i often think that like we just have people like i don't have a cfa right and i'm not gonna bag on cfas i i'm only gonna say like they did a really really great job marketing the cfa and back when i was coming up like it was brand new and you know it's kind of like we really want to give you one or we'll just give it to you your book is great i'm like
yeah no i don't need that i don't want that i i'm wondering like about accreditation and and i have a specific view about where this goes but i wanted to get i wanted to get your view because a i respect it but b that you you also have pursued or have already you know numerous advanced degrees do you think that accreditation like i have a ba in economics worthless
worthless and but in the old world that degree suggested that i was capable yeah i think we've moved into a world where what i do is far more accurate about people's perceptions of me do they want to invest in a company that i've started et cetera what do you think's going on with accreditation and where do you where do you does it reach an end state it's
interesting so it's interesting that you bring up the cfa institute because mark franklin the ceo of cfa is actually my neighbor we hang out and talk about this sometimes but like what you know what they what is it what is it that they're trying to do and like what is their purpose in this world of abundant things that appear like credentialing right like what is the point of a lot of this
how do they think about you know the job like one way to think about like what a cfa is is that it is somewhat like a luxury good like it is a little bit like a louis vuitton bag in the sense that like well you want a one that's the real thing because it is costly to acquire and it signals a certain kind of thing right and it only comes and has a very
very it has a very specific provenance right and it in in it signals that you have done the work to obtain this thing right like however it might be right yeah and and no question i have massive respect for the they hit virtually every childini persuasion technique and i i i think it's brilliant but keep going keep going there's there's a so there's this there's this really interesting
challenge which is like the challenge of luxury good manufacturers right whatever they might be whether they be handbags or cfa level twos is how do you how do you how do you bring how do you how do you bring something to a mass market while it's still being scarce right like how do you grow a luxury brand while maintaining its value right this is you know the the the
person most uniquely qualified to answer this question in the world is certainly bernard or no but like how do you take you know how do you solve this challenge of again like if you think about for the cfa institute specifically it's like you want to go take this i like how do you go take the cfa program to a place like all these other countries in the world without deluding something for your
charter holders and having to be mad like all the stuff it's like everybody you know these these are they're like how do you like how do you make how do you how do you maintain how do you maintain this thing it's like well one way that you can sort of think of it is like there's no upper like some there's no something that there's no upper bound on
how much meaning can get created um in things that have a sufficient degree of that can be that can be subdivided in interesting ways so long as they have meaning to people right so an example is like there is no upper bound on how big the wine industry can get right that will not that it will never plateau right the reason why i will never plateau is because you can always
manufacture more meaning out of it because it is sufficiently complex and it is sufficiently it is sufficiently developed to have these years of storylines in them but most importantly because there is sufficient mystery in them right the power of mystery is massively massively important in anything that has this hard to obtain component of it which is like if it's
perfectly transparent it loses a lot of its value right i think anything that that is a credential of any kind has to navigate this the the this tension between well you want to be very clear about what the credentials are but you also want to be very clear about what the mystery contained within it is right and again in the case of something like in the case of something like having like
getting your cfa actually an mba is probably an even cleaner example which is like well i did it same thing not much difference in these two it's like it they have to simultaneously be very clear about what was done in order to obtain this certification right it's no different than like what is the process by which i am showing you that this grand cru bordeaux came from this row in this
vineyard with this qr code that you can scan and like show that this is a real thing and not a counterfeit wine or something like that right while at the same time right doing that work in order to present the mystery of it which in the case of a credentialing for employment is like this person might be the person who does 30 million dollars worth of work for you
right you don't know right you don't know until you hire them right whether they are actually that person right but this credential will get them to the point where you can make that bet similarly you don't know if this bottle of wine is going to be good right you're making a bet right every time you open a bottle of wine you're making a bat right but there are all there is all
this work that the industry does in order to create a rarity around that that is desirable and good for everybody involved right like similarly if you look at all these kinds of credentialing right it's like there is a lot of useful work that can be done for the benefit of everybody for creating that kind of great greater transparency such that greater mystery may reveal itself