YouSaid · the spoken record

Jenny Heller

lines on the record: 46
first: 2021-03-25
most recent: 2021-03-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“There's a few. I'll give one, the single most important one comes in the form of kissing my wife in the morning. And we kiss and hold hands as we go to bed at night, which is super cute. And we've only been married for a short while. We've only been together for a few years. But it's less that action and more that every single day we make sure we connect. And that sets the stage for everything in my life. So that's definitely my most important daily habit. There are a lot of little things I do that vary around a lot that have to do with like how am I preparing for my day and I'm both a workout person and a meditator and I think those are also really really important for me but there's nothing more important than feeling connected to my wife every single day.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've been asked this a lot, and I answer it sometimes facetiously about patients, which is something that my mother used to say all the time. But the real answer, as I've thought about it, is unconditional love. So I was fortunate to be in a family that had all of its issues, like every other family. And I have annoyances with my parents like everybody else does. However, I never had to doubt for a second that my parents loved me and that they told me that all the time. And there were lots of little ways that that was just a confirmed truth. And to go through and grow up with that as a foundation is priceless.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My biggest pet peeve, I have a few, but I think the biggest one is when I'm driving and there's someone in front of me who is well below the speed limit. Let's start with the premise that I don't understand speed limits in the United States. I know next to no one who drives the speed limit, and yet they still drive very safely. So there's something to me that's off about the posting of the speed limit, but there's a safe amount that you can drive like above the speed limit. And when someone's driving like 15 miles an hour below a 40 mile an hour speed zone, it's just incredibly annoying to me. And it shouldn't be because they have every right to do that and they're abiding the law. And I don't want to. It's a big pet pee”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investment stuff, letters, news. And I always have a pile of books on my desk that I want to read. The last couple of years, I've read more books than other, and I'm not a 50 book a year. I'm more like a 12 to 15 book a year person. And I'm at a bagel so far this year because I've been so busy on things in and around the business. So I am going away for spring break. I'm hoping to get to some books, but we'll see what happens.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Manager letter after manager letter after manager letter after manager letter without necessarily in any instance thinking why am I reading this letter do I have a thesis about a manager in our portfolio that I'm trying to comb through here or am I just gathering general information which is also perfectly fine so now a lot of my reading is it does affect how I'm thinking about what I might do on the podcast sometimes that's the matic i do read some manager letters still it's like a habit i can't get away from but i tend to do it on the ones that are really great thinkers not so much talking about their positions in the market and then generally i have this constant tension between books and”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't think about it enough is the answer for all of these other things I've talked about, how I've thought through my calendar and interviewing and all this stuff. I have not thought enough about how I curate information sources. I've started to think about it. And I have small examples. So I don't really read the newspaper anymore and particularly not the business news because if I really want to understand what's going on, I read Matt Levine's blog. So Matt writes Bloomberg View. And when all the stuff was happening with GameStop, it doesn't take very long to understand the stocks bouncing around and something's happening with shorts. If you want to get all the nuance, you just read what Matt's writing. When I started diving into SPACs, I wanted to make sure I got every little angle of it. You just read what Matt's writing. So a little example of that. So what that gets to though is trying to be aware all the time that you have a limited amount of bandwidth to read. What do you want to spend your time reading and why? So I spent years reading.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not to say their hedge funds won't get them there, but when you think about what your expected returns should be for that group of managers, you really should keep into consideration that as a base rate, the aggregate isn't as good as you think your portfolio of managers is. So just an interesting example of how do you incorporate base rates in the outside view into your decision making. So there's some of them. I think there's a bunch more in the book, but that's kind of the high level.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then together you have independence of thought. And so that's the conduct. When you get into the thought process, you get into things like thinking in probabilities, and he uses the phrase want to bet. A lot of people say, oh, this is a great investment. Well, are you 100% sure it is? Are you 60% sure? And then the next one is using base rates. So Michael Mobison talks a lot about base rates, the inside view versus the outside view. My favorite example of this in our world is hedge funds. Everyone I know doesn't think that a portfolio of hedge funds, generally speaking, will get them the returns that they need for their portfolio, but they do believe that their hedge funds will get them there.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way we form beliefs is when you hear something, you think it's true and only later or system one thinking, system two thinking, you only later decide whether it is or not, which means that when you go in to make an investment decision, if the leader of the group comes in and says, I'm kind of leaning towards buying this, I'm kind of leaning towards investing in this manager. What do you think? You've just lost the idea of independence. So let me come back to cognitive safety. Infecting beliefs is incredibly important. Cognitive safety means that if I am a junior person on the team and I have a different opinion, that I am free to express that opinion without punishment. If it's going to affect my compensation and I don't agree with you, I'm not going to say anything.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Diversity is incredibly important within that. So it's not just four to six people, it's four to six people that think differently. Importantly, it is not four to six people that look different but think exactly the same way. So social diversity does have tremendous benefits for cognitive diversity because oftentimes it's a correlated variable with where people come from and how they think. But what you're really getting at is cognitive diversity. So that's a starting point for how you structure that group. When you get into conduct, the most important thing is cognitive safety. And the best way of describing it is something that Annie talks about, which is the way we think means that any of us can infect other people with our beliefs.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. So I'll skip right over all of the reasons why we're terrible at making decisions. Annie's books do a fabulous job of laying that out. But just know that that's the case and know that we all understand behavioral finance and what that means about why we're likely to make mistakes. The question then is what do you do about it? And there are a few things that I learned from Annie and others. And a lot of it has to do with decision making in groups. It also applies to individuals, but most of these teams are groups. So the first is the way I would frame it out is what's the structure of the group? How does that group conduct themselves? And then how do they think? So the structure of the group is fairly simple. Optimal decision making units are four to six people. I cannot tell you the research of why that's the case. I just know it is. So you think about your investment committee should not be 12 people. It probably shouldn't be two investment people either, four to six people. We know that cognitive”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After David Swenson. So, David's book is still the seminal Bible, but what happened and how does CIOs evolve from there? And then the last section is the best remaining quotes distilled in life lessons and investment lessons. It's a ton of fun.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Chapter I wrote. I had written separately about interviewing because in all of the years of interviewing managers, I had never once thought about how was I doing as an interviewer? But once I started the podcast, I started reading a little bit and listening to the way that people like Larry King or Tim Ferris or Cal Fussman, these real professional interviewers go about interviewing. And you quickly learn, oh, there's a set of things that they do that are common across the discipline. And then the book just took shape like that. The first section is called Toolkit. And it's five tools interviewing decision making or two of the five. The other three are negotiations leadership and management. These are all things that CIOs and investment professionals need to be effective in their jobs. And not a single one is taught in investment organizations in the CFA. They're absolutely taught in other businesses or other disciplines. Some of my favorite guests on the show were not investment people and really deeply ensconced in those lessons. And so that's a section of the book. Then there's a section of investment frameworks which are my way of thinking about is what happened to the CIOC?”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I could quickly go through, read the quotes. And that was the idea was, okay, maybe we'll do like a quote volume. And by the way, I've done that. It's not the book, but I am making it available once the book comes out to every single person who joins our free mailing list because it's kind of cool. And it started that way. And through that, there were some other things that I really wanted to curate for myself. The first was decision making. So I've interviewed Annie Duke a number of times, Michael Mobison a number of times, Gary Klein, and they all have these great nuggets about decision making that I really was not privy to in my 20 years of investing. And I wanted to make sure that when I make investment decisions or I make decisions in life, that I'm being thoughtful about what I've been exposed to. And it just doesn't go in my own ear and out the other. And so I wanted to just distill that into like my own checklist of how do I think good decision making works. And that turned into the first.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First, let's start with the anti-inspiration. The anti-inspiration is previously writing a book because once I did that, I was pretty sure that I always say that the only thing writing a book does is it take us up time and resources, which are the two precious assets that we have. What happened with this was I knew there was a book in the podcast if I ever chose to write it. I wasn't sure if I would. I didn't know what that book would be. And after 50, 100 conversations on the podcast, I had gotten to the point where I couldn't remember the great nuggets from Jenny. Like you were probably the fourth guest, if I remember right. I remember you talked a little bit about design thinking, but I barely remember that conversation. I just know that there were some great gems in there. And so I decided to try to figure out a way to go back and curate that. And it started with, I had a couple interns last summer who helped me outline every single episode in quotes.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which means you have to put your own priorities first. And it doesn't mean that you're a bad person or negative or there's anything wrong with just not responding to something that just happened to come through the transom.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To ask for whatever they want to ask you for, for a meeting with a manager or something like that. But you didn't ask them to, and that's okay, which means there's nothing wrong with you actually not responding. And I've really struggled with that because I always wanted to be someone who was open and responsive. And when I had lots of terrific people on our team at protege, I would say, look, if you say no, that's okay, but you have to respond. And now I've just gotten comfortable with, look, I'm just not going to respond to everything. There's more coming in than I wanted. It would take me an hour every single day to respond to everything that comes in. And we all need to live our own life, one of the aphorisms from the hero's journey, be the hero of your own life.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Saying, I have so many things I'd rather be doing in that time. But don't get me wrong for a second, like I am not good at saying no. The one area that will have commonality that I think is fine is a concept. So I have a lot of people reach out to me over LinkedIn and Twitter and LinkedIn in particular. I'll connect immediately with LinkedIn. It allows people to follow me. And so my LinkedIn is a mess. Meaning there's 13 or 14,000 people on it that are connections.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's not easy. So I would say two things. First, up until about a year ago, I really had a hard time saying no because I actually had time. And it's a real stretch to figure out a way to say no when you actually do have the time, even if it might not be high value time, you're leaving space if you don't meet with that person. So one of the things I've tried to figure out is how can you say no in a way that's almost like a no and instead of a no but so one example of that is I have people regularly will say, hey, I just want to catch up and it may not be that I don't want to catch up with them. It's just not going to fit into my top 100 priorities. And so I might say I'm totally swamped the next two or three weeks. Right now it's easy because I say I have a book launch coming. I'm totally swamped. But then I say anything I can help you with, just drop an email. And I'll respond to those emails, but it's much, much quicker to respond to an email for two minutes than to have a casual 30 to 45 to hour long call where after 20 minutes I'm”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we're probably not going to mutually get a lot of value out of it. I do a lot of those calls anyway, but I don't prioritize them. And so as time goes on and you leave enough time for me, it tends to be Friday afternoons to look at my week next week and really two weeks out or three weeks out and say, do things look about right? And then you just kind of just once you hit Monday, you're just going.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the day, I get a little stressed. So you figure out how your schedule works. Now that is in the weeds. I'll go to one higher level and then we can move on, which is the whole why about all of that has to start with for me, it's my vision for the business. You're like, okay, how should the vision for the business fit into my calendar? I need to think about, okay, what matters for the business? Are these revenue generated activities or are these just fun conversations to have? And how do I prioritize those in terms of what goes into my calendar? If I have to choose between when I want to sit down and talk to someone or these days have a Zoom call, is that someone who I'm going to be compounding my relationship with and compounding knowledge by having that conversation? Because that's part of what I'm trying to do. Or is it just someone who I think is a one-off call? Maybe I can help them, but it's probably not going to be a relationship.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always a fun conversation. I always learn something, and who knows what will come of that? And maybe I can share with you what I'm doing, and that's going to help you. Well, that will never happen if at some point in time I don't have a reminder, oh, I have to talk to Jenny in a while. Let me drop an email because I know the few times I have done that, we're both like, oh, yeah, let's get together and talk. So some of it is figuring out, which I'm still in the process of doing, how much time do I need to block on my calendar for people I want to reach out to to try to get on my calendar. And all of those times are pre-committed, meaning that if someone says, hey, Ted, can we talk about this? Now my assistant, who's just fabulous and fabulous to have, will know there's no meetings that get scheduled then. And she also knows I'll do three or four calls every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoon, and they should be spaced a little bit so I can breathe. And I need time at the end of the day because I'm a zero inbox guy. And if I don't get through all my emails at the end,”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I have maximum effectiveness in the mornings from 9 to 12, maybe to eight or seven to 11. That's when I can get really like focused work done. And later in the day, I might fade, but there's lots of things you need. I need to respond to emails. I need to assign stuff. I need to move stuff around in my calendar, whatever it is. Figure out when you have the most energy and then optimize your day based on your own body clock and energy schedule. So those are two little ones. The last one that is just constantly evolving is outside of those times that are blocked off or the times where I'm just getting stuff done, who do I want to talk to? Because lots of people want to talk to me. And I have a list that comes from a tool and there are a lot of people on the list that I know, Jenny, I do not want six months to go by before we get a chance to sit down and talk about investing because it's”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Go through my calendar now, and there are certain blocks of time that I just call for me, I call it focus time. I don't know exactly what I'll be doing. Maybe I'll be editing a podcast then. Maybe I'll be doing research for a show. Maybe I'll be doing some investment work. But I have a couple of blocks of a few hours a week that nobody gets on my calendar in those times. And we all can do that, but you have to pre-commit it because what I was finding was as I got busier and busier, people reach out all the time and say, hey, can we catch up? And people I know and like, and I'd love to. And oh, can I talk to you about this? And before you knew it, your calendar is just gone all day, every day. And so the first is pre-committing the calendar to block time that you need. The second part of that is figuring out your own body clock.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love the question. Thanks, Shenny. My wife would tell you that my real superpower is this like trying to be a ninja about efficiency. I'm not so sure about that, but I absolutely love trying to maximize my time. And part of that, for those who know Myris Briggs, I'm an ESTJ. And that coding, you usually find them in like a COO, not a COO. Somebody just likes to get stuff done in an efficient way. So there are a few things that I've done that I'd love to share that I think are incredibly helpful because we all get really busy and our calendars get filled. And the first is this idea of pre-committing your calendar.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Filtering ideas, I think there are ways, and maybe it's just through having them on the podcast, but I think there are ways that I can contribute and build a relationship with the people running the money. Have been showed investment opportunities in great funds that people say, oh, this is scarce capacity, but I'll have no connectivity to those people. And I'm just not interested in doing that anymore.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Valuable sports franchises. And then with COVID, you had this funny dynamic where all these owners who had vanity interests in these teams and always got a dividend every year were now being called to make capital calls. And it wasn't so much fun to talk to people about it at a cocktail party that they couldn't go to because of COVID. So you had this interesting dynamic of remarkably good team. I got reintroduced them two or three times last year. Same thing. People saying, oh, you should do a podcast. And I finally said, well, let me talk to them. And lo and behold, they'd raised a billion dollars. They had done three deals. And there was a story there. And the reason I bring it up is because they haven't done a final close yet. So they'll be closing, I think, of it about a billion and a half in a few months. And I spent some time understanding what the investment was with some of the people on the team. Very due diligence light compared to what you do or what I used to do, but enough that I took my investment instinct and said, I think this is a unique opportunity. I think I understand these people. And most importantly, and what's different a little bit about how I'm”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Part of the reason why SPACs had such this massive infusion of capital. So that's one that's new and exciting, but that's not interesting to anyone else except for me. So the one that I've talked about recently with you and a group of past guests is a fund called Arctos Sports Partners. I'm a big sports nut. I got introduced to Arctos really because someone thought that they'd be an interesting podcast guest. And that was about a year and a half ago. They hadn't raised any money. I got introduced to Doc O'Connor, who's the former president of Madison Square Garden COO of Creative Arts Agency, and he partnered with Ian Charles, who is a partner at Landmark Partners, the Secondaries Business. And they created an investment fund to buy minority stakes in professional sports franchises. And I won't go through the entire investment thesis, but what you have is an asset that is incredibly valuable and opaque what that value is. And suffice it to say that when you do the work, it's more than you could read in the Forbes, what are the most”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, we have talked about this. It's not surprising, Jenny, if you're in your seat overseeing billions of dollars that great opportunities will come to you. It was surprising to me with my very small balance sheet that I would see new very interesting investment opportunities. So it's just in the last year that I've started putting my capital to work in less liquid things. It's always easy to do it in liquid things, but it takes some planning and thought to do that. Some of them have come from the shows. Some of them have come from historical relationships. And it's more fun for me to talk about the ones that other people have access to because there are one or two, for example, I've just joined the board of a SCAC who's through a manager that I've been advising for three or four years and I've written about this and shared it. The sponsor equity in a SPAC is the best risk reward available in the markets anywhere that I've seen since the subprime short. And I won't go into why that is, but it's.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know that you're still exceptionally excited about investing in something you've mentioned to me is that in compounding knowledge and relationships, you're seeing some investment opportunities that are really, really unique. And it's something that's giving you a lot of energy. Can you talk a little bit about what those are?”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Carefully the learning is always happening for all of us, the implementing is investing. So there is a piece of this that, yes, I'm still investing and I intend to do that in the future. The biggest difference is sharing because when I sat a protege or even when I sat at Yale, sharing what you were doing and sharing it publicly certainly was not a part of your job. In fact, some people would say that is a detriment to your returns. But that is a key component of what I want to do. And then I do have a set of value statement that I put together and I summarized it as compounding knowledge and relationships. It's not about compounding capital for me. It's about compounding what I know about investing and really compounding relationships, the people I know, how do I help them? How do we help each other? And it's just the most gratifying thing that I've done in my career.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so this came out of some of the interviews I did, and particularly with Shundrun Thomas, who's the CEO at Northern Trust Asset Management, and just a gifted gifted leader. And I wrote, there's a chapter in the book that's coming out about leadership and some of those principles. So I took that to heart, and last year I said, I'm going to create a mission statement and a set of values for capital allocators. And the fun part about doing that then was I was just doing it for myself. I had no one else to appease. I didn't have to make any compromises in what that value would be, but I knew that when I went to hire people, I wanted them to fit into these values. And I did take the statement that I wrote and shared it with two close, close friends of mine in my inner circle to get their feedback and make sure that they felt it resonated right with who I am and how I work. The vision statement is the following, is to learn, share, and implement the process of elite investors. And I chose each of those words.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it was a very, very different proposition. And I still get inbounds. And I've said, you know what? For now, I'm not doing that. And the new experiment, and we'll see what happens, is to take that onto a webinar format. And I'll be doing the first one actually next week, which backstop solutions has sponsored. And they said, let's do a panel on technology for the investment office. And how do you get a return on your investment for technology? And they put Ashby Monk, who's been on the show and Kenakundi, a former colleague of mine and chat at Backstop. It's going to be really interesting. I hope people will listen to it. And that's different, right? That's live. They'll have that recording. There'll be a subset of people who listen. And if there's value to that, I'm excited about that. But that's a new experiment. I still have an economic opportunity in this first meeting. I just didn't like the way it felt and I didn't think the value proposition was strong enough to continue to offer.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it didn't feel right. And the reason it didn't feel right was that it was clear to me that those people for the most part wanted to be on the podcast. And I had separated the two. And I said, no, this is outside the podcast. And even though they were getting value out of it, what I was hearing back was that they loved it. But they didn't love it for the reason I thought they would. They didn't love it because people listened to the recording and it improved and accelerated their process. They loved it because people said, oh, Ted interviewed you. That's really interesting. I want to meet with you. And I said, wait a minute. So what they're selling is a signaling effect that I don't think existed.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be a great platform. I called it first meeting. And the idea was to do the first meeting that a good allocator, or hopefully a good allocator, would have with the manager and let that manager distribute it to accelerate their process. It was going to be a paid service. And I got a lot of interest. I probably did a dozen of them last year.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel like I'm just at the beginning of this process of testing, but I'll tell you one that's probably the most interesting. So last year, I had so many money managers coming to me to want to be on the show for obvious reasons, because the listeners are just this terrific group of allocators and money managers and other people in the community, but they wanted to come on the show to tell their story. And that really isn't what the show is about. The show is about me choosing who I think can add value in the knowledge base of the audience. But one of the managers I had on, Geordie Visser at Weiss, called me up the next week and said, I think you have something here because ever since I did the podcast with you, my meetings are better than they were before. And so much so that I'm not going to any first meetings anymore unless they've listened to the podcast. And so he said, I think you need to do something with this. So I listened to him and I created something that I thought would.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that felt very different from having a business that I'm not sure how much money this business makes and should I be hiring people and paying them and just in doing it and flipping that switch has been this massive growth opportunity for me because you immediately can get leverage and develop the processes so that I can spend my time doing the things I want to do, which is really talking to people about investing, educating, and I call it compounding knowledge and relationships.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Members, I said, Well, this podcast actually is okay. Then I flipped the switch and I went, wow, what can I do? And that is the biggest difference with what I'm doing today. In the past, there's managing capital and protege had a great run for many years. A lot of it was I'm going to make this money so I can figure out what I want to do. And what I didn't appreciate the time was that constant desire to innovate within what I was doing. It was more, we've got a great model, let's just keep going with it and let's hold it as tightly as we can and make sure we don't lose this. This feels like a piggy bank and we're adding value for our clients. Like let's just keep doing the same thing. And now it's completely the opposite. It is what's working, how do you experiment? How do you create optionality and then be just totally open to what those options might be? So the entrepreneurship part has been really fun. I've just hired people for the first time. I had people I had hired in the past to protege and work with people. So I was really comfortable managing people.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So a lot of it is the same. So I come from a family of educators. My mother was a career teacher. My father's a doctor who also taught my sister is a special ed teacher who's now an administrator. So I always thought I would be a teacher. And maybe the podcast is that, right? It's a modern digital way of teaching. So that part, I think even when I was sitting in the seat of investing money, I had clients and the conversations with clients felt like maybe we're just teaching them about what we were doing. But that was very, very natural. part that wasn't natural at all was entrepreneurship because i'm very risk averse with my personal life and finances and how i think about stability and so i just describe myself for years as the most reluctant entrepreneur in the world i did everything i could to not turn this into a business but once the foundation got built i mean that in an economic sense once there was sufficient sponsors and premiums”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just love having people on the show who can share their stories and they get something out of it. Where if I have investment ideas, I would much rather call you and tell you, hey, I found this great idea than I would say, oh, I have this great idea and I'm going to make a lot of money from it. So I think that I don't want anyone to think for a second that that reset took courage. If anything, it came from fear. It wasn't a position I chose to be in fully. I did to some extent. And I just feel very fortunate a few years later to have found something out of it that's both fulfilling and pays the bills. It's nice.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Loved about managing money. It was the connection of the activity to the output. So, there are a lot of people like you who have worked at Endowments Foundations like me who work for nonprofits and get this great personal gratitude out of the mission. And I think that is wonderful. I see that. I see the benefit of it. But for whatever reason, that wasn't me. And I knew it wasn't. And then when I was managing an investment fund and I had lots of clients like that, just generating returns, just making money never felt fully fulfilling to me. But at the same time, I love the markets and I really love investing in managers. And so so much of what was happening, I felt that really suited me. But there was always something missing. And as the podcast evolves, and particularly over the last year when it became the core of all the activities I was doing, I kind of figured out that the biggest difference in what I'm doing now and what I did before is sharing what I'm doing. And I absolutely love that.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Amount of time, but I had time. And that's a real luxury. One of the things that happened was I got introduced to a group called the Heroes Journey Foundation, which was one of these amazing experiences where you go off into the woods and really dive deep in your own life. And I learned a lot from that about myself, from that experience and started to really process very quickly what had happened. Now everything that happened since, I'd like to tell you it was by design. And you know Jenny as well as anyone. It really wasn't. Like I was thinking all along, I'm just waiting until I have my next investment seat. And I did for a little while and I did a bunch of projects and I was working with a friend getting ready to start a family office. And the podcast kind of came out of that. And it suits me in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated or expected. And that I think if there's one thing I never really”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh boy, well, you know, I'm not sure I hit pause or pause was hit on me. So let's be clear about that. But to broaden that out so people understand, when I left protege partners, I really didn't know what I was going to do next. And at the time, I was managing and had gotten quite good. I think at managing a portfolio of small hedge funds and even 2015 and the markets rolled over in the beginning of 2016 and hedge funds were under scrutiny. So that activity itself was very out of favor. And then as you know, at the same time and something I wasn't anticipating, but I got a divorce. And so, yeah, a lot of my life caused me to hit pause. And so I was fortunate compared to other people in that situation for a number of different reasons. One is even though I felt this great pressure financially, I didn't actually have it. But then you slash your balance sheet in half with the divorce and then you really think you have it. But once you normalize that, you say, actually, had some time.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the podcast has a public sharing to it, but for me, it feels awfully similar to that. If there's an eccentricity next to it, my wife would certainly say this. I'm probably not as good in certain small groups, but not one-on-one, when you're trying to sort of balance and pay attention to multiple people at the same time. I sometimes struggle with that and will just fade out and hope that somehow I can just be connecting with the person next to me. So a little bit of both. I appreciate you saying it. It's something that I think has always just been natural to me. I think about manager meetings. I always liked manager meetings a little bit better when it was one-on-one and the few times you can do that when you're around a team than when you have other people on the team with you just because there's an element of being able to connect that I think is a lot easier for me in that setting.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll let you define genius that way. You know, I don't really know. It's hard to say, yes, that is my genius. What I can say is that one of the things I found is that aspect of doing interviewing just comes naturally and easily for me and more so than other people. And the commonality, whether that's the interviewing process on the podcast or just throughout my life and how I might define that is I'm just really comfortable diving in deeply in one-on-one conversations.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hello, I'm Ted Sides, and this is Capital Allocators. This show is an open exploration of the people and process behind capital allocation through conversations with leaders in the money game, we learn how these holders of the keys to the kingdom allocate their time and their capital. You can keep up to date by visiting capital allocators podcast.com. As we finish up book launch week, I thought I'd share this interview conducted by Jenny Heller, my friend, the seventh guest on the show, and the president and chief investment officer of Brandywine Group Advisors. We discussed the business of capital allocators, entrepreneurship, effectiveness, and investing, including a brief description of my most recent private equity fund investment. Enjoy this interview of me by my friend Jenny Heller.”
2021-03-25 · Capital Allocators · Ted with Jenny Heller – Compounding Knowledge and Relationships (Capital Allocators, EP.185) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source