Behavior Gap Radio

In this short episode, Carl explores the tension between keeping your options open and actually choosing a life. When does flexibility stop being freedom and start getting in the way?

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In this short episode, Carl shares his favorite part of real financial planning. Before the numbers and plans, there’s a simpler question: What is all this money for?

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In this episode, Carl continues his reflections on commitment and thresholds through one fascinating word: cleave. It can mean to hold tightly together, but it can also mean to split apart—a beautiful accident of language that captures something essential about meaningful commitments. Whether we’re entering a marriage, leaving a career, or choosing a new path, something is joined while something else must change shape, and Carl explores why that isn’t simply the cost of commitment but perhaps the very thing that makes commitment meaningful.

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In this episode, Carl continues his reflection on thresholds, exploring the tension between leaving and arriving as his daughter prepares to get married. Some opposites aren’t problems to solve but polarities to hold, where each side gives meaning to the other. A threshold gives us space to honor what is ending and welcome what is beginning, but eventually, we have to cross it, allowing the old relationship to change shape so we can fully step into what comes next.

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In this episode, Carl reflects on threshold moments as his daughter prepares to get married. These moments resist simple categories: they can be happy and sad, an ending and a beginning, a leaving and an arriving, all at once. Rather than rushing across the threshold, Carl explores what it means to stand there for a moment, honoring what is changing while welcoming what is becoming possible, and recognizing that a meaningful life is full of moments when something precious must change shape for something new to begin.

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In this episode, Carl reflects on how differently we can interpret the world when we’re tired, emotionally depleted, or “in the basement.” A harmless comment, a credit card statement, or a letter in the mail can suddenly feel threatening, even when nothing is actually wrong. Carl explores the growing space between stimulus and response, and why simply noticing our own state a little sooner may be one of the most valuable practices we can develop.

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In this episode, Carl continues his exploration of a different approach to marketing with a simple question: Where are you still smoking? Before worrying about SEO, websites, content, or the latest marketing tactic, he argues that we should fix the boring basics first: return the email, call people back, show up on time, do what you said you would do, and say thank you. It’s a reminder that some of the best marketing isn’t marketing at all. It’s simply doing the work well and taking care of the people already knocking on the door.

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In this episode, Carl begins an exploration of marketing with a provocative claim: most marketing advice is just success porn—a tidy story built after the fact about why something worked. After decades of chasing tactics, formulas, funnels, and experts, he offers a different approach he calls “the offering.” Instead of asking how to get more clients or capture more attention, what if marketing began with making work worth sharing and offering it to the world with care, craft, consistency, and generosity?

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In this episode, Carl explores the “normalization of deviance,” the unsettling way risky behavior can slowly begin to feel safe simply because nothing bad happened. From investing to riding motorcycles, repeated success outside our normal safety boundaries can teach us exactly the wrong lesson: we got away with it, so it must be okay. Carl offers a simple reminder worth carrying with us: Getting away with something isn’t evidence that it was safe. Sometimes it just means we got away with it.

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In this episode, Carl explores one of the most dangerous lessons we can learn about risk: nothing bad happened last time. Whether in investing, backcountry skiing, or everyday life, repeated exposure to risk without consequences can slowly convince us that we were safe all along. Carl reflects on how the absence of consequences can masquerade as evidence of safety, and why one of the most important practices in risk management is simply to remember what happened to those who weren’t so lucky.

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