The Intentional Investor #47: Ted Merz

In this episode of The Intentional Investor, Matt Zeigler sits down with bestselling author, humorist, and essayist Michael Perry to explore the life experiences that shaped his writing and worldview. Perry shares stories from growing up on a dairy farm in rural Wisconsin, the lessons he learned from sports and hard work, and the powerful influence of his parents’ humility and charity. The conversation moves through his unlikely path from farm kid to nurse to full-time writer, including the mentors, moments, and unexpected decisions that helped shape his career. Along the way, Perry reflects on independence, purpose, faith, and the role storytelling plays in understanding both investing and life.

Roger Mitchell joins The Intentional Investor to share the improbable journey from a working class upbringing in Scotland to the upper tiers of global finance, music, media, and sport. Along the way, he reflects on the formative lessons that shaped him, from navigating rough public schools and working late nights in a family fish and chip shop to flying across Europe for high stakes meetings and interviewing some of the most powerful figures in sport and business. This is a conversation about usefulness versus indispensability, about how narrative and presentation shape power, and about why leaving home is often the moment everything changes.

In this episode of The Intentional Investor, Matt Zeigler sits down with Ted Merz to explore how careers, ideas, and communities are shaped less by optimization and more by immersion. Drawing on stories from Ted’s early life, his time at Bloomberg, and his post corporate reinvention, the conversation weaves together lessons on curiosity, communication, and why showing up in person still matters in a digital world.

In this episode of Intentional Investor, Matt Zeigler sits down with Ritavan to explore how a life shaped by loss, curiosity, and self-directed learning produced a distinctive way of thinking about mastery, ambition, and purpose. From a remarkable family history to an unconventional educational path, the conversation traces how early experiences with adversity, mentorship, and intellectual independence compound over time into a durable framework for growth.

In this episode of Intentional Investor, Matt Zeigler sits down with Tony Greer for a wide-ranging conversation about markets, risk, identity, and the experiences that shape how we operate under pressure. From growing up on Long Island in a tight-knit Italian family to trading precious metals at global banks, Tony shares the formative moments that defined his relationship with money, risk, competition, and resilience. The discussion moves fluidly between personal history and professional lessons, revealing how early adversity, intense trading environments, and deep relationships influence decision-making both in markets and in life.

In this special year-end episode of Intentional Investor, Matt Zeigler and Ben Hunt reflect on the stories, turning points, and formative moments that shaped the most memorable conversations of 2025. Rather than market calls or forecasts, this episode focuses on identity, risk, mentorship, reinvention, and the experiences that quietly redirect a life. Through a countdown of the top ten clips from the year, the conversation explores how careers are really built, how values are formed, and why the most important lessons often come from unexpected places.

Greg Larkin joins The Intentional Investor to explore the wild arc of his life: from feral 1980s–90s New York City, to punk rock basements, to microfinance in Scotland, to predicting the subprime crisis, to becoming a leading voice on innovation, courage, and community-building. This episode blends personal history with market insight, crisis leadership, creativity, and what it means to build a meaningful life and career.

Dave Nadig joins us for a wide-ranging conversation on intentional investing, creativity, career detours, near-death experiences, and building a meaningful life. From growing up as a “no-lock kid,” to working on live TV in Los Angeles, to the early days of ETFs, to a traumatic climbing accident that changed his worldview, Dave shares a remarkable story filled with lessons about ambition, humility, family, and purpose.

Pablos Holman is a legendary hacker, inventor, and investor whose career spans from rural Alaska to Blue Origin and beyond. In this episode of The Intentional Investor, Matt Zeigler explores how curiosity, creativity, and relentless experimentation shaped Pablos’s journey — from hacking onstage and pioneering early web development to building inventions that shoot mosquitoes with lasers and investing in deep-tech founders today. It’s a masterclass in innovation, persistence, and the mindset of people who make the impossible real.

Adam Butler joins The Intentional Investor with Matt Zeigler for an honest, funny, and deeply reflective conversation that traces the origins of one of investing’s most thoughtful minds. From a Dungeons & Dragons-playing kid in Newfoundland to the CIO of Resolve Asset Management, Adam’s story is about curiosity, overconfidence, failure, reinvention, and finding purpose through markets. Along the way, he shares the lessons that shaped his worldview — and the mistakes that built his philosophy on risk, humility, and growth.