Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masser and I'm
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stanobek. We're here every day bringing
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Speaker 1: plus technology, politics, economics, all harnessing the power of Business
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Speaker 1: download Bloomberg Business Week and iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot Com.
Speaker 1: You can also listen to our radio show at two
Speaker 1: pm Eastern Time on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on
Speaker 1: YouTube search Bloomberg Global News. Well, we love to do
Speaker 1: regular check ins when it comes to crypto. It's certainly
Speaker 1: something that we talk about each and every day on
Speaker 1: Quick take Stock. Katie Greidfeld, who's joining me right now,
Speaker 1: We concre that each day at noon Eastern time. You
Speaker 1: can watch that at Bloomberg dot com slash qt. Someone
Speaker 1: who joins us all the time on Quick take Stock
Speaker 1: is Judika Chow. She's head of OTC options trading at Kraken.
Speaker 1: She joins us on Bloomberg Business Week Radio this afternoon
Speaker 1: from New York City. Ju Think, how are you hey? Guys, good,
Speaker 1: how are you We're doing getting ready for this three
Speaker 1: day weekend, But before we get there, we got to
Speaker 1: do a deep dive into bitcoin and what's been happening
Speaker 1: with crypto Bitcoin down about one point five really testing
Speaker 1: that mark up. We ask you all the time, do
Speaker 1: you think to explain the volatility here? Why are we
Speaker 1: seeing this recent sell off when we are testing forty
Speaker 1: four dollars recently? Well, I think the crypto markets, in
Speaker 1: bitcoin in particular, have been seeing a little bit of
Speaker 1: a lack of conviction as it relates to UM to bitcoin.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of the longholders are already long UM,
Speaker 1: and I think the some of the bears have paired
Speaker 1: their positions, and so a lot of people are on
Speaker 1: the sidelines, and that's kind of resulting in Bitcoin just
Speaker 1: moving with the broader markets UM but sort of following
Speaker 1: the trends of the NAZAC and what's going on globally
Speaker 1: UM without some of the more Bitcoin specific factors at play.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's kind of what's driving it
Speaker 1: right now. We're definitely seeing more interest in other kinds
Speaker 1: of trading like options and relatives and yield plates, but
Speaker 1: I would say, in terms of the spot flows that
Speaker 1: we're seeing on the OTC desk, it's actually more money
Speaker 1: on the sidelines and not a lot of conviction in
Speaker 1: the spot stays right now. Well, Jessicau, that's what I
Speaker 1: want to talk about, is that you know you are
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of interest in trading. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you look at the NASZAC one hundred, like you said,
Speaker 1: if you look at options and derivatives, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of activity there. Not a ton when it comes to
Speaker 1: crypto though. I mean, if you look across exchanges right now,
Speaker 1: crypto exchanges that ends, you have seen trading volumes drop.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious. So if this is this sort of
Speaker 1: malaise is to continue where you know we're sort of
Speaker 1: range bound, sort of trading sideways, is that ultimately bad
Speaker 1: news for crypto because I mean, at least when it
Speaker 1: comes to uh some of the people I follow on Twitter,
Speaker 1: it seems like the volatility is part of the fun.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no question that volumes are inversely proportional
Speaker 1: to volatility. So if you looked at when we have
Speaker 1: the bull run, it wasn't just the fact that bigoin
Speaker 1: was going up, but the volatility was realized was north
Speaker 1: of a hundred, and that was sustained for months at
Speaker 1: a time, and that was definitely good for volumes and
Speaker 1: activity and kind of building momentum. And I think, like
Speaker 1: real economic momentum, um and momentum goes both ways, kind
Speaker 1: of like inertia, so things sort of stop moving and
Speaker 1: people stop talking about it, and I think that definitely
Speaker 1: comes into plan. We're seeing that with bitcoin sitting at
Speaker 1: a sixties seventy ball um. The other aspect is that
Speaker 1: it usually is relative to what the other opportunities are
Speaker 1: and so to the extent there is UH volatility or
Speaker 1: relative volatility in the stock market, then capital might be
Speaker 1: deployed there instead. The one thing I will say is
Speaker 1: that on the option side, we do see um. We're
Speaker 1: seeing very healthy flows and activity, and I think part
Speaker 1: of the reason there is because with options there's a
Speaker 1: wider range of more nuanced positions and bets that people
Speaker 1: can put on different kinds of yield place so it's
Speaker 1: not as simple as just buying or selling. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no question that overall, all, you know, as we
Speaker 1: want damp and volatility as a sign of maturity um
Speaker 1: when it comes to trading, volume and activity, it has
Speaker 1: the sort of quieting effect. And something I think about
Speaker 1: a lot is that there seems like there's no shortage
Speaker 1: of enthusiasm in the broadbrush crypto space if you think
Speaker 1: about all the enthusiasm around Web three, around Defy, around
Speaker 1: the metaverse, but it seems like that isn't translating into
Speaker 1: the price of bitcoin at all. So I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear your thoughts on whether we're sort of seeing I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe a bifurcation in the space, maybe something
Speaker 1: not as strong as that. But again, it just seems
Speaker 1: like there is a lot of enthusiasm and things to
Speaker 1: get excited about in the broader cryptocurrency universe, but not
Speaker 1: necessarily when it comes to the prices of the coins. Definitely,
Speaker 1: and this is something we've seen over the years. The
Speaker 1: price of the coins is often driven by whales um
Speaker 1: by very large healthy accumulation, unhealthy accumulation um It's really
Speaker 1: the price action can deviate sometimes from what we're seeing
Speaker 1: in terms of like the fundamentals on the ground. And
Speaker 1: I think if I look back to like that happened
Speaker 1: in maybe more of a negative way, which is that
Speaker 1: price was appreciating extremely rapidly, much more than some of
Speaker 1: the actual progress that we were making in terms of
Speaker 1: building out use cases and protocol development. Now one could
Speaker 1: argue it's perhaps the opposite. There's prices a little bit
Speaker 1: of lackluster given some inflation concerns, but there's more going
Speaker 1: on in terms of building, investment in space, hiring in
Speaker 1: the space UM from traditional finance and tech, and so
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these things will see play
Speaker 1: out over the course of years as UM companies are
Speaker 1: built in use cases are built, and it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: reflected in price because those dynamics are a little bit different.
Speaker 1: Do you think that we only have about forty seconds
Speaker 1: left with you? But I'm wondering, when you think about
Speaker 1: the crypto universe, what is it we should be focused on.
Speaker 1: What's it our that our investor audience should be focused
Speaker 1: on in terms of catalysts move forward? Well, I think
Speaker 1: right now there's definitely a pay attention to the macro environment,
Speaker 1: mostly in terms of UM, in terms of volatility, but
Speaker 1: also in terms of inflation. You know, I think with
Speaker 1: the three of us have talked a lot about whether
Speaker 1: or not crypto is an inflation hedge, and at some
Speaker 1: point the tides will turn in. It actually will become
Speaker 1: an inflation hedge, and I think being positioned right at
Speaker 1: that time. The question is when the question is when.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've had plenty of hot inflation, Prince haven't
Speaker 1: really seen too much of it into crypto lately. But
Speaker 1: to Jessica's point, it seems like a tech sock. Juso,
Speaker 1: head of OTC Options trading at crack and joining us
Speaker 1: on the phone from New York City. I want to
Speaker 1: bring in James Army, who's an arts columnist for Bloomberg
Speaker 1: business Week. James joins us on the phone from New
Speaker 1: York City. James, I saw this story crossed this morning,
Speaker 1: and I immediately said we have to get James Tarmy
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg business Week radio to explain what exactly is
Speaker 1: happening and talk about it. Um DuPont Airis is sued
Speaker 1: by museum that alleges she took antiques. What's going on here?
Speaker 1: It's quite a story, and the long and short of
Speaker 1: it is that, uh, this woman named Sabrina DuPont Wangenegger,
Speaker 1: whose father was William K. DuPont Um, was uh gifted,
Speaker 1: she says, um a serious of objects in twenty nineteen. Well,
Speaker 1: her father died uh in, and it turned out that
Speaker 1: there was a coddessil to his will that said that
Speaker 1: some of these objects were supposed to go to, uh
Speaker 1: this museum called Winter Okay, wait, I just want to
Speaker 1: I just want to jump in yes. So, so basically
Speaker 1: just think of it as like a little amendment to
Speaker 1: his will that says, by the way, I want X
Speaker 1: number of objects to go to this museum. And the
Speaker 1: museum is actually a museum that was founded by a
Speaker 1: member of the DuPont family. This is a sprawling, very wealthy,
Speaker 1: very old family um and they had a long history
Speaker 1: of giving um objects to Winter churchs UM, an independent institution,
Speaker 1: but the family had been very involved in it. Long
Speaker 1: story short. Uh, She realizes, oh, wait, you know I
Speaker 1: should back up. If the objects in the will are
Speaker 1: sold or given or gifted, great, no one is under
Speaker 1: any obligation to give them back. It's just if these
Speaker 1: things are still part of my estate, they can go
Speaker 1: to the museum. So father dies, she informs the museum
Speaker 1: that there's one thing less um in the will. It
Speaker 1: rather in the estate that was in this kind of
Speaker 1: coddissol and the museum says, great, thank you, takes the thing,
Speaker 1: takes the objects. That's that until there's a major auction
Speaker 1: um of this guy's estate and the daughter had included
Speaker 1: some of the objects she'd been gifted. The museum says,
Speaker 1: wait a second, youth, that these weren't part of the estate.
Speaker 1: Now you're selling them, we want them back. It's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of twists and turns, but what the real
Speaker 1: takeaway is get your affairs in order, because there's no
Speaker 1: way for the daughter to really prove that she received
Speaker 1: the gifts to his father to a daughter. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's sorry, I'm I'm I'm talking a lot about It's well,
Speaker 1: you need to because it's a really complicated story that
Speaker 1: involves cottils and wills and antiques. That's a new word
Speaker 1: for me. I love to reading this. And there's a
Speaker 1: you know, there's a whole part about the codicil in
Speaker 1: the story. And I mean, James, do we know what
Speaker 1: objects that we're arguing over? Because okay, so the lawsuit
Speaker 1: says that you know, she attempted to sell five antiques
Speaker 1: valued at roughly two d thousand dollars. What what what
Speaker 1: are these antiques? Do we know? So? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're pieces of kind of American decorative arts. So
Speaker 1: there are various pieces of nature, but then there's also
Speaker 1: some documents that had historical significance. The thing to remember
Speaker 1: about this, though, is that it represents a very small
Speaker 1: fraction of the overall estate. So the option of this
Speaker 1: man's belongings brought in close to seven million dollars. What
Speaker 1: they're arguing about represents maybe three of the overall estate.
Speaker 1: And I spoke with her um after we kind of
Speaker 1: discovered this suite, and she said that the entire process
Speaker 1: was utterly absurd because it represented such a tiny part
Speaker 1: of the estate. That and she told the museum about
Speaker 1: the existence of the will. She didn't really have to
Speaker 1: tell them if she was trying to defraud them. So
Speaker 1: she's sort of outraged about this, and rather than settled
Speaker 1: with them, she is actually fighting because she feels like
Speaker 1: this is a sort of slap in the face given
Speaker 1: her family has given many millions of dollars to the
Speaker 1: museum over over the years. So that's what I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to you about, because you know, she told
Speaker 1: you in an interview that she's very saddened by this
Speaker 1: whole situation. Quote, I will absolutely defend my integrity, which
Speaker 1: I feel has been called into question, and I will
Speaker 1: absolutely defend my father's wishes. So it's not about the
Speaker 1: actual stuff for her, right, quite quite right, actually, But
Speaker 1: is it about that for the museum? Sorry, go ahead, James,
Speaker 1: you know this, I have, so I don't. The short
Speaker 1: answer is for the museum, I don't know. They issued
Speaker 1: a statement and wouldn't comment on the record. But there
Speaker 1: are court documents that you have you can go through
Speaker 1: that are part of this suit at the museum filed
Speaker 1: in Delaware court UM. And in that these documents you
Speaker 1: can actually see correspondence from them, and they are very
Speaker 1: very careful in their correspondent with the estate and with
Speaker 1: the daughter to say, listen, we're not calling your integrity
Speaker 1: into question. We are not calling you a liar. We're
Speaker 1: not saying that you sold these things. However, we as
Speaker 1: an institution have a fiduciary duty to ensure that we
Speaker 1: are UM following up on this because this was gifted
Speaker 1: to us and we can't just walk away from it
Speaker 1: because you say it's yours. So it's actually UM in
Speaker 1: a certain respects not really about the money from an
Speaker 1: outside of perspective, It doesn't seem like it's about the
Speaker 1: money from either side, because of course Winter Term Museum
Speaker 1: has around nineties thousand objects in this exquisite hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five room mansion on a thousand acres of manager
Speaker 1: of gardens. It's really exquisite. This is in this is
Speaker 1: in Delaware. Um. But but I think neither party is
Speaker 1: particularly avaricious from the and this is from an outside perspective,
Speaker 1: neither seems desperate for the money. Instead, they both seem
Speaker 1: to be at least on the outside looking me and
Speaker 1: pursuing it. On principle, James, what is your best guess
Speaker 1: about how this ends? I mean, is this museum going
Speaker 1: to end up with these objects at the end of
Speaker 1: the day. You know, I really can't say, Um, what
Speaker 1: I could can say, you know, I mean, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not a legal expert on the street law. What
Speaker 1: what I what I can say is that, um, both
Speaker 1: sides appear to have equally compelling claimed Um. You know,
Speaker 1: in the sense that, uh, there there is ample documentation
Speaker 1: on the daughter's side to demonstrate that these were a gift.
Speaker 1: But it's not rock salt a documentation, So it's not
Speaker 1: like she has a smoking gun. And if she did
Speaker 1: have a smoking gun where she could produce it, the
Speaker 1: museum wouldn't have brought the lawsuit in the first place.
Speaker 1: So you you have, on the daughter's side a long
Speaker 1: history of the father giving her gifts, and you have
Speaker 1: the father actually having revised. And this is where it
Speaker 1: gets even thorn here. The father then revised um what
Speaker 1: he wanted to give to the museum three years later,
Speaker 1: and then entered into a separate promised gift contract where
Speaker 1: he included some of the stuff he was going to
Speaker 1: give but not other stuff, which the daughter says demonstrates
Speaker 1: that he had changed his mind and wanted to give
Speaker 1: her these gifts in the first place. But there are
Speaker 1: a lot of twists and turns, as I said earlier,
Speaker 1: but I think that it actually has um much broader
Speaker 1: resonance for those of us who are not members of
Speaker 1: a sprawling billionaire family, and those of us who do
Speaker 1: not run museums, which is that um. You know, oftentimes
Speaker 1: there can be informal interact some transactions between family members,
Speaker 1: but if family members have obligations to other institutions, when
Speaker 1: that dies, you have to issue some level of accounting
Speaker 1: for the things that you have. And this is not
Speaker 1: just a question that is facing the very wealthy or
Speaker 1: even the moderately wealthy. Um. This is something that faces
Speaker 1: or that that many people who will be receiving things
Speaker 1: in their parents or spouses. UM. States. Um, you need
Speaker 1: to actually keep in mind. And that's why I think
Speaker 1: that this is such a kind of compelling case, even
Speaker 1: though the actual states in terms of dollar amounts are
Speaker 1: actually quite small. Yeah. That's a really good point, James,
Speaker 1: because that's something that we hear a lot about, especially
Speaker 1: with the wealth transfer that's happening between generations and the
Speaker 1: historic wealth transfer that that's set to happen. Um. As
Speaker 1: you know, the greatest generation ages out, and indeed baby
Speaker 1: boomers do as well. Uh, James, before we go, forgive
Speaker 1: me because I know that you're the arts columnist, and
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how often you cover stories like this, Um,
Speaker 1: just in the context of of Katie asked, what's you know,
Speaker 1: what's next? How it ends? I want to know how
Speaker 1: long it could take, because these things can be tied
Speaker 1: up for a long time, right. Oh. Absolutely, unless there's
Speaker 1: some settlements, this could easily take years. And UM, it's
Speaker 1: it's it really depends on how um malleable or or
Speaker 1: how willing to reach a compromise either party is. And UM,
Speaker 1: I think at least you know, again, I didn't actually
Speaker 1: speak to the museum on the records, so I can't
Speaker 1: I can't actually speak to this. But from the daughter's side,
Speaker 1: she's in budging because she feels like she is in
Speaker 1: the moral and legal right. UM. And so there's a
Speaker 1: strong possibility that this ends up is going to do court.
Speaker 1: So James, UM, what what comes next in the process here?
Speaker 1: What are you going to be looking out for you
Speaker 1: continue to follow the story? Well, is going to be discovery.
Speaker 1: So they will actually both sides will actually keep adding
Speaker 1: documentation to the case. There will be UM, yet another
Speaker 1: affidavit from the UM from the daughter, the museum will
Speaker 1: continue to add UM. The museum will continue to add
Speaker 1: documentation in what's in a kind of process of exploration,
Speaker 1: and then UM, if necessary, will go to trial. UM.
Speaker 1: And that's that's sort of what I'm waiting on and
Speaker 1: what we'll be watched. And James, the the woman at
Speaker 1: the center of the Sabrina DuPont lnon Egger, UM, can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about the way that her
Speaker 1: dad's estate kind of change from being overseen by his
Speaker 1: family office earlier in his life, but then towards the
Speaker 1: end of his life he didn't have that same infrastructure. Yeah, so, UM,
Speaker 1: I can't speak too much to it, but I what
Speaker 1: I what I can't say is that she basically talked
Speaker 1: about him kind of scaling back his business activities and um,
Speaker 1: as a result, he had less of a need for
Speaker 1: a very kind of a large office to manage his affairs.
Speaker 1: So they had family advisors still, including a family lawyer
Speaker 1: and a family accountant, but not people who were kind
Speaker 1: of permanently on the pay roll. UM. And so you know,
Speaker 1: he was a person her father was a person who
Speaker 1: fought and sold and traded antiques as a hobby constantly. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, he collected one of the pre eminent
Speaker 1: collections of Chippendale furniture and then sold it all in
Speaker 1: the nineties when he um sold most of it in
Speaker 1: the nineties when he became interested by something else. And
Speaker 1: she told me that, you know, he had a very
Speaker 1: fluid idea of collecting, which is that he didn't just
Speaker 1: want to buy it and hold it. He was always
Speaker 1: on the lookout for something better. Than what he had
Speaker 1: ad and when he found that he wouldn't keep the
Speaker 1: old thing, he would sell it, he would move on UM.
Speaker 1: And so you know that is he was a man
Speaker 1: of substantial means UM and that was totally possible. But
Speaker 1: it meant that when he died, because he didn't have
Speaker 1: this family office infrastructure in place anymore, it meant that
Speaker 1: she was in charge of dealing with this pretty vast
Speaker 1: amount of objects that she told me that there were
Speaker 1: at least fifteen hundred maybe more. He had a gentleman's
Speaker 1: farm in Delaware, UM, and it was a monumental undertaking
Speaker 1: because she was basically UM, she told me, doing it
Speaker 1: on her own. And this again once again gets back
Speaker 1: to this idea UM, that this has resonance for a
Speaker 1: broader audience because it's really about UM trying to make
Speaker 1: sure that there is some level of uh, not only documentation,
Speaker 1: but accounting of of objects. And you know, frankly, I
Speaker 1: don't think I know a single person who has inventory
Speaker 1: lists of their belongings. It's just not how most people
Speaker 1: I know, even people who have lots of stuff or
Speaker 1: lots of questables, are at works really work. And I
Speaker 1: think that it can be a weak up call when
Speaker 1: you actually hear about this. Well, James, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not just kind of you know, you don't want to
Speaker 1: make that call get in touch with a lawyer, but
Speaker 1: you'd also people I don't think want to think about
Speaker 1: mortality right and how things yea, how things go at
Speaker 1: the end, Um, James, this was a really fantastic deep
Speaker 1: dive into a story I had no idea about. We
Speaker 1: really appreciate you taking the time and giving us all
Speaker 1: the details on it. James Tommy is arts calumnist for
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week. You got to check this story out.
Speaker 1: It's available online and on the Bloomberg terminal. Well, I've
Speaker 1: been really looking forward this week to speaking to our
Speaker 1: next guest. She's got a really, really interesting back ground.
Speaker 1: She's an entrepreneur, she's a best selling author, she's a
Speaker 1: keynote speaker. But before this, she was a refugee UH
Speaker 1: from the former Soviet Union, coming to the United States
Speaker 1: at just the age of thirteen. She's also worked at
Speaker 1: places like McKinsey and Company and Microsoft, UH and more.
Speaker 1: Her new book is called The Awesome Human Project. Break
Speaker 1: Free from Daily Burnout, struggle Less and Thrive more in
Speaker 1: work and life. Natalie Cogan joins us now she's the
Speaker 1: founder of Happier Inc. As well. She joins us on
Speaker 1: the phone from Boston. Natalie, how are you so thrilled
Speaker 1: to be here? Thank you, Well, we're thrilled to have you.
Speaker 1: Before we talked about the book, I just want you
Speaker 1: to take us back to that moment that you realized
Speaker 1: you wanted to sort of make this change in your life,
Speaker 1: because you have these experiences that I think, uh, a
Speaker 1: lot of our audience has working for large firms, working
Speaker 1: in the consulting business. Uh, what was happening in your
Speaker 1: life at that point. Yeah, it's a great question, you know,
Speaker 1: coming here as a refugee, I have the American dream.
Speaker 1: You know my parents and I my parents sacrificed everything
Speaker 1: to bring me here. So I had the American dream.
Speaker 1: And here I was. I didn't speak English when we came,
Speaker 1: and here I was at mckensey and I was in
Speaker 1: venture capital at the age of five. There's fewer than
Speaker 1: six percent women in VC. I was, you know, doing uh,
Speaker 1: really meaningful work, but uh, always at the expense of myself.
Speaker 1: I really believe that emotions have nothing to do with work.
Speaker 1: I kind of followed that old school, a dodge of
Speaker 1: leave emotions at the door. Um. No one ever talked
Speaker 1: to me about that, and so UM I had achieved
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of success, but inside I was really struggling.
Speaker 1: UM just overwhelmed and exhausted. And as a leader I
Speaker 1: in all these companies, I always thought my job was
Speaker 1: to pretend that everything was amazing, no matter how I
Speaker 1: how I felt. And it got to a point where
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I couldn't hold it all in anymore. And
Speaker 1: I several years ago, went through a really severe burnout,
Speaker 1: which is something I know a lot of folks relate
Speaker 1: to right now. And that got me to a place
Speaker 1: where I couldn't just will myself through anymore. I couldn't
Speaker 1: just push it. I couldn't grit my way through. I
Speaker 1: was really good at GRID, but I had to, for
Speaker 1: the first time in my life, recognize that it's not
Speaker 1: enough to care about your work. It's not enough to
Speaker 1: care about your team or your organization. You can't give
Speaker 1: what you don't have. You have to cultivate your own
Speaker 1: emotional and mental health in order to really show up.
Speaker 1: And so I went searching a determinous amount of research
Speaker 1: and UM just to help myself heal and ended up
Speaker 1: developing a method that UM I now get to teach
Speaker 1: to others, which is UM a great honor. Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about that method, because I mean, personally speaking, I
Speaker 1: would love to know how do I break free from burnout?
Speaker 1: How do you how do you prevent it from happening?
Speaker 1: And if it's already happened, I mean, how do you
Speaker 1: bounce back from that? Yeah, it's a great question, UM
Speaker 1: that I'll try to answer as as short as possible.
Speaker 1: So just to get to the second part first, if
Speaker 1: you are really feeling UM on empty, UM, one of
Speaker 1: the some of the signs that burnout are feeling really
Speaker 1: depleted of all energy, starting to resent work that you
Speaker 1: otherwise UM like, withdrawing from social interactions. These are all
Speaker 1: things I'd experienced. UM, you're probably in that place. And
Speaker 1: so if you're in that place, the thing I want
Speaker 1: you to please here is that you can't just ignore
Speaker 1: it and make it through. You have to pause and
Speaker 1: think about how do you make your emotional fitness your
Speaker 1: well being? How do you make that your daily priority?
Speaker 1: And it doesn't require you resigning, It doesn't require you
Speaker 1: throwing everything out the door. It requires things like, Okay,
Speaker 1: when do I do something that fuels my energy? How
Speaker 1: do I take a break? How do I do something
Speaker 1: that fuels me as a person unrelated to my work?
Speaker 1: And so if you're in that place, you really have
Speaker 1: to make that a priority to not get stuck in
Speaker 1: that cycle of daily burn out, to not get there. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a connected answer, but the first thing to recognize
Speaker 1: is there. You and your job are two separate entities
Speaker 1: in a relationship with its other. And just like we
Speaker 1: know for any healthy relationship with another person, each person
Speaker 1: really needs to fuel themselves to show up fully. You
Speaker 1: can't over rely, you know, even if your job is
Speaker 1: really meaningful, that doesn't mean it can give you everything
Speaker 1: you need, including rests, because you're a human being and energy.
Speaker 1: And so just that construct to think about this question
Speaker 1: that I've been offering to people is how would I
Speaker 1: describe my relationship with my job? Because one of the
Speaker 1: misconceptions about burnout is, um, it happens when we have
Speaker 1: too much work. Having too much work is just one
Speaker 1: of the many, many factors and others. Natalie, I just
Speaker 1: want to jump in here with a couple of things. One,
Speaker 1: we are a waiting President Biden, so we will be
Speaker 1: going to him. When we do. He does start to
Speaker 1: speak to give us an update on the situation on
Speaker 1: the border of Russia and Ukraine. But now they want
Speaker 1: to talk about the pandemic. Because the idea of burnout
Speaker 1: really I think shifted a lot over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years as people have been many have been stuck
Speaker 1: at home, many people now working from home or you know,
Speaker 1: attempting to work from home. Um, how does how does
Speaker 1: that shift the idea of burnout? And what are the
Speaker 1: types of breaks that you can take if you roll
Speaker 1: out of bed in the morning and you jump on
Speaker 1: zoom and you're doing that until dinner time. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: boundaries of all blurred. Um for all of us who
Speaker 1: I've said lucky enough to work from home. And there's
Speaker 1: even a couple of tips that I just want to
Speaker 1: offer really concretely. So it is really important to get
Speaker 1: disciplined about taking breaks, and it is we we we
Speaker 1: do have the capacity. Microsoft just released a study where
Speaker 1: they looked at just taking five minute breaks between meetings
Speaker 1: dramatically reduce the stress and um emotional exhaustion. So having
Speaker 1: the discipline that Okay, I'm done with this meeting. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get up out of my chair. I'm gonna even
Speaker 1: if you have to walk around the room or go
Speaker 1: to another room in the house. If you cannot, all
Speaker 1: take a walk outside. So taking those shower breaks, it's
Speaker 1: really essential. It helps the brain reset. The other thing
Speaker 1: that I really recommend is to create these discipline both
Speaker 1: emotional and physical boundaries. So instead of jumping on zoom
Speaker 1: as you rule out of bed, take a moment, and
Speaker 1: one of the emotional fitness skills I teach us gratitude.
Speaker 1: Take a moment, write down three things you are grateful for.
Speaker 1: What it helps you do is it uh practice and
Speaker 1: gratitude reduce the stress. It helps you um not ignore
Speaker 1: the good things in your life, which otherwise your negativity
Speaker 1: bias ignored. And it's a way to center yourself and
Speaker 1: fuel yourself before you you know, the work takes over.
Speaker 1: So beginning your day with gratitude at the end of
Speaker 1: your work day, to have some kind of a little
Speaker 1: tiny ritual to transition from work too, I'm now going
Speaker 1: to focus on my family, or myself or my friends.
Speaker 1: So for example, something as simple as closing down your
Speaker 1: computer turning the lights off in the room where you're
Speaker 1: working and walking outside maybe to get some fresh air,
Speaker 1: or uh, leaving your phone and closing the door. Our
Speaker 1: brain responds to these kind of physical cues, and creating
Speaker 1: some of those boundaries really helps the brain to disconnect
Speaker 1: and have have those separations so we don't continually just
Speaker 1: think about work and just get in that cycle and
Speaker 1: nat only something that caught my eye in the notes
Speaker 1: you centers before the show is that you know you
Speaker 1: should shift from harsh self talk to self compassion. And
Speaker 1: that caught my eye because I mean, that's something that
Speaker 1: you know I struggle with too, So I would love
Speaker 1: to hear some tips on how how you do shift
Speaker 1: that that kind of that self talk, that inner monologue
Speaker 1: into something that's a little bit more positive. Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, I just want to say I love that
Speaker 1: you brought this up, because when we think of burnout,
Speaker 1: we think of external things, and actually things like the
Speaker 1: way we talk to ourselves, the way we look at
Speaker 1: the world dramatically impact a risk of burnout. So a
Speaker 1: couple of really concrete tips. So a practice that I
Speaker 1: use is when you notice that you're talking to yourself
Speaker 1: in a harsh way. We all know that in our
Speaker 1: critic chatter. Take a pause and then imagine that you
Speaker 1: are talking to someone you really care about, a partner,
Speaker 1: a child. I usually imagine my seventeen year old daughter
Speaker 1: Mia for this, and then rephrase what you just said
Speaker 1: is if you're talking to them. And research shows that
Speaker 1: when we talk to ourselves in a supportive way, it
Speaker 1: improves motivation, it improves focus. That has the same positive
Speaker 1: benefits as one of friends is talking to us in
Speaker 1: a supportive way, and the opposite is true. Talking to
Speaker 1: ourselves in a critical way dramatically increases stress. So again
Speaker 1: it's this practice of recognizing when you're being harsh and
Speaker 1: then imagining you're talking to someone you care about, because
Speaker 1: we naturally are more compassionate towards people we care about
Speaker 1: than ourselves, and reframing what you just said to yourself
Speaker 1: as if you're talking to that person. It's a really
Speaker 1: really powerful practice. Um. But as I always say, the
Speaker 1: goodness is in the practice, So it's not about doing
Speaker 1: it once and then the self critic has gone away.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, easier said than done, right,
Speaker 1: because old habits die hard, Yes, And so this is
Speaker 1: why I talk about all these as skills. A skill.
Speaker 1: You improve a skill by practicing write, any skill, writing,
Speaker 1: running right. The more you practice so that are you become.
Speaker 1: But if you stop practicing, it's not so great. So
Speaker 1: I think for me, after I burnt out, it was
Speaker 1: actually very powering to recognize that these emotional fitness skills,
Speaker 1: some of which we've talked about, like I can practice them. Um,
Speaker 1: I have some control and they help. And so the
Speaker 1: same you know to your question, the more you practice,
Speaker 1: the easier it does become. It becomes more intuitive you
Speaker 1: have access to that practice easier. But yes, I don't
Speaker 1: want to I'm not going to sugarcoat it will have
Speaker 1: us die hard I was when I started to practice. Hey,
Speaker 1: if you're just joining us, we're speaking to Natalie Coogan,
Speaker 1: founder of Happier, Inc. Also the author of the Awesome
Speaker 1: Human Project to break free from daily burnout, struggle less,
Speaker 1: and thrive more in work in life. Should also note
Speaker 1: that we are continuing to await President Biden. We are
Speaker 1: expecting expecting him to speak any moment now from the
Speaker 1: Roosevelt Room at the White House. We'll bring you those
Speaker 1: comments live when he does start to speak. Natalie, what
Speaker 1: are the small moves that we can make. You know,
Speaker 1: we talked about this, this idea of incremental changes, right,
Speaker 1: what are those small moves that we can make that
Speaker 1: we can start doing now to help us get to
Speaker 1: that place where we actually do get closer to becoming
Speaker 1: you know, more of an awesome human things. And the
Speaker 1: first thing I just want to say, um, both parts
Speaker 1: are important. It's awesome and human. So we all have
Speaker 1: this capacity to do great stuff, to do meaningful work,
Speaker 1: to be a positive impact. But we're human. That means
Speaker 1: we need rest and we need to take care of ourselves,
Speaker 1: and we're not going to do it perfectly. So it's
Speaker 1: both of those. It's really embracing both of those. But
Speaker 1: a couple of things. The first is to recognize that
Speaker 1: you can't give what you don't have. Um, I spend
Speaker 1: so much of my career as a leader, in my life,
Speaker 1: as a mom, as a martyr, really believing as I
Speaker 1: mentioned that it didn't matter how I felt, that I
Speaker 1: could just continue to positively impact my team. You can't
Speaker 1: give what you don't have. So just understanding that that
Speaker 1: fueling your emotional, mental and physical energy is your responsibility
Speaker 1: and then making that a priority. So when you make
Speaker 1: your to do list for the day, put one thing
Speaker 1: on your to do list that you can do to
Speaker 1: fuel your emotional, mental, and physical energy, which is, by
Speaker 1: the way, how I define self care, to put one
Speaker 1: thing every day on that UM on that list. The
Speaker 1: second is recognized that your brain is not here to
Speaker 1: make you thrive. It doesn't care about your happiness. Your
Speaker 1: brain is here to survive. So we have to course
Speaker 1: correct some of the unhelpful thoughts that our brain gives us.
Speaker 1: We just talked about endless self criticism and how we
Speaker 1: ship that, but there's this practice of just editing our thoughts,
Speaker 1: recognizing that you are the editor of your thoughts. So
Speaker 1: your brain is telling you that this is never going
Speaker 1: to happen, or this is not going to work out,
Speaker 1: or ruminating on worst case scenario, which has been very
Speaker 1: common in the pandemic because uncertainty is very hard for
Speaker 1: the human brain. Being the editor of that thought and
Speaker 1: asking yourself, well, is this thought true? And does believing
Speaker 1: this thought is that helpful? And doing that on ongoing basis.
Speaker 1: And one last thing is to remember to practice your
Speaker 1: joy um. I think we live in a world that's
Speaker 1: kind of taken them oomph out of joy. It's becomes
Speaker 1: something that's a luxury. But joy is not luxury. It
Speaker 1: is our life fuel. So making it a priority to
Speaker 1: do something outside of work that brings you joy because
Speaker 1: not only does it make you feel better, but it's contagious.
Speaker 1: Emotions are contagious. Human emotions are contagious. So when you
Speaker 1: fuel yourself, when you do something that brings you joy,
Speaker 1: you actually spread that to everyone around you. And Natalie,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people would say, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to do that. I want to practice self care.
Speaker 1: I want to inject some more joy into my life.
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't think my boss would be
Speaker 1: on board that. You know, even if I tried to
Speaker 1: set boundaries, they might not be respective. I mean, what
Speaker 1: would you say to those people? It's a great question.
Speaker 1: And you know, so much of my work is um
Speaker 1: with companies. I work with companies on teams and this
Speaker 1: comes up a lot. And the first thing I would
Speaker 1: I would suggest is have the conversation. Don't assume that
Speaker 1: your boss knows how you're feeling, or that they understand
Speaker 1: where the boundaries need to be. Have the courage to
Speaker 1: have the conversation and have it from the point of listen,
Speaker 1: here are some things that would be really helpful to me.
Speaker 1: For example, to not have this meeting scheduled every day
Speaker 1: back to back, um, to not get last minute to
Speaker 1: do is on a Friday after noon and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure when the deadline is. It would be helpful to
Speaker 1: me because it would make me better at what I do.
Speaker 1: So have that conversation from that elevated place of recognizing
Speaker 1: that your boss is not an evil human. They just
Speaker 1: may not have any awareness that these are the boundaries
Speaker 1: you need. Um Um. I own up to this in
Speaker 1: my book. I always really cared about my teams when
Speaker 1: I was a leader, but I had no awareness of
Speaker 1: any of these things, and so I didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: honor their boundaries. Um. And so that's the first thing
Speaker 1: I would suggest is have that conversation. It's actually a practice.
Speaker 1: I leave a lot of teams on to have a
Speaker 1: conversation about boundaries, and it turns out, Um, it's usually
Speaker 1: not huge things. It's usually simple things like listen, if
Speaker 1: you send me an email Friday afternoon with to do,
Speaker 1: can you tell me when you really need it? Or
Speaker 1: I would love to not have calls before nine am
Speaker 1: is that possible, and uh, it's really empowering to have
Speaker 1: those conversations with your boss and your team, if your
Speaker 1: leader to lead those Natalie work. Katie and I got
Speaker 1: started with this interview. As we were preparing for it,
Speaker 1: we were talking to each other about the different ways
Speaker 1: that we kind of deal with separating work and life
Speaker 1: and talk. We both are big proponents of physical exercise,
Speaker 1: Like Katie runs every day oftentimes. Actually I'll be talking
Speaker 1: to her at night and she's running through Central Park. Uh,
Speaker 1: I super fast, super fast of course, um, of course.
Speaker 1: And and then you know, and I try to, you know,
Speaker 1: get on the stationary bike and do a lot of
Speaker 1: cycling and get out there. And I'm wondering how physical
Speaker 1: activity fits into this because at least for both of us,
Speaker 1: and it's such an essential park of balance. It's really important. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we we have mental energy, physical energy, emotional energy,
Speaker 1: and so it's really important. Um. And you both know.
Speaker 1: But doing something physical releases and doorphins that gives you
Speaker 1: a sense of progress actually, like doing a little work out.
Speaker 1: There's interesting research about weightlifting, and lifting weights turns out
Speaker 1: to have these this interesting mental benefit of it gives
Speaker 1: you confidence that you can achieve hard things because your
Speaker 1: brain is like, oh, look I lifted weights, my muscles grew.
Speaker 1: Oh I can do this also in my regular life.
Speaker 1: So physical activity is really important. And the thing I
Speaker 1: would encourage um, everyone listening is to recognize that it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you need to go run every day. Stocks
Speaker 1: really bouncing around today. Katie s down about six tenths
Speaker 1: of one percent right now. The nazacked down just about
Speaker 1: one percent right now. Interestingly enough, the SP five hundred
Speaker 1: briefly did turn positive this afternoon, but is again lower.
Speaker 1: Let's try to make sense of it with Aaron Kennon,
Speaker 1: co founder and CEO of Clear Harbor Asset Management. Clear
Speaker 1: Harbor Asset Management has more than one billion dollars in
Speaker 1: assets under management. Aaron joins us on the phone from Stanford, Connecticut. Aeron,
Speaker 1: how are you doing? Just great? Tim, Thanks for having
Speaker 1: me help us make sense of what we're doing. Well,
Speaker 1: we're doing. We're we have, you know, kind of some
Speaker 1: good vibes ahead of the holiday weekend. I gotta be honest,
Speaker 1: UM's great, but market not really feeling it. Uh, what's
Speaker 1: been happening here? Because I think a lot of our
Speaker 1: listener as a lot of investors trying to figure out, okay, um,
Speaker 1: when is this choppiness kind of done and we start
Speaker 1: to move back towards those highs that we saw in November, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that that we've been really trending sideways to
Speaker 1: downward um since since November. And I think that the
Speaker 1: real story of the equity market is just general weakness
Speaker 1: even beneath the headlines, which are are weak in themselves
Speaker 1: if you look at you know, whether it's the tech sector,
Speaker 1: which is you know, seeing significant weakness across the board
Speaker 1: curricularly sort of small cap, MidCap, but you know, at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, we we really attribute this
Speaker 1: to the understanding that the market has, which is this
Speaker 1: sort of record level of liquidity is finally departing the scene,
Speaker 1: and that's coming from both the FED, which is poised
Speaker 1: to start tightening next month, and of course the fiscal side,
Speaker 1: which is well for the last two years, the fiscal
Speaker 1: stimulus was the size of the combined economies of the
Speaker 1: state of California, Florida, Texas combined, and that's essentially gone now,
Speaker 1: and so you have heightened volatility and you have less liquidity.
Speaker 1: That that tends to mean that price and earnings multiples
Speaker 1: are poised or at least at risk for contraction. That's
Speaker 1: what we've seen this year where the SMP PE multiple
Speaker 1: is actually contracted two and a half times two and
Speaker 1: a half points, now trading at about nineteen times anticipated
Speaker 1: two thousand and twenty two earnings. So while we do
Speaker 1: expect earnings to grow this year, that that higher level
Speaker 1: of volatility, Tim and Katie is going to certainly bring
Speaker 1: pause to investors and Aaron with that type of setup
Speaker 1: where you are seeing PE multiples start to come down
Speaker 1: a little bit, I mean, do you view that as
Speaker 1: an opportunity at this stage or do you think there's
Speaker 1: still more of sort of a revaluation to go. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the technical backdrop frankly is still weak, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't always guide what we do. We believe in
Speaker 1: sort of disciplined in our cost averaging depending on the
Speaker 1: types of clients that we have um but but we're
Speaker 1: also very mindful of of valuations across them ket place,
Speaker 1: and there are certainly areas of real opportunity that we
Speaker 1: see even within the equity markets, but it's hard to
Speaker 1: try to catch that falling knife. No one ever does
Speaker 1: that perfectly. As they say, only monkeys can pick tops
Speaker 1: and bottoms, and we sort of embrace that mantra and
Speaker 1: maintain our discipline across all asset classes for our clients. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's say a new client comes to you, or
Speaker 1: perhaps a current client that you have has some sort
Speaker 1: of exit. What's the strategy of introducing those assets into
Speaker 1: the market. Well, we think about the long term. Most
Speaker 1: of our clients are busy professionals. They're trying to simplify
Speaker 1: their financial life. They're trying to make um you know,
Speaker 1: they have they have sort of different buckets of assets
Speaker 1: sometimes located all over their place, and it's part of
Speaker 1: our job to sort of bring some sense to the madness.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, we're really thinking about, you know,
Speaker 1: long term anticipated returns of major asset classes, in the
Speaker 1: mix of those asset classes, in the anticipated volatility of
Speaker 1: each one of those asset classes is to to allow
Speaker 1: for them to achieve their long term goals while also
Speaker 1: being able to sort of sleep well at night. And
Speaker 1: so this current market sort of speed bump that we're
Speaker 1: going through right now, we do think it has a
Speaker 1: heightened opportunity to last for for a while. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't really change the sort of asset allocation process that
Speaker 1: we go through on behalf of our clients and Aaron,
Speaker 1: let's let's get more specific here, so being being disciplined
Speaker 1: the the asset allocation process. When you look across asset
Speaker 1: classes from fixed income to equities, what are those different
Speaker 1: allocations look like? You know, where are you overweight? Where
Speaker 1: are you underweight? Sure? Well, I think fixed thing comes
Speaker 1: interesting here because, of course, the anticipation right now is
Speaker 1: the Fed's going to raise rates six times this year
Speaker 1: and call it to maybe three times next year, and
Speaker 1: the curve is quite flat. Um. You know, we we
Speaker 1: have a hard time believing that, particularly when even this
Speaker 1: week and last week there's been evidence that the economy
Speaker 1: is slowing down, that the inflationary peaks that we have
Speaker 1: been noticing over the last few months maybe waning. Um,
Speaker 1: the supply chain picture looks like it's at least on
Speaker 1: the margin improving. Shipping costs have been thawing, business costs
Speaker 1: generally have been subsiding, and so we think the Fed
Speaker 1: may end up proving to be at least relatively consensus
Speaker 1: a bit more dubbish over the next six to twelve
Speaker 1: months and you know that has an opportunity in some
Speaker 1: sense for for us to maintain some exposure in the
Speaker 1: front end of of of the fixed income market. But
Speaker 1: we were guided by the benchmark, which is the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Barkley's Aggregate bond Index, and so we need to always
Speaker 1: know where we're making our bets on credit exposure, on duration,
Speaker 1: and how that correlates with other asset classes in the portfolio.
Speaker 1: I mean, Aaron, you said that you weren't in the
Speaker 1: business of catching knives, but when it comes to the
Speaker 1: front end of the yield curve, a little bit of
Speaker 1: a falling knife here, yeah, I mean, certainly. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's been an interesting market and while we are
Speaker 1: sometimes on the margin tactical, we want to be mindful
Speaker 1: of where where our bets are. And we think at
Speaker 1: one right now and the t your treasury with a
Speaker 1: market anticipating six rate hikes that to your treasury is
Speaker 1: pricing in almost chance that that consensus is going to
Speaker 1: be correct. You know, our view is that that may
Speaker 1: be just a bit too aggressive. Hearon, just in the
Speaker 1: last minute that we have with you, we got to
Speaker 1: talk to your politics here and help us understand help
Speaker 1: our listeners and viewers understand Russia and Ukraine and the
Speaker 1: impact that it's going to have on markets. Well, it's
Speaker 1: just another veil variable that certainly doesn't reduce volatility, it
Speaker 1: only increases it. Putin is a bad guy, you know.
Speaker 1: He seems to have aspirations to expand the Russian Empire
Speaker 1: and this could have a rather significant consequence to the
Speaker 1: overall market. I think in a couple of different ways. Ways.
Speaker 1: One clearly volatility, But on the energy side, UM, that's
Speaker 1: that's a huge question around UH, you know, nord Stream
Speaker 1: two is it Is it going to be dead or
Speaker 1: or not? Um. Europe needs natural gas to uh to
Speaker 1: provide electricity to the population. They've reduced their nuclear capabilities
Speaker 1: significantly in the midst of having the Russian news around
Speaker 1: their neck for the last several years. So it's it's
Speaker 1: certainly a conundrum for for Europe right now, and it's
Speaker 1: and it's a real challenge for the world and for investors.
Speaker 1: Aaron Kennon, we love it when you join us. Have
Speaker 1: a great three day weekend. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: taking the time. That's Aaron Kennon, co founder and CEO
Speaker 1: at Clear Harbor Asset Management, over a billion dollars in
Speaker 1: assets under management. Thanks for listening to Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: Download the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot com,
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