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Emily Haisley

lines on the record: 102
first: 2026-06-28
most recent: 2026-06-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And so, you know, sometimes the things that we think help us hurt us. There's a lot of different experiments in psychology that show the value of breaks and the value of pacing yourself, going slow to go fast, right? So you don't wind up in a hole that then is inefficient for you to climb out of. And instead, there's this illusion that we should keep working and pushing and pushing and pushing when there's diminishing marginal returns to that work. And actually we'd be more productive over the long term interfacing the work with more rest. There's a lot of illusions that lock us in.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did it work, or could we have been better if we didn't have that? Like, we don't have the counterfactual. But I will say, though, that I share that fear that you've articulated. I share that fear in myself. It keeps me clinging to it. But what I at least need to get rid of is like, I know I burn energy by thinking, I'm not working hard enough. I'm not doing enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not X enough. Like I know those thoughts take my focus and they're about me when again, like I want the focus to be on the task. The same thing I'm trying to get, the investors to focus on is to take their own ego out of the equation and focus on the task at hand.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Day long, but it's to really try to be a better listener and not only be a better listener of people, but to be a better listener of my nervous system and what my nervous system is trying to tell me that I need in the way of food or rest or stimulation or different types of people, et cetera, and to just really be present, to really be here, to not go anywhere when I'm having a conversation with somebody, to really listen to them.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Way of becoming the observer. And then once you notice it, you of course don't just notice it. If it's shallow, you deepen it and it calms you down. So you use it to control your state. And that and some other breathwork techniques that I did, I quite like breath hold. I find them quite blissful. So other types of breath work that I've done has just really unlocked like a whole world for me that I never thought that I never could have imagined was there. And so that's, you know, aside, you know, from, you know, mindsets, sleep, you know, and good sleep hygiene and prioritizing sleep and meditation, breath work is right up there with one of the things that I recommend for investors to try. And one of my more recent New Year's resolutions was, you know, I do listen to people.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It at this particular point in my commute about a minute before I walk through the door of the office. And so then it's just like, you know, so then you've turned it into like a game of noticing. And you just become curious about it. And just noticing it is often enough to release its hold on you. Just notice it and let it go. So I recommend that everybody do that if they are having problems with their inner critic. The second year's resolution that really changed my life quite a lot was to just notice my breath. Just again, about noticing, just noticing it, when I'm feeling awkward, notice it. When I'm feeling afraid, notice it. Has it increased? Am I feeling shame? Am I feeling nerves? What's going on? And to just use the breath again as a”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the one that changed my life the most, they've all kind of changed my life. The one that changed my life the most was for years, you know, I had, and I think many people do, I had the inner critic speaking very loud, saying very mean things to me. And I from time to time see a therapist. And a therapist like several, several years ago said to me, I think they are just doing it out of habit. I think it's just a bad habit. And that really landed with me actually years later. And then years later, I decided it was going to be my nearest revolution to stop saying mean things to myself. And so, you know, the spiritual practice tells you that the first thing you do is you're just mindful and then you just notice when you do it. And so you just like bring like a scientific lens to it. Like, when do I do it? Like, oh, I tend to do it more in the morning. And oh, I tend to do it on my commute and to work. And oh, I tend to do it.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I also have to say that I do still really blessed to be a BlackRock where I do feel that the culture has been created by a very kind and very smart people. And one of the things that I was struck by coming when I first came to BlackRock is how much everybody seems to want to succeed. And of course, it's not going to be like that every minute of every day. But you ask yourself if it's not going that way, what's going wrong? What am I doing? What's there a structural problem here? Is there a personality clash here? And you just tried to, you know, is there a real debate to be had that I'm taking too personally, right? Like you reflect on those moments and you tried to and you look to the future of how to make things better.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Time be really ambitious and make a good living and do, you know, and do their best for themselves. I don't see that there is necessarily that conflict. And boy, do I see a lot of opportunities for doing good and for doing well for yourself at the same time?”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In a way that is value for money and that is properly risk managed, I think that serves like a real purpose. And I don't see really any contradiction necessarily with that and right livelihood. And then, you know, in the more mic micro scale, I'm sure, you know, there are elements of every corporate culture that are dysfunctional or that may be a bit toxic, but that doesn't mean that you can't go into that corporate culture and try to figure out what might be driving the dysfunction and alleviate it. And everybody can do their part for that to work towards, you know, the public good of the firm and of society more broadly. And everybody can kind of have that in mind. And at the same time,”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you just made the tainted altruism mistake. Yeah. If we must be doing something bad. And so, and I just don't think that's necessarily true. I think that, of course, there are, you know, areas in every industry. And whether you're in government, it's the same. If you're in nonprofit sector, it's the same. I think that in every industry, there's opportunities to do harm on like a macro scale and a micro scale of your daily interactions. But I think that, you know, particularly in the world of finance, there can be this perception that it's not serving in a public good. And I dispeak that. I think giving everyday people access to capital markets to invest for their future and to grow their wealth and to do that.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very weak heart, and the doctors didn't think he would live as long as he would. He lived into his late 70s, but they expected him to die much earlier. And so I think he always felt that death was right around the pointer. He always fully had like internalized that he could die at any moment. And so because of that, he just thought he just lived in the moment. He just lives without fear. Because once you really take away like that fear of death, like, you know, or what you're, you know, once you have to confront that fear of death, right? Like what else? Like what else is really going to scare you if you confronted that? And, you know, that was something as a child that I really marveled at and something that, you know, as I happen to have like a few, you know, near-death experiences over the course of my life, I've like actually like really.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was really interested in the conflict that's going on in everybody's brain between the ego want that might be like ambitious or concerned with like other people's, you know, with managing one's impression. And then on the other side, the part of you that could observe the ego and the part of you that just wanted to live and that just wanted to eat life and that just wanted to sort of, you know, just in its nature without wanting to be anything, just in its nature was kind of like a positive force of light in the world. And he had a very unusual existence. He had an infection in his heart when he was a child. And so he had”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he's someone who, you know, like I'm really grateful to, like, I've had so many figures in my life who have introduced me to different ways of thinking and different ways of being creative. Like my mother's like, you know, extreme like academic focus and my father was a very creative focus. And my uncle, Robert, was also a very creative person, but he also had, you know, quite a strong, I don't know if I would call it spiritual angle, but he had this real strong interest in understanding the ego. And he would talk to me, you know, even when I was a young child and give me like very specific literature to read, even taught me how to do yoga as a child. And a lot of what he”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fear, that intense fear I had that everything I was learning might not be applicable just almost immediately got wiped away. And I joined a behavioral finance team at Barclays at that time. And I felt like a kid in a candy shop in that everywhere I looked, I saw the potential to apply behavioral science, to apply psychology, to apply these insights in the corporate world. That was from everything towards nudging people to save more or encouraging wealth clients to overcome their myanthic loss aversion, you know, to become fully invested. doing work in financial well-being for Barclays customers. It was just so many opportunities. And I've continued to see that as I've gone to different firms.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think that, again, I come back to this inclination, like I had like as a young person that there was so much that psychology could bring to bear in the real world. There were so many more applications, you know, outside of the disease model of psychology. And then with positive psychology and focus on wellness, you know, it doesn't even stop there. There's so much that psychology can do in policy, in organizations to improve things. And when I left academia and I moved from, you know, I moved from the US to London and I moved out of academia into the corporate world, I was really struck that, you know, the greater culture shock was from academia to the corporate world rather than from the US, the UK. But also, I was struck by that.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To eco, where in the hero's journey there's a kind of, you know, there's almost always this death of the ego or like a sacrifice of the self for some greater good. And the punchline, like the secret is that actually you unlock everything. It's by sacrificing your ego. It's a false sacrifice. And actually, you know, like once you align yourself with some greater sense of meaning or mission, you know, whether that's being a good steward for the millions of people to trust BlackRock with their money or whether that's a mission about ESG investing or whatever it is that you're aligning yourself to, it's often these things that feel like sacrifices that actually unlock you from the chains of your own ego and unlock your potential”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Venture that you do much better, right? Than if you're clinging to the past or you're clinging to old ways of doing things. And so that's part of where, you know, I try to instill that in investors as they evolve their process and learn from their mistakes. And I also try to cultivate it in myself, always trying to do things that put me outside of my comfort zone. And people kind of talk about the imposter syndrome as a problem, right? Of people feeling like an imposter. And I kind of think actually when you don't feel like an imposter, that's the problem, right? Because that you've just been doing exactly what you've always been doing, right? And you're not pushing yourself forward. So, you know, so I think there's a lot of lessons there. I think also one of the main lessons of the Shiro's journey resonates with what we were talking about earlier.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So one of the reasons why I really love the hero's journey is I just think it has so many different messages in it. And one of the, you know, so many that show like the value of trials and tribulations and not being afraid to come out of your comfort zone and learn new skills and just the understanding that, you know, life is change. Like it's just everywhere. It's in markets and the economy. It's in the seasons. It's in our aging. There's no coming away from it. And I think that if you stop, you know, resisting change, you stop trying to have expecting certainty and predictability in your life and in markets. And you begin to instead embrace the”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, that serve as these cooling off periods. But here's the place, like, you know, to make those mistakes and to learn because not everybody has had the benefit of living through a difficult market environment yet, right?”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I mean, first of all, I've had the exact same experience of being working one of the first times I did felt had like an important piece of public speaking to do. And I look back on that experience now, and I am so grateful because anytime I have to do public speaking subsequently, I'm like, it's never going to be as bad as that. And I survived that and I learned so much from that. So I'm really kind of grateful for that experience. And I think the same is true for investors that might make a mistake in volatility, right? Like if they've gone through it and they've panicked into error, right? Or they haven't kept their convictions, right? Like, or they've gone with the herd instead of what they believe or what their edge is, right? Like if you've gone through that once, right? Like, okay, yeah, that's a horrible experience, but you're not going to make that mistake again. And, you know, that's like a lot of like the point of this exercise is this is the place to kind of like, you know, to make those mistakes. And yes, in real life, you might have more like cooling off period or you might have, you know, like research processes. You might have trade diorizing processes.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Same way as the portfolio would draw down in real life. But the reactions that they're having when they're playing the game is fun. Like they're stressed, but they're smiling and they're having fun and they're laughing and it's exciting. And so that's also like really interesting to me, right? Like it's the same situation. And like when it's a game that gives you an opportunity, right? to have like a totally different emotional experience around the problem solving compared to when you are actually in the situation and actually losing real money and there maybe there's a bit of gallows humor but generally it's just a very unpleasant difficult situation so i i really like that contrast because it helps you look at the problem from like a totally different emotional standpoint”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think that that's particularly true where the investment team's strategy is to look through volatility is to hold risk through volatility. And maybe that helps them think through some of the edge cases like where they wouldn't do that. So, you know, here we're putting them in a pressure cooker environment, right, to make all of the mistakes here and think through. you know, and rehearse how they would make decisions in a real setting. One of the things that I also really like about the game is that when teams are making decisions in volatility in, you know, in the real world, it's often not pleasant. It's often very painful, you know, and we're drawing down their portfolio in the game, in the”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“May sit back and really listen to everybody's point of view in an independent manner, you know, maybe doesn't work when you're making decisions under the pressure of the clock. And maybe that type of leader needs to be a bit more active in those situations of, you know, going to the expert for their point of view, you know, getting a counterpoint of view. Why are they wrong? needs to be more directive and how they manage the group dynamics under those situations.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hold risk through volatility? Are they somebody that wants to provide liquidity during volatility? Are they somebody that maybe wants to manage risk in a more dynamic way? So it really helps them kind of like understand given the types of investors we are, our temperaments, our edge, the constraints on the portfolios and the time horizons of the portfolios that we're managing, what actually makes sense and lets them kind of rehearse what makes sense for them. The other thing that teams get from this is that they get to see how their decision making process changes under volatility where they may have to make decisions more rapidly if they have gone with a strategy of being more dynamic and volatility. So that same group dynamic that I explained earlier where the head of the team”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The team news headlines and that are economically normally pretty economically relevant or they may just be noise, but that's what it is for the team to decide, right? Whether they want to react to this information and if they want to react, how do they want to react to manage their portfolio? And then as they decide whether to trade or not, then the simulation produces another headline in the next period and you kind of keep going, you keep iterating in that process. And from doing this exercise several times, one of the things that I think the teams really learn is what is to really be really clear about what their strategy is for trading through volatility. Are they a team that has to”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so this is something that, you know, again, it's inspired by George Loanstein on hot state and cold state decision making and thinking that and also having experienced seeing investors go through the experience of volatile markets and how stressful those types can be, there's the thinking, can we let investors kind of practice how they would manage to their portfolio through different stressful, volatile market experiences. And so I'm a woman on my team, Nikki Lai actually took this idea and used AI to create a game, which we're constantly developing on the full team and making it better. The way that the game works is that it loads up your existing portfolio positions and shows”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Out of cash flows and more towards being funded through leverage. This is, you know, it's a risky stress potentially stressful period of market history, but like, man, is it interesting? And the lessons that investors will gain from having a front row seat to markets during this period of history will serve them throughout their entire career. So taking that broader mindset and taking a mindset of learning rather than this mindset of just worry and being in it, I think it's quite positive.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oxytocin in them, and they simulate oxytocin in ourselves. And this has this really positive outcome from a stressful experience of drawing closer to your teen. Another kind of classic positive stress mindset is looking at it as a learning experience. You know, you look at like what's going on in markets today. We're in the midst of this major technological innovation of AI. Of course, that is making investors nervous, right? Like that is reducing breast in market, that's making valuations start to feel frothy, that's getting investors worried.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Chronic, and we go into burnout, or if we're in panic and we can't focus. So to think about the benefits that come from stress, I also really like this insight that the stress hormones are not only cortisol and adrenaline, but that oxytocin is also a stress hormone that leads us to gravitate towards others when we're feeling uncertain, right? You really want to resist if you're feeling stressed withdrawing into yourself. You want to follow that impulse to be drawn towards others. And oxytocin not only draws you towards others under stress, but also has this heart protective effect, has a health benefit under stress. And as we draw towards others, towards others, investors in the platform, or to other members of our team when we're under stress, and we bond with them or we connect with them, then that actually stimulates.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, in terms of the main mindset shift is around seeing the stress as something that is fueling. Like I've just heard about this study where they told girls doing math exams that the butterflies in their study, in their stomach were fuel, not nerves, right? Or you can think about if you have to do some public speaking and you have all this nervous energy, well, put that energy into your smile, right? Like, you know, use that energy to show how much you care about the topic. And a positive stress mindset is one which is, you know, leveraging, you know, the main function of stress, which is to give us energy and focus rather than we're stress can go wrong. And, you know, when it becomes”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, for me, I always like to go for a mindset approach, for a mindset shift. And I feel that that does help a lot of investors. But for every investor, there's a different approach. I could talk through some of those mindset shifts, but”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And acknowledging their stress, that then often would take them out of that chronic stress state and bring them back down to their baseline and help them recover. There's also the information in that of like when you're in volatile markets or you're in a period of drawdown, often investors might think, well, I just need to work harder and spend longer hours in the market or, you know, be more and more vigilant about what's going on in my portfolio. And what I try to impress on them is that it's not just their job to work hard. It's also their job to rest hard because if they aren't able to meet that stress with rest and recovery, then it's very likely that that stress is going to be more biasing for their decision making, that may be a cycle that takes them towards burnout.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But then, in addition to that, the data that we get and linking the data to portfolios is so rich for so many reasons. So there's even just this really basic and intuitive finding that their performance impacts their physiology, that their performance impacts their stress level. And that may be a kind of like no-brainer, but it's useful for people to see. And it's particularly useful for investors to see like if they're in a period of sustained drawdowns and their stress has stayed elevated, we really want to bring that to their attention. And often you'll hear something like, oh, I didn't, you know, I've been investing for so many years. I didn't really realize that the portfolio was still impacting me this way. I thought I'd move behind that. And then it's just by looking at.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“on their internal cortisol levels, right? Not great. You think maybe not so bad, but there could be some problems if those cortisol levels are being driven by the markets, but like really bad if those cortisol levels are being driven by something in their personal lives or something that's going on in the work environment that's not related to the risks and opportunities in markets. So this is something that this was the kind of the driving kind of factor, the driving like rationale for the project. And we do see, you know, with individual investors, relationships between their stress levels that we can measure from the aura ring and the risks that they take in their portfolio. And the main thing that we want to do is bring that to their conscious level of awareness and try to break that relationship between stress and the body and risk decisions in the portfolio. So that's kind of the impetus for the project.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So I think that the main kind of bias that inspired this project was that research had shown that when you administer cortisol to people in a laboratory setting and then test their risk preferences, if they have sustained levels of cortisol over the course of about a week or slightly more, this can then change their risk preferences. And they saw this from looking at an experimental group receiving cortisol and a control group receiving placebo. And they found that those receiving the cortisol were biased towards risk aversion. Now, we need our investors at BlackRock being able to take risks and to have the basis for those risks they take, you know, what's going on in the markets. We don't want them taking risk depending on”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I mean, what I think about sustainability is I completely agree that we should be looking at it through the lens of risk and also looking at it through the lens of opportunity. So there is this bias called tainted altruism, which is that we often, and to me this is the status bias, and it's this idea that anything that might have positive externalities that might be doing some good in the world like shouldn't be making money or won't make money, right? And if you think of how like what sustainability is, right, like you think it's like, it's like new innovations that don't have a lot of negative externalities and are likely to sustain us through into the future that why not think of them as opportunities even if Maybe they have some benefit for the world, despite that fact.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The other thing that I would add to your list is political diversity. People are so polarized by politics these days. It's really, I think, essential to have people in the decision-making environment from a different political persuasion than yourself. I think especially because there's so much kind of politics lead to so much of like a worldview of what you think is right or wrong, which then affects your forecasting so critically because you want your side to be the right side. Well, it's such an”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think the geography, when I hear femme investors from other parts of the world, which is one of like the great advantages of being at BlackRock, I mean, that is just, it's not only fascinating to see, you know, how where somebody is based changes what they believe and what they forecast, but it just, it's just so interesting. It's always, you know, it's just fascinating to hear another point of view that comes from someone living in a different place.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's not the next best expert in that area, the next person that you'd want to have is someone that brings a different perspective, someone that doesn't share the same assumptions, someone that may make a mistake, but it's not going to be the same mistake as the first expert that you brought on. And this, again, is because if you have two people with exactly the same background and training and experiences and ways of thinking, then it's very likely that they're going to make the same mistakes. And so they're going to have correlated errors. And so there's kind of almost no, there's just not a lot of benefit of having, you know, a clone like on the team. And you get much more benefit by introducing somebody that's going to have a different error and going to be able to spot yours.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, and to be fair, I think this was something that Thomas really drove changing the composition of the IC. And I think just, you know, needed to kind of sense check that idea with me. And it's something where, you know, you want to balance diversity to the point where you're choosing, like, this is actually like Kahneman's idea that if you are looking for the first person to be on the IC, you just want to take the person who has the most expertise in the area, like, you know, the best track record in that area, like you trust them the most, like, you know, they have the clear, you know, training in that area. But then the second person that you would want to have in that group is someone.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If the deal is going wrong down the road that will know that we're wrong and we try to dispose of the asset rather than continuing to spend to throw good money after bad. So that kind of all happens in the preliminary IC. And then in the final IC, as we mentioned, we introduced blind voting. And so this was, you know, so at this point now it's hardest to potentially walk away from a deal or to vote against it. So what we do is have the IC members vote anonymously. So it gets away from the kind of pressure of you being the one, you know, who doesn't want to voice your true feelings about the deal because you don't want to be the one who has killed the deal, who's kind of ruined it for everybody else. So that an amenity like takes away that kind of pressure.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You imagine that it's three years down the road, and we've all agreed that this investment was a colossal mistake. What happened? And so that person then goes through that process. And what you want to happen here is to make it, you know, okay for somebody to challenge the work that the DLT and has been spending long hours exploring and building. And so you do that by making it structurally part of the process. And then just because the pre-mortem, if you do a pre-mortem and you're identifying lots of risks and lots of pulls in the deal, that could lead you to potentially walk away. But also what that could do is just to say, okay, well, you know, maybe we need to negotiate the terms harder or maybe we need to encourage, you know, to structure it differently to be able to guard against some of these risks. Or maybe this just gives us a blueprint for.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so this actually serves a couple of purposes. I think most people would have heard of Devil's Advocate. So you want to bring a devil's advocate into the discussion. And in this particular example, what we decided to do was to have an outsider be the devil's advocate. So instead of having one of the IC members do it to bring in somebody from outside of the IC group because bringing in the presence of outsiders also helps you think harder about your assumptions. And it was generally somebody who has really the time and the space, the capacity to really dig into the details. And then so they're not only digging into the details of the particular deal, but they are licensed. They are charged with thinking about if this deal were to go wrong, what would go wrong? And that's what we call a pre-mortem.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About it. They're objectively often more correct, the more disagreement there is in the discussion. So that type of structure allows the chair to pull out different points of view and make the full committee aware of them”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and this practice of just collecting independent points of view knocks out a whole lot of them. I mean, another bias that groups have is that they like to talk about shared information and they like to talk about things that they agree on. If you and I agree on something that feels good, that just humans like that, like we'll feel closer to each other, we'll trust each other with just positive emotion, us disagreeing is horrible, right? People don't like it. It makes them uncomfortable if a psychologist wants to do an anger manipulation, something they can do is find out what somebody believes and have them watch a video of somebody arguing the other side. Disagreement is just unpleasant. But the literature suggests that disagreement leads to much better decisions, objectively better decisions, even though the group may feel less confident.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I see and then Thomas has as he's going into that meeting understands what everybody else believes about the deal before the discussion even starts. And so if it starts with people talking about the strengths and it seems like it's just moving in that direction, but Thomas knows that there's one IC member that has a less positive view on the deal, he can make sure that perspective is aired in the meeting.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You. So instead of having everybody receive the memo receive the IC paper, go into the room and discuss it, where then again, you can anchor on the position of the first person that speaks. You want to encourage everybody to come to their own perspective on the deal before that meeting. So we introduced voting head of the preliminary IC. And instead of it just being actually, it wasn't just kind of a yes-no vote. It was their rating the deal on the distribution, comparing it to, you know, to a scale with very concrete anchors, looking at the distribution of deals that had previously been approved by this IC, how good or bad is this particular deal. Then those votes, those ratings go to Thomas, who's chairing”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On a particular deal, on an opportunity, you kind of become kind of pregnant with that deal. You've done lots of work on it. You've spent due diligence money on it. And then to walk away feels like a loss, right? So this is, I think, the number one bias that you need to try to overcome in private assets. And so the last kind of stop for doing that, hopefully that's done earlier in the process. But then the last kind of stop for doing that in this world are the investment committees. So in Thomason's process, what we did is before they went into a preliminary IC meeting. So this is not the final IC. This is one where they're deciding whether or not to spend the due diligence money. You want to collect independent points of”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So I can talk about how that process has shifted a bit. But again, it goes back to loss aversion. And when you're working in the private asset space, like real estate or private credit or private equity or infrastructure, I think the number one bias that you need to be aware of is the sub-cost bias, which is that as you've had”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Perspectives, right? And then, of course, at some point you form a judgment, but you're open to reversing that judgment if you're convinced by a better point of view or if you're convinced, if you're convinced by new information that emerges that tells you that you're wrong. And this is, you know, consistent with the trait of active open-mindedness that Tetlock found was really one of the defining traits of super forecasters. This idea that they have strong convictions, they have strong beliefs, but they are willing to update. Their egos are not so fragile that they don't update in the face of a better argument during the information.”
2026-06-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH069: The Psychology of Investing w/ Emily Haisley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT