Transcript
Welcome to Money Isn’t Everything. I’m Mary Wisniewski, Cornerstone Advisors editor-at-large and host of the show, where we explore early-stage ideas that could shake up financial services, if they’re not already.
Today on the show is Dr. Leda Glyptis, who, among other things, is a former banker and helps companies understand how to compete in the digital age.
She writes a regular column for FinTech Futures, is often a keynote speaker at major industry conferences, and most recently published a new book this year called Beyond Resilience.
It’s peppered with takeaways that are helpful for entrepreneurs, including just how difficult it is for founders at times.
Like, sell-your-car-to-make-payroll difficult.
Here’s our conversation.
Leda, welcome to Money Isn’t Everything.
Thanks so much for being on the show today.
Thank you for having me.
It’s great to be here.
Well, it’s great to be here because we just finally met each other in person, that being the most important thing.
It is.
It is so exciting, though, when you’ve been having conversations spanning years with someone and finally they’re there.
It’s like, oh my God, in my head we’re friends, but we haven’t actually met before.
But we are.
We are friends.
And you have a new book that’s out, which is also part of the link.
I’m going to show it for the people who are listening.
I got a copy while I was at the booth.
A little backstory there, I got into the Fintech Meetup back room before it was officially open, and I had one of those neon little shirts that construction people wear.
I was like, “Where are you?”
I was so excited about the construction.
I mean, I know this is not the topic, but when I arrived and was trying to get to the booth, they were like, “Oh, we’re not done building yet, so you’re going to need a high-vis jacket.”
And I was like, “I’m ready to get into character now. I want a tool belt. I want a hard hat.”
Like, no, just high-vis. You’re fine.
No fun.
Whatever.
It looked safe, but of course I know if one had an injury in there it would be hard to do.
But I’m sure anything is possible.
Absolutely.
But yeah, I want to unpack this book with you because I read it over this weekend and just had a lot of really interesting specific examples and vignettes and messaging of what I think would be effective for any founder or bank entrepreneur type to think about.
These are good lessons, good traits to have if you’re trying to build something new.
I even love the little details, like little backstories of how Sardine’s name came from, “Oh, something’s fishy here.”
So I want to unpack some of these major themes.
But just because we mentioned Fintech Meetup already, what were your impressions of that event?
Were you surprised by anything that happened there, other than us in construction gear?
Yeah.
Well, that was a first for me.
Given I’ve been doing this for as long as I have, everyone’s surprised when I say this was my first time in Vegas.
But this was my first time in Vegas.
So that was a lot.
There was a lot.
Aren’t you always like, hey, we’re at these casinos with bankers talking about financial health, among other things?
No, so just before coming on this call, I’m in San Francisco at the moment, so the window between me being awake and not busy and my parents in Greece being awake is very small.
So I gave my mom a quick call in between.
I was saying to her that I had to walk through a casino to go to a conference where I was there, you came to the booth, I was there with Fincan, a KYC/AML solution.
Everyone was gambling like they were in some sort of trance, and everyone was smoking indoors.
You know that the world has moved on because my mother, sitting in Greece, was like, “What? They were smoking indoors?”
This is my first time in Vegas, which gives an interesting backdrop.
I thought the event was great, and it was really interesting for us both, for me being there with a book recently released, in an event that I hadn’t done before.
I was there to catch up with friends old and new and get my book into people’s hands.
Also, I had an amazing panel.
But I was there with Fincan, who’s a partner and client of mine, and we’re on a mini book tour.
I’m with them in San Francisco today.
I’m with them in New York later this week.
But they were leaning into the Meetup quite a lot, obviously, because there’s a fantastic opportunity.
So they and I had slightly different experiences, and we both walked away going, that was actually great.
Intense, but great.
So, well done, Sanj and Gary.
Great job.
Yeah.
It is very intense, but I think they do pick really important panels.
I know one thing that I can’t stop thinking about because it makes me laugh because of how true it is.
It was the robo-advisers talking about a design challenge.
I always focus on, oh, how do you build product for someone who doesn’t know that much about money or does know a lot about money but doesn’t have much money?
How do you get them to use an app?
But the conversation there was like, how do you design a product for the cocky bro?
I was like, good question.
The bro has enough products.
Leave the bro alone.
And how do you get him to stop?
I guess when he loses his money.
I don’t know.
But anyway.
Yes.
It also brought your book to me.
What a delight.
And congratulations again on having that out in the world.
It must be a thrill to see the physical book in people’s hands.
It’s an amazing feeling.
Actually, as you showed to the world, I’ve gone for an understated, subtle color for the cover.
Yeah, I’ll bring it back.
You can actually see it from space.
So when people were walking around the concourse carrying it, I was like, this is fine.
It feels amazing.
When my first book was out, I was like, maybe I will get blasé about having the physical artifact out in the world.
But not today.
I can tell you that book two, not blasé yet.
I’m still like, oh my God, this is a thing.
I didn’t pick the bright yellow because it’s visible from a distance, but it works.
So it was actually really nice.
I could see people really far away carrying it.
I was like, yeah.
I want to explore some of the bigger themes and, of course, anything you want to unpack with it.
One thing that came to mind, and I think it’s because I listened to a podcast you were on before even reading your book, was this word “success.”
I believe you were talking about how people would recoil from it.
Yeah.
Let’s make that our starting point.
Why do you think an entrepreneur doesn’t want to be defined as successful necessarily?
Why is that word tainted?
Yeah.
I think part of it is the jinx, right?
I think people are afraid of the jinx.
It was interesting because, as you say, the book is about, do success stories have anything in common?
That’s what I wanted an answer to when I started my research.
We all talk about failure so much.
Let’s talk about the success stories because actually they are in a minority, but there are enough of them.
So when I started, as you rightly point out, when I started telling people that I wanted to interview them, everyone said yes.
Then when I said what the book was about, they were like, “Oh.”
I think there are a few reasons why people recoil from the word success.
One is the jinx.
Nobody said it, but I absolutely believe it.
When you’re an entrepreneur, there is so much of taking your life into your own hands that goes on, so you don’t want to tempt fate.
I think there’s an element of that.
I think the second element is we always think of success as shiny and pristine and perfect.
Most people are like, I’m not done yet.
I’ve done some things, and some of them have worked and some of them haven’t, but I’m not done yet.
None of what I’ve done is the complete story.
No story I could tell you would be the complete story.
For every success story I have, there are the 10 times that we fell flat on our face on the way there.
So success feels loaded.
That’s why one of the things I do early on in the book is, if we take the sting of perfection out of the word “success” and it’s like a thing that works for long enough to stand on its own two feet, not a thing that was pristine or worked forever, then actually we have quite a few success stories.
It doesn’t need to be about perfection.
It doesn’t need to be the full story.
It has to be about getting things over the line, which is hard enough.
But it was funny to see everyone going, “Oh no, I don’t want that word. Arrogant. It feels scary.”
See, that’s curious to me because I know plenty of people who would want to be in a book about success.
But perhaps they’re not founders.
Perhaps they’re not founders.
I had immense bias at work when I selected the people who are in this.
Yes.
Because the reality is, you were talking about earlier who’s designing solutions for the bros.
Well, the bros are plentiful out there, and I’m sure there are some categories of bro that include some women, right?
This is not a gender thing.
But there is an arrogant, “I stand tall against the world,” heroic founder narrative out there.
I just don’t buy it.
I don’t believe it’s true.
I don’t believe it’s a full story.
I don’t believe it’s helpful.
So I very much avoided those people.
Yeah.
And you got real.
I can’t remember which founder this was, or it was co-founders, but you had mentioned about them selling their car to keep their business.
Two people said that.
It was Ton Bǿnd from Gii, now Carman Plus, sold his car to make payroll.
And Daniela Binatti and her husband of Pismo sold their cars so that they could manage their household expenses and keep their daughters in their school.
The personal sacrifices people make.
Both of these companies, both Gii and Pismo, have had massive exits.
Massive exits.
I love the fact that when I spoke to these two people, the stories they wanted to share were about the reality of an entrepreneur.
Not everyone gets the massive exit to Walt Disney or Visa.
Most people will have to make the hard calls of, how am I going to make payroll?
How am I going to keep my family going while I’m not taking a salary?
That unglamorous part of the founder life needs to be talked about because successes are 5%.
Challenges are 100%.
Yeah.
I think that’s, you know, I live in Los Angeles, and it is something that’s common for celebrities or actors, where you just see the end result and you think it’s been a charmed life.
But it is actually pretty dang challenging underneath.
I have one segment in the show, and it ties nicely to this.
It’s “That’s What You Said,” and this is what you wrote, actually, which is, “Success, for the purposes of this book, is the art of not dying.”
I like that definition because I think it’s especially, well, actually I might just take it for myself.
I do think it’s especially important when you think about startups because most startups fail.
So, how did you land on that definition of success for the book?
So, I was an academic before I went into finance, and I worked a lot on transitions, regime transition.
We used to say that you consider a democracy stable if they’ve had two changeovers of power and the loser hands over power to the winner without picking up a gun.
My students used to hate that definition.
Like, that’s it?
That’s all?
Surely you need human rights protected, and you need everyone, like, liberty, happiness and Fruit of the Loom kind of thing.
And it was like, no.
You need a working definition that says, yes, it is a functioning democracy if there have been two changeovers of power.
Actually, the bar is low enough without it being unhelpful.
It also is helpful because it tells you that a working, functioning democracy can still fail.
You’re not protected.
So I took that and tried to apply it to the business setting of success.
What is a definition that doesn’t need you to have been successful for 100 years before it says, “Yeah, that works,” and also that doesn’t say that if you succeeded up until now, you’ll succeed forever?
Think about Blockbuster.
The Blockbuster moment.
The reality is, Blockbuster was a very successful business for a long time.
The fact that they missed their turn doesn’t mean that they weren’t successful.
So I tried to apply that definition of democracy to the idea of success.
A definition that is robust enough to really help you divide between good ideas and something meaningful, but also not something that will require you to be perfect or keep going profitably for 20 years before you can go, “Yeah, that worked.”
Yeah.
I found that in your book.
I kept feeling like among your themes was, it’s not linear, this path to success.
You’re going to be high, you’re going to be low.
Whatever direction you’re going, you’re going to have another one come at you sooner than later, probably.
Yep.
Yep.
Especially for the financial services types, this is overwhelming as a thought exercise, right?
You want the stability.
You want your Outlook plan for the whole year of, these are my meetings, this is, look at me climbing on up.
But the reality is, that’s not really going to play out like that.
No.
It’s funny.
I had a conversation with someone about the book recently, and he was like, “It sounds like you don’t want people to become entrepreneurs.”
I’m like, I am.
Because I don’t want them to be entrepreneurs.
But because I think that we have created a mythology around, everyone has a novel in them, everyone has a startup in them.
For many years there were these corporately funded playgrounds where people could start a startup, and it almost felt like there was a cushion that would catch you.
There isn’t.
So I don’t want to put people off.
I just don’t think we’ve done ourselves any favors with that narrative of, it’s going to be great.
It’s not.
It’s going to be really, really hard for everyone.
And for some it’s going to be great.
Some people really have it in them, and those people will go and go again.
But I do try to put the others off.
I do try to create that moment of, are you sure this is for you?
Yeah.
Well, you definitely do.
Because I’m like, there’s definitely, you know, it takes someone bold.
Takes someone with arrogance, but in a positive way.
You need optimism, for sure.
You need optimism.
You need a certain degree of self-belief, which sometimes can translate into arrogance and sometimes it doesn’t.
But you definitely need that view of, here’s a big problem that no one else has tackled.
I will.
You need a certain degree of self-confidence to do that, to not be like, no, that’s above my pay grade and below my sense of wonder.
I will leave it for someone else.
Oh, I love that phrase.
“Below my sense of wonder.”
Gotham.
It is not one of mine.
TV show.
You know it’s well said.
A crusty old policeman says that a lot.
It’s like, “I’m not doing that. It’s above my pay grade and beneath my sense of wonder.”
I was like, I like that.
I’m stealing that.
Oh my gosh.
I want that in a deck.
There you go.
See, adding value every day.
Every day.
This other thing you brought up about the entrepreneur, and I think it’s really important.
I make this rookie mistake all the time of indecision.
You argue that actually just deciding anything would be better than letting indecision carry on and suck up resources and so on.
How did you come to think about indecision and the problems that actually causes more than, let’s say, just waiting to find the perfect answer?
Part of it is personality.
I personally struggle with indecision.
But I think I came at it from two places.
One is I have worked in an entrepreneurial environment, and the last few years of my life I have worked inside startups, although I’m not a founder myself.
But most of my career was inside big corporates, where indecision masquerades as optionality.
Actually, you put a lot of funds and time and energy into keeping your options open or hedging or buying you more rope before you need to make a decision.
But the reality is, every time you maintain your sights on 10 options rather than one, the dilution of your execution ability, your resources, your time, is exponential.
So I actually saw what was strategy across the board for a very long time, that optionality play, really eat into resources in a way that we weren’t quantifying properly.
Because we were talking about what we spent on each thing, but we weren’t talking about that dilution of impact.
So that started getting me really thinking about, actually, organizations that said, “We’re not doing any of that,” executed faster on the things they did, even if those things were less ambitious.
As that was percolating in my head, the other area where this thing of, decide quickly, came up, hiring and firing.
Again, you tie it to values and it’s like, that’s not fluffy.
That’s not cute and loving.
We’re talking about culture.
One of the things that people came up, particularly founders, came up with again and again was, be decisive about firing.
Be extremely decisive in the case of firing people who are not working out.
It’s not about optionality as much as giving people time, mostly giving yourself time before you have to make a difficult decision.
Every single one of them talked about having regretted not making the decision in a timely manner.
Because again, the impact is not in terms of that person and how long it will take you to backfill their position.
It’s the faith that the company loses in you.
It’s the toxic effect a bad hire has on team members.
And I’ve done that.
I’m guilty of that.
As I say in the book, of knowing I had to let go of someone and not doing it because it would cause me other problems.
I have regretted that.
The combination between having seen the industry go down the optionality path and really not gotten any results from it, and having seen leaders, myself included, hesitate when you have to make a difficult decision, it’s like, if you take a step back, that time that you prevaricate always comes with a very, very high price tag.
Yeah.
I have never had to fire someone.
Gosh, I hope I never have to.
I’ve had to do it quite a few times over the years, and I will say it never gets easy.
Even if you’re firing with cause, even if they failed to perform or have behaved poorly, it is a horrible, horrible conversation.
But it is a necessary skill for anyone leading, whether it’s in a startup or corporate.
Oh yeah.
I can’t even think enough to do it.
Right.
Oh, absolutely.
You mentioned that toxic.
Certainly, you can hire someone that brings down the whole team just because, well, maybe they’re a bully or just maybe they’re sloppy, or whatever.
Sloppy.
My old boss described someone as sloppy and stroppy, and I was like, why is he still here if, and I’m not picking up the slack, FYI.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It’s like, you see it, you called it, do something about it.
One of my favorite quotes in the book is from the CMO of PensionBee, Jasper Martens, who says, “You have to do something about toxic people because they’re like Teflon. Nothing sticks to them, so they stick around.”
I was like, oh my God, I know so many people like that.
I know so many people like that.
This is the perfect quote.
Well, I have two questions, but they take us in different paths.
I think we’ll stick to this talent area since we’re on it.
Also in the book, you had a section talking about how it’s a different type of talent you’re sourcing when you’re just starting the startup versus when it’s more properly funded.
Meaning, maybe you don’t have air conditioning on in the early days in the office.
Who does that bring through the door versus, hey, now you’ve got all these perks?
I’m wondering, through your interviews or just even working through the book source, going through your notes, were there any standouts in this or any lessons that would be helpful to someone starting out?
So there are three things that really stayed with me.
One was with Juan Guerra, the CEO of Revolut Mexico, who I’ve known for many, many years.
I’ve known him start a series of businesses.
I’ve seen him go into corporate roles.
As we were talking about the fact that, you know, Revolut is an established business, but at the time when we did the interview he was applying for a license that he now got, it was a startup setup.
He said, “You know, I’ve done all sides of this. I now know I’m not a farmer. I like planting things. I don’t necessarily need to harvest them forever and tend the field.”
That self-awareness is really important.
Because the reality is, when you start your career, you’ll have certain ideas about what you’re good at.
They may or may not map out to what you’re good at really.
For Juan, looking back at his career and going, “You know what? I’m good at starting things. I enjoy starting.”
That self-awareness is actually really important.
So if you’re midway through your career, talk to some of your colleagues.
Talk to some of your old bosses, mentors.
You might be surprised by what they tell you you’re good at, and it might not be what you think you’re good at.
That’s an interesting exercise.
That would make me nervous because personally I always want the thing that I’m good at to be the thing that I like doing.
I want the thing that I’m good at, and I’ll go back to your question, but I wanted the thing that I’m good at to be the thing I’m most proud of.
So for me, you didn’t ask, but I’m going to tell you anyway.
Bring it on.
Because of my background, because I come from a family where I was the first one to go to university, because I was very bright as a kid and everyone was like, “Girls need to be pretty. You shouldn’t be bright. What are you doing? No one will want to marry you.”
Being intelligent is so important.
So for me, it’s like, I’m smart, I’m hardworking, I’m good at this.
I was absolutely heartbroken when one of my first big promotions, my boss at the time told me that my biggest asset was my personality and my energy level.
I was like, what?
And I was like, but I’m so smart.
He was like, “Yeah, yeah.”
But I’m so good at this.
He was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s the energy.”
It was gutting.
I was disappointed.
I was actually quite upset.
But as the years pass, I see what he means.
The thing I’m proud of has everything to do with my journey and where I put in the work.
But the thing he sees is the thing that’s differentiating in the market.
Yeah.
I was just going to say, I bet he’s highlighting that just because in this industry there aren’t so many energetic people in a daily conversation.
I know.
My energy runs high.
I remember someone telling me, “Your energy is my payment.”
I’m like, well, that’s great.
If only that could be true.
If only that could be true for all things.
So I think that conversation is important, right?
If you don’t know what phase is yours, where you’re good at, have that conversation.
It might disappoint you like it did me, but it will be useful.
Okay, I’m going to do this too.
But you’re also getting me reflecting on my reviews of some previous jobs.
They’d always highlight my achievement as something I was like, that was the easiest thing in the world for me to do.
Why is that on my accomplishment list?
Easy for them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that’s a big part.
The second thing that really stayed with me is something Christian Nentwich said in the interviews, which is, “The version of you that started this company, you either have to evolve or step away.”
Or both.
Or both.
Then the question, the third piece, becomes, who’s got your back?
Because you may think you’re evolving, but you might not be evolving fast enough for the business.
Who’s got the ability to catch you from the error, to say, “You know what? You’re not changing fast enough. You have blind spots.”
Where is that support?
Where is that mentor?
Where is that support network?
You need to find them.
Then, as an extension of that last piece, I’m going back to Jasper Martens, who said, “I’ve had the same job since I started at PensionBee, the same title, but it’s not the same company. It’s not the same job, and I want to see it through. But every phase is a different challenge.”
Are you evolving in the right way for the business?
If yes, you can stay the course.
If not, you need support or you need to go.
I don’t like this grown-up bit.
I like the early panicky phase where there’s mice in the office and no air conditioning and everything needs to be done and everything’s on fire.
But everything is possible, and there’s adrenaline and there’s fear.
Some people love that.
Some people hate that.
Playing to your strengths.
To what you said earlier, Mary, you want to be good at the thing you’re enjoying.
Maybe that is the answer for a lot of people.
But be honest about the fact that you enjoy it.
Because everyone’s like, “We’re going to see this through to IPO.”
It’s like, do you want that?
Yeah.
Running a business is hard, and it’s a very different mission.
Do you want that?
I like these.
Essentially, we’re asking existential questions of ourselves and the work that we do.
I think that’s really important and hard to answer accurately.
It is.
But at the same time, I’ve been saying this for years to all of my team members.
The reality is, we talk about work-life balance, but if you find it, call me and I’ll come back.
No.
It’s usually like a lot of work, and then like, okay, now these couple days to reset.
We work on average, what, 10, 12-hour days, mostly.
Most of us will work 10, 12-hour days, and then don’t do the math.
Don’t do the math.
Four, five hours over the weekend, right?
So you spend more time doing this than you do doing anything else.
Friends, loved ones, family, hobbies.
Just make it easier on yourself.
Especially for us.
We are in a privileged part of the market.
I know it doesn’t always feel like that, but we’re not working down mines.
We have choices.
Those choices can be about how it feels to show up and do 11, 12 hours a day.
It’s never going to be easy, and you’ll always be like, it’s sunny out there, I want to go out and play.
You can actually play to your strengths.
At the end of the day, we’re at the well-remunerated, creative end of the market.
Why not play to our strengths?
Why not be like, I’m happier when I do that.
I’m good at that.
I’m going to combine the two, and my 12 hours a day will still feel like work.
I don’t buy that.
I don’t either.
Easier.
It’ll be a bit easier.
It makes it easier.
I know when I’m writing something and I really want to write, I’m like, yes, I could just never stop this.
Well, I would still stop.
But it is that thrill.
Still work, but it is that thrill.
I have to ask you about having worked at a bank and also talking about change within a bank or a large corporation.
That feels like Mission Impossible.
But what was your experience like in that?
You know when you have three thoughts at the same time and you’re silent because you don’t know which one to let out first?
Yeah.
So let me start with looking at things from where I am now.
I would give us all a B, B-minus.
We’ve actually achieved quite a lot, but we have achieved it in a really inefficient way.
So if you ask me about the experience of being in the work, it was mostly frustration.
Because when you’re in the weeds of doing the work, you’re like, we have something really substantial here that we all agreed we’re doing.
We’re getting distracted by fear, insecurity, a policy that was written in the ’80s.
So actually, let’s change the policy about the way we manage our time.
Just the fragmentation of attention means that we’re not very good at staying with a problem to solve it.
In fact, my first book is all about the ways the human element and the process element gets in the way of delivering technology changes, nothing to do with the tech.
So if you ask me about the time that I was actually in the job, frustration was my overwhelming emotion.
Because it’s like, if you could give me more than 15 minutes of your time at a time, we can fix this really easily and fix it in a way that is sustainable for the long term.
But we’re just getting in our own way.
And it’s fixable because we get in our own way.
The process has been one of extreme inefficiency.
So we’ve actually made it quite a long way.
When I started my career, getting onto cloud was another struggle.
Getting an API-first infrastructure was a struggle.
Actually moving away from data lakes to any data architecture that was queryable, is that a word?
It is now.
It is now.
Being able to safely, like when I started my career, we had no way of doing a safe POC with a startup.
Now I’m on the board of a startup that is on the sandbox.
So the change of fundamental building blocks in the industry has actually been momentous.
It’s just we’ve made it harder on ourselves than it needed to be.
So it feels like Mission Impossible even though we’re making progress.
It requires that willingness to bang your head against the brick wall as a sort of job description, which I find is where we need the biggest change.
I’m hoping that as my generation, getting old like me, not you.
Me too.
Generation is now getting into positions, we’re sitting at the big-boy table.
Yeah.
If you’re sitting at the big-boy table and you remember what it was like, how about you remove the requirement to bang your head against the brick wall?
Retain the governance.
Retain the compliance oversight.
We need those things.
But we know where actually our fear gets the best of us.
So how about we stop doing that?
I like that.
It would be great to stop doing that.
Well, what about, just two questions left for you.
One of them is just open-ended.
Is there any area of fintech that you’re especially excited about or scared about, let’s say in the next month or two?
So over the years, I’ve always given the same answer whenever I’ve been asked for predictions, and it is, the bits under the bits need to work.
I know plumbing is not anyone’s favorite topic, and big organizations spend their money where the value can be seen.
I wrote a piece a few years back called “I Want My Bling Where I Can See It.”
People were like, are you serious?
I’m like, yes.
Years ago, I was most excited about the Stripes and the Plaids.
Then I was very into core.
I remain absolutely convinced that we need to get our connectivity right.
Because in a real world where real-time, system-to-system-to-person connectivity is how we operate and how the bad guys operate, actually having robust, scalable and meaningfully calibrated infrastructure is the most important.
Maybe you want to do sexy AI stuff at the top end, or you just want to be able to participate in global transactions without having to coordinate all your T-plus-whatever regimes in the back.
We cannot talk about banking, fintech, AI.
We can’t talk about any of that without going, okay, pop the hood and let me see what you’ve got underneath.
Because unless these bits can do the sexy things you want at the top without falling over, you have a resilience problem.
You don’t want a resilience problem in the era of deepfakes.
You don’t want a resilience problem in the era of quantum computing implementations coming our way.
So the only conversation we should be having, particularly within existing institutional players, is put your infrastructure right.
Yeah.
I’m glad you led us to that point because it’s very important and very practical in a meaningful way.
I just have one question left for you.
But before that, I just want to congratulate you again on your book.
I’ll drop where to buy it in the show links.
If anyone wants to reach out to you, is there a best way?
LinkedIn.
I occasionally still visit X, but I’m not very active there these days.
But I’m still there if you want to find me.
Yeah.
LinkedIn.
I know what you mean.
Last question.
What’s the image on your phone’s lock screen?
Oh.
It is myself and my boyfriend on the island of Hydra.
Oh.
That sounds really amazing.
Was it?
It’s beautiful.
It’s an island only an hour away from Athens, which is where I’m from, in case people haven’t worked that out.
It is where Leonard Cohen used to live, and it is absolutely stunning because no cars are allowed.
There are no cars on the island other than one rubbish truck.
So you see people moving building supplies on donkeys.
Everyone has to carry their stuff.
It’s just so quiet, so peaceful.
You know what?
That’s amazing.
I’m from Michigan, and there’s one island called Mackinac Island, and no cars there either.
I haven’t been there in years, but I’ll be going later this year.
So what’s on yours?
What’s on your lock screen?
Oh, what’s on mine?
I paused only because I changed it, but it’s always my dog.
It’s my Maltipoo, Benedict, named after Much Ado About Nothing.
But he has his party hat on.
Oh, I love that.
Anyway, thanks again for being on the show.
Lovely to reconnect with you.
Congratulations again.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Okay, one thing I learned is that making a decision, any decision, can be more helpful than wasting time investigating options.
And I really need to apply that to my own life.
Two weeks from now, we’ll be exploring rethinking value at financial institutions by a perk that might surprise you.
See you then.
Enjoying Money Isn't Everything?
Subscribe on your favorite platform