.
Scott Dickinson: Not a lot of Australian clients coming through?
Ben Felix: Yeah. Well, that's it. There are other benefits to that. But, anyway. Yeah.
Scott Dickinson: Maybe that's a good segue. Like you mentioned how it's been impactful to the wealth management practice. Is the podcast directly profitable other than the fact that has led to client lead generation?
Cameron Passmore: Directly? No. Because as you know, we don't monetize it other than getting leads from it. But the biggest benefit for us I think by far is to find talent. So many of our new team members in the past couple years came from the podcast. People reaching out saying, "I hear you guys. I relate to you. I trust you. I like the mission that you seem to be on." And that has been an incredible source of new talent.
Ben Felix: Yes, that is absolutely true. But it does not hurt with business development either. It's our number one source of new leads.
Cameron Passmore: Once we started putting it out there that we were open for business, we were so sensitive about being perceived as hustlers that we avoided any mention that we were open for business. We hardly even mentioned what we did other than very briefly in the intro. As you know, Scott, we would never push. So, now we put in what we call a call to action upfront. And so far, this year, it is our number one source of leads.
Scott Dickinson: Kind of what lead was speaking about a little bit of that Canadian humility coming out there?
Cameron Passmore: Yes.
Scott Dickinson: Why don't we go back to the beginning? First podcast episode came out August 3rd, 2018. That episode was titled The Cheapest Advice Probably Isn't the Best, which I think is a sentiment that a lot of people in this room would probably agree with. Do you ever go back and listen to that? And is there part of it that is cringe-inducing hearing those early episodes?
Ben Felix: All of it is cringe-inducing. I do not go back. I get a lot of questions from people who want to start a YouTube channel. More so than a podcast. And they talk about how they feel nervous in front of the camera or they feel rigid in front of the camera. And I tell them, "Go and watch my first videos. It's embarrassing." I keep them up, but it's embarrassing. Time in front of the camera and the microphone I think helps a lot.
Cameron Passmore: Yeah, I never listen to what we call us episodes where it's just Ben and I. But I often listen to the other guests’ episodes. The guests have just been sensational. And as you know, we stay out of their way. Ask very short, very tight questions. So, I will go back and listen to many of them often.
Scott Dickinson: And when this started, August 2018, kind of just over five years ago, did you have any idea or any vision for what it would turn into here in September 2023?
Ben Felix: No. None at all.
Cameron Passmore: Well, it wasn't the goal though, because back in the day, we used to have an annual event, a client event, where we would fly someone in at great expense across the country or across North America. Put them up in a hotel. Have a ballroom like this. Serve food. The event would cost us $10,000 or $15,000. I'm sure many people here have done similar things. Our goal was if we can reach 100 people a week, that'd be great. And the cost is almost nothing other than our time. And so, we quite quickly got to 100, 200 people in episodes. That was deemed to be worthwhile.
Scott Dickinson: And how did the two of you meet? And whose idea was it to start a podcast originally?
Ben Felix: Well, it took a while after we met before we started a podcast. But we met once at a networking event. And Cameron wanted me to call him back and I never did.
Cameron Passmore: He never did.
Ben Felix: He kind of grieved about that the second time that we met. But I had started in financial services. I was working for a mutual fund dealer. I discovered the whole idea of index funds and low-cost investing. Through that, I discovered dimensional fund advisers. And I called them and asked if I could use their products at the dealer that I was at. And they actually laughed at me at the time and said, "No. No, we don't deal with that firm."
And then they called me back six months later and said that there was a guy in Ottawa who's got a practice using dimensional funds and asked if I wanted to be connected with him. And that was it. That's how we met.
Cameron Passmore: But, yeah, you did not call me back the first time I met you. That you're so ahead of that. But you were not who you are today back then either. I mean, you've come a long way in terms of your research and ability. It's been an incredible decade of us working together.
Ben Felix: I'll take that that as a compliment.
Scott Dickinson: And the podcast, whose idea was that?
Ben Felix: I think I walked into Cameron's office and said, "Let's do a podcast." And Cameron said, "Okay, let's do it." And we bought microphones and we started doing it.
Cameron Passmore: Yeah, I knew I didn't want to do YouTube. I was too afraid of that. The podcast seemed easier.
Scott Dickinson: And in those early days like we were talking a little bit over breakfast today on startup costs and the equipment. You guys have obviously high-end audio. Now high-end video equipment. For people that are interested in introducing this for their wealth management practice, what does the upfront investment look like?
Cameron Passmore: Probably in the zone of $5,000 to $10,000 per setup. Depending if you going to go on YouTube and have the camera. The camera is expensive. You can spend a lot on a backdrop if you want. But you could do it on the cheap as well if you wanted to.
Ben Felix: We didn't do video for our podcast until episode 101. We did 100 episodes audio only, which, in hindsight, I think that's one of the questions you might ask, is about regrets or mistakes. That was probably a mistake in hindsight if we could go back and do video from day one. Because the growth in viewership on YouTube has been incredible relative to audio. But we didn't start until much later.
Cameron Passmore: Yeah. It would have been nice to have had Ken French episode 100 on video.
Scott Dickinson: Just missed it.
Cameron Passmore: Just missed it. And I've always – out of personal curiosity, I've been fascinated by the people that listen to long-form or watch long-form content on YouTube. For example, my routine with podcasts is working out, commuting. Always doing something else. I can't imagine sitting down and watching an 80-minute interview on YouTube in most cases. But it sounds like there's an audience out there for that kind of content.
Ben Felix: I don't get it either to be honest with you. I'm like you, I listen to podcast while I'm doing other stuff. But, yeah, there's a lot of appetite for long-form content.
Cameron Passmore: But you called this. Because I'm the one that wanted it short, 30 to 45 minutes because that's the cadence that I was listening at the time. And you kept saying, "Forget about the length. It'll be as long as it will be." So, you were dead right that people do have an appetite, especially when you get a guest that you're engaged in their research, engaged in what they want to deliver to you.
We go in well-prepared for these interviews, right? And when you engage with someone who's put their life into this research, they want to talk. We had what? Cam Harvey, as an example. World-renowned economist. He was two and a half hours and he would have kept going if we didn't have to go for dinner or something. It was long. It was fantastic though. Gene Fama, same thing.
Scott Dickinson: Yeah. Tell the story about – you mentioned that at dinner last tonight.
Cameron Passmore: We had a chance to – everyone knows Professor Eugene Fama, Nobel laureate. I've met him a number of times. He can be gruff a bit. And we got a chance to interview him on Good Friday in the morning. Because he only works in the mornings, right? And his advice was, "Okay, check in with him at an hour. You get an hour. But at about five minutes to, see if he's having a good time and how long he'll let you go." And so, Ben asked me. He said, "Let's keep going." So, got 62 questions in. His answers are very sharp in – what? Hour and a half. I mean, it's just an incredible interview.
Scott Dickinson: What is the longest episode? Is it Cam Harvey? Have you gone beyond –
Cameron Passmore: It's got to be, I think. But we've had many now that go hour and 20, hour and a half. Now we speed it up a bit. We speed it up by 10%.
Scott Dickinson: Speed up the audio.
Cameron Passmore: Yes.
Scott Dickinson: Okay. Since we're talking about guests, favourite episode, favourite guest? Maybe we'll start with you, Ben.
Ben Felix: It is tough to choose one. Because we have had conversations with some incredible people. I mean, Robert Merton was amazing. Gene Fama was incredible. Ken French, John Campbell. I don't know if – did people recognize these names? They're big academic financial economists.
My favourite though, and I do have a favourite, with apologies to everybody else, I guess. But John Cochrane, who is an economist at – was at the University of Chicago for many years. Now he's at Stanford. He's done incredible work on asset pricing and portfolio theory, which I think is directly applicable to the work that a lot of us do. And he's done a lot of practical application work stemming from that.
And so, we did one episode with him on that, on portfolio theory. That was for me just incredible. I mean, almost transformational in the way that I think about what we as a profession do. And then we did a second episode with him. He's just finished a significant book called The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level, which is a theory of inflation. We again spent an episode with him on that. And those two episodes for me were just incredible.
The amount of work that we put in to preparing the questions for them was – I mean, maybe that correlates with how good the episode was. I don't know. But those two episodes with John Cochrane are my favourites.
Cameron Passmore: We also hit a vein of academics in behavioural finance. And people like Katy Milkman wrote the book How to Change. Ayelet Fishbach, book, Get it Done. But there's a whole cohort where they're all friends. They introduced us to each of them. That's how we met Hal Hershfield who wrote the book Your Future Self. There's a whole vein of incredible people down there that completely changed how we think about so many things.
If I was to pick a favourite, I'd have to go with Chris Hadfield, which was a surprising – not that we were surprising him, but surprised at how great that episode did relate to the rest of our content. Goal setting. Some great career advice in there. It was also one of the episodes with the lowest initial downloads. We actually had to go back, as you know, and tell listeners. Like, "You got to go listen to this." It was really good. And he was spectacular.
Scott Dickinson: The nerds weren't interested in the astronaut?
Cameron Passmore: They were out.
Scott Dickinson: That's actually worth going into. Because you do have a diverse audience base. You do have the people that want the deep dives, and the financial research and really arcane, specific topics. And then you have a group of people that are more interested in the broader stuff, like the Chris Hadfield conversation. How do you balance those two?
Ben Felix: I don't know. We try and do a balance, I guess? We do deep dive topics and we have deep dive guests in pretty geeky topics. But then we also do – like, Cameron reviews books in some episodes. And that's I think more access to a general audience. But the feedback that we get is that people who don't understand the really geeky topics still like to listen to it because they're trying to push the boundaries of what they know. And then people who like the geeky topics also like the less geeky stuff. We seem to have a reasonably good balance of geeky and less so.
Cameron Passmore: But it has to be what you love doing. Because it's too much work to not. I think it starts to reflect with this many episodes what we're both interested in. I mean, everyone knows Ben's geekier than I am. He's the intellect in terms of all the academic research. He owns that. He loves that.
I mean, some of the topics that we've talked about lately, we just interviewed Brittany Hodak who wrote the marketing book Superfans. And we interviewed Matthew Dicks who wrote the book Storytelling. This is not geeky academic finance stuff. But a lot of our audiences in the business is interested. And I hear from a lot of people. Because we have a reading challenge that they get inspired to read more. Check out of their phones a bit – to someone's question here earlier, check out of your phones and check into books and try improving your life. That incremental that Chris Hadfield talked about. Every day, just incrementally get a little bit better. That's our goal.
Scott Dickinson: Do you want to just talk about the reading challenge and what that is?
Cameron Passmore: It's just an idea I had. January 1 last year, we showed to Angelica, who's in charge of our marketing group, and said, "What about a reading challenge? Some sort of inspiration to get people to read more?" Angelica found an app. You can sign up. You can join the group. I think we have 700 people in the group. And we called it last year 22 and 22. So, 22 books and 22. This year, 23 and 23. And there's a whole community. I think Ben and I each have probably 400 people directly connected to us. You can see what people are reading and what they're reviewing. And lots of people reach out to me directly, perhaps YouTube, and just to say how much they appreciate it. And they love getting ideas of what else to read.
Now we got people sending in book ideas. And it's also kind of cool. Because you can leverage that to get interesting guests. And now for the book review segment, I'm doing I'm actually reaching out to authors to come on for quick 20-minute hit on their book, which is really interesting, really fun.
We have Morgan Housel coming up soon and his new book. Shane Parrish has a new book coming out. He's already in the queue. We got a lot of interesting people with a platform and the interest that you can get some really cool people.
Ben Felix: I think the reading challenge speaks of something bigger with the concept of having a podcast show, which is that there's a whole community. I mean, we have the explicit online community. But there's a whole community of people who are interested in the stuff that we're talking about. They, therefore, have shared interests. And that becomes a pretty interesting pool of people for us to communicate with.
Cameron Passmore: Well, this is something, Patrick O’Shaughnessy, I'm sure people know him from Invest Like the Best. There's something about the auditory experience. Like you either like our voices or you don't. But if you do and you kind of like the characters, it does really become this tight community.
And like I heard from – we talked about this on the podcast a couple weeks ago. Introduces to a friend of mine. He had no idea we were doing this. He's absolutely blown away. And he's a firefighter sharing the content with his – or my brother. Another story is a firefighter in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. And so, one of his colleagues at Francophone was an active listener. My brother didn't even know I was doing the podcast. He finds out from this other guy, just did a name connection. You just never know who's actively listening and engaged.
Scott Dickinson: Speaking of Patrick O'Shaughnessy, when he's kind of been asked the best episode of his podcast are the one he enjoys the most. He described it as what are the episodes that people are going to be going back to 10 years from now and revisiting or discovering for the first time. I know you mentioned John Cochrane, Chris Hadfield. Are there any others that stand out that you think have that kind of stain power?
Cameron Passmore: Gerard O'Reilly, Co-CIO of Dimensional. I've listened to that one many times. Eugene Fama, Ken French, Charlie Ellis. Mayor Statman, we just had on, was fantastic. David Booth who founded Dimensional from a business standpoint I thought was excellent too.
Ben Felix: I do go back to John Cochrane episodes a lot. But Cameron also mentioned earlier, we had this whole vein of guests or a whole cohort of guests on happiness and well-being. And I think it relates to Barbara's talk this morning. The research that we spoke about with those guests became a really important part of our wealth management business and the way that we deal with clients. I definitely refer back to those episodes or the research of the guests that we had in those episodes. That was really I think transformational to the way that we set up our client relationships and communicate with clients.
Scott Dickinson: And when you're getting in front of these people or asking people to come on the podcast, obviously it gets easier with the growth of the podcast. But how have you gotten some of these big, bold print names in academic finance to just come on for an hour?
Ben Felix: We just ask. It does get easier though when we have a big list of past guests who are pretty big names. Early on, I guess we just got a little bit lucky with – I guess we had some podcast episodes out. And I know we had one of our first somewhat big-name guests. He said that, "You know what? I went and listen to some of your episodes and they're really good. I'm happy to come on." That helped. But it builds. It snowballs. Now when we ask a guest to come on, we send them an email that lists some of the past guests. And it's like it's everybody. So, everybody says yes.
Cameron Passmore: But you start asking friends. We're friends with Larry Swedroe, and Rick Ferry, and Dan Solin and people like that. And then you ask them for introductions. Larry gave us an introduction to Cliff Asness at AQR, which was great. Every little bit, you're just kind of scratching to get that break through.
And then we reached out to Ted Seides of Capital Allocators and we share production team in the background. That was kind of the intro. And he said, "I get asked all the time. But maybe that's who you were referring to. Yeah, I listen to your stuff. You guys are okay." So, he's become a friend of ours since then.
And then a friend of ours in New York City knows Jill Schlesinger, who's the personal finance person for CBS Morning News. We got to meet Jill. And she was just on with her new book a couple months ago. And we're living this, right? You have to be keen to be aware of what books are coming out. And it also becomes a bit of a race, right? Because a lot of our guests will go on like Masters in Business with Barry. We're trying to get in the queue kind of competitive to try to beat them.
We also did a trip to New York City where we interviewed Barry, Dr. David Blitzer from S&P, which is another fantastic interview in the history of indexing. But, again, it's who knows who and just ask.
Scott Dickinson: And Barry Bean, Barry Ritholtz of Ritholtz Wealth, who I think is probably an American similar style to what you guys are trying to do on the podcast front. I know they have a series of podcasts you mentioned. I don't know if I'm supposed to share this, but they're thinking about rolling out some more podcasts in the next couple of months. It is a bit of a different strategy that not a lot of – whether it's RIAs in the US or independent wealth managers in Canada are pursuing what you guys are doing.
Cameron Passmore: It's hard though. It's a lot of work. It's a major time commitment. Not just preparing, but finding the people, booking the people. We do it all ourselves. We don't have booking agents. We don't deal with – we even inbound requests coming from agents. All but one we've turned down. And that one we, in hindsight, might have passed on. No names. You don't want to just be on the circuit just welcoming authors. And then, so many guests show up and they're like, "You actually read the book." Well, of course, you read the book. But they're so used to just being a name to plug a podcast.
Scott Dickinson: To clarify, I also read his book. That wasn't just interviewing him. In terms of dream guests that maybe you haven't been able to book yet, is there anyone that stands out?
Cameron Passmore: Let's see. I mean, Danny Kahneman would be cool to have. Myron Scholes, Bill Sharpe, Dick Thaler would be pretty cool. We think we have a line to Dick Taylor. Because he's co-author with Cass Sunstein, who was just on. Another phenomenal guest. Really nice guy too. Anyone comes to mind for you?
Ben Felix: The one that we regret is Markowitz. He was kind of right in there with the type of people that we've had on the podcast. But he's obviously passed away. So, that was a shame.
Scott Dickinson: And similar to what Barbara said earlier, are there ever interviews that just don't go the way that you think they're going to go and you just decide it's not worth releasing this because this is not what we thought we were going to get out of this person?
Ben Felix: We've never not released an episode. But once, we had to heavily edit in post-production.
Scott Dickinson: No names on that one too?
Ben Felix: Yeah. No names. Usually, that doesn't happen.
Cameron Passmore: And one episode had a lot of backlash, which really shocked us. People accused us of having like political motivations. And I have no idea of Ben's political – we've never spoken politics ever.
Scott Dickinson: Do you want to start today?
Cameron Passmore: No. I'm good. But we had a lot of backlash on this episode about diversity and equity we were shocked by. Because I thought it was a really nice episode. My fiancé loved it. And we're not trying to annoy anyone. We're trying to learn. We generally just want to learn.
Scott Dickinson: I think it's worth bringing that kind of incident up. Because you're a pretty mild-mannered guy. And that's probably as heated as I've ever heard you on the podcast. Do you want to just give a bit of background about what the topic was and what the backlash was?
Ben Felix: The guest was a feminist talking about the state of the world for women and money. And then, how those things relate to each other. And like Cameron said, we thought it was fine. It was interesting. And we did hear from a lot of women afterwards it was a great episode. But there were a group of very vocal, very angry men. We're going to get backlash again for this episode. Thanks. Thanks, Scott.
Scott Dickinson: Glad that I could join the team.
Ben Felix: Yeah, that was ugly. I mean, that's about as ugly as we've seen our podcast community get ever.
Cameron Passmore: But if you don't like it, why did you listen? I don't understand.
Ben Felix: I don't know. We got to stop talking about it. Which is sad that that's the result of the feedback that we got on that episode. But, yeah.
Scott Dickinson: And in kind of a similar vein, are you guys ever – like one of our most famous exports, Drake, has a line where he says, "7am in Germany. Can't believe that they've heard of me." Are you guys getting recognized in public airports, different places? And is that exciting? Surreal? Weird?
Ben Felix: Yes, it happens. And, yes, it is exciting, surreal and also weird.
Cameron Passmore: But it's kind of fun to get feedback. I was at Costco a few months ago and someone recognized me. And you get a chance to ask, "What do you like about it?" And so, you get some feedback from people. Yeah, it's nice to see it has an impact, which was the ultimate goal, right?
Scott Dickinson: Still on the fun side of fame. It hasn't hit –
Cameron Passmore: We're talking one episode, right? This is hardly a regular.
Ben Felix: Or not that famous.
Scott Dickinson: Pretty niche topic, I guess. You're not quite putting up Justin Bieber YouTube numbers even with 4 million. We do have a couple questions from the audience. I'm going to go to one now. Our firm just launched a podcast. What advice can you offer for us to succeed?
Ben Felix: One of the reasons that we've had a little bit of success with our podcast is that we've been consistent. We committed to doing this from day one when we started. We've done an episode every week since. Never missed one. And they come out at the same time every week. And I think that's huge. I think it'd be very difficult to build an audience without that consistency. That's probably the number one piece of advice that I would have for anybody starting a podcast.
Cameron Passmore: Vast majority don't last more than a month, I think. People start and quit pretty quickly. But you have to love doing it. Otherwise, you're not going to do it.
Scott Dickinson: And I think the other thing that's worth talking about is just the work. Is the amount of time that you guys are both putting in to each episode? And maybe just talking to that, you obviously have other facets of your jobs. What percent of your day, or week, or year is on the podcast versus the rest of your roles at PWL?
Cameron Passmore: Well, it's interesting. Because we're doing a lot of this work already. Searching out people and reading books. It's part of a way of living. But directly for the podcast, it's at least 10 to 20 hours a week minimum.
Ben Felix: It's tough to separate it out though.
Cameron Passmore: Yeah, I know.
Ben Felix: My job title at PWL is Head of Research. And so, I'm doing the research anyway. What's the extra time specific to the podcast? I think that's a lot harder to articulate.
Cameron Passmore: But for a John Cochrane type episode?
Ben Felix: Yeah. But like you said, I wanted to read his research anyway.
Scott Dickinson: He's reading that on the weekend. It's fine.
Ben Felix: True.
Cameron Passmore: I mean, it's true, right? I know you're not supposed to work after hours. But we will often chat many times through a weekend.
Scott Dickinson: Because it's the stuff you would be doing regardless of the podcast.
Cameron Passmore: Right.
Scott Dickinson: I do have some good news for you from one of the audience questions. I was not expecting this. But hopefully, this helps justify the trip to Toronto. I'm not going to say the person's email address, but it says, "I can put you in touch with Bill Sharpe." So, there you go. Hopefully, that leads to future appearance on Rational Reminder. I don't want to get clickbaity, and I know we've talked about the title here, but if you could distill the last five years into a couple of sound bites, like your biggest takeaways, your biggest lessons, what would they be? And maybe I'll start with you, Ben.
Ben Felix: One of the big ones is that there is no optimal investment strategy. We think about that a lot professionally. But we've talked to so many experts with expertise in different areas of finance, and financial economics and implementation of financial products, and nobody agrees on the optimal portfolio. I think trying to pursue that is probably not going to be fruitful.
One common thread though, among all of the many academics we've had on our podcast is that I don't think any of them have disagreed with this. As a starting point for portfolios, low-cost index funds are pretty great at least as a starting point. And that's something that I find interesting. Because we've talked all of these academics and they generally agree on that. In the world of practice, I don't think you find quite as much agreement. That's one big thing.
The other thing is about happiness and well-being and how that intersects with financial advice. We listened to Barbara this morning, and I thought that was great. There's a model that we've learned about through doing the podcast called the PERMA model. Positive, emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. And I think having a model like that as an aspect of the advice that we're giving to people when they're making financial decisions is really important. That's when I talked earlier about things that have changed our business, that's a big one, where we're not just trying to find the maximum Sharpe ratio for clients. We're trying to help them make good decisions that improve their more holistic well-being. That's something that we've learned a ton about from doing the podcast.
Cameron Passmore: The other thing too is a testament to the into that you wrote five and a half years ago, sensible investing and financial decision-making. This is all about decision-making. And if you think about it, going back to Wally this morning, life is about making decisions.
That's what we do every week, is try to find information to help people make better decisions. And there's an appetite for that. And a lot of people do like long-form content. I believe a lot of people – a lot more people should want long-form content. You heard us talk last week about you did a deep dive two weeks ago that referred 23 different studies, which who knows how much time you put into it? But in 30 minutes, you can hear Ben's take from 23 different academic studies. I would argue that's a worthwhile investment of time to help you make better decisions.
Scott Dickinson: And probably more than 30 minutes went into that, I'm guessing.
Ben Felix: Oh, yeah. A little bit more. I think another big one is there's stuff that we've learned. There's stuff on portfolio theory and on well-being that we've learned that helps us in our practice. I think about podcasting, we've also learned a lot of stuff. People want to talk about their research. People who have done a lot of work on a subject. I mean, this event today is a testament to that as well. People want to talk about the work that they've done. People who have done work in academia typically want to help people with that work. And so, they're excited to talk to practitioners. That's been an interesting thing to learn.
Cameron Passmore: And even though we talked about some of the big names we might have interviewed, some of the greatest guests are people you've never heard of that are just so happy to be asked and were unbelievable. We had Itzhak Ben-David a couple weeks ago. I think this was his first podcast that who it was. He was a fantastic interview.
Scott Cederberg changed how we think about markets with his long-term capital markets research. He's not a household name. And those finds that Ben digs up are unreal.
Scott Dickinson: Do you want to talk about your personal reading habits? We talked about the reading challenge. But maybe that's contributed to it. But how do you find time? There's a lot of busy professionals in the room listening. What do you do to find time to read?
Cameron Passmore: I make it an atomic habit. Five or so years ago, I had lunch with a client and I was blown away that he had read, I forget the number, but 20 or so books. I was blown away. Because I might have read two or three books. And just decided 45 minutes every morning. and I swear, it's not much more than that. And I just finished book 48 of the year. That's not to brag. It's just if you do 45 minutes, you're going to do a book a week. That's just most books are like 260 pages. And four or five hours, it just happen.
And I do it in my Kindle. So, I take notes. Feed it through a Readwise, back to Evernote. I mean, everyone's got their own habit for capturing notes. But that's a big deal too, is to capture what you retain and have a mechanism to review it is really important.
Ben Felix: I don't really have any habits or hacks like that. But I will say that having something like our podcast – like I mentioned I'm doing research anyway for my job, which is true. But having a podcast forces us – as long as we want to keep the podcast up, it forces a cadence of research. So, we know that every week we have to either have read a bunch of research from a guest we're going to interview or we have to have prepared our own research. We alternate between guests and presenting our own stuff. That forces me to do a lot of reading. I don't have a hack though.
Cameron Passmore: There is that constant pressure to make sure you keep up. And if you're going to take a couple weeks off, you have to make sure you got some work in the bank.
Scott Dickinson: And if you had to recommend, I guess you've read hundreds of books over the course of doing the podcast over the last five years, one, two, three books that would be relevant not just to this room but to anyone, what would they be and why?
Cameron Passmore: That's a very hard question. Depends on what you're interested in. But big impact to the question we had here about distraction. I love the book Deep Work by Cal Newport for two reasons. One is it's super important to get into flow in the work that you have so to block time to do that deep work. But also, most people are distracted. So, if you become a deep worker in your environment, that gives you a serious edge up on other people.
And the other book that I would recommend, we just interviewed Matthew Dicks who wrote Storyworthy. And Storyworthy is a great gift that you have to make compelling arguments in your environment, especially in a busy environment that we're all in and a large or remote type environment. Those are two great books I would highly recommend.
Ben Felix: CFA Research Institute has a book. I think it's just called Financial Market History. I don't know if people have read it. Incredible. Incredible book. I think everybody should read that. We get a lot of interesting perspectives from podcast guests. But I find the deep historical perspectives just on data and what has happened in the past in financial markets. I find that to be really interesting. But that's a book that captures a lot of that in terms of asset class returns, and market structure and things like that.
And then the other one is also historical. It's The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth. It's a firsthand account from a lawyer who lived through the Great Depression. But he's journaling about what's happening in his life, and what he's thinking about and how he's processing the information. And it's just an absolutely incredible perspective to think about today, which is why it's an interesting book.
Scott Dickinson: How are the two of you different other than your interests and other than maybe height?
Cameron Passmore: I'm 6'3 and I'm tiny in this group.
Scott Dickinson: I'll say, when we took the picture, I was like, "Okay, I'll at least be his height." And I was like, "No. I'm not his height either." But we talked about complimentary skill sets a little bit last night. And I think we've gotten into that. But how do you complement each other? And is there anything that you don't complement each other that gets on your nerves about the other person when you're in a room interviewing people for five years?
Cameron Passmore: Go ahead.
Scott Dickinson: These are the hard-hitting questions.
Ben Felix: I don't think we get on each other's nerves very often. I'm probably more analytical than Cameron.
Cameron Passmore: Probably.
Ben Felix: That's probably the biggest difference though. I mean, we share a lot of the same interests. And even if I'm more likely to dig through academic papers, Cameron's just as interested to hear the conclusions as I am.
Cameron Passmore: Yeah. I get what comes out of his research. I just don't have the drive and the intellect to dive into the papers like you do. I think you can live easier in a world of chaos I think a bit more than I can. I mean, a good way, right? It may come off like it's polished. There's a whole lot of duct tape behind the scenes to pull this off every week. But the commonality is the drive, right? We're just curious. We're not 9-to-5'ers. We're bouncing ideas off.
I've chilled a lot – like we get lot a lot of stuff go. Some things I may have disagreed on. Like, the length early on, stuff like that. Because no one knows the truth, right? So, we're happy to experiment. He didn't know if the book review was going to be of interest. I didn't know either. Who knew if it was going to be goofy next to his deep dive? Does it work? We'll let the listeners be the judge. But it's kind of what we like doing, right?
Scott Dickinson: Yeah. Five years in, hundreds of episodes. Do you have an idea of when this would stop? Or do you envision doing this 5 years, 10 years, 15 years from now?
Cameron Passmore: We don't quit very well. I think that's a trait of ours. As long as there's good research, and interesting authors and stuff to think about, I don't see why it would end.
Ben Felix: We're enjoying it. And that's one of the things in thinking about pursuing a podcast for somebody else. You've got to enjoy the work and the whole process. If it got to a point where we weren't having fun or weren't enjoying, we probably would stop. But we're not there. I don't know when we would stop. Eventually. But I don't know what the driver behind that would be.
Scott Dickinson: Okay. You talked briefly about regrets and not having video on the first 100 episodes. Anything else that you know now that you wish you knew five years ago? Three years ago?
Cameron Passmore: No. It's super fun to play around with ideas and try stuff and see if it works and see if you enjoy doing it. So much of it is an accident, right? Even deciding do we have a guest. Do we have a guest every other week? How did that cadence happen? Early on, we tried to do Ben's deep dives together. It quickly became evident that doesn't work. Let Ben do his deep dive. He's great at it. And then we change the order of the show. It's a fun recipe to mix with. It's super creative too. Actually, put something as a finished product out and see what like our marketing team does with it afterwards. Because once we're done recording, they own it, right? They get creative on the graphics on the video and the engineering behind the scenes.
Scott Dickinson: Okay. You guys know how you end each interview with a guest. But some of the people in the room will not. Each time they have a guest on, they conclude the interview with asking that person, "How do you define success in your own life?" So, I hope you're prepared for this question after 270 something episodes.
Cameron Passmore: I'm not. But it's easy for me like to be around people that you're crazy about. And I love going to work. Like, every morning, Lisa will say to me, "I can't believe you're so happy to go to work every day." We jump out of bed at whatever, 4.30 in the morning. I can't wait to get to work.
Ben Felix: I'm not prepared for this either. And I thought about it because –
Scott Dickinson: This was not on the list of prepared questions, to be fair.
Ben Felix: We always put that on the list for the guests so they can think about it beforehand.
Scott Dickinson: I should have added that. I apologize.
Ben Felix: We've heard however many 100 plus people, very accomplished people, answer that question. And there's so many different ways to answer that I think are pretty great. I don't know if I have one that's unique or particularly good. I think you got to enjoy what you're doing minute-to-minute. But you've also got to be able to reflect longer term on what you have done and be happy with that. I guess something like that. Enjoying what you're doing moment to moment. But also, being able to look back on the bigger picture and be happy with where you're at.
Scott Dickinson: It's pretty good I'd say for not prepared.
Cameron Passmore: It's a pretty good answer.
Scott Dickinson: Yeah. Any closing thoughts for this room of people? Obviously, there's some people thinking about starting a podcast. There's a lot of independents. There's people that work at banks here. Any advice based on what you've learned based on your careers at PWL?
Cameron Passmore: Keep on learning every day. That's what Chris Hadfield told us, right? It's not about being an astronaut. It's about becoming an astronaut. It's every single day. In this business, just keep learning and helping and get better every day.
Ben Felix: Content has been – I mean, we talked about the growth of the podcast. The growth of our business has kind of mirrored that. And the content has been an important part of that. If you can do it, if you can pull it off and be successful creating content, I think it can be really valuable. I mean, it's not – other than our time, I guess, which is maybe expensive. But it's not particularly expensive. We're not buying Google Ads or paying for advertising otherwise. But we're getting massive reach with our content.
It's pretty incredible for a lot of different reasons. But if you can pull that off, if you can be consistent with doing something like that and build a community around your content, I think it's extremely valuable in our business.
Scott Dickinson: Great. I want to thank both of you. Again, I'm the first person to ever host a Rational Reminder other than the two of you over the last five years. That is an honour as a longtime fan of the show. And just really appreciate you guys being here today.
Cameron Passmore: It was great to have you on.
Ben Felix: Thanks a lot, Scott.
***
Ben Felix: All right. I hope people enjoyed that. And now we're going to move on to our Mark to Market segment with Mark McGrath. Mark, welcome back to the podcast.
Mark McGrath: Thanks. Always good to be here. Feels like it's been a while.
Ben Felix: Yeah, it's been a while since we recorded. Because we had a bunch of – Cameron and I were travelling. And, so we had a bunch of pre-recorded episodes. And it's been a different experience than usual. What do we got this week for Mark to Market?
Mark McGrath: What do we got? I'm going to talk through some of the concerns that I think a lot of people don't know about when it comes to a certain type of account called an “in trust for” account or an ITF account. Sometimes these are called informal trusts. These are accounts that were – traditionally, they were opened at a bank branch. And it's a way to convey money to a minor child or grandchild, right?
Take a scenario where let's say you're a parent, you're funding the RESPs, the education plans for your kids, that's all going well. You've got additional money that you want to put into your kids' hands, but maybe it's not such a significant amount of funds that you're going to go to a lawyer and draft up a formal family trust, right? Maybe it's $10,000, or $20,000, or $30,000, or $50,000, or something like that where the lawyer fees to draft a formal trust maybe don't make sense in the context of the amount that you're going to contribute for your kids.
And so, there's this type of account called an ITF account, or an in trust for account, or an informal trust account. And it is an option. And the way this work is you open it at a bank, or you can open it with an adviser, or brokerage and you contribute money. The child is the beneficiary. They're the only one that can benefit from the funds. You contribute the money and then you manage it on their behalf.
And the reason you might want to do this or the benefit that at least is sort of marketed and sold is that if you invest that money inside an ITF account and you generate capital gains, so you invest in something that goes up in value, those capital gains can be taxed in the child's hands. Not in your own, right?
The alternative usually is you have the money in your own non-registered account where any capital gains you're going to pay tax on presumably at a higher bracket than your three-year-old child who hopefully does not have a job and is not earning an income. Now that's great.
Any other types of income? Like, interest, or dividends, or foreign dividends? Those do get attributed back to you, the contributor, to the account. This is really sold as a way to invest the money for your kids, target capital gains, trigger capital gains over time in their hands, they’re likely not going to pay any tax on it, and when they reach the age of majority, the funds are legally theirs. You get to hand it off to them and now it's their money.
On the surface, that all sounds great. There's a number of things that can go wrong. These are often not set up correctly when you look at how trusts are supposed to work. First of all, CRA does not distinguish between like a formal trust and one of these accounts. In the eyes of the CRA, a trust either exists or it does not. Full stop. Right?
Now for a trust to exist, it has to meet certain tests and definitions. And usually, if you go to a lawyer, you would have a formal trust deed prepared. And it would be very clear that these definitions and terms are being met and there's no issue with that.
The problem with these ITF accounts is, often, that certainty is not clear from the paperwork that you're using to open up the accounts. Because when you go in and you open one of these, it's just like a new account application form similar to opening, say, a TFSA for yourself.
And so, you can run into these issues. And one of the big ones is something called the reversionary trust rules. And that's a fancy term that basically says if you're the trustee of the account and the contributor or the settler of the account, you can run into an issue where a CRA says, "No. No. No. You didn't actually give this money away. It looks like you did, but you're still in control of it. Because you've contributed the money, but you're still in control of it as the trustee. And so, we're going to revert all of the income, including the capital gains back to you.”
And the issue is this might not happen until many, many years down the road where you've already triggered capital gains in the hands of the child and a CRA goes, "No. We're going to look at this as if this trust never existed." And so, now you've got all these back taxes to pay because you were putting those capital gains in your kids hands. But actually, they're yours.
And not only that that, but because some of these tax bills are retroactively due 10 years ago, now there's a bunch of penalties on top. It completely undoes the trust relationship and can be a pretty nasty surprise.
Now I've never seen this happen in practice, but in theory, this is a possibility. And so, one of the ways around that is to ensure, if you're going to open one of these accounts, the settler or the contributor and the trustee are two different parties altogether, right?
You might have let's say a father be the contributor or the trustee and the mother, or the other spouse, the partner, being the other party, right? There's a separation between who's contributing the money and who's controlling it. That's one way around it. Now that's only one of the issues.
Some of the other issues arise if one of the parties passes away. And this is something that I've never seen discussed or considered when these accounts are recommended. If you think about it, let's say there's three parties. There's the contributor, the trustee and now there's the beneficiary. What happens if one of these parties passes away?
If the contributor passes away, from a tax perspective, that's actually the best-case scenario. Because from that point forward, there's nobody to attribute the income back to because they're gone. And so, the only party that is now responsible for any tax is going to be the beneficiary. If the contributor passes away, even the interest and the dividends, which normally would be attributed back to the contributor, are taxable to the beneficiary's hands. Obviously, it's a terrible scenario. But at the same time, from a tax perspective, not a bad thing.
Where it starts to get messy is if the trustee or the beneficiary passes away. If the trustee passes away, the trustees will determine what happens next. If they have named a new trustee for it, like a subscriber trustee, then it will pass to this new trustee and they'll continue to manage it.
I have never seen a will where this was done. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. And maybe there's some great planning going on and people are doing this. But I've never seen a situation where somebody had one of these ITF accounts and their will named a subscriber trustee. If they don't, it goes to the estate of the trustee. Okay?
Back up a bit. Because it's starting to get messy. The trustee passes away. Now the estate of the trustee is effectively managing the trust account for the beneficiary. But guess what? The executor of the trustee might be somebody totally unrelated or somebody that the contributor wouldn't want to elect to actually manage these trust assets, right?
Maybe you named a friend and the contributor is a grandparent or something who doesn't know this friend. But now the executor has to manage the money. And it may be completely different than the wishes of the original contributor, right? You get into these kind of strange offshoot relationships. That's potentially one problem.
The other issue is if the beneficiary passes away, then it also gets pretty messy. Obviously, they're a minor in this case. It's not likely, but it does happen, unfortunately. Because minors cannot execute a will, if a minor passes away and they're the beneficiary of a trust, there's no will. And so, it follows the laws of intestacy, which is just a fancy term meaning, "This is what happens if you die without a will." Right? And in that case, the parents would typically get the first share of the assets in equal shares.
Now imagine a situation where a grandparent opens one of these trust accounts for their grandchild. If the grandchild were to pass away, the money would revert to the parents. The grandparents have now completely lost control of this thing. They no longer own the money. It's now been given to their parents. And maybe that's not the end of the world. But at the same time, that's probably not what the original intent was for opening these types of accounts.
Those are the major issues, I would say. The other ones are, once you gift to one of these trust accounts, it's irrevocable. You cannot take it back out. And if you do, you end up with problem number one, which is that reversionary trust concern. You can't even take it out to contribute to a RESP for the child. Because, technically, a RESP is owned by the subscriber, not the beneficiary.
If you go to a trust and realize you should have gone to a RESP, sorry, you're now reverting the trust, which can get pretty nasty. And probably one of the bigger problems is that, when they turn 18 or 19, the money is legally theirs. I don't know what you guys were like at that age. I know what I was like at that. I can tell you right now it would not have been a good scene if I knew there was a bunch of money. Suboptimal is a polite way to put it, Cameron. For sure. That money would be long gone. I'm not sure I'd be here talking to you guys right now.
And some people – I've got clients who have kids who are financially mature enough to handle that type of windfall. But the decision's now out of your hands, right? If they find out about it, it's legally theirs. And if you don't give it to them, they can actually to you as, say, the parent or the grandparent to get the money. It can get kind of nasty.
That's how they work. That's the downsides of them. What can you do instead? I'd say the easiest thing is just consider the RESPs first, education funds for your kids. If you've maxed those out, you can look at other things like just paying their expenses directly during their lifetime. Let's say it's a grandparent opening it for a grandchild. Rather than put money in trust, just pay for their activities, their private school, their sports, their arts and activities and that type of thing. And when they get older, you can help them fund a tax-free savings account. That's really simple you just give the money. And as long as they're 18 or 19, depending on the province, they can fund a TFSA.
Another option is life insurance. For some people, that might be reasonable or something to consider. And so, I do want to point out that these things can work. They can be great tools for people. I'm not totally against them by any means. I just think people need to consider some of these risks and downsides before they just sign an account opening document for them. I think that's it.
Ben Felix: Yep. Interesting topic.
Cameron Passmore: All right. Thanks for the Mark to Market.
Mark McGrath: Thanks guys. See you in a couple weeks. Cheers.
Cameron Passmore: All right. Always great to have Mark join us. Great information there. Let's jump to the book review section. Once again, I discovered a great book. I enjoyed it immensely. It's called creating Superfans: How to turn Your Customers Into Lifelong Advocates by Brittany Hodak.
I reached out to Brittany to see if she would join us. And she agreed to come on. And much like the last marketing book we talked about, which was Nancy Harhut's Using Behavioural Science in Marketing. Well, that's really applicable. And I know there's a lot of business people listening to us who I think will appreciate this book.
Anyways, Brittany is an award-winning entrepreneur, author and customer experience speaker. She's delivered many keynotes around the world to companies such as American Express and organizations like the United Nations. She's also worked with some pretty cool brands and entertainers, like Walmart, and Disney, Katie Perry, Dolly Parton.
And I really liked her book. So, I reached out, invited her on. So, she came to join us. I thought our conversation was terrific. This is our conversation with Brittany Hodak about her book Creating Superfans.
Cameron Passmore: Brittany Hodak, welcome to the Rational Reminder Podcast.
Brittany Hodak: Thank you so much for having me.
Cameron Passmore: Congratulations on your new book Creating Superfans: How to Turn Your Customers Into Lifelong Advocates. I got to tell you, our head of marketing, and our listeners know Angelica, she saw you speak at the Jolt Conference earlier this year. And as you were speaking, she downloaded your book. Texted me that I've got to get this book. I downloaded the book right away I think as you were speaking. And then I reached out to you immediately after diving into the book to have you come on. So it's great to have you join us.
Brittany Hodak: Oh, that's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I'm thrilled to be here.
Cameron Passmore: Right off the top, what is a Superfan?
Brittany Hodak: A Superfan is a customer who's so delighted by their experience with you that they come back and they tell their friends. They become what I call an enthusiastic advocate.
Ben Felix: What is a brand?
Brittany Hodak: A brand can be a person. It can be a thing. We are living in a world where all of us are essentially brands. And one thing that I want people to really know and understand, especially when you have employees, is that your brand is your team.
Oftentimes, we think our brand is our logo, our website, the ads that we placed. But in reality, our brand is the people and our team and the interaction that those people are having with our customers. Because a brand is really just what someone thinks about when they think of you.
And more often than not, unless your brand is like Disney, or Amazon, or Nike, people aren't thinking about your logo. They aren't thinking about your campaigns. They're thinking about the interactions that they have with your teammates and the products that you sell.
Cameron Passmore: A couple weeks ago, we had Matthew Dicks join us who wrote the book Storyworthy. And he talked about the power of storytelling. That was an incredible conversation we had. Now you wrote in your book that Superfans are created at the intersection of your story and every customer's story. How do Superfans relate to the company's story?
Brittany Hodak: It's important to know that it's not just the company's story. It's also the stories of everyone who works at the company. Because much like the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan, they are intertwined. Because as I said before, your brand is everyone that's working on your team.
In the book I talk about using the power of storytelling to set yourself apart from your competitors. I think the biggest threat that every business faces, whether you're a brand new business or one that's been around for centuries, is apathy. Customers who just don't care enough about you to have a strong opinion one way or the other. They see you as a commodity provider.
Maybe they'll give you their money or maybe they'll go to a competitor. They're probably going to be making a decision based on a commodity factor. What's the closest? What's the fastest? What's the least expensive? And by using storytelling, by cementing yourself as a category of one, you begin to chip away at some of those commodity things. You begin to make things like price and speed a little less relevant. Because people say, "But I want to work with them because they're the best."
And the quickest and the most effective way to do that is through storytelling. Because stories are much more impactful and much more memorable than the things that we sort of like to think rational people are using to make decisions. Things like facts, and statistics and all of those scientific, logical, quantifiable details. But every single research study that has ever looked at this has shown that storytelling is much more powerful, much more effective, much more memorable than all of those things.
Cameron Passmore: Do you have any sense of what causes apathy in a business? Is it that lack of stories that individuals carry?
Brittany Hodak: Part of it is that. And I think it's really lack of differentiation. For a very long time, we were living in an economy where it was service-based or product-based. And you could do okay competing on commodity things. Because people weren't able to get everything they wanted at the click of a button on Amazon.
If you were the closest to a bunch of people, if you had convenient hours, like you would do okay. But the world has changed. And now everything is available in the click of a button. You don't have to click a button. You can search with voice to get what you want. It's never been easier for upstarts to use technology to level the playing field in many ways with much more established competitors who have been around for a much longer time.
And because of all of those things, it has become increasingly important to set yourself apart with things that are not based in commodity. Because it is easier for a customer today to have apathy than it ever has been before. Back in the day, you maybe had to put effort into remembering like what was the name of that handyman? What was the name of the person who came and did something for you? You'd put their card on the refrigerator so you had it.
Now if you forget that, you can just do a search and find a ton of people who are nearby who can come help you solve that problem. It has become easier for customers to have apathy because the access to information to find other people who do something very similar or perhaps exactly the same as what you do has never been easier.
In order to set yourself apart, in order to turn those customers into Superfans, you've got to overpower that apathy. You've got to make them want to say, "I don't want to work with someone else who does what you do. I want to work with you. Because you're the best."
Ben Felix: That's really interesting. You were speaking to this, but I want to ask about it explicitly. Why are Superfans so important to building a successful business?
Brittany Hodak: Super fans are important for a few reasons. Number one, they help bring you more qualified customers. They are out there advocating on your behalf when given the opportunity to do so. That could be in person at a baseball game or a supermarket. It could be online. It could be writing reviews. Talking about you in a post that they're putting on a social network, or a blog, or in an email blast. They're bringing you more highly qualified prospects. And there's a trust factor of those prospects who come in.
The other reason that they are important is because they are going to have a much higher lifetime value and they are going to come back much more regularly than other customers. Because they've solved this problem. They're no longer looking for like, "Oh, I need somebody else to clean my carpet. I need somebody else to fix my car." They're like, "Oh, I found someone. This is great. I don't have to solve this problem again. I don't have to do another search six months from now when I need something else. I have found a really great solution."
Cameron Passmore: In addition to characteristics about the business, are there characteristics about the person that caused them to be active in advocating for a business? I've wondered this for a long time. Because we often have clients that will be very active in referring to our practice. Is there something about that personality?
Brittany Hodak: Yeah. Typically, a Superfan is somebody who likes to be helpful. They're very social. They want to help other people. They oftentimes are either extroverted or very connected in their communities. These are the same people who are helping with suggestions and recommendations for things that aren't business-related, right? Like, saying, "Let me tell you about this class your kid needs to take." Or, "Let me help make dinner for you because you're overwhelmed." Or, "Let me help drive your kids to the practice," which the really great thing is we all have these people on our lives. We all know the people that we can go to for a recommendation that seem to be overconnected, that seem to over-index in their ability to help us or like whip their phone out and say, "Oh, I know exactly who you should call or who you should talk to."
And in the world that we're living in, increasingly, everyone is an influencer. Everybody has the ability to post things online. To share opinions that will change the way somebody thinks about because we trust their recommendation. We trust their input. We trust that action. Yes, these are typically customers who have strong social bonds in their community. Are trusted within their peer group or their friend group and like to make helpful recommendations.
They like that sort of social capital they get when they say to somebody, "Oh, try this new restaurant. Or go here. Do this." And somebody has a positive experience based on that recommendation.
Cameron Passmore: I never thought about that before. That's interesting. It's much easier to be an advocate now that it was, say, when I started in this career 25-plus years ago.
Brittany Hodak: Oh, absolutely. Because we are all carrying ground computers in our pocket where we can share our opinion. And the really interesting thing about the connectivity that we all have with social networks now is if you think about the posts that go viral on a regular basis, a very, very small portion of them are from professional creators. Those people who are spending all of their time trying to create viral content, trying to do something that's going to catch on. That is a very small fraction of what actually goes viral.
More often than not, it's an average person who shared an opinion that resonated. That overpowered that apathy that we all have that made people say, "Oh, I want to share this. I want to tell somebody about this. I want to have this reach other people so that they have the same reaction to it that I did," whether that's a positive or negative emotional reaction.
And so, that's when I talk about this idea that everyone is an influencer. Every single person has the ability to have your opinion heard by every other person on the planet. It's a really wild sort of social experiment that we're all living through together right now.
Ben Felix: How can a Superfan be created?
Brittany Hodak: Superfans are created, as I mentioned before, at the intersection of your story and every customer story. And I have spent my career obsessed with trying to figure out how people can create some science around the art. What can we do? How can we make someone go from – in my book, I talk about this idea of the ladder to super fandom and all of the different steps along the way. From getting somebody to be aware of your product. To trying it. To actively adopting it. To showing some sort of affinity for it. All the way up to the final rung of the ladder, which is advocacy.
And in the book, I talk about each of those rungs on that ladder and sort of what it looks like and how you move people. But, ultimately, the process that I recommend, the system that I write about in this book is a five-step formula that anybody can look through this lens to think about how they turn more of their customers into Superfans. And I call it the Supermodel.
Cameron Passmore: If one of our team members meets a new prospective client, how does that person determine what their customer story is?
Brittany Hodak: The Supermodel is, S stands for start with your story. And, really, that's all about getting clear on your own uniqueness. What is it that you do that makes you deserving of Superfans both from a company level and also as the individual who's working there? Getting real clarity on what sets you apart. Why are you not a commodity provider? Why should someone choose you at the exclusion of everyone else?
And then the second part of that, U, understand your customer story. That's where the question that you just ask comes into play. What can you do? In the book, I offer sort of a secondary framework for really truly understanding your customer story. Teddy Roosevelt said, “People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.” And I think that is so fitting here.
Really asking the types of questions to uncover what transformation your customers is looking for. What is it that they need both on the surface and below the surface that you may be the perfect fit to help them with? What are they struggling with that you're able to come alongside them and say, "Hey, I'm the right person to help you solve this problem because I have helped other people who were where you're at by –" what are those stories that you're telling?
And then the questions that you're asking are really to help uncover what reservations do they have? What is it that they're looking to come out the other side of the tunnel with? What are those things? Asking those questions, leading with empathy so that they feel that they are not just another prospect, not just another sale. They feel that real human-to-human connection. That they matter to you as much as you and what you do matters to them.
Ben Felix: What does it mean to say that we're living in an experience economy?
Brittany Hodak: Living in an experience economy means that we're no longer in a market where things are driven solely by the product or the service. Those two things have long since blurred. According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers study, 86% of people are willing to pay more for the exact same product or service if they know they're going to have a great experience.
Experience is everything. It's the number one differentiator between your brand and every other. It's the number one thing that allows you to build loyal customers to increase your profit margins. That experience is so critical. But in an experience economy, the inverse of that is true as well. Experience is everything, but everything is experience. Every touch point, every interaction, every single time a customer is in front of your brand, whether in-person, or online, or on their mobile device, that is part of the experience.
In an experience economy, you've got to look for all of those moments where you can win. Where you can elevate something from ordinary to extraordinary. Where you can take it from a neutral experience to a positive one that they're likely to remember and maybe even tell their friends about.
Cameron Passmore: And think about the flip side of that, how is this affecting customer expectations?
Brittany Hodak: Oh, customer expectations are constantly getting higher. And part of it is because everybody else is raising their game. And part of it is because of technological advances. People don't just compare you to the best experience they've had with your direct competitors anymore. They're comparing you to the best experiences they've had anywhere.
And as we see innovation, as silly as it sounds to say, the Domino's Pizza tracker, right? Things like that that have become so ingrained in the pop culture zeitgeist make us think we should be able to have the same access to that information and those experiences regardless of what we're doing.
When a small business says, "Oh, I don't know where this is at." Or, "I'm not sure how long it's going to take." Oftentimes, the response is not, "Oh, that's fine. Because this is a new company or a small business." It's, "If Domino's can tell me who's putting mushrooms on my pizza right now, and Lyft can tell me exactly how many wrong turns my driver has to take before they get to me, why can't you tell me where this thing is? The technology exists."
In a customer-driven experience economy, expectations are constantly rising. And this is important for business owners to know because you should always be innovating before you have to. You should always be making things easier and more frictionless for your customers before your competitors do. Because what was good enough three years ago is not going to cut it today.
And even if you're like on the cutting edge today, in a few years, the things that you're doing now that might seem really innovative are going to be table stakes. Because technology has made it so easy and fast for people to catch up to the category leaders.
Ben Felix: How important is a team versus an individual in winning new business?
Brittany Hodak: It's incredibly important. Because everyone is in the experience department. Every single person, regardless of your role, you are shaping the perception that prospect has of the company. It's critically important for everyone on the team to understand not just their piece of the puzzle, not just their role, but really how it fits into the bigger picture.
And, again, why someone should care? What is the thing that every one of you is doing collectively but also individually to earn that new business? To be the right partner for that prospect?
Cameron Passmore: In your book you wrote that the best marketing doesn't cost anything. Can you talk about how businesses should think about their investment in marketing?
Brittany Hodak: Yeah. What I mean by saying the best marketing doesn't cost anything is, when you have word of mouth, that's free. When you have people out there advocating on your behalf, that's free. And oftentimes, when we think about marketing, we think about the paid things that we're doing. The campaigns that we're running. The creative that we're making. Redesigning things.
And in reality, if you can spend a little bit of money to do things that make your customers happy, that make them more likely to tell their friends, that make them more likely to come back, you're going to see much higher ROI on that. And some of the things that matter the most to customers, things like kind words, and handwritten, notes and being able to take the time to talk to them to understand what it is that they're going through to help them out, those don't cost anything at all.
And so, making sure that you're giving everyone on your team permission to do those things, to look for those opportunities, to connect on a human level to do those sort of high-touch things that can't yet be automated. To help increase the affinity that someone feels for your brand and generate some of that reciprocity with those prospects and customers.
Cameron Passmore: Love it. The book is Creating Superfans: How to Turn Your Customers into Lifelong Advocates. Brittany, it was awesome to have you join us.
Brittany Hodak: Thank you so much for having me. It was great talking to you both.
Ben Felix: Thanks, Brittany.
Cameron Passmore: All right. I thought that was great. Brittany is great. She has a podcast as well that's really entertaining that I listen to periodically. Welcome to the after-show. Ben, I think it's safe to say you enjoy travelling quite a bit now and meeting lots of other people.
Ben Felix: Wow. Let's slow down here. I enjoyed meeting lots of people. Do I enjoy travelling? Not that part. Hotels? No good. Airplanes? No, thank you. Getting back home and sleeping in my bed and actually having a good night's sleep for the first time in however many days was great. But all worth it to spend time with lots of like-minded people at all the different things that we've been at recently.
Cameron Passmore: Okay. Let me amend what I said. The travel, maybe not so much. But you enjoy the people and the destinations. I mean, our trip down to Southern California was pretty. It was incredible. Where we were, the weather was fantastic and we had a chance to – we actually had a meet up for some really interesting people, interesting collection of people. People that were at the conference that listen. Like our good friends in the industry that listen each week.
But we also had some other guests just come and join us. This new friend of ours flew down from Seattle to meet with us, which is pretty cool. And we also ran into Mayor Statman before that breakfast, which was pretty fun to run into a mayor.
Ben Felix: Yeah. That whole event was very cool. And I met everybody. Everybody that I know from our podcast, and from the internet and from Twitter. Everybody was there at that conference. I met a lot of people in real-life that I have known on the internet for a while. That was a really cool experience.
And then when we were in Toronto, that was also incredible. The CFA thing that everybody just listened to earlier in the episode. But then we also had the Rational Reminder meetup in Toronto, which was also incredible. We had a room packed with podcast listeners and hearing from everybody the impact that the podcast has had on their thinking, and their life and their decisions. It's like kind of surreal to hear that kind of stuff.
Cameron Passmore: Yeah. And like I told many people, the consistency of the audience. Because we've had five of these now. And just the interest level, the kindness, the love of learning, the love of sharing, just the love of coming in and sharing this common bond with people, it was a pretty incredible event. We must have had at least 30 people in Toronto.
Ben Felix: Yeah, at least. If you count people coming and going, it was probably more.
Cameron Passmore: Probably more.
Ben Felix: Maybe 30 at a time for a couple of hours.
Cameron Passmore: Yeah. Yeah, super fun. All right, do you want to dive into these reviews that we got on Apple?
Ben Felix: Sure. Yeah. Jay Snedaker from the United States says, "The podcast is fascinating and insightful. I discovered Ben through his YouTube channel and quickly rushed to listen once I heard there was a podcast. I have not been disappointed. I work in wealth management in NYC where many professionals are unfortunately solely focused on investment returns and miss out on other valuable components of advice that Ben and Cameron address almost every episode. I just finished episode 267 on the expected cost of pessimism and the value of storytelling. I will be sharing with all of my colleagues. This podcast is true financial education. Thank you." Very nice. Thank you.
Cameron Passmore: Cool. Keep going. I'll do the LinkedIn ones later.
Ben Felix: Okay Bach Cast from the United States says, "Excellent information and discussions. Great resource for a wide variety of topics from financial planning to living a happy life, to nerdy discussions on investments. I really appreciate Ben and Cameron's scientific and humble approach to new information and subjects. Their curiosity and willingness to suspend preconceived notions instead of just lecturing the audience is a breath of fresh air in the podcast space."
PNW Matt, also from the United States, says, "Fantastic podcast. The hosts deliver a wide range of practical, high-quality interviews and summaries. I'm consistently amazed by the calibre of their guests. I listen to a lot of podcasts a couple of hours a day, and this is the only one where I immediately move every single episode to the top of my playlist. I can't recommend this podcast enough." Very nice.
Cameron Passmore: Very nice.
Ben Felix: Words people write about us are just – like I said earlier, it's like surreal. It's crazy.
Cameron Passmore: But I will agree with that last comment, the calibre of guests has been great. On LinkedIn, I heard from some pretty interesting people. Shilas from Toronto reached out saying, "Great podcast. I've been a longtime follower. Helped me transition from being anxious and unsure about financial planning to being relatively competent and confident. As Chris Hadfield stated, ‘I've not only learned about financial management but life lessons and how to plan for a good life thanks to your podcast covering a range of topics.’ Guests have been awesome. Top advice, which we give. I've been meaning to share this with you for some time. But thanks to your nudge in a recent podcast. I now send a long overdue thanks and appreciation. Keep up the great work."
Brian from Windsor reached out and said that he was at the CFA event and enjoyed it. Alex from Montreal reached out saying he's a huge fan and that have great admiration for the work that we and the team do. Side note to that, Alex asked to connect to talk about the energy, which is always an open offer out there. We're be talking soon.
Fatir from Mississauga, thanks for connecting. Love the podcast. Sanjam from San Francisco, thanks for the amazing podcast. Big fan. Watching religiously the last three years. Farooq from Ednomton. New listener. “Found it by your conversation with Plain Bagel. I was captivated by the recent episodes. So, decided to rewind the tape back to episode one.” They're on episode 20 now.
Nathan from London who was also at the meetup that we mentioned. Been a dedicated listener the past three years. And I've heard you mentioned several times you enjoy connecting. We did connect and was great to meet Nathan.
Why don't you mention this email we got, Ben?
Ben Felix: Yeah. Just wanted to – real quick before the email. You reminded me of in the Rational Reminder Community there's a section where people can introduce themselves. And somebody did that recently. And I just wanted to read out the last part of what they said. So, they talked about why they joined the community and what they want to learn, all that kind of stuff. But what is their favourite Rational Reminder episode? I just thought this was interesting and very cool.
Their favourite podcast episode is episode one, the first one. And we always talk about this how it's always crazy to think about how people go back and listen to the first episode. Their favourite episode is episode one. Because it was cool to listen back to the origins of the podcast and to see how it has grown so much into the community that it is today. That was cool. And then, special mention to the episode with Cliff Asness, episode 99, which, yeah, that was a great one.
And then they also wrote a thank you, "I'm so appreciative of RR the podcast. This forum and the community, it truly feels like a Mecca of investing with so much knowledge, quality discussion and filled with so much warmth and respect among members to boot. I've already tremendously benefited from this community and have spent hours and hours reading through many rich discussions. I haven't stumbled upon a place quite likes before, but I'm really glad I did. Thank you." Nice. Right?
Cameron Passmore: Mm-hmm. It's true. And you see that when you meet these people. From London to Ottawa, to Toronto, to California, to Montreal. It's such a persistent trait that you see. Yeah, it's impressive.
Ben Felix: Okay. The email, "Hi, Ben and Cameron. I've been a listener for a few years now and have been meaning to have write for a while. I want to say thank you all so much for what you do every week. I believe that what you provide listeners is a real service to living a better life and to living a better financial life and a better life in general. The material and guests you have had on the podcast about happiness and money have made me realize that actually spending more money now is something I should do. Having always been a super saver, you'll have helped give me the confidence to relax my savings rate and spend more money in the present while also feeling safe and confident about my financial future. If I lived in Canada, I would love to work with you guys at PWL. Thanks again, and take care."
Cameron Passmore: Very cool. Coming up next week is the episode that we recorded in California with Hal Hershfield. Hal killed it. It was so much fun being there with Hal.
Ben Felix: Yeah. It's great.
Cameron Passmore: And then in the coming weeks, we have Professor James Grubman coming up. And also, Shane Parrish will be joining us for a full episode talking about his new book Clear Thinking, which was just released.
Also, I want to mention again – you don't mention it very much lately. But the 23 and 23 reading challenge is still going on. Of course, super easy to join. You can visit rationalreminder.ca and click on the tab if you want to join. Books are just – I don't know the current total. But people are just crushing – crushing books in there, which is so good to see.
Had a number of people actually at the event in Toronto mentioned that they do appreciate the book challenge and the book reviews that we do. And people were really writing down actively the book recommendations that we did give. There is interest in that. It kind of puts pressure on to make sure we choose good books. But I've heard that a number of times over the past two or three weeks as we've been meeting lots of listeners. But it's been a super weird few weeks with the travel. And like we're kind of out of sync on us episodes and guest episodes. And so, forgive us. It'll be a little bit messy for another month or so I think before we kind of get back into our regular routine. But it is weird for us with the travel in and out of the office. And both of us have had other travels too. It's been a pretty incredible five-week run here.
Anything else, Ben, on your mind?
Ben Felix: No. I think we're all good.
Cameron Passmore: All right. Thanks, everybody, for listening.
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Books From Today’s Episode:
The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level — https://www.amazon.com/Fiscal-Theory-Price-Level/dp/0691242240
How to Change — https://www.amazon.com/How-Change-Science-Getting-Where/dp/059308375X
Get It Done — https://www.amazon.com/Get-Done-Surprising-Lessons-Motivation/dp/0316538361/
Your Future Self — https://www.amazon.com/Your-Future-Self-Tomorrow-Better/dp/B0BJ554T6M/
Like the Best Podcast — https://open.spotify.com/show/22fi0RqfoBACCuQDv97wFO
Deep Work — https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692
Storyworthy — https://www.amazon.com/Storyworthy-Engage-Persuade-through-Storytelling/dp/1608685489
Financial Market History — https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Market-History-Reflections-Investors-ebook/dp/B06WVBHK72/
The Great Depression: A Diary — https://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Depression-audiobook/dp/B0030HF9F6/
Using Behavioral Science in Marketing — https://www.amazon.com/Using-Behavioral-Science-Marketing-Instinctive/dp/1398606685/
Clear Thinking — https://www.amazon.com/Clear-Thinking/dp/0593716213
Links From Today’s Episode:
Rational Reminder on iTunes — https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-rational-reminder-podcast/id1426530582.
Rational Reminder Website — https://rationalreminder.ca/
Shop Merch — https://shop.rationalreminder.ca/
Join the Community — https://community.rationalreminder.ca/
Follow us on X — https://twitter.com/RationalRemind
Follow us on Instagram — @rationalreminder
Benjamin on X — https://twitter.com/benjaminwfelix
Cameron on X — https://twitter.com/CameronPassmore
Cameron on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronpassmore/
Mark McGrath on X - https://twitter.com/MarkMcGrathCFP
Mark McGrath on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgrathcfp/
Brittany Hodak — https://brittanyhodak.com/
Brittany Hodak on X — https://twitter.com/BrittanyHodak
Brittany Hodak on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/brittanyhodak/
Brittany Hodak on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/BrittanyHodak
Brittany Hodak on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanyhodak/
Creating Superfans — https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Superfans-Five-Step-Multiplying-Reputation/dp/1774580780
Annual Wealth Conference 2023 — https://web.cvent.com/event/874a7379-a0cb-4b91-ad18-c46daf17b685/summary
Rational Reminder Episode 1: The Cheapest Advice Probably isn't the Best — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/1
Rational Reminder Episode 100: Prof. Kenneth French — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/100
Rational Reminder Episode 169: Prof. John Cochrane — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/169
Rational Reminder Episode 171: Prof. Campbell R. Harvey — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/171
Rational Reminder Episode 200: Prof. Eugene Fama — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/200
Rational Reminder Episode 224: Prof. Scott Cederburg — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/224
Rational Reminder Episode 226: Colonel Chris Hadfield — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/226
Rational Reminder Episode 268: Itzhak Ben-David — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/268
Rational Reminder Episode 271: Expected Returns of the AI Revolution (plus People are Lying to You About Money w/ Anthony Walsh) — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/271