The Reinvention Zone: Candid Life & Career Shift with Marc Proulx (#186) — Transcript
Updated: Oct 26
THE PICTURE OF WEALTH · EPISODE 186
What comes after leaving a career that has shaped your identity? Marc Proulx and Dustin Serviss discuss a transition out of corporate banking, the uncertainty of reinvention and finding room for curiosity before choosing the next direction.
Listen to the episode
This transcript was generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability. It may contain transcription or speaker-attribution errors. Refer to the recording for exact wording.
Chapters
[00:00:00] Questioning everyday health routines
[00:08:08] Children, phones and access to technology
[00:11:27] Letting children pay for upgrades
[00:16:03] Leaving a risk-management career and reassessing risk
[00:20:20] Separating familiar goals from what you actually want
[00:25:37] Emotional intelligence in business
[00:30:52] Conviction, crypto and the influence of other investors
[00:36:12] Matching risk to your own time horizon
[00:44:54] Personal data and the limits of general health advice
[00:49:16] Returning to simple health habits
[00:54:09] Solo travel and permission to explore
Guest & resources
Related episodes
Transcript
[00:00:00] Marc Proulx: Yeah. But then I met with, Trina at the gym, and he said, are you really dehydrated? I'm like, no. Because I was talking about how I need to go up in the middle of the night and go pee sometimes. Yeah. Then I mentioned, I take electrolytes, and he connected that and thought, okay. Maybe there's a connection there. And what he said, and I haven't researched or validated this, is that you don't need electrolytes every day. It's when there's a deficiency that you actually need them. Yeah. So by taking it every day, you've created some sort of dependency on it. And so maybe you have an excess, and that's what your bladder is saying. Okay.
[00:00:45] Marc Proulx: We need to get rid of this now. So I stopped taking it six days ago.
[00:00:52] Dustin Serviss: Okay. And
[00:00:53] Marc Proulx: I'm still fine. Yeah. And now I'm only gonna take it when it's super hot outside or I'm doing a very physical activity.
[00:01:02] Dustin Serviss: Because I don't... I would agree. It's like my workouts, I sweat sometimes. But if I'm doing, like, a chest day and I'm just benching and clowning around, I don't develop a huge sweat. It's just a mile.
[00:01:16] Marc Proulx: Exactly. So then I... It got me to thinking I'm very, I don't know, conspiracy theorist kind of thing. Yeah. But just the whole marketing thing. Consumerism is making you buy stuff you don't really need, but trying to justify it. That's... I guess that's my definition of consumerism and it excel in that bucket. I can see there's a need for it, but not necessarily every day.
[00:01:45] Dustin Serviss: Oh, yeah. I... Hundred percent. What if you could use your mind? This is getting a little bit out there, but I know listenership can handle it. And so could you, is that you could actually do the same things you're trying to do with your mind that you're buying day in and day out or watching the Instagram scroll and be like, yeah. I need more vitamin e. Or I I need... It's like, you do blood testing. You do Yeah. Next column seven glucose testing. So it's the stats, but I think you're right. I think there's definitely something there of we fabricate because we like to buy stuff.
[00:02:27] Marc Proulx: Yeah. Have you heard of the concept of mid curving?
[00:02:31] Dustin Serviss: I have not.
[00:02:32] Marc Proulx: Okay. So it's this meme going on, and I've learned about it in the investment space. It's basically a bell curve distribution. And on the left side, there's this basically what looks like a dumb caveman. K. And on the right side, there's the Yoda. And then there's every... Everyone in the middle. And who is it was saying this? Raoul Pal. He was saying, basically, people are mid curving it. They're trying to find all these little hacks, all these little things overthinking it, whereas the person... The dumb person on the left end, basically, buy and number go up in investment terms, and the Yoda ends up with the same conclusion.
[00:03:23] Marc Proulx: So, basically, you don't need to do all this stuff in between, and I've thought about that from a training perspective or just overall health perspective. Because I've tried... Like you, I like experimenting. I've tried the cold plunge, the sauna, all this stuff, the red light therapy, which I never ended up being fully committed to. And then I thought back down to this whole mid term concept, and I was thinking lift weights, donate processed foods, and sleep. That's it. Yeah. That would be all you need to do.
[00:03:58] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. I know. I'm a hundred percent in agreeance with you, and I wonder how much we move the needle, and it wouldn't... It would take a serious study and someone's whole life to know how much taking... Oh, see the electrolytes because that's what we're talking about. How much the electrolytes actually are extending your life if you were in, like, a fixed vacuum environment.
[00:04:21] Marc Proulx: Yeah.
[00:04:22] Dustin Serviss: You know what I mean? It's... Is it a day? Is it... Oh, no. It's years.
[00:04:27] Marc Proulx: So it's Or is it actually taking life away from you because you're exceeding the minerals for magnesium, potassium, and whatever is in the electrolytes, and it's creating some sort of imbalance.
[00:04:38] Dustin Serviss: But studies show and Connor Bedard drinks BioSteel when he plays hockey, so that must mean that... Yeah. I think wealth could go a lot bigger for people if you didn't spend on certain things. And is there a form of dependency or why... It's it's a big question. Like, why do we spend on anything that we don't need? Is choice, lifestyle, albeit all those reasons.
[00:05:13] Marc Proulx: It... Is it really choice, or is it perception of choice? That's basically you get manipulated into thinking you need it.
[00:05:23] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. I'm not on Instagram, but I hear my wife and we have these visits about certain things or the videos that are popping up, and I... All I observe is the ping... This... All these little micro bytes, and it's... That's research. Maybe, but it's... You you... Like, the cons... The person just watching hasn't done the research.
[00:05:44] Marc Proulx: Yeah.
[00:05:44] Dustin Serviss: And we're... And before, research used to be a hundred and ninety page thing done by a university and then triple verified by other researchers.
[00:05:56] Marc Proulx: Yep. These meta analysis. So that's the paradox is that we actually have the tools to do more research. Any individual has the tools to do more research than ever, and yet we don't. And we just take things as they're laid out. And there's been no been no more amount of bullshit out there than ever half of the Internet is just complete garbage.
[00:06:25] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. How do you think... So your kids are a little older than mine, but how are you equipping the kids with the tools on how to sift as I'm visiting with my own parents and they're rattling off factual news stuff, and I'm rattling off stuff, bunking... Debunking what they're saying. So what are you doing with your kids to equip them to handle their future in this world?
[00:06:54] Marc Proulx: Yeah. I'm not sure if I'm properly equipping him with tools, but to me, the number one tool around anything is awareness. So I can't count the number of times I've repeated how algorithms actually work and that they are meant to feed and reinforce and engage you. And so if you're showing interest in a certain thing, it's just gonna deepen that interest in terms of confirmation bias and for you forming that thought. I've heard mostly my older son. So my kids are fifteen and eighteen. So the eighteen year old does watch a lot of YouTube shorts and all of that. Not TikTok, but mostly YouTube shorts.
[00:07:40] Marc Proulx: And he is coming up with this information where I'm thinking, what are you talking about? So we usually talk about it at the table. And that's when I kinda reinforced that these things are built to basically bring you down a rabbit hole and make you stay on your phone or computer as long as possible. Right? But it's just reinforcing. I can't think of anything else I could do. Have you thought of other things? Do you kids have phones yet or not?
[00:08:08] Dustin Serviss: My kids are eight and ten, and they don't have phones. That's ironic. This Christmas, somebody gave my one child... It's not an iPhone watch, but it's like a a watch. It looks like an I
[00:08:18] Marc Proulx: iWatch. Yeah.
[00:08:19] Dustin Serviss: But it has apps and stuff on it. And he's going, oh, I'm trying to connect to Snapchat, but it, like, it won't work. It says, won't connect to Bluetooth. It was kind of the first realization of, like, he's actually curious about it because he's got hockey buddies with all their brothers and at the rink. Because I'm sure there's other chat and looking at each other's phones and whatever. Basically, can I get Snapchat? It's when you can get a... You can buy your own phone and when you're an adult. But, I I think it's on my mind right now of, like, how do I tell them when I'm, like, visiting with my own parent about that was fake news?
[00:08:57] Dustin Serviss: And it's... I'm ninety nine percent sure. I'm not a hundred because I don't really know. I just acquired my knowledge from maybe not mainstream media. It's... But who knows if that's right? So COVID brought in this bit of uncertainty in all of us that Yeah. You've gotta make a decision. The only one that you can trust is yourself. And the decision you make, it's like, you can... You have to live with that. So giving them the tools to... I I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is to sift. Like, the screen time and all that, that's one thing. But to sift whether you see something... You were...
[00:09:36] Dustin Serviss: You're in the investment world, the market stuff. The block of clients, when you meet clients, they have varying degrees of what news they watch. So when you're listening to people talk, you know, you have all this stuff that you're going mad. A lot of stress is created by the consumption of certain things. So my default has always been, well, just cut it out. And I don't think that's totally right, but I know and understand my strategy. I'm gonna miss out on the shooting in Delta, and I'm gonna miss out on... I'm not gonna know that and not be up to speed, and I'm fine with that.
[00:10:13] Marc Proulx: Yeah. What you just mentioned, I think, is if there's one thing that I could go back and change is delay having a phone. And there's all this research coming out. What's his name? Jonathan Haight, who's all about... And I think he's the one that led most policies around high schools changing their phone policies in terms of banning it. He... And he's written a lot of good books in terms of the anxious generation, the coddling of the American mind. And... But there's a catch, though. The catch is sometimes the kid will feel left out, and that's almost as negative as the stuff that you would find on the smartphone. Right? So
[00:11:01] Marc Proulx: playing that game of back and forth is something that we've struggled with in terms of how much screen time. I think we were really good at it probably up until twelve, but then it went sideways.
[00:11:19] Dustin Serviss: Did your kids get jobs and had their own money and they bought their own stuff, or it was just like some sort of access where you wanted to know where they were at their their friends? Or
[00:11:27] Marc Proulx: Yeah. It's an access thing. Communication. And we've repeated that actually. A phone is to communicate because they didn't... They don't communicate well, and they may need to use it for all the junk stuff. But, yeah, if they want a phone or even if they've wanted computers, games, all of that, they've This is gonna sound cruel, but I've made them buy it themselves if they wanted it. I would provide the basic phone or basic model, basic mountain bike. But if you wanna upgrade that and go further, then it's on them. So they've used birthday money and, yeah, one of my kids have had... One of my kids has had a few jobs to to pay for those
[00:12:06] Marc Proulx: sorts of things. And that's just real life. Right? You... Delaying gratification is really important. And especially nowadays, everyone wants everything instantly, and it's so easy to make it happen.
[00:12:19] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. Our realization with the social thing was a game called brawl stars, which is
[00:12:25] Marc Proulx: something for you.
[00:12:26] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. You know what that is? Yeah. And so it was like, no. He can't have that. And, it was... He was nine at the time, but he said, hey, dad. Like, all my friends are talking about it, and I'm not part of the thing. And it was as a... My my analogy in my head that I thought of that kinda connected the dots is my friend's snowmobile. I snowmobile. And there's a certain point where your technology is old and everyone else has new stuff. And it's not about keeping up with the Joneses. It's just that's where everyone's riding, and they're riding different places, and you're not. Because you can't make it or you can't...
[00:13:04] Dustin Serviss: You're not reliable enough or that machine's not reliable enough. So it's... Yeah. So you upgrade. So that it's, oh, yeah. I do get that point. And that was a realization where we need to give them the tools that work with them instead of just controlling everything because as they get older, controlling it, you're not gonna be in every scenario. Yeah. Control.
[00:13:24] Marc Proulx: One thing we have... So we have controlled it up to a point. And recently, my son, like I've mentioned, he turned eighteen. So we got the actual email from Google that says, you're no longer part of this plan. So we had family link where you can control... Basically, you need to approve which apps get on to the phone. You control the timing of when the phone turns on and off. So we've... We used that for the past six or seven years. It's worked well because a lot of the time when we want something done and they're not paying attention, shut the phone off.
[00:14:01] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. That's when you get
[00:14:02] Marc Proulx: that's when you get an instant reaction. Yeah. So it's been interesting in terms of the eighteen year old basically gaining freedom, so to speak, on his phone, and I can see it lag back in terms of not being on time with his medication and losing track... Keeping... Not keeping track of things. So I've wonder... I wonder if it's been a disservice to have those controls, or maybe this is just a initial reaction that happens with other things where, yeah, I have the freedom, but then it loses its novelty, and he'll grow up, become an adult and be able to control it himself. But, yeah, I don't know what the answer is.
[00:14:53] Marc Proulx: I guess the answer is we'll find out.
[00:14:56] Dustin Serviss: Pass now.
[00:14:56] Marc Proulx: When this brain is fully formed at twenty five.
[00:14:59] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. Things happen... Remember, like, back at baby stage that things happen so fast or you're, like, worried about something that changed and it's, oh, yeah. We're asleep through the night now. Or my eight year old, probably two months ago, could barely read. And his six year old peers are reading. And so we're like, oh, man. And all of a sudden, yesterday in the truck driving home, he's reading. And so it was like, wow. He's also reading things. He's like, can he read sentences? Then he reads books, and he he can read signs. It's so you're... I was so worried about it three months ago, and now all of a sudden it changed.
[00:15:38] Dustin Serviss: You might be in the same boat where, you know, that novelty wears off. And, oh my goodness, he's got a job. He's a good human. And we're micro worrying.
[00:15:49] Marc Proulx: What's the saying is that... I've read this quote that ninety nine percent of the things you worry about will never actually happen.
[00:15:57] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. Yep. And
[00:16:00] Marc Proulx: that's that's definitely applicable in this case.
[00:16:03] Dustin Serviss: Do you think... Obviously, you got an intro that I did previous to this, but you were in risk management in your job. And I think about this because of my career doing life insurance. You're doing risk management. You're planning mostly for downside and protecting people. So where I'll say we are in mid forties, rebirthed. Again, you can take a story where you wanna go, but are you trying to unpack some of that risk management fibers in your own life? And how are you doing that?
[00:16:48] Marc Proulx: That's a good question. I am trying to untrain myself, so to speak. And what I mean by that is my default is basically go to worst case scenario. Yep. Yep. Because that's what I've been trained to do for the last fifteen years.
[00:17:04] Dustin Serviss: And
[00:17:07] Marc Proulx: my background in risk management was around operational risk. So things that can go wrong with basically people process systems and external thing... External environment. So that's the definition of operational risk, which is pretty much anything. So I'm conditioned to always think like that, and I'm trying to uncondition myself to live more more freely from that perspective. But as I've... As you mentioned, I'm in a transition phase now. So I was on a, a severance package, which just recently finished. And now I'm thinking to myself, oh, shit. What do I do now? And I'm going through all of these worst case scenarios in
[00:17:54] Marc Proulx: terms of looking for the right thing for me. And, for example, looking... I saw a job. It was two... Or right before Christmas that I thought, wow. This is my skill set, and this is for a a great cause. It's for working in risk management and set... Setting up an enterprise risk management plan for a charity.
[00:18:18] Dustin Serviss: Nice.
[00:18:19] Marc Proulx: And that's the kind of that's the kind of gig I'm looking for now. Not necessarily it being about the money, but being about more purpose side. And I haven't heard anything from them. And now I'm thinking, oh, shoot. Am I gonna end up with nothing to fall back on? I've been in this weird phase of I kinda whipsaw from almost feeling overconfident to feeling not confident at all. And usually, I am very confident in most of the things I do. And when I set targets, I usually achieve them. And I'd usually set up tons of targets. I don't achieve all of them. But even the ones that I achieved, I'm still being productive more than most people.
[00:19:08] Marc Proulx: But, yeah, it's a weird transition. It's the honeymoon phase is now done. And now it's getting real. Now the fact that... Especially with my kids going into post secondary and huge astronomical costs coming my way, It's getting real now, and I need to figure it out.
[00:19:26] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. I just... So I just wrote an article about... It was basically about... Are there two different ways that you could attack wanting to set goals? So a lot of my study lately has been on coherence, alignment, and, like, the quantum kind of space of your brain. Maybe for some listeners, that's too far out there. Maybe it's not. But it's just a different way of when you're a kid, you're playing, and you're just bouncing around. You're not really too worried about much, but you really get an authentic experience of doing what you love. Yeah. And when you've had success in setting up a goal, being extremely driven,
[00:20:20] Dustin Serviss: creating a process to get to it, it's hard to not go, I should do that again. But the goals are almost like we talked about earlier with the scrolling. Our brains are so preprogrammed after twenty years of professional life. How do you know what you really want and to get the alignment when you're, like, thinking, oh, I wanna... Yours is more full of dropper by corporate position, and I wanna make this much. And you're back on the same track instead of really getting aligned with what you want. And what I found after spending a couple days researching was you can operate in two states. So you operate in the first state of...
[00:21:08] Dustin Serviss: When you're sort of quantum discovery, no process, no... There doesn't need to be proof for you to move forward with an idea. So to discover Yeah. I I wanna go this way. And once that kind of gets closer, then you would... You can switch gears to the process driven. But to get there, you can't be living in the process driven sort of process systems. How do I get there? You sounds like you already... That might be a marker of that that applying for that job help that's... I am serious about this. Might not be that job, but it might be a lot one like it. But at least you can now focus on that type of thing and apply a system to it.
[00:22:01] Marc Proulx: Yeah. I guess another thing that I thought of in terms of that direction is doing consulting work, but also there's that fear of the unknown. You've you started your business and went through that whole process. I've always been part of the corporate world, so working on behalf of someone else. So that seems very scary. And at the same time, I have this cognitive dissonance in terms of, do I really wanna put in the grind at my stage in life to do it? Usually, the answer becomes no. Why would I rather focus my efforts on just giving back and aligning and talking about alignment aligning with my values, which are basically
[00:22:49] Marc Proulx: my family and giving back to the community. So I get caught in this back and forth. I've actually applied for banking jobs even though I told myself there's no way in hell I'd wanna go back.
[00:23:02] Dustin Serviss: You're you're putting in the reps.
[00:23:04] Marc Proulx: Yeah. Because that's where I think I'd have the best shot and would be the easiest to get. Is it truly what I want? No. To me, that's plan c or d, if that... But I don't know. I get in the motion of thinking about, again, from a risk management perspective, what about the money and maintaining the lifestyle and all of that? But the good news is I'm thinking about these things, and, hopefully, I'll remain true to myself and actually end up with something that aligns with my current thinking, not the me from twenty five years ago that was just a money hungry corporate guy.
[00:23:46] Dustin Serviss: That could be age, stage. Your wealth picture looks different.
[00:23:51] Marc Proulx: Yeah.
[00:23:51] Dustin Serviss: Kids are older. Yeah. I was thinking driving today about being in business and being in a this... In a midlife call or whatever zone of question. And I was specifically thinking... I was driving by the Dufferin Boutelle, but I'm specifically thinking about being a business leader, having a cache as that. And as you get further out of I was specifically thinking about meetings with accountants back five years, ten years ago. I really like to get in there and, like, boxing gloves on and with a client really... And be learning, like, really advanced things because the questions would be advanced.
[00:24:43] Marc Proulx: Yeah. I haven't... I get
[00:24:44] Dustin Serviss: in those scenarios, but not a lot. Now I'm not looking for them. I'm not really driven. And so it's... Is my business acumen less? Am I less of a business guy? And so then it... Your identity gets a... I was having a little identity challenge. Is it less, or are you wiser? And are you more rounded in different fields to to fill in that? I don't know what... I know you and I have talked about identity before. But
[00:25:15] Marc Proulx: Yeah. And I've thought about that. And it goes, I guess, maybe it ties to emotional intelligence. Right? In terms of
[00:25:23] Dustin Serviss: Yeah.
[00:25:24] Marc Proulx: Being wiser.
[00:25:25] Dustin Serviss: Is emotional intelligence worth as much as business intelligence?
[00:25:30] Marc Proulx: I think it's worth more. Based on what I've
[00:25:35] Dustin Serviss: valued by yourself.
[00:25:37] Marc Proulx: Yes. I think you can also navigate the business world a lot better with high emotional intelligence. Let me put it this way. Technical competence, I think, will be outweighed by emotional intelligence most of the time.
[00:25:59] Dustin Serviss: Due to AI or due to they're all gonna... Problems will be sorted out?
[00:26:06] Marc Proulx: Because it's... And I talked to my wife about this a lot because her... She works in h... HR, so it's always people problems. And I always come down to the same conclusion. It's the people that are the problem for everything.
[00:26:20] Dustin Serviss: That's that's the last... Yeah.
[00:26:22] Marc Proulx: It's just human nature. And so I think emotional intelligence is the appropriate tool to manage all of those issues. So throughout my career, I like to think that I got more emotionally intelligent, especially when I started managing teams and other people where it wasn't about me anymore. It was about serving others. It took me a while to get adjusted to that because I was an individual contributor for a long time, and it was all about striving for performance and so forth. But then when I got a team initially, it was hard for me not to coach them on doing it my way because I thought my way was the best way. In the end, it doesn't matter.
[00:27:14] Marc Proulx: It's the outcomes that count. People can get through to different outcomes in different ways, and that's fine. So it took me a while to peel back and let people do their own thing and be there to just remove roadblocks, encourage them, provide guidance, but really let them do their own thing. So that was a hard transition for me in terms of essentially letting go. And I think speaking of letting go, maybe that's the transition I'm going through now in terms of being the corporate finance guy. Yeah. Letting go of that identity and trying to figure out who I wanna be and what I wanna do because I think... I still think I have a lot to give.
[00:28:00] Marc Proulx: And not utilizing the skills that I've learned would be a waste, and I don't wanna be in that position. And that's why I volunteer a lot for charities is to use the skills for good that I've Yeah. I've received from the corporate world. But I wanna do more and make sure my time is productive and that I'm giving back because I've been privileged and lucky throughout my career. A lot of luck too, but, yeah, it's a karma thing in terms of giving back. And I think that's the stage I'm at. I'm done with the take take, more of the giving phase at this point.
[00:28:38] Dustin Serviss: Do you think the affinity you have to cryptocurrency helps or makes it harder to navigate the decisions going forward?
[00:28:55] Marc Proulx: I think it makes it harder. Yeah. And I'll explain in this I
[00:28:58] Dustin Serviss: was thinking because you're... Yeah. That's a... Like, cryptocurrency perceived as a risk takers kind of vehicle.
[00:29:07] Marc Proulx: Yes. And I think about that because in terms of long term planning, it is a high risk vehicle. It is volatile. For example, it's gone down... It went down thirty six percent in the last three or four months. So that was a direct thirty thirty six percent hit to a large portion of my portfolio. So I do think about it a lot because... I guess there's two things. One is I am in it for the long game, and I've gone through ups and downs, serious ups and downs. So I don't plan on being influenced by the volatility. That being said, I do wanna have a minimum threshold to be comfortable and not have
[00:29:56] Marc Proulx: to worry about the long term financial viability of of my family. I don't wanna go out too much guns blazing. So I am monitoring it closely even though I have a long term horizon because if it went to a certain level, then I'd have to just... From a risk management perspective, cut it and move to something safer. Not just from a financial perspective, but from a marriage perspective. I have to make sure that stays intact. Yeah. Because that's a big thing as well is that it's a partnership, so we both need to be on the same page. And I have a higher risk tolerance than my wife does, which is fine. So that's why we have constant conversations.
[00:30:40] Marc Proulx: We actually had one yesterday, last night, because I went to this gathering of okay... It's called okay Bitcoin. So it's Okanagan Bitcoiners.
[00:30:50] Dustin Serviss: Okay.
[00:30:52] Marc Proulx: And part of it was just for... Just to meet new people and just to see what I can learn. What I realized is that these... Some of the people that were there were a lot more hardcore than I am in terms of putting things on the line, like, selling all of their RSPs, putting everything, taking loans, which I thought was absolutely nuts. But, yeah, these people have the conviction that I thought I had, but I guess it humbled me in terms of my conviction thinking, no. I'm actually still diversified. I'm not putting my eggs all in one basket. Spending time with them made me realize that.
[00:31:37] Marc Proulx: And my wife was worried about me going because she thought I'd come back and say, oh, we need to invest in more crypto. But it actually had the opposite effect in terms of... No. I think we're good, and I would even consider scaling back once taking profits off the table at a certain point in the near future. And, yeah, the discussion was around the allocation that we have around crypto because she's reading the psychology of money. And she read something in there that... Yeah. Morgan Housel. And she read something in there that along the lines don't put too many eggs in the same basket. Yeah.
[00:32:18] Marc Proulx: And and, yeah, that's where the conversation led to. But the end result is status quo. But, ultimately, yeah, it's something I do think about. And prudent risk management is to taper off at some point and just take profits off the table and put it into more more secure things Okay. To make sure that I'm setting myself up for the future because I don't wanna be a cowboy as well. I've done that in the past, actually. The good news is that I learned my lesson when I was nineteen, twenty when I was
[00:32:54] Dustin Serviss: just the last
[00:32:56] Marc Proulx: The lesson was don't be a cowboy with your money. Yeah. I was trading all these tech stocks that I knew nothing about and was making tons of money, but I also lost everything pretty quickly too. So I don't wanna be in that same situation, and that's why I'm gonna take more of a cautious approach now just based on that history and just based on more wisdom or emotional intelligence around investing. I realized... I don't know when I realized this, but not too long ago that it's really meant to be a boring journey and marathon. The more boring it is and playing vanilla it is, more likely it'll be successful and just stick to the long game
[00:33:49] Marc Proulx: rather than trying to make a quick buck here and there and trade and just go to the nearest... The latest flashy thing. And this goes back to that concept of mid curving.
[00:34:00] Dustin Serviss: Yeah.
[00:34:02] Marc Proulx: Basically, get into the sectors of the world or economy that you think will do better in the future and stick with it. That's it. So my investment philosophy has changed greatly, and it's now super boring by technology, by crypto, and broad markets, and forget it's there. Yeah. And just monitor slightly. Because it is fun to train... To look at the markets. I'm still... I still have that drive to know where things are going, but I'm also... Have enough experience now to not act on it every single time in in trade.
[00:34:50] Dustin Serviss: So if you're... Have conviction on Bitcoin, the price is going down. If you had more cash reserves, just keep buying it as it's going down to bring the cost down so then the returns happen faster once it reverses.
[00:35:06] Marc Proulx: Yeah. In theory, that would assume I'm at a low allocation, but I'm already at my maximum allocation
[00:35:13] Dustin Serviss: in terms of portfolio.
[00:35:15] Marc Proulx: So doing that would definitely be acting like a cowboy, which, like I said, is not Yeah. Where I'm what I'm trying to get to.
[00:35:25] Dustin Serviss: And when you set that up originally, I I guess where my head goes is what could we learn from Mark a year ago or two years ago when he built the portfolio and then ended up in that allocation and not... Well, it should say, if we don't have enough cash or having cash on the sidelines to be able to buy versus going all in. Because if it did go up, then you would look like not smart by having cash on the sidelines. You know what I mean? That's Yeah. The devil's advocate of a scenario.
[00:36:12] Marc Proulx: I would say it's different for everyone. Right? Because everyone has a different risk appetite, different objectives. And the key thing is everyone has different time horizon. So I got into crypto in twenty twenty one, and at that point, I I told myself, yeah, this is a ten year ten year view.
[00:36:32] Dustin Serviss: Right.
[00:36:32] Marc Proulx: So I haven't swayed from that. Even though at one point, like I mentioned earlier, I was losing, or I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but I was losing seventy five percent Right. At one point in twenty twenty two. And I was seriously questioning, do I just do something really stupid? And my wife was looking at me like I probably did something stupid. But I think I set three rules at the onset. One is stick to the time horizon, don't use leverage, and pretend that you lost it all. Would you still be okay? So I've stuck with those three, and so I've only invested what I'm willing to lose entirely, go to zero.
[00:37:23] Marc Proulx: And I'm still maintaining that same time horizon. Even when I left the banking world, I doubled down on what I had. It had gone back up at that point. And at that point, the whole space was changing when Trump came in. So there's... There was a path being laid out in terms of the ETFs being approved. The more regulatory clarity, there's still work to do on that, but it's getting more defined. So you can see slow adoption over the next ten years. So all of that volatility that was there at the beginning, the ex... Excessive volatility of seventy, eighty percent drawdowns, I think, is probably a thing of the past. Will there be drawdowns? Yes.
[00:38:09] Marc Proulx: There... We still will be. Will they be as severe? Probably not, given the amount of institutional investors that are in there. So all the... There's all... A whole bunch of positive things that are happening and have happened that made me confident at that point to invest more, but it was still within my risk appetite. That's the key. What can I easily sleep at night with knowing that it might go down twenty percent in one day possible? Yeah. And that's, I think, another key. And I think this ties back to what we were talking about emotional intelligence too. So you being in the investment space directly with clients, do
[00:38:51] Marc Proulx: you find that you've had to coach people from an emotional intelligence perspective? Because I'm sure there's people that come to you and say, oh, it went down five percent. Let's sell everything. Yeah. How do you navigate that with your customers?
[00:39:05] Dustin Serviss: It usually has nothing to do with the investments. It usually has to do with globally in their life. It has to do with their friend circle. It has to do with who they're talking to. It has to do with maybe a health scare. It has to do... So there's a compound. So when you get under the layers of them reviewing the statement, they're down. Most of the time, it's due to all these other compounding things. And so you're triaging those things and getting back to the plan of do you need the money now? All the things you just mentioned, time horizon. If someone's retired, then we would set up the account so then... Or what we call asset dedication.
[00:39:48] Dustin Serviss: So you have different buckets for different things. You got GICs. You got bonds. You got stocks. And the stock, those are the ones that go all over the place, but those are the ones we're earmarking to meet you in ten years. So those are powerful conversations because things that come out of that are, hey. Take a week off the news. And people say, well... And they almost... What do you mean? It's like, when you wake up, grab your cup of coffee and just draw a picture on a notepad, or don't turn on the TV. Don't scroll your phone. And just see if all of a sudden when you're walking on the street, you might say hi to somebody.
[00:40:31] Dustin Serviss: So I haven't said hi to somebody in a month.
[00:40:33] Marc Proulx: So Yeah.
[00:40:34] Dustin Serviss: I never noticed. And so that's back to the wealth side. It's people's psychology is a major a major contributor to... And there are anomalies. You talk about COVID. You talk about o eight crash, and and it gets it'll push people over the edge where it's... This is a one off. This is gonna be different. That's... I don't I don't wanna get all into inflation and all the kind of stuff the way the economy works, but markets have been resilient through so many different things. So if it goes to zero, we're all going to zero. All the rich dudes, all the... Everybody. And so we'll have a world that's even, and a little bit different.
[00:41:18] Dustin Serviss: So we can't worry about that. Yeah.
[00:41:23] Marc Proulx: Just on that thought, have you thought about... And this is a definite tangent,
[00:41:28] Dustin Serviss: but Yeah. Let's do it.
[00:41:30] Marc Proulx: I've thought about... And I've read a lot about what does the economy look like when AI is doing most of the jobs? Does money even is money even a thing when there's a world of abundance where it costs almost nothing to do anything? You just get a robot. There's infinite resources. What does capitalism even look like at that point in time?
[00:42:03] Dustin Serviss: I don't know.
[00:42:04] Marc Proulx: I've thought... I've tried to think about it, but it's such a foreign concept that it freaks me out. Yet, we're going in that direction with the progress made from an AI perspective.
[00:42:16] Dustin Serviss: I would say cancel out the people on the extreme wealth and the people in poverty, and you take the mass in the middle. People's lives are easier today than they were before
[00:42:29] Marc Proulx: Yeah.
[00:42:29] Dustin Serviss: From email on... And I'm just, like, maybe work environments, like, email automation, blah blah blah to figuring out just common tasks to solve. AI has done a lot of that. So, yeah, like, a person has more free time. Are we being more productive? Most would argue no. We're probably less productive. But does it matter?
[00:42:55] Marc Proulx: What does product... What does being productive mean, though? Is that out of personal definition?
[00:43:00] Dustin Serviss: I'm thinking of, like, GDP and, like, getting a country more productive so that the economy keeps afloat.
[00:43:10] Marc Proulx: But do you think GDP is an actual measure of productivity, though?
[00:43:14] Dustin Serviss: The newsletter I was reading yesterday is there's a few GDPs and there's, like, the the politicians will keep the gas pumps down. And I don't wanna get into a whole Venezuela thing, but it's like the control of the gas pumps looks like there's no inflation.
[00:43:29] Marc Proulx: Yeah.
[00:43:30] Dustin Serviss: If you can keep the gas... It's... That's what everyone fills up. Oh, no inflation. When in reality, in... Inflation is happening at extremely fast pace in the economic system. Maybe not as... It happens for all of us. You buy milk or you buy... This goes up a little bit. But in the war... A world of economics and the way that money passes between countries and the debt that's handled, inflation is the only way this sort of keeps going as the system that we're in now. If US is a one trillion a year debt payment, then Yeah. They can't tax more because that'll cause a recession. They can't... Because people just things will slow down. So the...
[00:44:20] Dustin Serviss: I thought the old adage was you need to produce. You need a country where production is raised and people produce more or consume less, which we don't seem to be trending less in consumption. Although, you and I just talked about it. Maybe we're pioneers in the space of less consumption is less vitamins and supplements because that you... People realize it's like, I'm done with this. Now all of a sudden you got more free cash flow for other stuff. More Yeah. To buy groceries because they're more expensive.
[00:44:54] Marc Proulx: Yeah. And I'm not saying that it's applicable to everyone. You really have to tailor it to you. I guess, basically, general advice I find is less and less applicable now. You really need to tailor it to you, and that's the reason I've done blood testing the Dexcom because I think you've used it as well. I'm not sure if you noticed that certain foods will spike for you. Yeah. It'll be perfectly fine for someone else. So it's really... I've moved more towards tailoring what works for me and worrying less about what the general advice is. Yes. It's general advice is guidance to...
[00:45:40] Marc Proulx: On what to try, but not everything is gonna work for you, and some things that may not work for others might work for you as well.
[00:45:48] Dustin Serviss: I think that's great advice. Serial doesn't increase my dex comp.
[00:45:53] Marc Proulx: Oh, it did huge spikes for me.
[00:45:56] Dustin Serviss: Maybe our test batch. I was on... I can't remember what it was. Rice Krispies or, like, it wasn't a sugary cereal though.
[00:46:04] Marc Proulx: Yeah. I did Rice Krispies, Cheerios, and Shreddies. Mhmm. And they all did not work with my body. So, actually, I rarely eat cereal in, which means I don't drink milk because I usually have my cereal in milk.
[00:46:19] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. So
[00:46:22] Marc Proulx: not drinking milk is positive as well. Yeah. So it leads to other things.
[00:46:29] Dustin Serviss: My discovery was dried fruit, which I know is
[00:46:33] Marc Proulx: high
[00:46:33] Dustin Serviss: sugar, but the... Where I got derailed and didn't even think about it was I went on a whole thirty program where you eat natural foods or whatever, and I was eating Laura bars, just cashews and dates in a bar. So very clean ingredients. Just sent my sugar through the roof. So I don't eat vellus, and I don't eat dried apricots. I would have three or four a day, and those... Even that small amount was... But here's one thing, and I'd love to know your research on it. My private doctor, we had a visit about it. And he looked at the results, and he said, your static thing over the ten days is fine.
[00:47:11] Dustin Serviss: And your curves, your body is dealing with the spike quickly and within a good... Like, your natural bodily functions are working. When you have a spike, the insulin kicks in and pops it down. So he's... You're not hanging out way high, and you're not going crashing. If you have one of those, the odd time, don't worry about it. And that... Just him saying that, put it in the back of my mind. I don't need to worry about this anymore. Because it's... You obsess about things.
[00:47:40] Marc Proulx: I do.
[00:47:40] Dustin Serviss: And it's all... It's okay. I know roughly the parameters of the food, and I know I keep it on track. So what did you post doing the blood glucose testing sort of take away?
[00:47:57] Marc Proulx: A similar conclusion. Yeah. And I read a a book. I can't remember what the book name is, but it was around you're trying to... I guess it's zoom out, first of all. K. Don't freak out about just... And it's the same with investing, actually. We're just talking
[00:48:13] Dustin Serviss: about you don't.
[00:48:14] Marc Proulx: Don't look at the weekly chart. Look at the yearly chart, and then you'll see that the direction of travel is what counts. And in terms of the spikes, it's, yeah, making sure that you're not having these variable spikes for a long period of time. So if you zoom out, you'll see that the curve is pretty flat
[00:48:36] Dustin Serviss: overall,
[00:48:37] Marc Proulx: and that's what counts, essentially. So say a similar conclusion to you, and I've... I did it once just to see what it was. I did change a few things, but I'm not gonna do it continuously to go through my entire Yeah. Food repertoire because that would just be too much. And another thing I've noticed is that the worrying about it and thinking too much about it is probably more detrimental to your health than, again, the whole mid curving Yeah. Concept. Right?
[00:49:15] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. I Eat I
[00:49:16] Marc Proulx: eat natural foods, lift weights, sleep properly. That's it. So I'm trying to... I've... I'm trying to come back to that all the time because the... There's this whole thing around anxiety, creating cortisol, which actually... It messes with your immune system, which is actually worse than the benefits that you were trying to get in the first place. Yes. For sure. Yeah. Keep it simple. There's a
[00:49:45] Dustin Serviss: whole another podcast we could do there. Can you finish us off with maybe an affirmation or something that you are I don't wanna say thinking about, but further than that where you're six months from now or a year from now, you're insanely happy with the progress you've had in those six months personally or professionally.
[00:50:13] Marc Proulx: Yeah.
[00:50:13] Dustin Serviss: What is that going to look like?
[00:50:18] Marc Proulx: It'll tie to two things. So I've got two main goals that I've thought about over the past couple of days. One is finishing two books that I'm writing. So I've... Over the past fourteen months, I've been to six continents, and my target was to write a book about each continent. And in... For various trips, some of them family trips, some of them individual trips where I was on a tour. But I wanna write the series. And so I've published four books, and I just finished my latest book, which I can send you about my Patagonia trip. I've got two more left to go, and that's a big thing for me because
[00:51:07] Marc Proulx: I am probably the last person that I would have thought would actually write a book.
[00:51:12] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. It's making my life.
[00:51:14] Marc Proulx: And I started this journey two thousand eighteen when I took a trip to Europe with the family and just for fun. And it was more about... It's not about selling books at all. It's more about just doing something that I never thought I'd be able to do and as a keepsake for the... For family and friends, just sharing our adventures. Yeah. So in twenty eighteen, I actually wrote every day on our trip, and I kept that draft for four years and didn't touch it. And then twenty twenty two is when I finished it and published it. And there was... The first one is always the hardest, and that's probably why it took me such a long time.
[00:52:00] Marc Proulx: AI tools didn't exist at that point, so I didn't have any virtual assistant that was a professional editor at a global publishing house. I had to do everything myself. Just the templates and moving things around took me hours and hours. It's getting easier and easier every time. And I've fine tuned the process now so that it's really easy. Using a... AI tools, I can take out all of the spelling spelling mistakes and structure, keep the same tone, the level of humor that I want. I just feed the old books that I've written in order to make them better and better. So that is a big thing for me to be able to finish that series, so to speak.
[00:52:44] Marc Proulx: And the second is really basic figuring out what I wanna do when I grow up in terms of finding... I don't wanna say finding a job, but finding something that fulfills me that is generating enough money to pay for my lifestyle. Not something grandiose, just something ideally that doesn't take too much of my time away from volunteering, staying healthy, and spending time with my family, which are my core values. So job actually is in... Or making money is probably in fourth place with all those other things. Powerful. Yeah. What about you?
[00:53:32] Dustin Serviss: I I will go to that, but I want to just tangent. Wasn't gonna go here, but I think we gotta go here with the travel of your goal to do it all and how you broach the subject to to finish your travel or realizing that traveling as four is expensive and trying to get one or two of those spots finished on your own and going from traveling as four to traveling as yourself to those locations. How was that?
[00:54:09] Marc Proulx: Yeah. The... It was interesting, actually. So there... There's two trips that I took in the past year on my own. One was a group tour to Egypt, and the other one was a group tour to Argentina. Part of it is balance. My wife went on a trip to Machu Picchu about a year and a half ago, and that sort of kicked it off from a permission perspective. Sure. And... Because prior to that, every trip had been together. Also, me being off for the past eighteen months made a different as well, so I had the time and the opportunity. Didn't kids are at later stage in high school, so didn't wanna take them out because it's getting more important.
[00:54:58] Marc Proulx: In the past, in elementary and middle school, we just take them out of school and take them traveling. Couple of other things too is the... My kids have traveled a lot, probably over fifty trips in the last fifteen years, and they seem to be done with it.
[00:55:15] Dustin Serviss: I thought, stop, stop, stop, stop,
[00:55:17] Marc Proulx: stop. Which I couldn't believe when they said that when they said that. But last spring break, we took a trip to Iceland and France, and it was meh. Right. It was fun, but I think we're done for a while. Yeah. So at that point, I said, okay. My wife and I said, okay. Fine. You can stay home, but we'll continue. And we've done that actually, just the trips to ourselves, which is nice as well. So we've, yeah, gotten from a family unit to basically trips as a couple and individual trips. It's all a matter of balance in terms of the timing, and my wife is working on a contract right now full time, so that's why we've gone back and forth.
[00:56:09] Marc Proulx: What it made me realize is two things that kinda circle back is I much prefer traveling with my family Right. And sharing experiences and exploring new things with them. And, also, we live in such an amazing place in BC. Why am I going halfway across the world to visit these places that look and feel like BC? I'm talking about Patagonia, especially. Right. I was in Patagonia sitting at a table with two guys. One was from Canada, and the other one was from New Zealand. So the person from New Zealand was showing me where they live. Basically, a nice strip of land, white sand beaches overlooking the ocean, a mountain...
[00:56:59] Marc Proulx: Small mountain range popping up in the distance at the end of the road. I was thinking, wow. And then I was showing him pictures of a trip that I took earlier this... Or late last year to the Canadian Rockies. He's, wow. This is amazing. Both looked at each other and thought, why the hell are we here? Traveling twenty, twenty four hours to get to these remote places when this is in our own backyard? Yeah. So I've changed my travel philosophy. I think just by my nature, I had to get it out of my system because I thought, yeah, it'd be cool to do six continents in almost a year. So I had to do it. But now that it's out of my system,
[00:57:43] Marc Proulx: I guess I've changed my travel philosophy to, yeah. I'd rather travel locally and experience... There's so many things that I haven't seen. You were mentioning Clearwater in that area, Wells Graveyard Park, which I've never been to. And, also, who I'm sharing it with, it's very different. It's cool to meet new people on group tours, but it's not the same Yeah. When you're with the people you love and enjoy spending the most time with.
[00:58:13] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. That's... I think that's a good end cap. Thank you, Mark, for, the visit today. There was a lot of good stuff in there. We always have a good visit.
[00:58:22] Marc Proulx: Thank you. Enjoy the conversation.