605: Harvard Economist John Campbell on How to Stop Losing Money to a Broken Financial System
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
Release Date: 11/26/2025
617: Inc 5000 fastest growing company on Psychology behind leadership influence and human behavior (with MichaelAaron Flicker)
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
Michael explains that people often struggle because “adding and adding must be more effective,” yet humans are “more confident when just one advantage is presented.” He shares that Five Guys succeeded because they “only do burgers and fries” and that “if you say you are best at one thing most of all, they’re more likely to believe that.” He emphasizes that “buyers…have a top force-ranked prioritization of the most important thing,” and focusing on the thing you are “best in the world at” is “more believable and more memorable.” On pricing, he notes that...
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616: NYU Stern’s Prof on How AI Is Rewriting the Future of Work (with Ben Zweig)
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
When most executives discuss AI, they focus on automation. Dr. Ben Zweig, NYU Stern professor and CEO of Revelio Labs, explains why the real disruption isn’t machines replacing people, it’s our failure to rethink how work is structured. “Labor markets are not as sophisticated as capital markets,” Ben explains. “We allocate capital efficiently, but not labor. That’s a huge weakness in how our economy operates.” In this conversation, we explore: Why every company must learn job architecture, seeing jobs not as titles, but as bundles of tasks that must constantly evolve. The...
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615: $12B Investment Firm CEO on Saving the American Dream (with Mark Matson)
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
In this conversation, Mark explains that “we often build our lives on things we are certain about that simply are not true.” He describes how “we don’t actually see the world… we see screens of how we think the world is.” He explains that these screens create “a double paradox” shaping what we think is safe, what we think is risky, and how we choose to act. Mark describes the difference between someone who sees a large employer as stability versus an entrepreneur who sees it as danger, saying “which screen is right? Well, it depends on which screen is going to give you more...
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614: Why Executive Leaders Feel Lonely
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
Adam McGraw is a Fortune 100 VP turned entrepreneur and co-founder of a leadership community. “We try and really curate it for folks that are in the VP and above through CEOs as well, founders, etc., so that they have this kind of safe white space atmosphere to really consistently plug in and build community.” “Not just transact network-wise in things that are typically narrow and niche… we really love the idea of a melting pot for leaders.” “This is kind of the new normal: constant change, constant uncertainty, constant transition.” “Being in crew keeps me grounded and...
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613: Microsoft CTO on AI, Human Agency and the Future of Work
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
Technology is reshaping the world at a pace few people, inside or outside the industry, expected. But every so often, you meet someone who has not only witnessed the major waves of technological change, but helped build them. In this conversation, Marcus Fontoura, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, CTO for Azure Core, walks us through the story of AI, what leaders are getting wrong, and how to develop the one thing that will matter more than any model or algorithm: human agency. Marcus has lived through every major inflection point: early search, the rise of cloud...
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612: How to Have More Hope with Dr. Julia Garcia
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
In this episode, Dr. Julia Garcia explains why hope is a habit and why it is critical for us to remove what blocks hope. She describes what happens inside teams when leaders lose hope, including “the culture that creates, the burnout that leads to, the discouragement and defeat.” Julia shows how unprocessed emotions drain leaders even when they appear high-functioning. “If we emotionally feel disconnected, we’re going to start looking elsewhere or we’re going to end up in a place of hopelessness where maybe we completely shut down in our career and now we’re just a robot.” One of...
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611: Former U.S. Intelligence Officer on AI, Leadership, and Thinking Like a Spy (with Anthony Vinci)
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
In this conversation, Anthony Vinci explains that “AI is going to be able to do more and more of what people do.” He describes a future where “AI is going to get better and better at doing what people do,” and highlights that leaders must understand “how do you figure out what AI is good at and then implement it to do that” and “how do you manage your workforce so that they are able to partner with that AI.” He warns that leaders often “overestimate what AI can do and underestimate it at the same time,” and stresses the importance of “getting that balance right.” As he...
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610: Cas Holman on Play, Creativity, and the Future of Work
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
When was the last time you played, really played? For Cas Holman, founder and chief designer of Heroes Will Rise and star of Netflix’s Abstract: The Art of Design, play isn’t childish. It’s the foundation of human creativity, resilience, and connection. She worked with LEGO, Disney Imagineering, and the LEGO Foundation and on a mission to help adults rediscover what children know instinctively: that play is how we learn, adapt, and feel alive. “Play isn’t what happens after work,” Cas explains. “It’s how we manage uncertainty. It’s how we cope, experiment, and find our way...
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609: UCLA Professor and MD on How Gravity Shapes Your Health and Mind
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
Dr. Brennan Spiegel, Director of Health Services Research at Cedars-Sinai and Professor of Medicine and Public Health at UCLA, author of the book Pull, explains why illness is often a failure to manage gravity. He describes how our relationship with gravity defines strength, balance, digestion, mental stability, and emotional health. Take the Gravotype Quiz at to identify how your body manages gravity. Key Insights and Action Steps — Dr. Brennan Spiegel “Every single cell of your body evolved from this force of gravity. Physics came first, and biology came second.” Illness arises...
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608: Harvard Professor and former CEO of Medtronic, Bill George, on How Leaders Should Manage Challenging Times
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic and Harvard Business School Executive Fellow, explains how leaders can stay grounded, principled, and effective in chaotic times. “It’s a world of chaos and it requires a very different kind of leader than in more stable times.” The skills that once mattered (process control, long-term plans) are now secondary to courage, self-awareness, and moral clarity. George says most executives still lead comfortably “inside the walls” but fear the external world (media, public scrutiny, and rapid change). “Today, if you’re a leader, you are a public...
info_outlineJohn Campbell, Professor of Economics at Harvard University and co-author of Fixed, joined the Strategy Skills Podcast to explain why the financial system often works against ordinary investors and how to make better personal-finance decisions.
After decades studying markets and investor behavior, Campbell saw a pattern: even educated, high-income earners routinely make avoidable mistakes in housing, saving, and investing.
“Once I started looking at how people actually behave, I became more and more aware of how pervasive mistakes are, people are just leaving money on the table.”
Those mistakes compound over time, widening inequality.
“It’s what economists call a cross-subsidy, from the poor to the rich. My co-author Tarun and I feel that this is really outrageous and we should be concerned about it.”
Five Key Insights
1. Financial Mistakes Compound Inequality
Campbell’s research shows that even when borrowers start on equal terms, inaction and misunderstanding drive divergence.
“Black borrowers are paying maybe as much as half a percentage point more on average than white borrowers… and that’s just because they haven’t refinanced.”
Behavioral gaps like failing to refinance when rates fall transfer wealth upward.
2. Housing Choices Are Often Poorly Understood
Many treat property as guaranteed wealth rather than a productive asset.
“It’s a huge mistake to buy a bigger house than you need, or even more so to buy a place and then let it sit empty… you’re effectively buying an asset and then throwing away the dividend on that asset.”
Unused or oversized housing drains capital that could compound elsewhere.
3. Early-Career Risk-Taking Is Underrated
“Most people, when they’re young, have a very large hidden asset, their earning power. For most people, that earning power is far safer than the stock market.”
Because human capital is relatively stable, young investors can afford higher equity exposure and should taper risk only as retirement approaches.
4. Target-Date Funds Don’t Go Far Enough
“Most target date funds are not aggressive enough early in life, and they taper down the risk taking too gradually.”
Campbell argues these default products should adjust risk more sharply and reflect each investor’s actual wealth trajectory.
5. Complexity Creates Confusion and Inequality
“This profusion of accounts leads to confusion. People throw up their hands. And the access to these accounts is unequal.”
The U.S. system’s overlapping account types favor large employers and the financially literate, leaving others behind.
Actions You Can Take Now
1. Maximize any employer match immediately.
“Certainly any kind of employer match, you want to maximize that right away.”
2. Save aggressively through tax-favored accounts.
“You should be saving aggressively and you should be maximizing your use of tax-favored accounts.”
3. Manage your mortgage strategically.
“Managing your mortgage is also a very important thing for people in the middle class and upper middle class.”
4. Consider adjustable-rate mortgages as efficient leverage if you can manage the risk.
“The cheapest way to lever that portfolio and be involved in risky markets actually in many cases is to use an adjustable-rate mortgage… a cheap way to take leverage.”
5. Use home equity as flexible credit.
“Home equity is a valuable source of credit.”
6. In retirement, spend your assets, don’t hoard them.
“Many people hang on to their financial assets too long and are too reluctant to tap home equity. The right way to manage retirement is a mix of annuities and reverse-mortgage borrowing… so that you can enjoy it.”
7. Avoid oversized or idle property.
“If you buy an asset and then throw away the dividend, you should not expect it to deliver a high return.”
8. Take more financial risk when young; scale back later.
Treat your earning power as your built-in “safe asset.”
9. Build an emergency fund before investing.
“It should be a priority to have an emergency fund in a safe and liquid form so that you stay out of high-cost debt.”
10. Support simpler, fairer financial design.
“We think the financial system is very important for the market economy and the unpopularity of finance is really bad. We’re trying to save the financial industry for itself.”
Get John’s book, Fixed, here: https://tinyurl.com/bdhj5zvd
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