Tony Miller: It has been a highly charged summer between the big year of elections, a series of political and geopolitical surprises, and a few market shocks. It has been anything but the silly season. We’ve launched a few episodes of 50 Faces TV focused on investor identity and responsible investing, and we have continued covering the issue of maternal mortality women in sports, and other matters close to our hearts. Now we are back to our main series for Series 5, and we are delighted to bring you another 10 inspiring guests who share their insights on careers, markets, overlooked opportunities, and advice for fulfillment in life and career. First, on investment topics, tune in as we cycle through investment opportunities in fintech and consider the implications of AI as an advisor.
Speaker B: I do think that It’s going to be a long time before, to your point, any of this technology really supplants human judgment.
Tony Miller: And think about how it can help allocators.
Speaker C: We get a lot of information as allocators. You got hundreds of emails in the morning, the PDF, the pitch book. In the due diligence phase, you open any data room, just think about How many files? It’s not realistic for a human to review all the documents. AI can really help.
Tony Miller: We go back to school with Tony Miller of Excolare, exploring the opportunities in investing in education.
Speaker D: I think one of the challenges in education in particular, human capital broadly, is having an innovative solution, having a better product, right, is necessary but not sufficient. It needs to be a product that can improve learning, but it’s got to be a product that improves learning and can scale across 10,000 school districts if you’re talking K-12, across 3,000 higher education institutions.
Tony Miller: And talk about how we can learn from incentives and what really matters.
Speaker E: First two letters of merger is me. So you absolutely need to recognize that everyone is evaluating the change and what it means for them individually first and foremost. And if you don’t respect that, then you’re not really fully grasping what that change means to every single person in the organization.
Tony Miller: We hear about the challenges of being on the front lines and dealing with clients.
Speaker F: I do think that in the role of being on the front lines, your job is to really distill down messaging, make it easily understood, tailor it to your audience, understand what they care about, and then let them guide you in terms of where they want to take the relationship.
Tony Miller: We discover opportunities in investing in agriculture.
Speaker F: The whole idea of natural capital, farmland and timberland, you know, sequestering carbon. We’re, we’re able to feed the world. We want to do it sustainably. We’ve got to do more with less. And farmland has also proven to be an inflation hedge. So there are a number of reasons to include it in a portfolio. However, because it’s illiquid, it’s been difficult to develop products that really fit a retail market.
Tony Miller: Some of our guests speak about how they have navigated through some uncomfortable cultures.
Speaker G: I joined the city in 1980, and basically it was the era of the dinosaurs. It was only 5 years past the 1975 watershed when women were able to open bank accounts in their own name. Can you imagine that? Younger women today can’t even think of that, and, and I’m glad they can’t.
Tony Miller: Rob Gardner speaks about the woeful situation around savings and pension pots in the UK as he advocates for better financial literacy through a formula of earn it, keep it, grow it.
Speaker H: Maybe just to give the listeners the scale of the problem in the UK, 1 in 7 adults have no savings at all. 1 in 3 have less than 1 month’s in savings, 1 month’s living expenses in savings. So they can’t go more than 1.
Speaker C: Month.
Speaker H: You know, once if they lose their job. The average pension pot of a 40-year-old in the UK is £15,000. That’s not a year, that’s full stop £15,000. That is just way too low. That is definitely sort of inadequate.
Tony Miller: And finally, you won’t want to miss the wisdom that is liberally scattered throughout this podcast series, including wisdom from parents.
Speaker I: My dad was a big influence on me in terms of the way I think. He used to always say, you know, what do you know for sure? Or take things back to formula. So if you had a question about how something worked, dissect it back to what do I really know for sure here? You know, usually the problem is fairly simple.
Tony Miller: And from an executive coach, don’t resign.
Speaker B: Yourself to what you think you know. I feel like a lot of people make an assumption or an assessment of a situation and then they move on. Don’t resign so quickly. Sit with it and sit with the discomfort. Sit with the tension. What’s that expression? Breakdowns lead to breakthroughs. I’m really encouraging people to be courageous and have tough conversations.
Tony Miller: We look forward to sharing Series 5 with you. You can find all of our podcasts on the 50 Faces Hub, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Tony Miller: It has been a highly charged summer between the big year of elections, a series of political and geopolitical surprises, and a few market shocks. It has been anything but the silly season. We’ve launched a few episodes of 50 Faces TV focused on investor identity and responsible investing, and we have continued covering the issue of maternal mortality women in sports, and other matters close to our hearts. Now we are back to our main series for Series 5, and we are delighted to bring you another 10 inspiring guests who share their insights on careers, markets, overlooked opportunities, and advice for fulfillment in life and career. First, on investment topics, tune in as we cycle through investment opportunities in fintech and consider the implications of AI as an advisor.
Speaker B: I do think that It’s going to be a long time before, to your point, any of this technology really supplants human judgment.
Tony Miller: And think about how it can help allocators.
Speaker C: We get a lot of information as allocators. You got hundreds of emails in the morning, the PDF, the pitch book. In the due diligence phase, you open any data room, just think about How many files? It’s not realistic for a human to review all the documents. AI can really help.
Tony Miller: We go back to school with Tony Miller of Excolare, exploring the opportunities in investing in education.
Speaker D: I think one of the challenges in education in particular, human capital broadly, is having an innovative solution, having a better product, right, is necessary but not sufficient. It needs to be a product that can improve learning, but it’s got to be a product that improves learning and can scale across 10,000 school districts if you’re talking K-12, across 3,000 higher education institutions.
Tony Miller: And talk about how we can learn from incentives and what really matters.
Speaker E: First two letters of merger is me. So you absolutely need to recognize that everyone is evaluating the change and what it means for them individually first and foremost. And if you don’t respect that, then you’re not really fully grasping what that change means to every single person in the organization.
Tony Miller: We hear about the challenges of being on the front lines and dealing with clients.
Speaker F: I do think that in the role of being on the front lines, your job is to really distill down messaging, make it easily understood, tailor it to your audience, understand what they care about, and then let them guide you in terms of where they want to take the relationship.
Tony Miller: We discover opportunities in investing in agriculture.
Speaker F: The whole idea of natural capital, farmland and timberland, you know, sequestering carbon. We’re, we’re able to feed the world. We want to do it sustainably. We’ve got to do more with less. And farmland has also proven to be an inflation hedge. So there are a number of reasons to include it in a portfolio. However, because it’s illiquid, it’s been difficult to develop products that really fit a retail market.
Tony Miller: Some of our guests speak about how they have navigated through some uncomfortable cultures.
Speaker G: I joined the city in 1980, and basically it was the era of the dinosaurs. It was only 5 years past the 1975 watershed when women were able to open bank accounts in their own name. Can you imagine that? Younger women today can’t even think of that, and, and I’m glad they can’t.
Tony Miller: Rob Gardner speaks about the woeful situation around savings and pension pots in the UK as he advocates for better financial literacy through a formula of earn it, keep it, grow it.
Speaker H: Maybe just to give the listeners the scale of the problem in the UK, 1 in 7 adults have no savings at all. 1 in 3 have less than 1 month’s in savings, 1 month’s living expenses in savings. So they can’t go more than 1.
Speaker C: Month.
Speaker H: You know, once if they lose their job. The average pension pot of a 40-year-old in the UK is £15,000. That’s not a year, that’s full stop £15,000. That is just way too low. That is definitely sort of inadequate.
Tony Miller: And finally, you won’t want to miss the wisdom that is liberally scattered throughout this podcast series, including wisdom from parents.
Speaker I: My dad was a big influence on me in terms of the way I think. He used to always say, you know, what do you know for sure? Or take things back to formula. So if you had a question about how something worked, dissect it back to what do I really know for sure here? You know, usually the problem is fairly simple.
Tony Miller: And from an executive coach, don’t resign.
Speaker B: Yourself to what you think you know. I feel like a lot of people make an assumption or an assessment of a situation and then they move on. Don’t resign so quickly. Sit with it and sit with the discomfort. Sit with the tension. What’s that expression? Breakdowns lead to breakthroughs. I’m really encouraging people to be courageous and have tough conversations.
Tony Miller: We look forward to sharing Series 5 with you. You can find all of our podcasts on the 50 Faces Hub, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
