Speaker 1I'm Ted Seides, and this is Capital Allocators. For the second year, our summer series will share some of the best episodes of the past, curated from our favorites and yours. You can pull down many of the great ones on our Spotify playlists. This series pushes them to your regular listening feed. Our 2026 summer series focuses on improving the investment process. Over the next six weeks, we'll share 10 gems from interdisciplinary skill sets that will help you level up your investing across decision-making, interviewing, storytelling, negotiations, and habit formation. This week's summer series is a highly atypical episode in which I appear as the guest. Matt Reitfelder from Apollo asked to interview me about interviewing, something I learned far more from hosting this show over the last nine years than I ever did while interviewing managers for the prior 20. The conversation was sufficiently popular that it made the summer series on investment process. Before we get going, we're hiring at Capital Allocators, two roles that will shape our next chapter. They're two of the best jobs in the business, at least in my opinion. It'll help us bring together our community of allocators and managers to compound knowledge and relationships. And best of all, we get to serve this community without really selling them anything. Full descriptions of the role are available at capitalallocators.com. And thanks for spreading the word about our two new roles at Capital Allocators. Capital Allocators is brought to you by AlphaSense. Here's something for you. Most AI tools today are very good, at sounding right. But can you actually trace it back to a filing, transcript, or specific passage that drove the answer? Or are you just trusting the confidence of the output? For allocators, that's not a minor concern. A missed filing, incorrect source, or context that gets lost somewhere in the retrieval chain aren't edge cases. They're how decisions go wrong. AlphaSense is the AI platform built specifically for this. They own the content, over 500 million curated documents, from broker research and expert transcripts to filings and earnings calls. And they own the retrieval layer on top of it. That means every answer can link back to an exact, verifiable source. Because the answer is only as good as what's underneath it. And with AlphaSense, you know exactly what that is. See it for yourself. Try a free trial at alpha.com. That's alpha-sense.com slash capital. That's alpha-sense.com with a hyphen in the middle slash capital. Capital Allocators is also brought to you by Morningstar. In a sea of data, you need to know what you can trust. Morningstar's data, analytics, and research helps bring clarity across public and private markets, connecting independent research and data into the tools and AI platforms you use every day. So insights are easier to solve. So insights are easier to spot and act on. Morningstar. Nothing in your way. Visit morningstar.com slash game on to learn more. Capital Allocators is also brought to you by Juniper Square, the operations partner trusted by the leading private market GPs. One theme that keeps coming up on the show is GPs that build the strongest and most durable relationships with LPs are the ones that have both strong returns and strong operations. And that's why we're here today. We're here today to talk about how to build the strongest and most durable relationships with LPs. And that's why we're here today to talk about how to build the strongest and most durable relationships with LPs. AI raises the stakes on operations. And having Juniper Square as your operations partner helps ensure your data is organized, accurate, and accessible so you can unlock operational alpha. That's why thousands of GPs trust Juniper Square. Learn more at junipersquare.com slash capital allocators. Please enjoy Matt interviewing me about interviewing in 2023. So Matt, this was all. Your idea. Yes, it was.
Speaker 2I think, Ted, the idea was you're the ultimate interviewer. So why don't we interview the interviewer about interviewing? So why don't we cut this into two pieces? I think one is kind of the why of your background story of how you got this thing started. And then I think we can shift into the how of you've been doing this a long time. I'd love to help you unpack what the lessons learned are that may be useful to your listeners is on a regular basis. We are all interviewing people. We are speaking on panels. We are giving presentations. And, you know, I think the thought was there may be some very useful lessons learned coming out of your experience that we can all benefit from. So if that works, why don't we start with the why? So how did you get started with the podcast? And how did you in particular approach mastering the craft of interviewing?
Speaker 1The truth is I did not find the podcast. The podcast found me. It was a serendipitous series of events after I had spent 20 something years investing in Yale and direct investing and then hedge fund funds of protege partners. And when I left, I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. And I had a bunch of consulting projects and I had written my first book that was about startup hedge funds. And I was on a couple of podcasts and it sort of demystified. Oh, this is just like two people sitting down talking to a microphone. I woke up one day and said, well, I have some time. I don't have like the thing that I want to do next. So let me run around, talk to some of my old friends in the endowment world. And that was it. Now people say, oh, what a great idea. Podcast. It was so early. And I used to joke that the business model reminded me of the internet. So it's like, Matt, you and I will sit down. We'll have a conversation, record it. We'll share it for free. And here's the business. We'll make it up in volume. So the beauty of it was from the very beginning, I didn't think that it could possibly be a business. I just enjoyed doing it. And so it started there. I had time on my hands alongside of other projects I was working on. So I just kept going with it.
Speaker 2So in a way, you were interviewing people. You were interviewing people off the air to map out this chapter. And in so doing, that kind of evolved into this business. Yeah, that's a way of framing it for sure. How did you prepare when you first got it started? Because when you make that shift into, I'm now going to move from informal to formal. I'm now going to really focus on this. How did you approach the preparation for diving into this?
Speaker 1Well, to take a quick step back to that, my frame of reference was interviewing managers. And I had done that who knows how many times. I'm sure it was thousands. It was over the years. And when I thought about this style of interview, my first instinct was it was the same thing. So I would prepare by reading information, having a sense of what I wanted to ask. My first couple interviews, I said, I know how to interview people. I'm going to lay out a list of questions that are the best questions you could possibly imagine. And then I'm going to go in and I'm going to ask and it's going to be great. And I remember one of my first couple interviews with Andre Perel, I was listening back to it as I was doing the interview. And at some point in time, he said something and there was a completely obvious next question to ask that I totally missed. I remember thinking to myself, why did I miss that question? And the truth was, I knew exactly why, because I had this long sheet of questions that I was trying to read and figure out what was going to come next. And I wasn't able to hear what he was saying while I was looking at my question list. So I went from a preparation that was map out all the questions to what works best for me to allow me to frame out what the arc of this conversation was. While at the same time, not being wedded to what's on the page. And that didn't take that long, but every person goes about it a little bit differently. And I got into a good cadence. You know, it probably took a year or so before I started to feel like, okay, I now know the level of preparation that feels about right for me.
Speaker 2Interesting. So over time, you've honed this formula. So if you step back, how would you describe the components of the formula? Just like in my manager.
Speaker 1Research days, you do as much work as you can in advance for the podcast. There's reading, there's listening, there's watching videos, trying to learn everything I can about the guest ahead of time. I conduct a prep call with each guest last about a half hour. After the call, I create a prep document, and that's the document I'm going to bring into the interview with me. And that's the place where I had to find my own style. There's no right way to do this. David Rubenstein, when he does his interviews, prepares. Very detailed questions. Spends a lot of time understanding how to word them. And then he memorizes the questions before he goes into the interview. Tim Ferriss, a great podcaster, brings in pages and pages of notes. In fact, he talks about his pages of notes when he's doing it. Larry King in the old days was known for just winging it. He had nothing with him when he did interviews. So I landed on using the research to create a very simple bullet point outline of topics. And that's what I bring with me into the room. But I actually. I don't prepare any specific questions ahead of time. And that works really well for me. It allows me to listen actively and engage with the guests. I understand that wouldn't work for everyone. But I just trust that if I'm listening carefully, the next question will just pop into my head. So that's the first part. That's my preparation in advance. The number one most important component is getting great guests. I've kept the show in my little world, which is being in between. managers, and investors. I ran a fund of funds. I was working at Yale. So I always loved the relationships with managers. My peers were the investors, and that's the world I've lived in. So I was fortunate that way that the preparation for the instant success of the podcast was 25 years of relationships in the making. And number two, you have to have some sense of what feels relevant for the audience. That's super challenging in a podcast because you don't know who the audience is. So I view the audience as me. What am I interested in hearing about in the investment markets? There's always a steady cadence of CIOs and how are they honing their craft and how can I help people hone theirs because I'm not practicing it anymore. And then the manager side is, who do the best investors love and what are they doing? And then the last piece I would say is trying to get the hell out of the way. People tell me now, oh, you ask great questions, you let the guests speak. The truth is I'm a middle child. I'd love being on the other side of the microphone. So I'm not a natural listener. And through the process of practicing, which the podcast allowed, I got much better at quieting down my own head and just letting somebody speak. Not only did it become natural in the podcast, it became natural outside the podcast and the rest of my life in every phase, except for my wife. And my wife would tell you over and over again, why do you listen to everyone else so well, but you can't seem to listen to me without cutting me off? I still have plenty of work to do.
Speaker 2It's always hard to port these things over. As a fellow middle child, I can relate. So it's interesting. So in some ways, what you're talking about is shifting from starting this process as someone who had walked in the audience's shoes and approaching it from an expertise perspective in asset management and the ecosystem that your audience lives in, but then shifting that expertise to the art of interviewing your natural curiosity, active listening, these new skills that are crafts in themselves. And we almost can consider those crafts as distinct. Part of that is certainly asking the right questions. I think you went from over-questioning, as you described in the early days, to the art of the powerful question. How do you do that?
Speaker 1This is one of the modules I teach in our Capital Allocators University. And in creating that module, it allowed me to take what was implicitly, implicit in what I learned and make it explicit. So I'll share some of that framework. I'd say there's three phases to it. So I think before you get there, you have to be ready to ask the question. Then the second phase was you have to know what question to ask, which comes from listening. And then there's all kinds of little things about when you're actually asking the question, how do you do that? So let's start with that first phase. Almost everyone in the business is focused on content. What question am I going to ask? What information am I going to try to gather? So I can make a better investment decision. Before you even get to that, context matters a lot in the practice of investing, whether you're an investment manager interviewing a CEO or a lot of allocators, investing managers. And what I mean by that is, if you think about what the purpose of asking the question is, invariably in investing, it's you're trying to gather information so you can learn in the process of making a decision. The question you have to ask yourself is, what context is most conducive to gathering information? What most people do across a conference room is a physically confrontational setup that's probably the worst way to make somebody open to sharing information with you. I saw this intuitively that David Swenson would do. Sure, you had plenty of those meetings in the conference room, but he would regularly play tennis with people. They'd come to New Haven. He'd bring them out to dinner. You do all these different things that allow you to put someone in an environment where they're comfortable so they can open up. Because if you're going for a walk on a sunny day, you're just more likely to be at ease than you are across the table from someone wearing a suit. You want to create the physical environment. You think about how do you even start that conversation and the emotional environment to be on the same side of the table as the person, so they're more open, more willing to share information. So it's fun and friendly, and maybe there's shared interest. It's relationship building. That's the first piece. Once you've set the stage in that way, to get to the point where you have to ask a question, you need to learn how to listen. You need to learn how to listen. And you said at Active Listening, everybody knows, be a better listener. I had never before seen anyone describe how do you listen? How does that actually work? And through a combination of connecting the dots through one experience with a relationship therapist, one with Chris Voss, a famous former FBI hostage negotiator, one with Daly and Kane, who teaches business negotiations at Yale, I started to piece together the same thread of a framework, for how you go about listening. And that thread has four parts. So first, I have to be fully present with you. I have to be listening to you, avoiding distractions that come in my head. Second, after you start to speak, I'm going to mirror what you said. I'm going to paraphrase it back to you. Third, I'm going to validate it. And fourth, I'm going to empathize. I'm going to try to understand how you're feeling. And only after I do all of that, which is the component of listening, will I respond to you. So rather than talk about it as a framework, let's have a dialogue, and I'll break it down afterwards. So that first step, I've got to be present. So I'm going to get focused before we start. Okay, I'm ready. Matt, it's Friday. What's on tap for the weekend?
Speaker 2We are renovating a house and we're preparing to move. Renovations. It's awesome. So you're renovating a house over the weekend? We've been renovating a house over the last six months, and we will be moving into that house next week. So we've got a couple of pieces that need to fall into place to adhere to our schedule over the next few days.
Speaker 1So you've been renovating a house over the last six months. You're getting ready to move in, and there's a couple pieces that need to move into place. Is there more about what those pieces are?
Speaker 2Some floors are being stained today and tomorrow. And if all that goes well, then some furniture will be assembled after that. We have to get these pieces together so that on Wednesday, the house will be ready to receive all the stuff.
Speaker 1So you've got the stain coming, you've got the furniture, you've got to sequence it, and hopefully you'll get the movers at the right time.
Speaker 2We're orchestrating a series of different vendors to execute the plan, which is very tightly scheduled. And we're relying on humans to hit the mark that they've agreed to. That's my focus over the next few days. So you've got humans involved.
Speaker 1Indeed. Is there more going on this weekend?
Speaker 2Well, I think we're going to try to pace ourselves and actually have a couple of dinners with friends over the weekend as well, which will help to reduce the stress. I guess they always say moving and buying a new house is one of the more stressful milestones. We've been through it a few times before. We were overly ambitious in the depth of the renovation we were taking on and overconfident in how easy this would be and how fast it would take. That's been humbling, but we're almost there.
Speaker 1All right. So let me make sure I got it. So you've got the core of this move coming up from the renovation, finally getting back in. A lot of pieces in place, a lot of logistics, that have to work out. You've got people involved. So you've got some dinner plans here, try to ease that. And there's a recognition here that, let's say, your expectations going in, of course, in any of these things weren't quite met. The reality is going to be.
Speaker 2With any renovation, there are a number of curveballs that happen. And when you're managing a tight schedule, that's always stressful.
Speaker 1Curveballs, tight schedule, and stress. Anything else about this weekend? That's pretty much it. I'm very goal-oriented this weekend. Let me just make sure I got that whole thing. So you've had this renovation going on for a while. It's coming to its end. There's a couple of big logistical pieces you got to get in place here, including the flooring and the furniture and the people that have to sequence all this on a tight schedule. Feels pretty stressful. Got a little bit of plans over the weekend with some friends to get out, hopefully to relieve the stress. And you're dealing with this recognition that, wow, this might have been not quite meeting your original expectations as these things go, because you've done it before and you should have known, but it always happens that way. Well, it makes sense that you'd feel stressed because these things are brutal, especially when you've been waiting a long time and they come down to the end. And it makes sense that you'd want this nice little stress relief. Hopefully your friends that make you laugh just because the whole thing, who knows how it's going to go. Exactly. There's only so much time you can spend on the floor of stain
Speaker 2before you lose your mind.
Speaker 1So imagine you're feeling stressed. Imagine you're feeling, you know, pretty, anxious to get into the house and pretty excited for the next chapter. Is that what you're feeling?
Speaker 2I'm feeling the complete basket of those emotions. Exactly. Anything else you're feeling? I'm feeling much better now that you're empathizing with my situation. So I feel some kinship. That's good. My stress is going down talking to you about it.
Speaker 1So let me break down the framework that I'd use in that conversation to hopefully get at what you just said at the end. You know, it starts with me. I'm feeling present. Pretty easy. We're just in a room together. There aren't a lot of other distractions. Then I ask you, hey, open question. What's on tab for this weekend? Whole bunch of stuff. My role there is to mirror. So I'm just going to try to paraphrase what you said back to you. If it gets to be too much, I might cut you off and say, hey, let me make sure I got that. Each time I'm done with that, I'll check in with you. I get that right. And then say, is there more? Let you go. Mirror that. Try to bring the whole thing back together. Did I get that right? Is there more? You get to the point where you're okay. That's it. Okay. That's our weekend. Great. Then I'm going to move on to. validating, using the phrase, it makes sense that. It makes sense that you're stressed. It makes sense that, you know, all of this is going on because, wow, this is a big move. And then in certain contexts, which I just did, that empathizing piece, which is, I imagine you're feeling this. And I'm just labeling it. I don't know if I'm right or not. I imagine you're feeling this. In a listening conversation, when I finish the structure of that, hopefully you get at, hey, wow, you heard me, is what I heard you say. And only then would I say, hey, can I respond to you? That is the structure of active listening. It's being present, mirroring what the person said, validating it. Then you may, in certain instances, move on to empathy, have somebody feeling about it. That structure is very similar to what I do on the podcast in different ways. So I tell people I only ask two kinds of questions. One is a form of a mirror. I heard you say something, and at the end of it, I ask you about that thing. Usually a lot of my follow-up questions are tied to something that somebody just said in the last sentence or the sentence before that. Or they're a transition question, right? Somebody comes to a complete thought, we move on to the next thing. So taking a step back, there's context, setting the stage so we can have an open conversation. There is that example of active listening. Then you get to the question you asked me originally. Third part, how do you ask a good question? There are a couple tips I would give that relate to that. The first is to understand there's a difference between an interview and a conversation. Podcast is an interview. In an interview, I am an allocator interviewing a manager. My only job is to gather information and learn. I am asking the questions. My job is not to prove to everybody else I'm the smartest person in the room. My job is usually not to inject my opinion because that's not going to help me gather information from you. A conversation is much more two-sided. So that's important to understand that I purposely don't speak much on the podcast. The second is that good questions are open-ended. They usually start with what, why, or how. And they're usually the same question you would ask otherwise if it was an either-or question. So sometimes somebody will accidentally prompt a response, give a leading question. Do you think this or this? Instead of what do you think about that? Because you're allowing someone to just speak. And a lot of times, particularly say manager-investor, if you lead to a leading question, you're allowing someone to just speak. And a lot of times, they're going to agree with you. You're going to feel like they're smart because they just agreed with you. So there's a whole gamesmanship out of it. I'll give you one little secret tip. There's one trick that I picked up and I've shared with a bunch of people and everyone has agreed that this happens. Compound questions are terrible. Compound question goes like this. I've thought of a question I want to ask you. As I'm asking this one thought and this one question that I so badly want to ask you, something pops into my head and I say, and, and I ask you a question about, I put a lot of thought into the first question and the second was an instinctive reaction to my own mind. When people answer compound questions, they almost always only answer the second question. And if you listen to that, it is incredible how often you hear somebody ask a great question, put an end in, ask a second question. And if it's on a panel, on a television show, a podcast, you only get the answer to the second part. So ask the one thought, the one question, keep yourself quiet and be patient.
Speaker 2Wow. There's a lot to unpack and to sit with that. You just said as a regular asker of compound questions, I'm sitting with the downside of that. And the fact that you're saying people only answer the second part makes so much sense. You also made some really good points about in an industry full of the smartest people in the world who love talking about smart stuff. You are providing us with a set of very concrete tactics to manage a conversation differently in order to get a higher quality result. But we almost have to go against the instincts of how we were trained as highly analytical people wanting to go right to the heart of an issue. And you're giving us techniques to actually get to that heart faster, but differently. I'm just curious, how portable do you think the tool set is across different facets of people's lives?
Speaker 1It depends on what facet. So one of the things that's challenging is emotionally charged conversations. Those are not only the best time to quiet yourself and try to listen actively. It's also the hardest because such an important part of the human wiring in feeling like you're heard is having somebody validate and empathize what you said. And when you're in an emotionally charged conversation, you instinctively think that means finally they agreed with you. Now, if you're the listener and you're being triggered, which is exactly why I'm not good at this with my wife, if something comes up and I'm upset, it's next to impossible to quiet your mind. So take that as relationship, emotionally charged situation. When you get into a business context or interviewing a money manager, people said to me all the time, well, you're just interviewing for the podcast. So let me tell you a story about that. I started the podcast a couple of years ago by, I'm starting to figure out how to do this instinctively. And I was on the investment committee for a foundation in New York. And we had money with a long-term hedge fund I had known for many, many years and wanted to check in with them. And I said, oh, why don't I go meet with them? And I sat down with the founder and instinctively started having a conversation like I do on the podcast. Hey, well, like what's going on in your life? And got into this open-ended questions and just listening to what he said. In the course of like an hour and a half, I learned more about what was going on inside that organization than I had in 20 years of knowing him as an investor. So the techniques work very, very well in the context of an investment-related conversation.
Speaker 2And one of the things that comes shining through in the techniques that you're using is psychological safety and comfort, which in a highly analytical industry, we want to go right at the heart of the table and create that context as you discussed. That seems really important if you want to actually have a deeper conversation that's likely more valuable for both sides.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think it is. There's a piece of it that I don't know, let's say analytically, if it's right, which is this has to be tied to authenticity. I happen to be someone who likes lightheartedness, who likes making people feel comfortable. And I'm not 100% sure if that's the case. But I do think that the things that I've learned and understood and work for me aren't just a form of confirmation bias. But I do think that creating psychological safety in whatever form that takes is incredibly important to getting people to be open. And again, if the goal is to gather information and learn from the people you're talking to, you need them to be open.
Speaker 2One of the other things you said that I think is really important in terms of being authentic, you talked about validation, but I don't know if you use this word, but neutral validation, where you're validating what someone's saying, but that doesn't mean you're agreeing with it. That means you're ensuring that they feel heard. And I think that feels important to retaining your authenticity, because you're actually being very precise about that validation, not leading them to believe that you agree if you don't feel that you agree to create that connection. I think that must be one of the ways that you retain your authenticity by it being neutral validation, not false or exaggerated validation. Yeah,
Speaker 1that makes a lot of sense. I haven't heard it phrased that way, but it sounds just right. We're going to take a quick break in the action to tell you about Ridgeline, the investment management platform built for firms who are rethinking how work gets done. You're at your desk looking at a line graph of your firm's growth. The line is moving sideways, linear growth, and you know exactly why. You're constrained by your operational bandwidth that's been the same for you for a long time. You're constrained by your operational bandwidth that's been the same for you for so long. It just feels like the cost of doing business. Ridgeline is built to change that line's trajectory, to be the inflection point that takes your growth from incremental to accelerated with the team you already have in place. Ridgeline is the only AI native investment management platform that brings together the front, middle, and back office with one set of data and powerful AI agents that automate away operational drudgery. So your talent can shift from managing old technology to the new technology. Ridgeline is built to change to materializing new ideas. Ridgeline helps asset and wealth managers understand and improve their firm's growth trajectory. To see how your firm compares to 16,000 of your peers, visit ridgeline.ai slash trajectory. If you file form ADV, your firm is already there. Then talk to Ridgeline about how you can do more with the team you already have. Any other tips on interviewing before we shift to the public? There's one that's incredibly important that I think will come up both in public speaking and interviewing, and that's the value of feedback. When I did this interviewing managers for 20 something years, if you think about what happens, you go into a room, you have the meeting, however well you've structured it, and you come out and you and your team sit there and say, what do we think? Is this someone we want to pursue? If we have money with them, do we want to keep our money? It's an evaluative conversation. In 20 something years of doing this, I never once came out of one of those meetings and said, how did I perform as an interviewer? Now I start doing that. the podcast. And at first I'm on my own. I record the interview. I then have to go through a transcript, send it to my producer. He edits it. I then listen to it again to make sure his edits are right. Then it comes out. And of course it's live. I want to listen like everybody else. So I have to listen to the conversation I had three more times. And the reason why I understood, hey, I missed the question when I was talking to Andre Perrault was because I was forced to create my own feedback loop. I was forced to listen to myself do this interview. And I did that hundreds of times. So one of the things that I coach the allocators and the Capital Allocators University to try to help them improve is create that feedback mechanism for how are you performing and your team, individuals on your team in interviewing managers. You need to have a mechanism to understand, did I ask good questions? Or if it's a junior person with the senior person, why did you ask that question at that time? So you can learn to get better. Right. Absolutely.
Speaker 2Basically saying, treat the art of asking a high quality question as a superpower that needs to be constantly refined and improved, just like the art of investing. Well said. Okay. So why don't we shift to public speaking? And I'd probably separate two different kinds of public speaking. So one is facilitating a panel. And then the second one is giving a presentation or participating on a panel as a subject matter expert. Do you want to start on
Speaker 1either side? Well, let's do panels. I think we probably want to turn this a little more of a conversation because you've done this as much as I have. And I want to get a chance to get your thoughts too. But let me start with a couple of thoughts on panels and you can reflect on it. Panels are really hard. And just to paint that out, we've all been on panels. We've all been in the audience. If you're in the audience, it's really hard to pay attention to other people speaking for 40 minutes when the dopamine of your phone's in your pocket. You don't want to have traveled a long way to listen to a panel so you can check up on your emails. Most panels have too many people on them to have a rich conversation. Each of those people has their own agenda. And I like to say there's always one. So if you rank four people on a panel, by definition, one of them is the most talkative and will try to hog the stage unwittingly. They're just more extroverted than the other people. So it's really, really
Speaker 2hard. I totally agree. Panels are very hard. In my experience, panels are hard because there's a risk that every panelist just has their talking points and it's three to four to five speeches. When panels are done poorly, it ends up being a collection of speeches versus a real dialogue and conversation. Every time I've been
Speaker 1asked to moderate a panel, let's say you have a prep call, somebody will say something to the effect of, well, let's make sure this is interactive. And I'm going to approximate the math, but roughly 100% of the panels that I've been involved with are not interactive. Legal. So your thoughts on what does it take to bring out the panel that moves away from the canned sets of presentations?
Speaker 2That's a really good question. If we step back from it, everyone's put so much time into this. Typically, panels are sourced with deep subject matter experts that the audience really wants to hear from, each of whom have a distinctive point of view. But there's a theater component, which is how do you make that really interesting? And then there's a substance component, which is how do you create a platform for them to get their point of view across in the most interesting possible way? And then there's the layer of a conversation that cuts across where they're learning from each other and creating something generative that is beyond and better than just many speeches. I'm a big music fan, so I almost think that music is a helpful metaphor on what a great panel looks like. There's a difference between panelists and panelists. There's panelists who are almost singing an independent song and panelists who are focused on building on each other's comments. And I think part of that is design and part of that is mindset. So if you really spend the time with the panelists to understand where they're coming from and you contract with them, that the whole point is to connect dots across the panel and everyone understands that's the design and that's the intention and that's what you're asking them to do. And then as a facilitator, earlier point, you're listening very actively. You've done enough preparation to understand who they are, what they care about and what their point of view is. Then you reframe the role of the facilitator as I'm the dot connector. I'm not just the talk show host. I'm actually very intentionally looking for what the thread is across the panelists. And I'm asking them to do that themselves. But if they don't, I'm working hard to draw that out because the thread is more interesting than the independent speeches.
Speaker 1You mentioned twice the preparation that goes into it. How have you found preparation works best to create the setting so that a panel flows as well as it can?
Speaker 2The way that I think about preparation for a panel has three dimensions. So one is what's your goal and structure? Like what's the sweet spot of what will be most helpful to the audience that is currently in the minds of the participants? So that's number one. Number two is the chemistry. So actually taking the time in a prep call to build rapport and chemistry with the other panelists is really important, which means that you're understanding who they are, what they care about, what their personality is like, so that they're comfortable with the facilitator and with the other panelists so that you can get them into a highly productive space. And that starts on the prep call. And then most importantly, before you get on stage, being very intentional about, getting that chemistry warmed up before you get on stage, that's unbelievably important. And then the third thing is about the substance of it. So there's no substitute for you actually really do need to do the research on the topic. You really do need to think about what's the most interesting thread for this particular audience that they're going to find helpful.
Speaker 1Super spot on. I mean, I found one of the biggest problems is that you don't have the prep time. And if you really want to do it the right way, like you said, you need to know as the facilitator, the moderator of the panel, what each person's objective is. And you need to understand what they might say and how that fits in with the other panelists. And I get asked to do this a lot. There are times where I have time to figure that out, or I know the people in advance, so it speeds that up. And there are times where you're just winging it. Right. That is definitely true.
Speaker 2I think that comes back to the more preparation, the better. The more intentional the preparation is. But I can't emphasize enough that the rapport really matters because people who are comfortable before they go on stage are going to be more interesting to listen to and are actually going to do a better job showcasing what's special about them and distinctive about them and what they have to say. The other thing is the more that you've prepared and you understand what people care about, if the flow isn't happening fast enough, then as a moderator, you cold call. And you can use a cold call very efficiently in a panel when you know what the person wants to say and wants to get across. And sometimes as a facilitator, if you're active listening, you can spot the moment better than they can. And you can spot it in a way that's generative, which to what has just been said. So I'll give you an example. So you're hearing a panelist start to get on a run on an issue that's adjacent to the issue that you know the person sitting next to you is. And you're like, "Oh, I don't know how to do this." And they're like, "Oh, I don't know how to do this." And you're like, "I don't know how to do this." And they're like, "I don't know how to do this." And you're like, "Oh, I don't know how to do this." And the person sitting next to them really wants to talk about they're having trouble getting in. And you can use these little techniques and say, "Oh, wow, that is such a good point. And I know that your colleague right next to you has a lot of experience on that and actually has a really special point of view on that. Why don't we build on that point?" And then that person is so, as you said earlier, delighted to be validated and seen and heard and recognized for what's special about them that they kind of light up. Then they go into that zone. And if you're listening hard, you're really focused on the goal and you've done even minimal preparation to understand what their point of view is, even if you just ask them to email it to you and you've worked hard to get chemistry even for five minutes before you get on stage and you see your role as a coach and doc connector, you're spotting those moments almost like a band leader and you're trying to nudge your band members to pick up the flow of the conversation.
Speaker 1I want to build on that with a couple other little tips. One of my favorites, and let's put it under the umbrella of risk management. When you do a prep call, one of the things I always do is try to figure out who that one is. And so inevitably, when you start, you'll go down the row. So sequencing it so the person who you think is going to speak the most speaks last and vice versa has a really nice way of balancing that out to begin with. This is a great little risk management tool. The other is body language. So, what's hard about what you said is that when that person is going on an adjacency, they're in their own head. And sometimes, depending on the setting, you can lean in or forward or move your hand or something in a way that kind of catches their attention so that they know you're leaning towards a microphone. Oh, yeah, wait, you might want to interject for whatever reason. It can be super helpful. I want to wrap this up by saying I did a panel at Milken and ad hoc, I gave what I thought were the key points. And so, I think that's really important. The components of a good panel, which are all nice summary of what we said. The first is it has to be entertaining, which isn't always easy to do because a lot of the subject matter is dry. But as the moderator, if you can throw in a joke, or a little jab or whatever it is, it just helps lighten that up. You have to have these actionable takeaways second. That substance has to be there. The third is that camaraderie balance between the speakers, which is really hard. And the fourth, which is my favorite one that almost nobody ever does, end early.
Speaker 2I'll give you one additional fun tip on top of that. In ending early, throughout the panel, I'm writing the closing and kind of preparing for the closing. A very skilled closing has two components to it. One is very validating. I'm thinking of what is the gem that I knew that person wanted to get across at the beginning. If I've done a good job as a facilitator, I help them do that. So I can pre-plan this pretty well. Add a little bit of the color of what they said or use a funny word that they used that increases the stickiness of the idea for the audience. And then the very last point is like the coaching point for the audience of the point of the panel. Like we're doing in this conversation, pull out what's portable that is actually useful to that person that they could use the next day to be more effective. And particularly if you want to make sure you're ending early, having that structure in your head and knowing that it's going to be good because you kind of have it half written before the panel ensures you're feeling confident that you can actually interject pretty forcefully if we're risking over time and close it out pretty tightly and pretty effectively. Okay, so why don't we shift gears and move to the public speaking side. So your audience is full of really smart people who are all the experts of their craft. And so throughout the year, probably every single person listening to your podcast is giving a presentation of some form to small groups, large groups. They're invited to sit on panels. The art of facilitating a panel is different from the art of participating on one. What have you learned that would be useful to folks in that space?
Speaker 1Well, let's frame it out as a problem and a solution. So the problem with public speaking is that people get inside their own head. They get nervous. They worry about what other people are going to think. And the solution to that goes right to what you just said in the synthesis of a panel is to have a game plan. So there are components to the game plan. And I would start with something that I heard from a professor that coaches public speaking at Stanford, which is the audience wants you to succeed. All of these people that could feel scary if you're not accustomed to public speaking, they're actually on your side. Nobody wants to see a complete train wreck or somebody fumbles all over themselves. So there's a lot to when you get on stage. But back to what we originally said, practice is so important. So if people are giving a presentation, actually delivering it out loud in front of your mirror at home just minimizes your downside risk. There are challenges with that, right? If you get too stuck in your own words, you could lose your place. But if you get too stuck in your own words, but actually practicing what you're going to say, every time I've had an important presentation that I was going to give, I made sure at least I went over it in my head. And ideally I said it out loud once or twice. And the more you do that, the better you're going to be. The other thing I like to tell people about the nervousness about public speaking is that we all practice public speaking every single day. Every time you're having a conversation with more than one person, you can view that as an opportunity to practice public speaking. Just to keep in mind that you don't have to be in front of 500 people to practice speaking in front of an audience.
Speaker 2Totally agree. And I actually think it can be very useful to just realize, particularly for this audience, that the world has become a lot less formal. So the old days where people might be overcoached for presentations, I think have transitioned to something less formal and more authentic. And that I think most audiences want to feel like there's not that much of a difference between having lunch with you and listening to you present in front of a couple hundred people. That's very different from years ago when people were taught that you had to actually present in a much more formal way. I think most audiences have a low tolerance for that. It's an ADD world these days. And I think you gotta be pretty tight with what you want to say. One of the most common blind spots I see is our colleagues in this industry are so substantive and so well-rounded and so well-trained to be detail-oriented and so proud of their point of view because they've spent a lifetime researching the components of it that they want to share all of it. And I think one of the biggest coaching points is to take that body of knowledge and to narrow it and tailor it and simplify it for the audience so that the whole audience can follow it. And I think one of the most valuable lessons I've learned is the rule of threes. I think the rule of threes applies in communicating almost anything into your point. That applies in small conversations and big conversations. Most humans can only retain three things. That's pretty much the max. And I think in our industry, we're often the rule of 15 or 20 or 25 because we're passionate about all those items. If you structure it and bucket it in three, it's much easier for your audience to digest it. And then you can double-click into those, and you might actually hit all 25 points. But the person can process it much more effectively if you go one step at a time into the depth versus what you often see, which is I'm just going to dive into the detail.
Speaker 1That rule of three reminds me of a little acronym I had heard, which is the age of a presentation, A-G-E. The rule of three being the goal. What are you trying to get across? And using the rule of three is a really effective way of getting to the G in age. The A is audience. So many people, when they go to give a presentation, say, this is my presentation I am delivering to you. The problem is you have an audience, and the presentation should be the audience that you're delivering to them for their benefit. It may only be a change in frame of mind, but a lot of times you think about a panel. I want to get my pitch across. Okay, well, what do they want to hear? Back to what you said before, it'll still allow me to get my pitch across, but it can come across in a way that is more thoughtful, more expressive of what someone in that audience wants to hear. So that's audience, goal, and the last is environment. The idea being it's very different if it's 500 people or there's five people in your investment committee meeting. Like one, you have to project, you have to be animated, all these things to keep people engaged. The other is a much more subdued, inclusive type conversation.
Speaker 2You just made a really profound point in an industry full of, you know, subject matter experts who we've spent our entire careers preparing our point of view on a particular topic. When you're presenting, you have to invert that mindset from expressing yourself to serving the audience. And a great salesperson knows that. There's a difference between your pitch and actually working back from the psychology of the audience and tailoring it as such. If your goal is to influence that audience, I think that's a great way to do it. I think there's something about entering any public speaking situation and going deep into the audience mindset, not just about the content. It's the difference between audience and content.
Speaker 1Let's take the context of you're sitting on a panel. Are there any things you found for when you were sitting on a panel that make for your presentation to be effective?
Speaker 2You know, I'll make a similar point to the facilitation one. Like the other side of it is when I'm a panelist, I want to be very clear about what I'm doing. I want to be cognizant of the build and the thread. I go into a panel knowing on that topic that I've prepared and I think I have some interesting thoughts to share. But the fun part of it is the active listening part, listening to what the people are saying. If I'm listening carefully, I'll actually try to use the tactic of building upon a specific point someone has just made. It builds goodwill with my fellow panelists and it actually helps keep it informal.
Speaker 1One of my favorite ones came from, I guess a number of years ago, I don't know, Ben Foreman of the Crypto Fund, Parify. He said, the attention span of an audience is two to four minutes. Answering a question, two to four minutes. And with podcasts, we have timestamps. I can see two to four minutes is like three or four sentences, full sentences. Gives you plenty of time to flesh out a thought. And where people run into problems is their joiner words. Finish up a thought and they say, and they go into another. So, and different people have different ones, but you go, one thought to the next thought to the next thought. And then somewhere along the way, you lose people. So to try to stay confined into the thought applicable for that thread, super important.
Speaker 2That's really good. Keep it tight. One other point I'd love for you to unpack is just the anxiety of public speaking. I think every one of us has anxiety before a big presentation that's high stakes for your career or a big audience. In some ways, it almost doesn't matter how much experience, I think most people you speak with who do a lot of presenting doesn't actually go away. How do you manage that?
Speaker 1A couple of tips that I've picked up along the way. The first is to acknowledge that you're nervous. It actually makes sense to be nervous in that setting. Maybe it's important. Maybe like this is your reputation. That's okay. That's a natural feeling in the moment. The next I would say is being present. So think of this as a form of meditation. When you're nervous, if you try to quickly unpack where the nerves are coming from, not analyze saying, oh, I'm nervous because of this, that, but gosh, there's a little butterfly in my stomach right now. I just took a breath, an out breath. Oh, someone else is speaking before me. Let me actually listen to what they're saying. So I get out of my head. There's a bunch of little ways that you can bring yourself present because if you're truly present in the moment, you won't be nervous. The nerves are coming from thoughts about something threatening in a fight or flight type response. So that's the second. And the third comes from what people say when they're nervous. And I'd say that sometimes they get tongue tied. More often, we all have verbal fillers, ums, likes. What we can practice is in any sentence, I'm going to do this right now, about 5% of my brain is thinking about making sure that I'm spacing out my words so that I don't say um, like, uh, uh, while I'm not. And if you practice it, it's not that anyone will be perfect, but practicing it and saying, okay, I'm not fully present with you because I have to spend time in this moment right now, making sure that I don't say a verbal filler. You will get better at saying fewer verbal fillers over time. That's a gift.
Speaker 2If we can all put that into practice, we'll go ahead and try it. I need to speak much more slowly. One other lesson I've learned just on the anxiety point or that I found helpful. I once watched, an interview of Frank Sinatra in his later years, describe the fact that after having performed at the highest levels and been considered the best singer of his era, he felt nervous every single time he got on stage. And that made me feel a lot better because for the master of his craft to say that and to say, oh, well, the anxiety doesn't go away. This is just about having a technique to channel it. Frank would talk about, it doesn't bother me that I have it because it's fuel. So I just want to connect with it. And so he talked about his techniques, walking onto the stage, feeling that and needing to shift. So I think it's always a question of how do you shift? And so for me as a public speaker, when I walk on stage and I feel that Sinatra moment, I want to use humor. I want to acknowledge someone in the crowd. I want to find some self-deprecation. I want to find some technique to shift from the natural anxiety of any high stakes moment into my more authentic space. I've tried a number of things over the years, but the Sinatra rule kind of keeps me focused on, okay, it's okay. You can accept that it's normal and it's just another technique that's needed in
Speaker 1your repertoire. I've heard from time to time about people saying, if you're giving a big presentation to focus on one person so that you're just talking to them, is that something that you've found helpful?
Speaker 2I actually do find that one helpful. I find it helpful in a slightly different way. When I'm on stage, my goal is for the audience to feel that they're sitting with me in my office, talking to me one-on-one. So I try to replicate the same tone and style. That goal of wanting it to feel the same way, I completely agree with. And I don't just focus on someone in the audience. I'm a very interactive person. And I think in today's world, people are not that interested in one-way communication. I'll actually walk out on stage and try to acknowledge someone in the audience or thank them. And I think that's a really good way to not just look at them, but to interact with them as a way to, just like the Sinatra rule, just kind of get myself into the mode that I'm shooting for.
Speaker 1Any other tips, any other things across what we've been chatting about?
Speaker 2I really like what you said earlier about the arc of the story. And I'd actually turn it back to you and say, let's unpack that because I think there's something too that substantive investors want to get across the content. But audio is a very important part of the story. And I think audiences and the theatrical element is almost like a television show or a movie or a novel, like there's an arc. And there's probably a lot for us to learn from that.
Speaker 1I'm no expert at it. So I'll throw out a few things that I've heard. And I had a wonderful storyteller, a guy named Neil Ford, used to be a Saatchi and Saatchi executive on the podcast earlier this year and really unpacked a story or two from him. The first part is you have to capture people's attention at the beginning. So it could be humor. It could be, you know, you're telling a story that you leave a cliffhanger and you're going to wait until the very end of the presentation to deliver the back part of that story. But there's something upfront that's your level of energy and what you're saying. So some combination of the Maya Angelou, it's not what you said, it's how you made people feel. And that's super important right up front. From there, the arc of a story is usually this happened, which led to this, but then that happened, which caused that, which caused this to happen. And as a result of that, this happened. And so it's a series of conjoined scenes that don't necessarily go in a linear path. And then, as you said, you want to wrap it up in a rule of three. What did we learn from this?
Speaker 2But I completely agree. And I share your technique that it's almost like a three-act play. The beginning is the setup, which is what's the situation and what are you trying to get done? The middle act of the play, is there some tension or some problem to be solved? So, what are we chasing? What's the conflict, the issue at hand? And then the resolution. And I think the good part about the resolution is go back to honoring the audience. So always end on what's useful to them. So let's do summary wraps.
Speaker 1I want to start because it's top of mind. Threads across interviewing, public speaking, both panels and public speaking. Preparation can't underscore how important it is, but it's got to be the appropriate level of preparation. If it's too much, you can get too wedded in it. Being present in the moment, listening, active listening, what that means, understanding who the audience is, summing up, and then afterwards, a feedback loop. Thoughts? I think you nailed it.
Speaker 2I would just respond to that great list, just saying, you have an audience and we have an industry full of really, really deep experts in the art and science of investing. And I think what you've shared with us today is a lot of the same. I think it's a lot of the same. I think it's a lot is the art and science of interviewing and how building out that craft is only additive to the craft of investing. And in some ways, I think a lot of people approach interviewing as a how hard could it be? Of course, I'm good at this. I'm an expert. And I think the takeaway from this discussion is it's actually pretty hard. So good news, bad news. So the bad news is in order to become great at interviewing, you have to be good at it. You have to be good at it. You have to be It is really hard and it takes years to master. The good news is you've elucidated today some very specific concrete practices that people can start using very quickly. And then I think to your feedback loop point, just like investing, it's iterative. So every time you do it, you can get a little bit better as long as you're reflective and you're getting the feedback so that V2, V3, V4 just gets better and better and better, which as listeners of your podcast, we know that your episodes just get better and better and better. I think it would only be fair to pose the same questions to you that you tend to pose to the rest of us. So let's give it a shot. All right. I haven't done this in a while. So Ted, what is your favorite hobby or activity outside of work and family?
Speaker 1I love playing tennis. I grew up playing tennis, played in high school, played in my 20s. Dave Swenson was my doubles partner at the New Haven Lawn Club. And then I didn't play for 20 years. I played in the New Haven Lawn Club. I played in the New Haven Lawn Club for 20 years. I moved to New York and darned as many courts in New York. And I met my wife just under five years ago. She's a big tennis player. And I got back into it. And it is my absolute favorite thing to do. What did you dream about doing when you were a kid? The first job I remember thinking I wanted was to be a math teacher. I had a 11th grade teacher named Mr. Cantor. And I remember saying to him in a yearbook, you've inspired me to be a math teacher. I loved math. Of course, owning the Yankees, it was very attractive to me. And my friends at Arctos have made that, not the Yankees, but have made that. So I own a few grains of dirt in a whole bunch of different ballparks around the
Speaker 2country. I think you've made both dreams come true then because you're doing a form of math teaching in this podcast. What's your biggest investment pet peeve?
Speaker 1It's when people talk about investing in absolutes as if they're certain they're right about something when the entire investment world, in fact, life itself is probability based. That's sometimes drives me absolutely nuts because I'm not someone who intuitively thinks that I'm right all the time. I just kind of hedge my own brain knowing that there are other outcomes than the one that I might be pretty certain about at any point in time.
Speaker 2When Ted hears certainty, he gets very suspicious. What's one investment mistake that you learned from and will
Speaker 1never make again? In my early twenties at Yale, we were allowed to invest in stocks with the right approvals. And Yale's managers back then, probably still today, had a lot of very concentrated portfolios, really sought to have managers that knew their stocks better than anyone else. And I heard this presentation from a guy who invests in energy stocks. His whole portfolio was like three or four names. And his newest name, I just was like, this is an incredible story. And so I asked David and Dean and got approval and I bought the stock and it was a big deal for me. And within three or four months, the company went bankrupt. So at the time, I'm probably done with CFA level, two, maybe three, and then I went and looked at the balance sheet and saw in this cyclical business, the company had like four turns of debt on it. And it was a 101 mistake, but I just took for granted that this guy who is a super successful manager, who knew the space, if he thought it was a great stock, it had to be a great stock. I was never going to do the research that he could do on the name, but I could have common sense checked that. And so it was a great lesson that you have to do your own work. And whatever that means in a different situation, you can't just take for granted, even with someone who was perfectly aligned. He had so much of his own capital in this name and he missed something that was totally obvious. Which two people
Speaker 2had the biggest impact on your
Speaker 1professional life? Dave Swenson is the easy and by far number one. He was my first boss, my first mentor, learned more from him than anyone else my entire career. That's super easy. The second one's harder because the path I took post that, I didn't. Really have direct mentors in the way that I did with David. And I would say, if I were picking a second one, and it's not intuitive, we've only been together four and a half years, it would definitely be my wife, Vanessa, my second wife, because her strengths of discernment, her eye for everything that has to do with marketing and messaging and her ability to be incredibly positive, even in the face of challenge, has been a huge boon for me over the last couple of years as this went from something on the side to the core of what I'm doing. And there's no way I could have done all this without her.
Speaker 2What was the best advice you ever received and what was the context it came to you?
Speaker 1I never heard the phrase, do what you love, until I went to business school at HBS. So I was 27 years old before I'd ever heard that what you could do is something tied to something that you're interested in. There are a lot of different expressions of it. Andy Golden, who's just retired, said, I'm going to do what I love. I'm going to do what I love. I'm going to do follow your like. You can't know at a certain age what you love, but you might know you're interested in something. But the idea of spending your time doing something that just innately you enjoy, like what I tell people now is I really, I don't work anymore. I may spend 60, 70 hours a week doing it, but there's almost not a minute of it that feels like work. Like I get out of bed in the morning, whether it's I'm editing a podcast or I'm getting to prepare to have a conversation or I'm talking to friends about investing. Or talking to a manager I've invested with, whatever it is. It's so much fun for me, even more so than that prior part of my career. And so I didn't learn that for a while. I mean, I think that's late in life to have heard that. I would say it's never too late. I think the podcast started, I was 48 when the podcast started, so 47. So it's never too late to kind of keep figuring out what that is.
Speaker 2Your passion for it comes shining through. That's for sure. Finally, the last one. What life lesson have you learned that you wish you knew a lot earlier in your life?
Speaker 1You can't do it alone. You know, there's the phrase, if you want to go faster yourself, if you want to go far, go with others. For whatever reason in my upbringing, I had an innate belief that I had to achieve everything on my own. And it wasn't until much later in life. And I would even say in this iteration, these last six or seven years of the podcast, where so much of what has worked comes from the power of having different partners. So a bunch of joint ventures with some people who were some of my closest friends in the business, the people on my team, not trying to feel like I have to be the one that has the answer. And if I think I have the answer to my own skepticism, better check with somebody else before I just rush and do it. So that's probably the one I wish I had learned a long, long time ago.
Speaker 2Fabulous. Well, listen, Ted, it's been a pleasure turning the tables on you to interview the interviewer about interviewing. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1Matt, thanks for the idea to do this. And thanks for breaking this up into part interview and part conversation, because I certainly got a lot out of that part of it too. My pleasure. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to the show. If you like what you heard, hop on our website at capitalallocators.com, where you can access past shows, join our mailing list and sign up for premium content. Have a good one and see you next time. All opinions
Speaker 3expressed by Ted and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Capital Allocators or their firms. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Capital Allocators or podcast guests may maintain positions and securities discussed on this podcast.
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