Conscious Leadership, Curiosity, and Culture by Design with Kaley Klemp
"The question is whether it arose by accident or whether you designed it with intention. And I would argue the vast majority of cultures arise by accident."
— Kaley Klemp
Most cultures aren't built. They emerge. A founder has an idea, recruits two friends, and the three of them live and breathe the mission until it works. Nobody stops to ask what values they're building on. Nobody writes down who gets to make the call when there's a jump ball. Then the firm grows past thirty people, the osmosis stops working, and the culture nobody designed starts running the show.
Kaley Klemp is the co-author of The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. She has worked with organizations including Research Affiliates, where she and I first met over a decade ago — she was part of the process by which I became a partner there. This conversation is about what it takes to lead with intention: in firms, in partnerships, in families, and in the relationship you have with your own money.
She is disarmingly direct about the limits of her own work. Asked once by a board to fix a CEO, she said yes. She was wrong, and she says so.
Key Takeaways
1. Everyone knows the right answer. Almost nobody has the vocabulary to reach it.
The organizing principle is a line. Above it: curiosity, candor, and claiming exactly one hundred percent responsibility. Below it: defensiveness, gossip, and either taking less than full responsibility — playing victim, playing villain, blaming — or taking more than full responsibility, which shows up as heroing and rescuing. What makes the model useful is precisely that it isn't controversial. Nobody sets out to run a firm on gossip, sloppy agreements, and blame. But absent a shared vocabulary, people slip below the line by default and have no way to name what happened. The framework isn't an argument. It's a map.
2. The need to be right is trained into you, and it's most expensive where brains are the product.
No teacher ever awarded points for being curious and arriving at the wrong answer. The whole apparatus rewards having the right answer and having it fastest. Then you land in an organization where the useful move is "I don't know, let me find out," or "here's my hypothesis, please poke holes in it" — and that inversion is genuine mental gymnastics. In knowledge businesses, where people are effectively selling their judgment, the cost compounds. The founder who can't be wrong builds a bottleneck: every decision routes back to them, they can't take a vacation, and the organization quietly learns to stop contributing. Curiosity isn't infinite deliberation. It's listening with real humility and then being willing to make the call anyway, because there's no such thing as perfect information.
3. Candor practiced early is the only prevention for the breakup that feels like betrayal.
Co-founder splits and divorces fail the same way. Two people build something, fall into family-shaped roles, and skip the conversation about where each of them is actually headed. One assumes five more years and then something else. The other never wants to sell. Nobody says it aloud. Five years arrive, and what could have been a difference of interests instead lands as betrayal — because it's a surprise. The same discipline applies to money. If a couple has never sat down to ask what their values are and whether their spending reflects them, they'll arrive somewhere in their sixties and discover every choice along the way did indeed lead there. If you don't define the money, the money defines you.
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About Kaley Klemp
Kaley Klemp is co-author of The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership and an executive coach and facilitator who works with leaders on culture, decision rights, and conscious leadership practice. She began her career as a management consultant at Deloitte before moving to the Young Presidents' Organization, the peer-group model in which CEOs and presidents challenge and support one another through significant personal and professional decisions — the work that first drew her to leadership. She has since worked with organizations including Research Affiliates. She holds a bachelor's degree in international relations, Spanish, and Portuguese from Stanford, and a master's in sociology and organizational behavior, also from Stanford. She grew up in Boulder, Colorado, where she lives again today.
Timestamps
00:00 — Introduction
01:00 — Boulder, Stanford, and the road into leadership work
03:00 — Deloitte, YPO, and falling in love with leadership
04:00 — Above and below the line: the organizing principle
06:00 — The need to be right, and why it's corrosive in knowledge businesses
07:00 — Every firm has a culture; the only question is whether you designed it
08:00 — Why school trained you to be right and adulthood requires the opposite
09:00 — How cultures form by accident
10:00 — Where osmosis stops working: twenty, thirty, forty people
11:00 — Decision rights: who gets to make the call on a jump ball
13:00 — The founder bottleneck and what it costs the organization
14:00 — "If I came here to make the decision by myself, we didn't need this meeting"
15:00 — Responsibility: making the call and owning the outcome
16:00 — When business partnerships break like families
17:00 — Why betrayal is what candor skipped
19:00 — "If you don't define the money, the money will define you"
22:00 — Heroing, and knowing what you cannot fix
23:00 — Looking at the dark corners without getting stuck there
25:00 — Why different people need different timelines to decide
26:00 — The Enneagram: strong, safe, good, and why they entrench
28:00 — The Pivot Questions
Full Transcript
Jonathan Treussard: Hi, I'm Jonathan Treussard, and welcome to Treussard Talks, where we talk about the mechanics of investing, the psychology of investing, and what it means to manage your wealth with purpose — because understanding your wealth shouldn't be as complex as building it. Welcome to today's show.
Kaley Klemp, I am so excited to be talking to you today.
Kaley Klemp: Hello, friend. I'm so happy to be here.
Jonathan Treussard: And a friend you are indeed. I have known you for certainly over a decade, and I met you because you really led a great deal of the culture efforts at Research Affiliates.
Kaley Klemp: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Treussard: I eventually became a partner there — and in fact, you were part of the process by which that happened. But I do want to hear about how you got here, your background, how you grew up. You have a very distinguished education. How you ended up going to Stanford, and then fundamentally, how you got into thinking about leadership and culture and really all of this interpersonal stuff — which, for our usual listeners, is going to be a different conversation. But to me it really is all interconnected, which is fundamentally: how do we make decisions, and how do we behave? So take it away.
Kaley Klemp: So many options for where to begin. I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, which ironically is where I'm back living right now. I was really lucky that I grew up in a place where the outdoors was a huge part of my life and where curiosity was very much encouraged.
Stanford was the place that I visited and fell in love with — my parents were willing to do the once-upon-a-time visit to all of the various universities. And my dad actually confessed later that he called my mom and said, "If Kaley doesn't want to go here, I do."
Jonathan Treussard: So good.
Kaley Klemp: I had such a wonderful four years on the farm there. I studied international relations, Spanish, and Portuguese, and then I got my master's degree in sociology and organizational behavior. And while I wouldn't say I necessarily use exactly the tools that I studied in my master's degree, I think that was part of the fire that got me really curious about humans — how we interact, how we think, and how we make decisions.
I was a management consultant right after college. And from Deloitte I started working with Young Presidents' Organization, and I would say that is where I first fell in love with leadership. But also with really understanding how important people's internal world is — people's health, people's wellbeing, people's curiosity, people's responsibility — and how all of it informed how they led.
For anybody who's not familiar with Young Presidents' Organization, also known as YPO: it's a peer group model where CEOs and presidents of various organizations share both personally and professionally, and both challenge and support each other about life's big decisions. So from there, I started working with organizations like Research Affiliates, where I had the privilege to meet you.
Jonathan Treussard: Yeah. And I certainly got a huge amount of insight, and I still derive insights from the work that you and I did together, so many years later. For me, it's all interconnected. Even when I talk about investing, I talk about mechanics, I talk about psychology, and I talk about purpose. There's so much focus on the first one, mechanics, but the other two are hypercritical.
Let's set the stage with a little bit of an intellectual spine, if you will, so that people can orient themselves around some of the concepts. You have a book called The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. We may not go through all fifteen — that seems daunting.
Kaley Klemp: That is a lot.
Jonathan Treussard: But maybe a couple would be helpful. I look at it as this concept of curiosity, this concept of responsibility, and of course you have an organizing principle, which is this thing, "above and below the line." So at the heart of it, how do you explain that to people?
Kaley Klemp: One of the things I love about your work, Jonathan, in investing, is that you are talking about how humans, how people engage with investing. The mechanics — if we were all taken over by AI, which may or may not happen in the near future, who knows — but because it really is so human, these worlds do touch.
So the idea of the line is essentially just that: it's an organizing principle. And it's simplistic, because I think that makes it easier to think about, where all of these concepts organize around this line. Above the line is curiosity, whereas below the line is defensiveness. Above the line is claiming exactly one hundred percent responsibility. When you fall below the line, you're either taking less than a hundred percent responsibility — in a framework of victimhood, or playing the villain and blaming — or you're claiming more than a hundred percent responsibility, which looks like heroing or rescuing. Above the line is candor. Below the line would be gossip or withholding.
And one of the things I think is interesting about this model is that it's not really very controversial. There are very few people who say to me some version of, "You know, Kaley, I think it would be awesome to run my firm with a lot of gossip, sloppy agreements, and tons of blame." That's just not the recipe that people set out for. And yet, if there isn't a shared vocabulary, a shared understanding, then people can accidentally slip into some of these — we'll call them bad habits. The idea of the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership is that it gives you both a map as an individual and then as a culture, as a firm, to be able to align people toward the behaviors and the qualities of being that help you create the culture that you most want.
Jonathan Treussard: It's funny you say that. A couple of things. One is something I need to say because it's so fundamental, and I learned it from you — though I knew it before you gave me language for it: "the need to be right." It is just pervasive, particularly when people are in the business of selling their brain.
So a huge part of it is to have the intellectual honesty, the humility — and honestly, this is how you do this better — to not need to be right. To be able to say, "I don't know. That's the way the world is." So one part of it is just grounding yourself in things that are fundamentally obvious. How would you know what's going to happen next? Because if you do, that makes one of us.
But the other part, again borrowing some of your terminology: when you join a firm, or you're building a firm, a culture exists. There's always a culture. The question becomes, do we have a definition of it, or does it just live in dark corners?
Kaley Klemp: Yeah.
Jonathan Treussard: If you don't have the roadmap, if you haven't been intentional with it, then how do you think you're going to be able to steer this thing to the right or to the left?
Kaley Klemp: Yeah.
Jonathan Treussard: I would love to hear more about that. And maybe to give you something more substantial: it's a founder-led firm, maybe more of a founder team thing, where eventually people drift apart or whatever. How do you think about the original definition of a culture, and then intentionally directing it past the natural emergence of it?
Kaley Klemp: It always makes me laugh when we talk about being right, because if your education was anything like my education — and I know that we were educated on different continents — there were no teachers who gave points because you were curious and came up with the wrong answer. So essentially we were trained our whole lives: get it right. Be the smartest person in the room, have the right answer, be the fastest with it.
So then to arrive in adulthood, in an organization, and to suddenly flip the incentive structure — to be able to say, "I don't know, but let me go find out," or to have the humility to say, "I have a hypothesis, please poke holes in it or challenge me so that we get to the right answer, rather than me being right" — can be a bit of mental gymnastics for folks. So I love how you named that as one of the things that I work on all the time with people.
In terms of cultures existing, I think that you name something really important. This is true both in organizations — the same thing is true whether in a company or in an intimate relationship, whether that's a marriage or a partnership. You have an operating system. You have a culture. The question is whether it arose by accident or whether you designed it with intention. And I would argue the vast majority of cultures arise by accident.
So we'll pick up our founder example just as a starting point. An individual has an idea. He or she realizes, "I can't do this all by myself. I'm going to ask my two closest friends to do it." We may or may not have enough dollars to rent some office space. We may or may not be in some parents' basement or garage. And we're going to go build this thing.
And the three of them — whether it's Silicon Valley right now doing 9-9-6, or whether it was once upon a time where you just sort of live and eat and breathe whatever this invention is — it's so compelling that there isn't typically design. Very rarely do those three people sit together and say, "What should our values be? What should our mission statement be?"
It's usually not until they get to around five, six, seven people that they say, "Oh, wait a second. We need some organizing principles." And then, because they've typically had such close relationships, it almost feels like a mind meld. It doesn't have to be quite as intentional.
Once you get beyond that point, though — so you've got your founding team, and now you start to get sort of twenty, thirty, forty people in your organization — the osmosis doesn't work. There are just too many people who are trying to do good work, who are trying to achieve this mission, and so it becomes a bit haphazard. I don't encounter organizations where people are intentionally working at cross purposes, and yet it will happen.
Jonathan Treussard: Those organizations are out there.
Kaley Klemp: I imagine they're out there. They don't hire me.
Jonathan Treussard: Right.
Kaley Klemp: But I think there is something about the founder often creating the culture simply by her or his presence. If you get more of a professional management, or a private equity firm buys the organization, then you start to see that culture being instituted by "what do we want to have happen?"
Jonathan Treussard: Yeah. And not to interject too quickly into this, but to your point — look, I'm a founder now, and because I used to work with you, I'm actually very intentional about knowing exactly what it is that I do.
Kaley Klemp: You are the rare exception.
Jonathan Treussard: One of the things that I think is interesting, to your point that the founder will create the culture — one of the terms that you've used in the past that I think is really important is decision rights.
Kaley Klemp: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Treussard: If it's your firm, if you're a hundred percent equity or seventy percent equity, you get to decide. This is where psychology meets capitalism. You're the boss. But the problem is there's only so much you can do. You and I used to work with someone we both admire greatly, and she would often say: our job is to see past the horizon line, and then actually draw a picture for people, because most people need it. They can't see past the horizon line.
Kaley Klemp: Yeah.
Jonathan Treussard: They're seeing different things.
Kaley Klemp: Yes. And I think this notion of decision rights — just the definition — is pretty intuitive. But the idea is: who gets to make the call if it's a jump ball? So ideally you're creating alignment, but there are different ways that you can do it. In the United States, we decided that we were going to go with majority rules. In most organizations, there is a person, whether the CEO or the managing partner, who gets those ultimate decision rights and gets to make the call.
What you're describing that I think is tricky is that as a founder-led firm grows up, the temptation continues to be to go back to the founder for their decision. "Hey Jonathan, you own the vast majority of the equity. What do you want to do?" And it makes sense that people would continue to go to that person, because it is in some ways theirs.
And yet, if we train the entire organization that the only person able to make decisions is the founder — wow, are we going to create a bottleneck. That person is never allowed to go on vacation, never allowed to get sick. And what gets tricky is that you can often unintentionally lose the intellectual honesty. Just because the founder has the idea doesn't necessarily make it the best. But people shy away, because, well, that person has decision rights anyway.
Jonathan Treussard: Part of it is, if you've hired those people and they're like, "I don't know, I just do what he says" — that seems pretty weak. It seems like leaving a bunch of value on the table.
Kaley Klemp: The CEOs themselves don't want that either. I can't tell you how many times they would say, "If I came here to make the decision by myself, we didn't need to have this meeting."
Jonathan Treussard: No, totally. It goes back to this — to me, it's all about "I don't need to be right. I can't be right. I need to be humble." It's like: what do you think? If I'm just talking at you, we're not having a conversation.
Kaley Klemp: As far as I'm concerned, that sounds directly in the paradigm of curiosity. I really want to listen. I really want to understand. I really want to engage. I am open to being incorrect, to changing my mind. And at the end of the day, curiosity doesn't mean infinite navel-gazing, nor does it mean unwillingness to make a decision. It means I am genuinely listening through a lens of humility, wanting to get to the best possible answer, and then willing to say: I'm willing to make the call. There is no such thing as perfect information, and I'm willing to make the call.
Jonathan Treussard: Right. And it becomes this concept of responsibility, which is: I'll make a decision, I'll own it.
Kaley Klemp: Yes.
Jonathan Treussard: We agreed this was my decision to make. I had a boss who, at some point, was thanked for his services. This was early on in my career, and I said, "What happened?" And he said, "You get to a level where things happen. You take shots, and if it doesn't work out..." You know what I mean? I think that's part of it — to live in the real world. Rather than operating from a place of risk aversion and mitigation, it's just: no. Sometimes we make big decisions, and then we go in a different direction.
One of the things that I think is really hard — and maybe this starts to drift us into the family territory — is that, as you said, the two or three people that built the thing together often end up feeling like family to one another. And there are just a lot of grooves. When you're in a family, everybody assumes certain roles, and it can dip into caricature. But the point is, to dip aggressively into caricature: you know who dad is and you know who mom is.
Kaley Klemp: Yeah.
Jonathan Treussard: You go to this person for this and that person for that. But of course, sometimes divorce happens.
Kaley Klemp: Right.
Jonathan Treussard: So what happens? How does one navigate that breakup situation in a company setting?
Kaley Klemp: I think it's much like a family situation, where in the most ideal world — where everyone could be their most mature and responsible and curious and candid self — you could say, "Hey, our interests are different, and we'd like to go in different directions." I think that there are examples where it can go really well.
To your point, Jonathan, I think where it goes sideways is where it feels like betrayal. And most of the time when that's happening, folks have skipped over candor along the way. They haven't been willing to say, "Hey, our visions for where this is going diverge." Or to be able to say, "I have five more years to really pour my heart into this, and then I want to go do something else," versus the person who says, "Oh, I never want to leave this and never want to sell."
If they don't have that conversation, when five years arrives — wow, is there a conflict brewing for them. And so I think you can end up in situations where people are the worst versions of themselves. That might take us into a conversation about personality styles, that people's worst looks different. But almost every version of self-destruction and vitriol that can exist in the world, I think, has shown up in these kinds of moments.
Jonathan Treussard: Yeah. This is one of those things where I think you can get in front of it by being intentional.
Kaley Klemp: Yes.
Jonathan Treussard: And not letting things brew under the surface. I mean, look — again, I'm French, and I have a tendency to be emotional and perhaps as a result overly communicative of those emotions.
Kaley Klemp: All the things that we love about you.
Jonathan Treussard: But I think it's helpful to just be like, "This is where I am." And then when you've had this conversation every six months for years, when you finally get to a place where one person says "I'm ready to tap out" and the other person says "I'm just getting started" —
Kaley Klemp: Yes.
Jonathan Treussard: — at least it doesn't become a surprise.
Kaley Klemp: And you're describing, I think, among all different relationships in life, a best practice. So certainly among co-founders, this is an essential conversation to be in on the regular. Also between spouses or partners who are saying, "What is our life about?" — that there isn't a moment where they say, "Hey, we're empty nesters," and one person is like, "Great, I'm going back to work full force," and the other person says, "What? I thought this was our chance to travel the world." Those are important conversations to be having along the way.
And I think this is where, as I think about you and your role in helping people understand and work with their wealth — understanding what is money for, how does this matter in my life — and being in regular conversation, where if there are parties who need to be aligned, they're having that conversation. So I think about you as being such a facilitator of both self-understanding and that expression. And the more people are willing to be candid, even with their own self, then they are able to make really wise decisions. Rather than ending up somewhere and looking back and going, "Well, shoot. Every choice I made along the way indeed led me here, but darn, if I could go back in time, I wish I were more intentional."
Jonathan Treussard: Yeah, totally. I think part of it for me, and the work I do today, is helping people have that conversation within themselves.
Kaley Klemp: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Treussard: It's their money, it's their decision rights — full on. You define it. I will say to people: if you don't define the money, the money will define you.
Kaley Klemp: Yes.
Jonathan Treussard: Part of it is that that's a prompt to say: focus on it. What is this money about? And only you can decide. I can keep shining a spotlight on it if it helps. And then some people are like, "I don't want to look at it."
Kaley Klemp: I think that's exactly it. I don't know people who think to themselves, "Hey, I'd like to wake up in my fifties or in my sixties, have a totally unconscious relationship with money where it completely controls me, and it creates a lot of conflict all around in my life, and I feel at the effect of it and am bullying a bunch of people for it."
I just haven't seen somebody in their twenties be like, "Hey, I'm starting my professional life, I'm getting married, this is what I want for myself." For me it's often in an executive leadership role, where they're potentially selling a firm and they recognize, "Oh my gosh, I don't have an individual identity outside of this." And helping them discover what their life is about. Sometimes it's within couples where they haven't sat down to say, "What are our values, and how do we know if we're spending our money in alignment with those?" Those are the kinds of conversations that I'm in. And I imagine there's a parallel version in your universe as well.
Jonathan Treussard: For sure. And then the other part of it, which is really interesting, is that people want to have different definitional relationships. I'm naturally — perhaps again, to an extreme — I want it to be collaborative, because part of it is, I believe in decision rights. It's your money. Given that the outcome is going to be so uncertain, we better make sure we've explored the range of outcomes and you say, "Yeah, that feels good." And then some people say some version of, "Nah, you'll make the decision, I'm okay signing off on it." And of course that makes me feel kind of wobbly. But part of it is accepting that people will look to you for different things.
Kaley Klemp: I think that you're describing something so interesting, which is: what do people do in moments of uncertainty? And uncertainty can be, "Hey, I don't have a full understanding of the financial markets." And rather than engaging or listening, or engaging with your podcast or reading your newsletters, they'll say, "Jonathan, just tell me what to do."
Similarly, there will be organizations that will say, "Hey Kaley, can you come fix our culture for us?" To which I say, I would love to work with you to define and then intentionally foster your culture. But no. Once upon a time, very early in my career, I answered the call from a board: "Can you fix the CEO?" And I was like, "Sure." Nope. No, I could not.
Jonathan Treussard: Yeah. Were you heroing yourself there?
Kaley Klemp: I was indeed.
Jonathan Treussard: But no, I think that's exactly right. You have to know what you can do and what you can't.
Kaley Klemp: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Treussard: And it's helpful to say, "I just don't think this is what I can do."
Kaley Klemp: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Treussard: Which takes a certain degree of maturity, I guess, all around. And it's funny, because obviously I think of uncertainty, I think of risk — and obviously my wife has opinions about this — I have no issues spending the vast majority of the day staring at dark places. Like, what could go wrong?
Kaley Klemp: Yeah.
Jonathan Treussard: Why is this awful? And that doesn't make me a negative person, because I can just stare at it and then put it where it belongs. And I think, to your point, for you it's saying: well, we're going to have to do this together, but are you willing to look at it —
Kaley Klemp: Yeah.
Jonathan Treussard: — at whatever's going on in your organization?
Kaley Klemp: The way that I hear what you're describing is: are you willing to see what is? And you alluded to this earlier in our conversation — that sometimes people really want to put lipstick on that pig and aren't willing to say, and it's a pig. It might be a really cute pig if you put a headband and lipstick on it, but it's still a pig. Okay, now what do we want to have happen?
If you go looking at those dark corners, at the worst-case potential scenario, and you get stuck there where you're no longer able to look into the future and make choices — yes, that's problematic. But a willingness to look into the future, to see what might happen and then make strategic choices based on what you were willing to see, rather than pretending that it wasn't there — that, to me, seems like wisdom.
[Thanks for listening. I'm Jonathan Treussard, founder of Treussard Capital Management. I hope you're enjoying this episode. If you'd like to start receiving my free newsletter, Wealth, Empowered, or if you'd like to learn more about me and Treussard Capital Management, go to treussard.com. That's T-R-E-U-S-S-A-R-D dot com. Thanks, and enjoy the rest of the episode.]
Jonathan Treussard: So there's something really pragmatic that I would like you to describe, which is the way different people process information differently. Because I think that cuts to the fact that we actually are very different, but of course we assume that everybody operates exactly the way we do.
Kaley Klemp: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Treussard: Some people will be very happy to walk into a room, be presented a situation, make a decision. And then for some people that's kind of the worst-case scenario, right?
Kaley Klemp: Yeah.
Jonathan Treussard: It's like, man, I need time to go for a walk and let it sit. So how do you deal with the reality that whenever anything resembles a group decision, different humans need different timelines, different processes, to actually get to a place of agreement?
Kaley Klemp: The first thing to do is exactly what you just did, which is acknowledge that people are different. That seems like such a basic concept, and yet it so frequently gets missed.
Personally, I love the personality tool the Enneagram. And what I love about the Enneagram is that it provides us not just with a personality assessment, or a diagnostic — it gives us room to grow. There are lots and lots of personality tools out there: MBTI, and Big Five, and the Birkman, and the Colors, and all the various ones. The reason I love the Enneagram is that it's about why you're doing what you're doing.
So for instance, "I'm striving to be good" might look or feel different than "I'm striving to be strong" or "I'm striving to be safe." But all of them are wonderful when they can work together — there's not actually contradiction between things that are good, strong, and safe, if we're all above the line, if we're all mature, if we're all listening to each other. But as we get to our worst and get entrenched, that person wanting to be strong might want to make a really fast decision and just deal with whatever the consequences are, whereas the person who wants to be safe wants to make sure that we've mitigated all the risks before we decide. And that's when you really see entrenched conflict.
All of that is a long way to say: choose something that gives you a vocabulary, so that you can engage with those differences from a place of curiosity and wonder and appreciation for difference, rather than trying to make someone a clone of yourself.
Jonathan Treussard: And it's so important. And again, it doesn't make people — I'm reminded of someone who was in a sales and distribution role. And you imagine, everything becomes kind of a typecasting, right? You think the salesperson is the one who just keeps picking up the phone and dialing for dollars, and everything rolls off their shoulder.
Kaley Klemp: Right.
Jonathan Treussard: And of course that person was just a very risk-management-oriented type of person who would keep going about what could go wrong. And I'm like, that doesn't seem like the typecast. But there is strength in looking at things from a different perspective. You just have to acknowledge you might not be straight out of central casting.
Kaley Klemp: Fair. Hopefully we have moved beyond being caricatures of ourselves — although sometimes it is quite fun just to be the most ridiculous version of that stereotype. Mostly for the laughs, and then the insight that arises.
Jonathan Treussard: I am about to be a complete caricature of myself.
Kaley Klemp: Oh.
Jonathan Treussard: I grew up in Paris watching a lot of French TV. One of the shows I used to watch was this literary culture show, and the host, Bernard Pivot, would ask his guests — playwrights, authors, whatever — the same set of questions at the end of every episode. Of course, those questions were adapted for American TV by James Lipton for Inside the Actors Studio. So on the way out, I have a series of questions I'd like to ask you. They're pretty metaphysical, but I will give you the opportunity to answer them as literally or as metaphysically as you see fit. Are you ready?
Kaley Klemp: I am ready.
Jonathan Treussard: Okay. What is your favorite word?
Kaley Klemp: Love.
Jonathan Treussard: What is your least favorite word?
Kaley Klemp: Polarized. Because to me, polarized means there's an absence of curiosity.
Jonathan Treussard: Yeah. It's talking past each other.
Kaley Klemp: Yeah, exactly what you were describing. Yes.
Jonathan Treussard: Yeah. What is your favorite drug?
Kaley Klemp: Adrenaline.
Jonathan Treussard: Okay.
Kaley Klemp: I mean, who doesn't want the adrenaline? So I live in Colorado. I love, love, love to snow ski. Being in the trees on a powder day, above a cliff — that moment of, this is freedom and presence all at once. I love it. That to me is adrenaline.
Jonathan Treussard: What sound or noise do you love?
Kaley Klemp: Laughter. Especially giggling.
Jonathan Treussard: Okay. I like the specificity.
Kaley Klemp: Because there's the ha-ha-ha laughter, and then there's just the giggling where you can't control yourself, like little kids. And then when adults do it, it gets contagious. It just doesn't get better than that.
Jonathan Treussard: I would agree with that. What sound or noise do you hate?
Kaley Klemp: I hate the sound of crunching ice. Like when people crunch ice in their teeth. I just — oh, can't do it.
Jonathan Treussard: What is your favorite curse word?
Kaley Klemp: I mean, Roy Kent. We are watching Ted Lasso. I just feel like he's embodied how many different ways you can use the word.
Jonathan Treussard: I think that's correct. Who would you like to see on a new banknote?
Kaley Klemp: So the context here is that I am listening to Jim Collins' new book, What To Make Of A Life. I didn't know very much about Grace Hopper until I listened to this book, and she seems like she might belong on a banknote, because she democratized access to computers and computing. And I feel like at this moment in time, we need a reminder that access and inclusion is really important when we think about technology.
Jonathan Treussard: Oh, I love that. What profession, other than your own, would you never, ever want to attempt?
Kaley Klemp: Oh, politics. I don't think I could do that much vitriol.
Jonathan Treussard: Do you think it requires vitriol? Do you think it's just baked in?
Kaley Klemp: I think it's just part of it. I would like to believe that I'm a relatively self-assured person. I'm not sure that I would do very well with constant attacks on my character — true or false.
Jonathan Treussard: Yeah, no. But I do think there's a difference between the pursuit of self-governance and what you would describe as politics. Narrowly defined, politics is basically theater. But it seems like being part of the attempt at self-governance is worth it.
Kaley Klemp: I agree with that. I think if you or I were able to sit in a seat in service of governance, and attempting to guide or shepherd or listen such that we could make where we live a better place — yes, yes to that. The path to get there feels precarious to me.
Jonathan Treussard: Pretty yucky.
Kaley Klemp: Yeah.
Jonathan Treussard: If you were reincarnated as a plant or an animal, what would it be?
Kaley Klemp: Any big cat — lion, tiger. Although, if I had to choose, I would say cheetah, because how fun would it be to be that fast?
Jonathan Treussard: Well, that's your adrenaline thing.
Kaley Klemp: That might be my adrenaline thing. Once upon a time, twenty years ago, we had the privilege to go on safari, and I watched — I think they were sibling cheetahs — and they looked like they were having just the best life.
Jonathan Treussard: That seems nice. All right, are you ready for the last one? If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you get to the pearly gates?
Kaley Klemp: Hmm. "There's even more love than you imagined."
Jonathan Treussard: Oh, that's beautiful. Well, Kaley, it was wonderful to talk to you today. Thank you so much.
Kaley Klemp: Jonathan, this was so fun. Thank you. Thank you.
Dolores: This podcast is for entertainment and education only. Nothing here is financial advice. Treussard Capital Management is a registered investment advisor. Please visit our website, treussard.com, for additional information and disclaimers.
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The content of "Treussard Talks" is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Treussard Capital Management or its affiliates. Consult your own financial advisor before making any investment decisions. For full disclosures, visit treussard.com.