#14 Brad Levy: Managing Uncertainty. How to Lead in Volatile Times

In this episode, I’m joined by Brad Levy, CEO of Symphony. Brad has spent decades at the intersection of finance and technology - a bold thinker, seasoned operator, and one of the most respected voices in fintech.

Before Wall Street was even on the horizon, Brad’s entrepreneurial spirit and work ethic were already taking shape. From the age of 14, he was earning his stripes working at Woodbury Commons, landscaping gardens, instructing tennis, and operating ski lifts. But it was a job during his sophomore year at university, researching municipal finance, that ultimately sparked his entry into the markets in 1992.

From 1992 to 2012, he spent two decades on Wall Street building deep expertise as a muni banker and later leading across capital markets, e-commerce, market structure, and strategic investments.

Since 2012, he has held senior leadership roles at IHS Markit and Symphony, where he’s been a leader, operator, builder, and transformer.

Brad always brings the best energy with him and this episode is no different!

Key Takeaways

Surround yourself with good people during tough times.

Flexibility is key in leadership and personal growth.

Authenticity in leadership requires balancing vulnerability and responsibility.

Crisis moments reveal true character and trust.

The importance of presence in navigating change.

Frameworks help structure thoughts and actions for success.

Measuring success through KPIs is essential for growth.

Time management is crucial in a fast-paced world.

Failure is a feature of the journey, not a bug.

Show Links

Website - https://www.georgiedickins.com

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgiedickins

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@GeorgieDickins-q7x

Transcript

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Hi, I'm Georgie Dickens, host of Stratospheric Leaders, the podcast where I get to have inspired conversations with extraordinary leaders from across capital markets. Join me to hear their game-changing strategies, the personal stories and powerful sound bites behind their stratospheric success. Every episode packed with wisdom, insight, and real-world lessons, the stuff they simply don't teach you in business school. If you want to elevate your game and most importantly, those around you, this podcast is for you. Enjoy. Brad, I am beyond delighted to welcome you to an episode of Stratospheric Leaders. You and I first met back in September 2021. It was just, I think, as we were coming out of COVID. And Lance Ugler suggested we meet because uh I wrote the book, uh, Stratospheric CEOs. He was one of the leaders I profiled, and he wanted me to speak to some of his trusted tribe to get their perspective uh on him. And you and I have become fur friends. We speak regularly. Um, you are my sounding board, you're my trusted advisor, uh, you played an integral part in the launch of my book, Stratospheric CEOs. So I know from our conversations how much value and insight I take away. So I'm truly excited for the audience to hear your lessons and your learnings. And when I think of you, there are so many words that come up, but energy is one of them. I think you have the most infectious energy. You are somebody that I gravitate to, and you, it's matched with you are a bold thinker, and that's the piece. You catalyse my thinking. And you are one of the most respected voices in fintech, having spent, I'm not going to ask you how many decades, but a number of decades at the intersection of finance and technology. So we're going to dive straight in because there is so much to cover. And I first of all look, people can, you know, will look you up on LinkedIn, many people will know you. You know, I said there's this distinguished career here. And I really want to take it way back to when you, again, as a child, what you know, what was your first ever job before Wall Street even was on the, you know, on the dot on the horizon for you? Yeah, so I had a lot of jobs actually. You know, I grew up in upstate New York a bit, and uh, I guess when I was 10, I helped my neighbor put in an in-ground pool and I helped break up his uh his backyard patio with a sledgehammer in 1980. So that was hard. He also helped save my house from burning down when he carried out a burning bed that I had, you know, played with matches. So he was a cop and that was my I think I got paid $2 a day. Um I became I was a camp kid, I did some tennis instructing, that was probably not really work. But then I worked at four or five places at the Woodbury Commons, Van Muzen, when it first opened in the mid-80s in upstate New York. Uh I worked at Sterling Forest as a ski lift operator and maintenance. I worked um gas station, car wash, propane fill. I worked at Bear Mountain as a maintenance person and then fought forest fires. I was kind of uh, and then I was a landscaper sort of my last summer before going uh to college. Uh my last, then I took a job in university as a sophomore doing research on municipal finance, which I sort of stumbled into. And that was, I would say, the job I had that put me into the markets ultimately in '92. Like a varied, varied jobs there from Woodbury Commons, which I used to love going to when I stayed with my brother to get all the great discounted uh when I when it opened in 85, the only brand name there was Van Nuzen. Everything else was generic. So now it's it's it's not the Woodbury Commons you knew. It was it was a it was a relatively depressing outdoor mall, to be honest. Well, and and and and and where you said, you know, so you nearly burnt your house down. I'm thinking about it. I was playing with matches, yeah. You know, put it in, put it out, put it in, put it out, gets away, kind of that never happened. And fortunately, I looked around a lot of cops and firemen. So they all came, they put it out, they carried the bed out, and uh disaster avoided. My parents were out to dinner, my sister was home with me, and I think I might have said the boiler blew up is some answer that might have caused the fire, but I don't think I knew I don't think I knew what a boiler was at the time. And do you know what we are gonna come to this later in our conversation, but it's it's who you surround yourself with matters, and it's you know, it sounds like even in your in your childhood, you know, you surrounded yourself with with good people. Well, just to say on that, because that's I don't mean interrupt I grew up with an an interesting crowd. It wasn't not everybody was nice, it wasn't a tough crowd, it wasn't the mean streets, but it was, you know, there were people on the edge, and you know, we didn't have a lot to do living five miles away from a store. You know, we rode our bikes, we went into the woods, and you know, there were some nutty guys I grew up with a bit. Um, I was always on the edge of that, to be honest, never in it, but you know, it certainly gave me perspective and maybe toughened up slightly, slightly. Well, the world's a tough place. So I think that's probably been uh was probably a good learning edge in those formative years. Absolutely. And and what really struck me is there, and and you and I have spoken about this before, you know, hard work is a minimum. And and I really hear that coming through from uh from you know the jobs you had, you know, growing up. And what did you dream of becoming before, you know, before finance and technology beckoned? I think at a young age, maybe, you know, what does a seven-year-old Brad dream of? Uh I dreamed of being taller and maybe having not a ball haircut, like really very you know, I didn't use Dorothy Hamill's haircut, whatever if you know that figure skater. Um, but you know, it was just uh, you know, I just wanted to be in with things, and I like to be in the mix, and it didn't matter if it was baseball or anything, right? I alone time was great. I actually was I'm quite good at being alone, but I just wanted to be with people, I guess. And it wasn't like a you know, my dad was in finance, I thought I'd be an accountant. That was kind of the path I went to SUNY Albany, which was menting CPAs at the big six for years. And I kind of went into being an accountant. I realized there's a bit of um art there, and then I stumbled into bonds and munis as research, and I'm like, there's a bit more math and sort of discounted cash flow curves and financing hospitals and bridges, and so that was that was a you know, I was going to be a sort of a business person, is my guess. You know, most of my friends were sort of going different directions, maybe cop, firemen, maybe go to college, some you know, then I had a few that would become an eye doctor, etc. So it was more generic be lawyer, be eye doctor, be accountant, and I was going to be an accountant because my dad was a controller and a credit manager in you know the uh the meat business. And and I'm curious about you know, growing up. So, you know, the pathway could have been accountant. You ended up and you said in um the Muni space. Uh when you look back on your childhood, what's a piece of advice somebody gave you that's I suppose it stayed with you? And what yeah, and who was it who gave you that advice? Um it's probably relax. You know, I'm not sure I have energy, that's a known thing. Um, I'm not sure where it comes from or why. It's it's fine. It's just something that I have. And it's you know, like all forms of energy, you know, they could be used in different directions at different times and to different degrees of success. Or if you think of the word nuclear energy, um you know, that has two sides to it in terms of its power. So I think that is something I've always had. I've always you know I was a small kid. I was shorter than my Bubby and my mother at my bar mitzvah. And I could they were not tall. I was four feet eight inches at my bar mitzvah. I was I wrestled in the 70 pound weight class in eighth grade and seventh grade. You know, I had forfeits half the time because they didn't have humans that were that small. So but I grew up, you know, playing basketball and football and baseball and killed a guy and whatever these games are, and I just it was just all of that. So is like the but at the same time, it's like that made me something that could probably go into that world a bit, but I need to relax. And Adam Ventures, is that a piece of advice that you still have to remind yourself of today? Because the world, you know, the world's moving faster than ever before. I feel like relax is a message we could all really benefit from reminding ourselves of. I think we've spoken before. So yes. I definitely need, you know, it's uh it's super active out there. There's lots going on in the world. I mean, just turn on the television every hour and there's something new and fascinating. So in my world, in my little bubble in the last three, five years, has had you know quite a bit going on. So, you know, there's no more important time for me to be more relaxed, more persistent, more quiet. And you you referenced there, you know, some of the um I don't know, changes, or just the current backdrop. And I think we can all agree that you know, change is normal. Our grandparents, our great-grandparents, you know, they all live through periods of change. It feels like we're in this period of exponential change, whether it's the uh you know, data, technology, climate change, geopolitical, the regulatory landscape, things are changing. And you're you know, you're a CEO of uh of Symphony, and leaders more is being asked of them than ever before. And I often find, well, I hear people saying, you know, we want our leaders to be authentic, we want them to be vulnerable, we want them to bring their full selves into work. And yet there's that tightrope that leaders walk because yes, it's about being authentic, and and there's some things that you can't bring your full self because everyone's looking to you for calmness, for confidence, for certainty. So how do you be who you are, you know, being authentic whilst fulfilling the responsibility of the seat? Right. So maybe there's bringing yourself, but not all of your words and actions, which is different. Um, people would assume bringing their whole self is they are exactly who they are in all situations. Um but there are times where you could bring yourself and modify your words and actions to fit better with the other side of the conversation. At market, we actually did a program called Emergenetics, which was about that profiling and the you know, the color wheel, and it's all fascinating in the tests you do. But the reality is, you know, I find the world and human, we're all a Tetris, right? So we all fit together better or worse. Why do we love Legos? It's probably something like that. Beehives. There's an element of you know, hexagons that fit together perfectly in all places in the world made by beehives. That's kind of remarkable if you just think about that. Legos probably exist for a reason, and Tetris is addictive and candy crush because it's that fit. So how do you fit with people without forcing people to fit? Sometimes it's just square peg round or the wrong time, and you just kind of have to call it that way and not be too frustrated by that. I probably get a bit frustrated in that when things don't fit, can't we just make it a bit smoother or chop that thing off to put it together? And it may be right, it just may be the wrong time, or it may have been, you know, what happened a few years ago and it's not the thing that's the forward. You and I always like our alliteration, and I and I and I I had the F's here, you know, how do you fit without you know forcing? And I put flex. So it feels you know, the importance of flex there. Um, because you it is about flexing. As I listen to you, it's like what does the situation demand of me? Who's the audience? So therefore, how do I need to be? What do I need to dial up, dial down? And being really deliberate and intentional, if that's how I'm understanding it. Yeah, flex is a really interesting word, right? Because you can flex. People, you know, you've got this the flex muscle, right? That's a word. Um, you're flexing, right? That was a flex. That's like a term today, I think, in the uh in the kids' vernacular, maybe, right? I had a program in uh market that I these strategic planning methods where I had flex 18. Uh, and I had these, you know, I named things through the years, and it was flex 18, and it was how you get flex, power, clarity. How do you flex to develop more power to have more clarity? And that was kind of that three-year plan that I was trying to develop where we were we had good ideas for the prior three years, and how do we take this into the wild but still have good software flex, good human flexes? The world is changed, the world is always changing, it's just a matter of degree and your position in it. So, how can you flex so much that you don't break, but sometimes that does come back and you have to kind of go the other direction? And it's you know, as you know, I I had a retina tear last week and I had laser surgery on Monday. I figured out through the process, it's just I'm nearsighted, and because of that strain, you lose a bit of flex, and you're just your retina just has a small tear. And uh, so my retina is less flexible now, as all maybe old people, and more so with nearsighted folk. So, like I can take it in any direction, but there's nothing more important than being flexible. Um, and there's nothing more important than not flexing sometimes, just to play with the words, you know, sometimes. And you love your yoga. I know yoga is um something that uh I'm sure is part of for you, sustainable, you know, keeping yourself fit for purpose. And there's an element of flex there that really, you know, the importance of a flex. Yeah, and that is probably the fifth thing you get from yoga, interestingly. Everybody says I will only do yoga to get flexible, and I can't do yoga because I'm not flexible, and guys don't do yoga because they don't care about flexibility. And so that's and I'm thinking of a business, how do you solve for that? But you really, it's a mind quieter at the core, which is why I've been in it for 12 years religiously. It's much more of the mind quieter, actually develops a lot more strength than you realize. You do 60 chaturangas in an hour with Ben my yogi because it's his 60th birthday, so he does one chaturanga on his birthday, you know, every so it's 55 on his 55th. It was that's a lot of chaturangas in a yoga class when you're also doing yoga. Well, those push-ups, you know, doing handstands, uh, you develop a lot of strength, and you even develop a lot of you know, your blood flow from your toes to your brow, you know, and then the flexibility sort of comes like almost as a as an extra. It's it's and I and I think the mind quarter you mentioned, like we all need a space for the mind, you know, mind to be quite. And I actually I've got my snow globe here. I often use my snow globe because I talk about in the midst like of a snowstorm, you can't see clearly. And I talk about the snow globe where every if every snowflake represents a conversation, a meeting, an item on your to-do list, a just an ask of you, like when it's shaken up, it's very difficult to see with that clarity, with with purpose. Where you know, once if you give, you know, once you let this this um snow settle, you can see the path forward. And I think it's the same, we all need those mind quiets, and it will look differently for everyone, but but it's a lot of different things. Yeah, I will I'll alliterate with you finding focus through the fog and finding friends through the fog, right? And how do you just reach out knowing there's the touch there that you just can't see, but you know somebody's kind of pulling you through that that light just to be super, you know, goofy, I guess. But it is that, and there's so much fog out there. I mean, there's fog between on-premise technology and the cloud. Technologists call that the fog, the place between your building and the cloud you're trying to build to. And most risk, most things break in the fog, right? When you're in yoga, you don't hurt yourself in a position, you tend to hurt yourself moving between positions. Yeah. It reminds me actually, just listening to you there. So one of our mutual friends, Doug Sifu, he's recently had a hip replacement and he spoke to the fact I said, What do you wish your younger self would know? You know, what would you tell yourself? He goes, I wish I'd done my hip flexes. Because at the time he's like, I haven't got time. And actually, his older self would have said, you know what, you make time to be flexible. All right. Well, I just send them a nice congrats on a second Stanley Cup victory, which is kind of amazing that I even have to. No, that's incredible. But now I have to also send them uh, I need to get you into yoga because you would not have had that hip replacement. Maybe. Some people would argue you would have had it sooner because yoga can hurt you if you go to, you know, overextend, you know, women, I would say, tend to overopen and overextend. Men tend to crumble in on themselves because they work their arms and their legs, their belly gets big, and they so you see old men walking down the street, they're crumpled, women are very upright, but they sort of get a bit more, you know, they they're a bit more open and then brittle, where men are strong, but they kind of cave in. And you could see an 80-year-old man and one walking together are 60, and they literally look like the shape that you did your abs when you were 18, and you never thought about your core forever. Which again goes back to the point of being deliberate and thoughtful, because again, thinking thinking ahead. Uh going back to leading through periods of exponential change, and and I often refer to it as turbulent times. I see many people who are see it as opportunity, it's like, you know, seize the day, it's you know, you work the crisis to your advantage. And so there's a certain, for me, like an arsenal of skills that that are required to lead in today's world. You've I haven't yet read it, I have ordered it on Amazon. Um, there's a book by McCray, I think it's called McCraven on how you conquer a crisis. And the reason I've ordered it is because when you like when you make recommendations, I'm like, right, I have to, yeah, okay, here's the book. So I've got a hard cop hard back copy coming. And because you speak so highly of the book, okay, you've got to, so and and I love the fact you said about making the bed as well. That's one of the things. The first things to do is it's this on the on the front of his book. But you you shared with me, it was a great book, and and what what resonated most? Because I haven't yet read it. You know, what have you taken away? Yeah, so I mean, crisis is always happening. Like in all parts of the world, there's sometimes a crisis. Right now, there just happens to be a lot happening simultaneously. Thomas Friedman's book in 17 talked about this age of accelerations with globalization, climate, and tech, and there's these three mega trends hitting, and because we're such a small human, we're overwhelmed. But maybe if we think about it, try to use it, get on top of it, you can almost ride that wave. So I visualize myself riding these massive volatile waves as I surf, not snorkel and not scuba. And the seat planes, by the way, are more when you're in trouble and you have to surveil for bodies like seat. And I know we'll talk about that a little bit later. But so the crisis moment is like who you work with in regular times may not be the people you work with in crisis times. Your first information that you get, you must consume, act, and be transparent, but you must also assume it's almost probably wrong. So you're in a very not deterministic outcome decision making, or much less highly probabilistic. So this might happen if we do this. There's plenty of stuff on television right now that is crisis with probabilities being made. Ten years ago was more this is gonna happen if we do that. It's a little bit like agentic AI. There's agents, right? They could be highly understood, very simple. You know it's gonna work as long as the tech is tested, and you can make that autonomous yesterday. You do three of those, you string them together, that's a nice thing. There's plenty of stuff that is probabilistic. And even things that we think are deterministic, like eggs are bad for you, is actually maybe not as true as we thought 30 years ago. I think what you what really struck me, and I think it's worthy of underscoring, the people who you surround yourself with in times of crisis might be different to the people in more fair winds or more normalized times. When you think about the people you surround yourself with in times of where there's a lot happened simultaneously, you know, you're riding that volatile wave. What are the characteristics or uh qualities you look for in the people you want to be around? Um I mean, at the base, are you someone who tends to kind of hurt people in a tough time? Right. And I have this formula about you know, there's good times and bad times, you build trust in bad times because that's when things really matter, like in the foxhole. You can have lots of good things happen if you kind of screw someone at that moment, that's it's over. So it's just that element of, and it's a little bit like just over time you go through life and you have experiences and you sort of just know where that trust lies truly. And those are the people you want to be with in crisis times. I have my rabbis, my people, my 20 people on the planet, you're in my bubble. You know, I speak to you often, I've got lots of stuff going on in my life. And it is, I would say, I would take an even more sort of strident view that it the team you work with in crisis is absolutely not going to be the team in total that you would work with in a normal environment, a BAU. It's not that everybody changes, but you almost always have to assume if we're in a crisis mode, something needs to change. Because it's just would be too odd to say, you know, that Toyota Camry driving me to work is just fine when there's four feet of water. It actually isn't. You kind of need a Ford F 350 diesel pickup truck, which I bought in 09 because I was concerned about things and I wanted to make sure I had options in all situations. That was a stupid thing, maybe, but it was fun. I wanted a pickup truck in my life because why wouldn't I? You know, I had I had matchbox cars, tonka toys. So that was uh I'm thinking, how could I be more prepared? About 2009, about things that might be coming, having been through 08, having been through 01, having been through 87 crash personally, with I got an interest in the markets, by the way, because my dad was trading stocks like everybody, and it didn't go as well in 87. So, like these moments of crisis that you learn from, you know, Michael Jordan learns from all of his missed shots. Every professional person I've ever heard, Lance, all these folks say, I learn more from my mistakes in crisis times than anything. And that's just, you know, fortunately, I've had enough of that where I just know sort of who you're supposed to be with at the right times and the right place. Maybe. And the word you said there is, you know, trust. And it reminds me of Warren Buffett's quote where it said, you know, he says, you can it takes 20 years to to build a reputation, it can take five minutes to destroy it based on action. And by the way, nobody likes a good crisis like Warren. No, I've got to be a good thing. He loves a crisis, he loves crisis mode because people can't deal as much. And then he's, you know, there's the buyers of cheap assets in crisis time, or there's the buyer of new business when the fog is there and you can build a business because there's so few people that can even see. Like the fog of times usually creates amazing innovation. It's a tough time, but it could be a terrific time when you look back on it in terms of what we've achieved in science. Tough time or terrific time. See, we I like what the T's are coming out there. Yeah. And and and we we mentioned there about crises. Yeah, yes, we look at the world around us professionally, you know, what how it's influencing you know what we do in our as leaders of organizations. And I and you just referenced there, you know, you're going through let's not call it a crisis, but stuff at home. Your wife is really. No, no, it's a crisis. Let's just call it what it is. It is, you know, you can't do it. My wife has cancer. So people that know know. If anybody wants to, you know, ping me and you know me, I'm happy to, you know, take a note saying, you know, happy vibes. So yeah, that is, you know, we're in a bit of a crisis moment, and and uh and I could take the C cubed uh and run it through that. Um speak speak to the C cubed then and and look, I I've never met Marcy, but I feel like I know her because you've you do the use of it. And I look so know that my my good vibes are being sent over to her. So we have our S cubed, and I'm sure we'll talk about that a bit. But um C Cubed came out in the last year sort of for me, which is contain, converge, and collaborate. It was actually written, Shani Bazar picked it up in an article she wrote um about you know, how do you contain risk, converge technologies, and collaborate more to get to this sort of you know, quantum future, whatever that means. So there's an element of contain, converge, collab there. If I think about what we're dealing with with my wife and cancer, you know, the whole goal is to contain it. And then you take all these things that are going on and you converge them together. You know, this is a blood cancer, it's a stem cell harvest, it's a kill of a system, it's a full refresh, it's a reset of your whole biology. Vaccines coming, like it's amazing what I saw. By the way, this is not amazing, just to put the wrong word on that at this point. Like, but when I saw how the centrifuge worked, and centrifuges are being talked about today, um, I just followed, I started following CERN on Instagram because centrifuges is on my mind. Because when you spin your blood and you can separate the plasma from the stems and collect those precious stem cells, that's like a real technology that's only around for 10 or 20 years now. And that's amazing because that's for me, that containment we did for the last six months and that convergence of technologies in the last three that I saw physically hit and actually saving life of wife, it's uh it's breathtaking. And I know all these technologies are gonna span across all of these things, including our little you know, finance uh chat, you know, voice telephone world. Not in the biggest way, oh my god, but like these things are all horizontal things. AI is one layer of that, but there's so much more that's coming fast. So it's but it's all good, you know. I've got, and by the way, community people, I get so many notes saying good vibes every time you come to me. That's your first, and uh it's all good. We're it's and it's by the way, it's going really well, and uh the process and the science is working, and you know, within a year or two, I think we're really in the rearview mirror. I mean, Sal Narrow. Yeah, I was gonna say uh that that reminds you, I remember it's Sal's a mutual friend of both of us, Sal Narrow, and I remember him speaking to, you know, in terms of not just crisis, but in in life in general, you know, there's a reason he said that the rearview mirror is much smaller than the windshield to, you know, always been looking to the wind, you know, the most of your attention, the windshield. Is is that something you subscribe to as well? Well, just to reflect on Sal a bit, who is truly one of my favorite humans on the planet, he's a really unique guy, and I've seen his evolution as a human over many years in a good way. He's just amazing. 2005-6, you know, we were all together, you know, looming into a financial crisis. We were at dinners and he was animated in a good way. Like we really have to solve some of this. And I saw him, you know, in that moment. That's not rearview mirror, that wasn't forward, that was the present moment. We're all, you know, in a dinner looking at like the markets and the volatility and confirms not getting done and credit default swaps in 05 and 6, basic stuff that we did get on top of. But um, you know, that uh now I look back today, you know, the rearview mirror is anxiety inducing. That's like a scientific psychological fact, I think. I've read that. Sorry, it's depressing. Back is depressing, forward is anxiety, right? Which is why presence is actually super important because the only moment that actually exists is now. You could project, but that day may not even come. And you could look back, but that day is not even here. And I would argue, and not to use this word for myself, but if you take that data, you learn and you roll it forward, that's maybe wisdom. And and I think it where you said that just really, you know, hit a nerve in terms of the importance of it. We only have the present moment. We can plan for the future, but you don't want to live in the future. I think it's recognizing what is the unmet future and what do I need to do to you know to move myself to that space. You know, we talk about Lance, he he and or or Henry Fernandez, you know, they they can, you know, that they spoke about, well, I I interpreted it as being able to see the unmet future, but it's then you know, bringing that back to okay, so what are we thinking, what do we need to be thinking about now, present moment? Yeah, 10 through 192. Speak to that. Because I love your, I love your you're a framework person. Speak to because that in our first conversation you mentioned that I was I remember busy scribing to be like, this is such a good framework. So as you know, I have this book and this book, and I've been writing in them for now 11, 12 years. So in you know, 2015, I'd left Goldman in 1112. I'd been at market for five three years, and I thought, okay, what does 10 years out look like? What does 2025 literally look like? A 10-year dream. But it's a dream because it's a dream, it can only be a dream state. It's too far to run a business, it's too far to talk to most people, it's just too far out, unless you're like with your maybe your family and you're thinking, where could we be living? And like that's fun. But businesses mostly can't run close to that marker. Um, three years is that vision line to me, which is where good sustainable long-term businesses run to that three-year vision pretty perpetually. One is that one-year plan you have to have. It's called the budget, right? 90 days is that mark every quarter that you measure your result, and then the two-week sprint. So 103-192, 10-year dream, three-year vision, one year to plan, 90 days to focus and measure, and two-week sprints. Now, depending on the time, like I'm a more of a three-year vision, 90 days to measure. I think we might be in a time where it's more of a one-year plan with a two-week sprint. Like, how do you really nail that plan? You're still measuring because you everybody has a quarter to mark. Like that's the public world, it's how we measure, it's the seasons. If you live in places with seasons like I do. Um, London, I don't have some. So, like that, but now, you know, I am personally shifting. I'm generally a 390 guy. I'm now running more to probably one, two. Two, I'm I'm focusing myself in the weeks that are mattering to the months that are adding up to the quarters that become your 12-month result. The result is still an outcome. You really have to be just like bring that, you know. If you're skiing, sometimes you really do have to look 10 feet in front of you. You know, you can't be so far down the mountain because you just need a bit of touch. And the I I love the I I've used this word several times in our conversation, but I love the intentionality of it. Um, I love the structure of it because it feels that that just gives it. I feel like it's like building a house. You know, you've got foundations, you've got that there's a plan, there's it's like all of those components are equally as important to make that dream a reality. I mean, it's exactly the way I think about it. You know, I grew up as a muni power banker in the 90s, right? I was getting deals done to build power plants. I got really interested in power. I understood cogeneration facilities and hydro and nuclear and geo geothermal. And I'm like, wow. And uh, you know, energy is great as we talked about, but you know, if you have energy without a framework, like that's like where is your power? Where's your containment? Where's your compartmentalization? Like I have a trust for I have an innovation formula I've worked on, which I've talked to you about with trust and passion. And that to me is a foundational thing, and you can apply it to your life and your business. Like, how do you innovate your way forward as a human, taking leaps in good and bad times, having experiences with people and building that trust so you can, and then with passion, you can take that trust with passion, and then you take tech and relationships and put it in the mix, and that's the foundation, right? This 103.192 is my framework of time management. It's my I call it like my lifetiming framework, my LTF. And it's now on version 3.0, which you know, and it's expanded to 10 numbers. But to make the point on the expansion, so in 2022, after 2015, I added 60, 10.62, 60-day burst to hit your 90-day mark. So when you're in sales, it's like let's burst for 60, so we hit the quarter. Right? If it's July 4th, let's run for 60 days because we know it gets a bit darker after July 4th. So, like, how do you get that energy up just to hit that mark? And so I added 60 in front of the 90. I added 40, 40, 10, 31, 90, 62 at that same time because I wanted a 40-year cycle in my head for two generations of humans. And so I just build that over time. It's like a scaffolding that builds a framework, and now I've got a much 987, 60, 50, 540, 10, 31, 90, 62, which is 10 numbers. I said it fast because I can, because I say it in my mind a lot. But that just takes me out to 60 years, three generations, where I just believe that's when big change happens on the planet. When it's both new humans that want to just do it and don't care what the old world war is, and you sort of maybe even repeat some of the mistakes because you forgot the old lessons. Yeah. Maybe more of that these days. Time will tell. But the the, I mean, you work closely with Lance and he talks about measuring everything. You know, it it when he talked about, you know, you know, and it's what you put your attention on expands. So I'm I'm seeing such uh such parallels here between you both have such robust frameworks for measurement to really make sure, you know, are we on the right track? You know, what's the overarching ambition? Are we on the right track? And then measuring yourself against that execution. I'll give you an example of that. And so my frameworks tend to be a bit higher level, more general, that I truly try to apply to my life. Um, I'll give you an example of a framework we had, a KPI at market when we worked. It was client touches. Uh, we needed to do 50 a month, 150 a quarter, uh, 600 a year as execs. We had to actually have that many touches and we had to record it and put it in a spreadsheet. If we didn't do that, it was going to hit our performance and our payout. So we had a hard KPI, and that's you talk about 50 client real client, like it could be a call, a meeting, something that you're generating an outside. You know, you could have people generally sitting around not doing as much. And if you think activity is a uh is a is a uh symptom of success, I know Eric Maldonado does, because I've worked with that guy for a long time, and he has high, high activity. Lots of calls, lots of sales, lots of meetings, lots of relationships, lots of revenue. So that was a hardcore KPI we had to measure every 90 days. Did you do your 150 client touches? And and it's it's that to me. I have a little PTSD, just uh maybe a tiny bit of how do you force maybe 150 client touches when salespeople actually want to be in front of their clients. But but relationships are so critical, and it's that it is the it is a hardcore KPI. It is, and I'm sure it the benefits of that were uh paid back in multiples in terms of. The genius of that KPI, by the way, it's an input-output, right? Everybody would say my KPI is my EBITDA, my revenue, my sales, my growth, my it's actually activity with purpose and good timing. And maybe timing is the hardest element to nail, as we talked, it's the hardest resource to preserve because you physically can't. So let's speak to that then. If you know if time is the hardest, um, one of the hardest resources to preserve, how do you manage yours? Well, my calendar specifically, I have eight color categories. Like I know I do about 800 hours a year physically flying in the air. I know there's 8,500 hours in a year, I know 3,000 of those hours are not really travel time because it's summer or holiday, so there's 5,500 hours in a year. I'm flying 800 of them. Not you know, eight over not, you know, 800 over 5,500, that's a lot of time physically in the air. That said, the beauty is a multi uh um, you know, I operate, I I I multitask a bit. So if I'm on a plane to Tokyo for 14 hours, I'm doing four hours of work. I might have seen three movies that I then write in the book. I I watch a movie, I quote, I then hit you on WhatsApp. Yeah. So like even that 14 hours of time coming back from Tokyo, here's the beauty of the Tokyo flight. 14 hours, you take off at 3 p.m. on Friday, you watch three movies, you do three hours of work summaries of the cool meetings you had, you land at the same time in New York. It's a my it's for me, it's so mind-bending. I I could confuse my time easily because it is confusing, I think. And I think we're starting to understand maybe elements of how this thing works over the span of a universe. Marcy would not like this frame because I'm playing a fake scientist right now. Um but like that is like amazing to me. And when I started to go more to Asia and back, I'm like, wow. And if you live on Mars and you go around the sun, how old are you? Like, what's a year? It's not the same time. Time is a measurement from a fixed position on a place we know, which is Earth. And then we could do degrees over a curved surface with a straight line making a triangle. Like, these are like mathematical, geometrical truisms that we know. How does that relate to me flying from Tokyo and getting five things done, but actually landing at the same time? And because I don't need a lot of sleep, I didn't sleep a lot on the plane because it's day, because I'm flying. I land at 3 p.m. on Friday and hang out at my house, go out that night, wake up Saturday morning, same time, and it's literally like I got 367 days that year. I I I okay, and tell me your eight, do you do you know what your eight-color coded is? Is it your assistant that does your eight-color coded? Or do you know, like how do you bucket things? So in my email inbox, which unfortunately for the first time in my life, I have an assistant in my inbox because I have such a tough time keeping up. So in that world, it's reply, review, uh, task waiting in some workday system. So there's like four or five categories in my email that are color-coded. My calendar is red is external meetings, blue is internal meetings, my exec board meetings are purple, my travel is light purple. You know, so I have eight colors that, and when I look at my wheel of my Google calendar, I know I spent 842 hours physically in purple. But I also know that that is, I know that there's many more hours than that because I'm doing multiple things at multiple times. And my team knows when I fly, I'm reading, I'm active, I'm looking at LinkedIn. People generally know when I fly because I'm active. And the the the I love what you said there around the the the wheel of Google Calendar, because I suppose the data doesn't lie. Well, it could lie, but it gives you even if it's a good or just an um an overview representation, in order that you can be like, okay, well, look, you know, if we go back to the market um measurement, you know, one of the activity measures is, you know, 50 client um touch points a month, you can very quickly see, you know, if that's you know what you set yourself as a target, like your all your time is in internal meetings, well then it So let me give you um three just visuals that just were so good for me. Yellow is personal on my calendar, and gray is a block of time. Okay. And those are on my calendar, you know. I need time Friday afternoon, whatever it is. So I need to see more yellow in general, whatever like yoga Saturday morning. Believe me, I'm I'm right with you, Sonny. So you're so bright, and your colors are always like, I love it, it's amazing. Um, so that is real, and then I would say three or four years ago at Symphony, I was probably like 40% external, 60% uh uh internal. Because we were just you know, a lot going on, coming out of COVID, really trying to just get things you know into that. And now I'm probably 80-20 external because I could see my calendar is just much more red. Yeah. And and and and it I go back to you know, what we put our attention on expands, like measure things and you know, the right things and things will improve. Um, you mentioned on like you know, your Tokyo flights that that you'll sometimes you know watch three movies. What is one film that you've watched that's had a very powerful, I don't know if it's a leadership lesson, a lesson in life that's that's that stayed with you. So this book has a lot of movie quotes. Probably the ancient one from Doctor Strange, where we're all in this river, whether you like it or not. That current exists, whether you like it or not. There's energy in that cuther current, whether you like it or not. If you fight that, you're probably gonna sink pretty quickly. But if you allow that river to become part of you or you somehow relax a bit, you you're in it. So we're all in that sort of river. You're never on the side. You know, everybody says the man in the arena. Well, everybody's in the arena, FYI. So, and I love the idea that we're all on the stream, and you kind of have to relax, or sometimes take that energy forward. So that's a really important quote, and I love the whole Doctor Strange kind of the whole the whole idea of it. Uh, you know, that's probably my favorite of all of those movies generally. But then I would say um Fury, I think it was Fury, uh uh Ideas are peaceful, history is violent, which sounds horrible. Um, but I'd like more data that says that's less true. We all have most of us people that are pretty good. I think we're good. We don't like people to be able to be feeling bad physically anyway. Like that's a peaceful idea. But even us peaceful folks can sometimes, you know, be a bit, you know, more aggressive, right? So ideas are generally quite peaceful. Not all ideas, I hear a lot of ideas are not peaceful, but let's assume that's a but you know, history has a lot more to it than that track, and that's just a very kind of yin-yang, be careful what you wish for, or cycles, you know, kind of repeat type stuff. And I love what you said, the Doctor Strange one. Um, because it just if I think of the river, the stream you mentioned, I think of a river as having lots of different tributaries. And sometimes when we're trying to go against the current or we're going too fast, we don't always see the tributaries. So there's something there for me about that going with flow and and it's it's the kind of the hurry up and slow down. It's the slowing down so you can you can see, and you're not missing some potential amazing opportunities or serendipitous, you know, these meaningful collisions. Yeah, and we had a riff the other day on that move fast, break things versus move slow with intention. And maybe that's the balance of moving slow with intention allows you to also have presence at the same time. If you're moving, you're arguably not present. But if you move with intention and slow, maybe you actually are present and moving at the same time. So I think that's really important. Have you ever gone tubing down a river? I'm definitely assuming the answer is no, given that. So in America, there are times where you're in a river tubing with people. Like you're all in these tubes and you're just linked together and you're just wandering down a river and you're in some place. It could be in the South, it could be anywhere in America. There's lots of places. They're at river parks where you go to rides, right? So but sometimes like you're with your kids and like they're floating off over there, and it's like, yes, and it's that fog point where you have to find your way through it, but then there's that people around you that you know your daughter's like floating off, and she's just gonna get caught in those sticks, or it's a real ugly area. There's actually like a little animal on the edge there. Like, so you kind of you're in that river and you just nudge, and it's like I think about that a lot. Like those growing up, and and again, like I'm not in a there are places in America where they literally do this like every week. Um, they go river tubing and just hang out with beers on floats and tube away. Uh I see that in I see that in Boca, Florida, in the Boca Lake, which is a totally different version of that. Just people hanging out in boats, you know, with drinks basically on tubes. So that's like, you know, that's that river, how you kind of loop that all around. I bring back a little my childhood, and you know, I'm sure you have versions of that in uh in places that you've grown up in life. Well, I'm not sure that I do, but I feel like I want to go tubing. And have you been skiing? Skiing, right? You got your family, it's a river. You're like, don't go to the edges, get out of the trees, watch that tree well. It's all the same. You could, you know, a river is a mountain, you know, it's all the same kind of vibe. And you talk about um, you know, you you've used a number of nautical metaphors um in our conversation. So one that I I actually I you know I noted in my that my book, Stratospheric CEOs, was around the uh the seaplane, the surfer, the snorkeler, and the scuba diver. And I've loved that. I use that all the time with clients, and I do always credit you just as an FYI. Can you speak more to that? Because that for me is such a um it just speaks to me. You ex Oh gosh, have you ever. I did this yesterday for so it it it's surf, snorkel, scuba, because you know, as a leader, as a human, surf often, snorkel sometimes, and scuba by appointment. Like you really should be pulled down as a leader to get in that level of detail. And I would argue in a zero through four, the seaplane is the moment that's maybe a crisis moment. You really have to surveil. You've had a ransomware attack, somebody's lost at sea, you're trying to figure out like a rip tider, right? So seaplanes, you don't want to. I would argue seaplanes are survival only. Yeah, you're probably operating too high as a leader. Surfing, you're right on the surface of the firm or your life, and you're really riding those waves. And that's a little bit like that Thomas Friedman book. So I like that whole, you know, snorkeling sometimes, you dip in, you kind of see what's going on, it's fun. You really got a scuba by appointment, like be brought down. And I added a fifth, which is splunking. Never go into the cave. They're terrifying, there's bats, and there's probably no good that could go that deep. Uh, maybe unless you have a ransomware attack. So, you know, seaplane, surf snorkel scuba, never splunk. Splunking. Focus. Yeah, so that's I have to land on a prime number, as you know. So I got there by the five S's, but it's an S cubed because it's the three in the middle you want to laser in on. Zero is C plane, four is Splunk, which is not a prime, which is why you exit out. It it I love the visual and it it really speaks to me. Uh, you know, and sometimes you know, you might be in survival mode as an organization, so you do need to be that seaplane. I suppose you know when COVID hit or 9-11 financial crisis, there isn't uh, you know, the zooming out at that high altitude, but then it's the zooming in and and and out of interest, uh is it something intuitively you know when to go seaplane to you know to surfer, to it to to snorkeler, to scuba die? Is it is it intuition or w how do you recognize where you need to move between? Maybe data, which is instinct. Yeah, which is it comes from experience. And you probably don't know it all the time, it's just something you kind of wander into a little bit. And I am gonna have a battery problem in two seconds, which is super insane just because I moved, so I didn't have my problem. No worries. I just want to 29%. Never know. It's gonna be okay. And when when we talk about instinct and data, it made me think about um failure. Um, you and I have talked about failure before, and when it comes to innovation, you know, failure is often part of the journey. And you shared with me, and I love the way you describe this, you you know, you shared you said failure is a feature, not a bug. Um, and success is not final and failure is not fatal. Can you speak to that? You know, and you you mentioned Lance and they all remember every one of their failures. They don't, you it won't necessarily recall all their successes, but failure is a feature, not a bug. Speak to that. So this one, I'm gonna wander a little bit with Ray Kurtzwell. So, and I learned a lot just in the last year. So there's this part of your brain that is deep and instinctual, and you do not think about what you do, it happens. It's like a breath, you're not thinking about it. And there's things that you actually physically do, like you know, fight or flight, like they're really wired into your brain that way. And we as humans have that from way back. Over time, I guess, our neocortex has developed more, and because of our opposable thumb versus primate, we have been able to both think of things and build them. And the building of them and the thinking of them has circulated and grown that neocortex to a tremendous size, to the point that our brain shape has changed, our skull has changed, our like so the physical brain has changed, the skull has changed. So if I think of how we are wired as humans now, given that neocortex is so dominant and we have so many X triggers and Facebook triggers, and right, there's so many things hitting that conscious. There is a very subconscious instinctual thing. And you're probably seeing some of those things play out. Like people are in fight or flight, and their instinct is to say, do this, and can't we just think a little bit more about that as like a human who might have evolved just slightly? And that's like a real like the science, you know, he wrote a book in 12 on the mind. This is 24. He wrote the original of this in 07. And he believes we're gonna really take biology and tech merge it to the point where 500-year-old people easy are gonna come in the next five to ten. I love that point because I've got my own personal battle going on, obviously. Uh not me, but my life and my wife. So it's I think about that a lot. And I think about like the brain is interesting, and we're obviously trying to replicate it through these models. I'm not sure that's possible, but it will change a lot of how we behave and what we do physically. I love that. I love that. And look, I I wanna I wanna pivot. We talked about failure. I also understand a little bit about I don't know if winning's the right word, but I do think it's winning. You know, what do you think of the the, you know, if we think of winning as a recipe card, and there's ingredients on that recipe card, and they're not vague ingredients like flour, butter, sugar. It's that you know, there's some specificity to the ingredients. What do you see as the uh ingredients for success? So and I'll take my market sort of CDS history. Like we did a lot to build a market from 2001 on and credit derivatives, and by we I mean Lance in the front, many people around this whole, at least from a data perspective. So we conquered, right? We conquered building an industry around credit default swaps and finding a way to ensure the risk of a default, which was great, and take a view on that name. Maybe we got a bit complacent as the winning and the money flows. And then, yes, we did have a crisis in 089. I'm not, it wasn't, I'm not sure if it was caused by that or exacerbated by that, or that collided with other things. I'd argue it was mass complacency, a lack of data, and people running away with a lot and not an you know a lot of you know, duh, which is it's not the first or last time that will happen. So I think about that, and I think about all the winning we did through 07 and 8 and then 09 to 15, felt very different because we had many, many things we had to handle, including bringing the world back from the brink of crisis and resetting the whole industry regulatory-wise with Dodd-Frank and MiFid and all of these. So we named our planet Market Fox 15 because we were trying to get back to the future by 2015 and get back to innovating again versus just solving for regs. Star 16, you know, you know, Fox, Star, and we sort of went off and then started to really get back to it by 20. And then we had another crisis that forced us to another level of mobility because of the pandemic. And now AI and quantum is gonna take that and put it on more steroids, and that containment to convergence to collaborate is gonna really do things that people have no idea about yet, and can't possibly like a penicillin moment. You'll see cubes. Now, look, I'm conscious of time, and we could spend hours and hours uh chatting, which we often do. Um, but I wanted to take us into a very quick fire round, and so everything short answers, a single single word or short sentence. The secret to a fulfilling life is people. Most people get old and don't have a lot around them, and that's kind of why they decay so quickly. Yeah, it's true, isn't it? And and you have to invest in relationships, you know. And your kids get married, you know, people disappear naturally through time. So how do you keep community? I'm never letting my children leave. My children are never leaving. I mean, I mean they're gonna have some, I they may have some views. No, I mean they still will be going, but as long as they still love their mum. Um one thing you can't live without. Yeah, the primary is my wife, and the secondary is yoga. Ah, yes. I love this. Morning luck or night owl? Yes. Which one? Both correct. I wake up at 5 to 6 a.m. and I could go to bed. I I don't need a lot of sleep, and people tell me I'm crazy, but I just I don't think I need more than five, six hours, really. And I could like so I, you know, I will generally so I am I'm a night owl as a kid. I stuck that way, and when I got to the street, I became a morning owl, and now I'm just whatever. And do you have do you have an aura ring or something that tracks your sleep? Okay, because I've just bought mine. And so with your what does it say when you have like four or five hours sleep, does it does that influence your um I don't I they don't call it a recovery rate? I'm only day one of my readiness. Does that does that sh does that show up in the readiness? Yeah, we say more I sleep, the more it thinks I'm ready. You know, maybe if my body temperature is up too much, it it stress first. My heart rate up is not a problem, it's the body temperature plus the heart rate, it means you're stressed. So yeah, I think those in general, there's there's some skew there. What I do know is I I pee uh somewhat frequently some nights. Okay, so that's that's what my aura ring tells me mostly. And does the aura ring do your temp does it do your temperature? It doesn't do temperature, but the stress indicator is a combination, I believe, of your heart rate and stress. Because again, what you want is 98.5 degrees body temperature, even if your heart rate is 170. Yeah, well, I'm looking forward to because we like data, so I'm looking forward to the data it's gonna offer me. Um, a book you're currently reading. Apple in China. Ooh. Yeah, how they kind of got caught in their supply chain and maybe have built a whole supply chain for China that's gonna be repurposed. It's very competitive it's very interesting and you know, somewhat controversial, but and and a view on the leadership of Apple for sure. Okay, that's one I'm gonna be reading then as well. Uh favorite Netflix series. Wasn't Netflix, but it is Vikings, and I found it through Lance, and it's kind of Game of Thrones, but better because it's almost real world. Okay, I haven't watched that either. Okay, I feel like I've got a lot of good recommendations coming. Somebody who inspired you early in your career. Yeah, probably my professor at SUNY, Dr. Ron Forbes, who built this program and it's the way I got to the street. And then I'd say Mike McCarthy at Goldman, um, who basically hired me. I had one interview at Goldman and got hired, which was very weird. Yeah, because it's only about a hundred. I met Mike, he hired me, and I landed there in three weeks because he had a hole to plug in their power team. Uh so that was uh that he was and he was a really cool guy, you know, like a bit of a rock star, Rolling Stone paintings, lived in a his his elevator opened into his apartment, which I couldn't imagine how people have that. That was kind of the coolest guy when I was 23. See that in the movies. Exactly. So yeah. Uh a hidden talent you have. Uh being quiet. Oh, okay. Well, uh, yeah, but don't be quiet when we got for that when I we catch up because I always enjoy our conversations. Uh favorite meal. Uh bumblebee tuna with real mayo uh on white toast, and maybe wise potato chips uh crushed on top. I don't have a very uh advanced palate, maybe. Your dream job outside of finance. Uh space. Joining Elon. Space. There's a lot going on out there, and we know a lot about it, but not nearly enough. And maybe the ocean, but space is kind of looking pretty cool these days. A superpower you'd love to have. Being quiet. And a legacy you want to leave. Systems that help people, I guess. It's a little bit like what I do, but it's just, you know, can we build systems that actually really get things done in a good way and evolve, you know, in a proper way when they need to? Yeah. Do we still need mainframes? I don't know. I just hear the word impact there. Impact feels important. And look, I have um not only have I taken copious notes and uh taken such insight from our conversation, but it's also been enjoyable and such an engaging hour. So I appreciate you. Um and thank you for bringing your full self into this episode. And I look forward to many people listening to this episode. I appreciate you, Georgie. Like fully, completely. Thank you so much.