Rich Lumelleau

Welcome to Motley Fool Conversations.

I'm your host, Motley Fool contributor, Rich Lamello.

Today's guest is someone who's spent his career helping people rethink the way they build wealth.

Mark Mattson is an entrepreneur, investor, and founder of Mattson Money, and the author of several books, including Main Street Money, The Dirty, Filthy Lives My Broker Taught Me, and most recently, Experiencing the American Dream.

His work draws heavily on academic research and behavioral finance.

He's known for challenging the traditional Wall Street mindset while empowering everyday investors to make smarter, more intentional decisions.

Mark, welcome to The Motley Fool.

Thank you so much for taking the time to come on.

And as the intro would indicate, there's a lot to get to.

But I guess for the listener who doesn't know your full story, how did you first become, for lack of a better word, kind of passionate about rethinking how Americans invest?

How would you summarize your core investing philosophy in a couple of sentences?

I know you said that investors don't need to try to outsmart the market, but instead try to stop outsmarting themselves.

What do you mean by that?

And what's an example of a way an investor, you know, kind of tries to outsmart himself in a way he can, you know, kind of arrest that?

Your first book, which we'll get to in a second, came out about 20 years ago.

What do you think has changed the most in the investing world over the last two decades?

And what, from your perspective, hasn't changed at all, is very consistent with when you first started writing books?

In the book, you talk about how investors are trained to kind of delegate their thinking to their brokers.

Well, I guess in 2005, clearly like the CNBCs, and you had a lot more information than you might have had 15 years prior to that.

But do you think that that's still the case or do you think we've kind of evolved from there?