Welcome back to Being Invested, where we explore the personal stories of the people who make the markets. We take a fun, fascinating summertime detour in Episode 6, for a conversation with one of the world's top investment coaches, Lawrence Evans. We all know the value of coaches in sport and other walks of life. But like me, you may not have heard of an investment coach - they are not standing by any sidelines and their names don't appear in headlines. But they can be game changers, integrating lessons from high performance sport and other fields, and shining a light on what investing skill is, and how to elevate it. Lawrence has worked with the world’s top investors for over 15 years, coaching using his own proprietary methods grounded in multi-disciplinary research and practice. He's helped them raise their game, recover from tough patches, hone their skills and communicate successfully - with a grounding in self-awareness and discipline. Lawrence and I talk about how he does this, what he’s learned over the years and how we all can improve our craft – investing or perhaps any craft - through identifying the rules we use, and knowing when to change them. I was thrilled to have Lawrence join me as a guest and found it a very stimulating conversation. I hope you enjoy it and thank you, merci, muchas gracias for listening!

WHAT'S IN STORE:

•  “Strength maximization gives you a chance to be Mozart.”
•  “I see no link at all between being a great investor in terms of skill and having a massive IQ. In fact, I actually think it might be inversely correlated. The more intelligent you are, perhaps the more troublesome it is to be a skillful investor.”
• “What are you trying to improve as an investor? …Almost everybody tells you, I'm trying to improve Alpha or my benchmark plus returns. But you don't control that. So I would ask the question again, give me something you're trying to improve that you control.”
•  “What is it about you that you're really naturally good at as a human being? And let's do more of that in your strategy. ... A lot of people who come into this investing world who are super smart and super intelligent, they think they have to be good at everything. Well no, that's not investing. …you have to wait, as Buffett calls it, for the fat pitch, and if everything makes sense, then go in. But if it doesn't, wait.”
• “Some of the best investment teams in the world that I've met are consciously risk diverse. Some of the worst investment teams I've ever met are risk non-diverse, and are clustered around the risk personality of the boss. But they are unaware that happens.”
•  “There are a lot of people with entrenched views and I'd much prefer them to have entrenched hypotheses.”
•  “You've got to be prepared to be self aware. Self awareness wins. Not smartness, but self awareness wins. And you have to be prepared to work super hard at discipline.”
•  “Most people struggle with discipline … it's within us all to be somewhat complacent, some more than others. But part of what I do in this process is introduce the humble notion of a checklist. A checklist is outsourced discipline. It's a … tool that outsources complexity to a framework that you follow.”

Lawrence can be found:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawrence-evans-9a72588/?originalSubdomain=fr

https://www.salomon-partners.com/people/

Thank you for tuning in! I'd love your feedback, and if you'd like to suggest a guest, please message me on LinkedIn.

GRATITUDE

Sound: Alexander Russell

Design: Sophie Hardy

Music: Tom McKean

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