Mastering Stress and Resilience in Trading and Leadership with AmplifyME CEO Will de Lucy

Hello and welcome to this special episode. Because we don't have a Deal Room episode with Steven, we've got a special guest, the founder and CEO of AmplifyMe, Will DeLucy. How are you, Will?

Very well, thank you. Thanks for having me on. I think this is my first one. It's only taken 4 years for you to get around to this.

Look, it's going to be worth the wait for all our listeners, I'm absolutely sure, because in this episode, I really wanted to pull on your experience having had a career as a trader, as a founder, and now as a CEO of a growing business that's going global at this point. And I wanted to talk about some subjects just to give the listeners a flavor, talking about managing stress, dealing with failure, building resilience, decision-making under pressure, how trading— I'd be super interested to hear your take having been a discretionary prop trader some 20 years ago to now you go and work with some of the most sophisticated quant hedge funds on the planet. And how has trading changed and get a bit of an insight into that. But like with all of our guests that we have, I'll treat you the same. If I could get a little bit of a summary of your background. And normally it would be great if you could go back to when you were a young person, a student, and what were you thinking at that point? Was even trading finance on your radar?

Yeah, that's interesting. It feels like a, what was I thinking? Um, no, when I was a young person, I, I didn't really, I know, I think now there's a lot more pressure on people to think about their careers a lot earlier. I wasn't really thinking like that so much just throughout school. Um, pretty much every day after school, I'd worked at a local restaurant. I'd wait tables to get, get, get, get money. I enjoyed the fast pace and pressure of that. Um, without knowing it, actually, I think working in that really busiest establishment throughout secondary school was really good preparation for dealing with pressure and working in a fast-paced environment. Went through university. I was not a particularly excellent student by any stretch of the imagination, but did know that I wanted to work in finance and then managed to secure some sort of summer placements when I was going through university that gave me a lot more insight. Um, and then landed a role as a, as a, as a trader. I was just incredibly fortunate. Um, in the interview, I remember, you know, they're still the same. Actually, I think a lot of the tests are used the same today, like quick maths, mental maths, which I really enjoyed. Um, the biggest event I think in my professional life was my first 2 weeks on the trading floor when I could see the patterns. I could see how markets were moving. I could see how products were correlated. I could. It was probably and still is the biggest light bulb moment of my entire life. Everything became clear when I got to see it and be involved within it. And that hit me so hard that, I mean, I then traded for almost a decade in bond markets after that, but I never forgot that. And I always wanted to see if I could use technology to build that type of light bulb moment for other people. How can that experience of practical learning by doing be shared with many more people? And that's where Amplify started back in January 2009.

Yeah. And you can't not say 2009 and give us the story about when you were looking for a location and the event that happened.

Oh my goodness. Yeah. I mean, look, it was just such a time of turmoil. But we were really lucky. The, um, guy that we traded for both Piers and, and myself, Ralph Goldenberg, was, um, a, a brilliant man. And obviously we, we, we traded for his firm for a number of years and so had made him a lot of money. Uh, so when it came to us requiring office space and, and so on, you know, I went to Ralph and said, look, I'm, I'm going to go out on my own. We're going to do something that's to do with simulations and education and, and training and assessment. And, and he was fully supportive of that. Um, And he pretty much gave us a phenomenal office in Canary Wharf. So he had this, this large trading floor and he, he, he, he let us have, I think for £500 a month when we started, you know, a 20-seat desk overlooking the water. Um, and that was, that was, that was great. So that he, that he was a huge help. Um, I think, and it just goes to show, you know, once you do start working and the advice to, to younger people out there, once you do build contacts and people get to know you and you, you prove your salt, it's great. People just want— I do think people want to help, uh, people want to help good people, um, and, uh, yeah, Ralph's, uh, kickstart for us in 2009 when there was so much uncertainty, uh, was great. I mean, we're completely self-funded, um, but, but he just helped with the office space and, uh, that, that, that was probably one of, yeah, a really good asset on our side.

So you didn't want to set up in New York? Were you considering that?

We did. We did. And now when I look back on it, it is amazing, like, looking back on the decision. So yeah, both Piers and I went over to New York. It's actually January the 15th, um, 2009, we're in New York and we saw, uh, the plane land in the Hudson. We were just looking outside of our window and just couldn't, couldn't, couldn't believe it. Um, we were thinking about setting up in New York because that is obviously the, uh, a larger financial center. We, we, we really wanted the challenge. Um, it's been a great story so far, but I'm happy to say that I'm now moving to New York with my family this summer, uh, 15 years later. Um, but it's, no, it's a, that, that was an interesting decision, but yeah, the opportunity with Ralph came up and that was definitely too good to pass down.

Cool. All right. Well, let, let, let, let's jump into some of the questions I've got for you. And one of the first ones here, cause I think as a, whether you're a student and you're kind of facing the application process, or you've already grad and you're a bit uncertain and anxious about your next step. You might be a business owner already or an entrepreneur. I think a lot of these things we're going to tackle apply to all. And the first one is about stress, because I think stress is felt by all of those pockets of people that I just mentioned. So when you were trading, or even now as a business owner, rather than just talk about stress in an abstract way, I wonder if you could give us some some tips or habits, techniques that you've used yourself, or when you've helped mentor all of the thousands of traders that you've encountered, that you've seen work and people have had success from?

Yeah, absolutely. This is, this is such a crucial subject, and one of the reasons why I wanted to get into the business of building simulations, um, in markets is because you can measure so much by how somebody responds to stress, uncertainty, adversity. And they can also train themselves. I was a very emotional trader. I'm probably quite an emotional person. You know, I really take things to heart, which is a blessing in a way, because it means you care and you want a good outcome and you put a lot of enthusiasm and energy into things. But, um, it also means you wear it a lot. You wear these things and they can be quite heavy. So there's some absolutely practical ways to deal with this. So the first things first, we start right at the beginning. It's self-awareness. Are you able to recognize when you are in a state of higher stress and you might be in a state where you don't make the most optimal decisions? Um, how, how quickly can you recognize that? Sometimes you can recognize it with a physical tick, right? Sometimes you can recognize it just by where you're breathing or by something that you're doing. And that's step 1. So self-awareness. Can you recognize what's going on with your body and your mind? The second one then is almost like, are you able to mitigate potentially damaging behavior? So when you're stressed and you're worried about something, and everyone does this, let's say we all do it, go to bed and a small grain of a problem in our head, then we build into some sort of mountain of mold. So if you, if you can recognize that happening, that's first the self-awareness part. Okay, I'm doing this, like, this is going to be detrimental to my night's sleep ahead. What's the action that you take? So you've got to have some sort of habit that you force yourself to do. Now, there's a great book about habit stacking that I read years and years ago that I definitely relied on quite a bit, which is to say, if you want to change your behavior in a way that's going to be give you a better outcome, the first habit that you do is something that's fun and easy and something that you want to do. So for example, I would find my biggest weakness as a trader was actually very often overtrading. I've probably got the biggest FOMO out of anyone that I've ever met. If there's a party, I want to be there. If there's a conversation, I want to be involved. If there's a move in the market, why aren't I in it? You know, so, so that was my biggest challenge, is not overtrading. And so I could feel myself beginning to try and force markets that weren't actually moving that much. And as soon as I felt that, then I would actually go and get myself a water or go and get myself a coffee or do something that was nice to do. And by taking that first easy habit, it then removed me from my screen, which was the actual outcome that I wanted to do. And it could start off. A whole series of other habits, which would be then, as I got back down to my desk, not to look at the screen, turn the screen off and actually review what I was doing, why I was doing it, have a reflection piece. I wasn't able to do that just immediately. There had to be a habit in the middle. There had to be something that was easier for me to do that would then lead to better behavior. Um, other examples would be getting into, you know, recognizing real stress and frustration, and then you just want to Well, you just want to throw, throw the screen out the window. You want to do something physical. So very often, you know, for me, I love cycling. I'm always on a bike. I would just get on a bike outside the office, do a loop, short loop of the City of London, for example. You know, you're by avoiding traffic and looking at buses and trucks and not getting run over. I would find that would give myself a head holiday. So again, with stress, we're probably our own worst enemies. We take something and turn it into a monster. And so it's about putting a firebreak in there and recognizing that you need to put a firebreak in there, but also recognizing when you're in that stressful position or you're overtrading, the last thing you want to do is to stop trading. That's the last thing. So can you, can you layer in a habit that's easier, that leads then to that outcome. Um, and that I found really, really important. Um, and it's, it's relevant in anything. I play a lot of tennis. I do that. I have to manage that, you know, where you want a positive outcome. Um, I just think the ability to be aware of what your mind's doing and know you— it's different for every single person. You know, you can't really say how someone else should deal with their their mindset. It's very, very personal. In fact, it's deeply personal when you watch someone go through dips in trading performance, how they come out of those dips, how they can grow from those dips ultimately, because that's, that's what ends up happening as the great outcome of all of this. The more you go through these sort of experiences and then you get knocked down again, but when you get knocked down again, you've now got a wider, more solid base to stand on than you did before because you've experienced it and you've grown from it. And then you get knocked down again and you've got that wider, more, more solid base that comes from experience. So, um, my advice to, uh, you know, any students out there is, you know, this is all part of the process. This, this stress, feeling it, trying to work out how best for you to deal with it. Um, for me it was definitely habit stacking and, and, and, and just trying to move towards a behaviour that would limit the damage that I'll do to myself. But the great thing is it does, you become much more resilient over time, the more this goes through.

Yeah. I think I remember perhaps you and Piers talking about back in the day and the risk manager would be, it's almost like a grieving process when you've had a bad day. It's like you get together, you have maybe in this case a drink, cheers, and then you put it to bed.

Yeah.

Come back the next day.

I mean, I do think we had a risk manager that might have had a bit of an alcohol problem. I do remember one time, um, because we started trading at 7 AM, it was straight off the doors, and by 9 AM, um, on one occasion when I was only 22, I think 23, I'd managed to, uh, yeah, lose a lot of money. And he took me out to— there was a— it was in Canary Wharf back then, there was a hotel around the corner, um, and said, look, let's have a wake for all the things he could have done with that money. And, but his, his argument was, um, and it's an interesting one, his argument was, you know, you have to be able to deal with disappointment and, and loss. You've got to mourn these events, deal with them, because if you don't deal with these events properly, what can happen is they sit in your subconscious just as a small voice that then interrupts your performance a week down the line, 2 weeks down, 3 weeks down the line, it's there. And the great thing about trading I, I found so interesting was what you do in the moment that matters is actually evidence of everything that you are. And if you haven't been able to deal with these small voices— should have, would have, could have— now revenge, vengeance, anger, fear. Um, you make decisions that aren't based on the screen in front of you. You make decisions by all of those unresolved things inside you. And it can lead to— what, what's so interesting about that is then, so that one bad outcome that you haven't dealt with properly then leads to another bad decision, which leads to another event. And actually, it— a whole train of events can come from an unresolved, uh, first instance. Um, yeah, I've mentioned tennis before. Have you ever seen Djokovic, for example, where he's an absolute robot? Um, let's say a point will go against him, he'll lose, uh, uh, there'll be a difficult net call and he'll be very frustrated. Now normally he'll bounce the ball, you know, 5 or 6 times, but you can see him resetting his mindset after that a negative event and he's there, he'll bounce the ball 12, 14, 16 times. He's just getting back into the flow state where it's just a serve. He's done a million serves. He's now gonna serve again, just like he always does. And what he's done through that action is put that last negative point to bed and then trade what's in front of him or play what's in front of him, not what's inside.

That's such a great analogy. And just kind of jumping on that word flow that you mentioned, because you hear this quite a lot with high elite sports athletes, high performance activities. Could you just explain a little bit about that state of flow and what that, how it impacts behavior, mindset, performance?

Flow's a really interesting one. I used to talk a lot about flow. I think you always know when you're not in it. But you probably— I don't think I've ever been in a state of flow and really thought, oh, this is flow now, because you're not thinking like that. When you're in a state of flow, you're just doing, and it just feels natural to do whatever it is that you're doing, and you're performing. That's when you're performing at the top of your game. You're not overthinking things. Decisions are clean and easy. If something goes wrong, it's no problem, you change it. You're— it, it, it's a perfect place to be. And everyone's flow's a bit different. So, you know, a big thing that we do at Amplify is helping people find their role, right? Where can you have a natural flow within? Um, for me, I would've been a terrible investment banker probably with, uh, my, my personality. You know, I needed something that was fast and changing, and that's where I found my flow. Um, So I think to describe flow, it's like you're doing something, it doesn't feel like work, it doesn't feel hard, and it's really making the best of all of your innate abilities. When you're not in a flow state, things just feel so different. I'm sure everyone's had that before. I certainly had it in trading where, well, I remember actually one of the traders opposite me was saying, whoever that guy Midas is, as in Midas, everything he touches turns to gold, whoever that guy Midas is, I'm his opposite. And he was going through a state where everything that he did was obviously not, not working out. And that happens when you're trying to force things, when you're trying to force an outcome. Um, yeah, it's such an interesting state, the state of flow. I think you know when you're not in it, and that's where then self-awareness comes. If you're not in that state of flow, what is it that you can do in order to relax and, and loosen up and, and, and, and do what's in front of you, not what you want to do. And that's then where the different habits come in. And, and, you know, the best way to deal with that is different for different people. It might be a holiday, it might be exercise, it might be a few beers, it might be— it's just different for each person at different times. But I think recognizing when you're not in a state of flow and then trying to move within that unconscious competence, you know, it's a really difficult thing to do and you almost do it without knowing it. But I think the most important thing is if you're not in a state of flow, okay, just don't try and force it now. Don't, you know, bet all on black. Now's not the time.

You mentioned awareness again there, and that's come up a few times. I just wonder, there's kind of being self-aware, and then as you described earlier, taking action. Do you think people that you've seen generally fall short on one or the other? Because if it was that simple, obviously everyone would be able to deal with stress perfectly, but that's very seldom the case, particularly in trading.

There's something in trading I used to talk about a lot called the Kolb's Learning Cycle, where you would experience, review, conclude, and do. Experience, review, conclude, do. And then the cycle— and that's how you get that sort of growth in ability. Now everyone can experience, we can review, we know what we then did right or did wrong. And as a trader, you might say, well, I won't do that again. Or next time I'm gonna— but the hardest one is that link between conclude and do. Do you then act in that way the next time? Are you able to implement what you concluded? Because at the time that it's most important to do so, we want to do the exact opposite. Um, and that's where habit stacking comes in. And it's so important. I have this type of thing not just in, in trading or markets, but let's say even with phones, right? I mean, I— the phones are so addictive, and I would found myself checking my phone just because I'd go through a routine, check, check, check. So at my home, there's now what we call a phone home, which is like a mat where mobile phones go in, go like rest on. And this happens because my son's got a phone now, he's 11. So we wanted to bring in some sort of control or help so it didn't become a thing, it didn't become an addictive thing. And just by the habit of putting my phone on the charging mat or phone home and not carrying it around with me when I'm in the house, that changes my behavior. So I think the conclude to-do is really hard, but you can think about it in a way, uh, like habit stacking, something that's easier that leads then to a change in behavior.

Yeah, I think there's this habit stacking idea is so powerful because I think a lot of people are just looking for that instant result, an instant thing, but actually it's these small things that compound and accumulate. So that's really interesting. And just going back to some of the questions here, one of the other ones I had was, you know, whether you're trading or in business, decision-making under uncertainty is a key skill. So how do you approach making tough calls when, like in both situations, it's very rarely you have a complete set of information? You have to just go with what you have at that time. You're never 100% sure. And so how do you approach that process?

It's really, it's a great question. I think I would answer it probably a bit differently. I would say the worst thing is to not make a decision for sure and to procrastinate and to delay and then the decision that you should have made, and there was then a clear outcome. It now, then, then often I found it becomes much more complicated now. And, and, um, so first things first, yeah, make, make a decision. And what I found in certainly my experience of Amplify over the last 15 years is being optimistic, expecting a positive outcome. Um, and it's been amazing what we can achieve just by being available and being present and saying yes. Um, so I'd always have that. I would lean to action for sure, you know, make a decision and make it confidently knowing that if it turns out not to be the correct decision, very rarely is that the end of the world, right? It's not nearly as critical as you can, and you can then move if needed. Um, and I think that comes from confidence and experience, right? You know, Seeing a decision perhaps not work out as you'd expected and then seeing how it can be recovered and then continued. So, yeah, don't see big, big decisions as too much pressure. Just make one, stick to it. Always know that, you know, if needed, things can change. And very often you can't predict what's going to happen anyway, right? It's so interesting how opportunities or events change Um, so make a quick decision, but then be flexible, you know, move to opportunities where they come.

Yeah. Perhaps then that idea of like, you can't, you can't predict the future. You can't have everything under your control. And for a lot of the students that you and I interact with, obviously landing a role, super intense, high stress. And so what's really important is resilience and mental toughness, but for young people who are still early, not just in the career, in their life at this point. And some may, might not have had the opportunities to, you know, have failure come throughout their life. So what ways and conversations have you had that you think have resonated with young people that would be just steps that they could take where they can start to build up that skill set?

The best out, I mean, we had the fortune to work with, you know, well over 100,000 young, young students, right? I've got to know some of them incredibly well over years. Um, and in fact, some of our students are now some of the most successful people in the industry, which makes me feel old. Um, the, the ones that have really done incredibly well, I think, have the, the yes button. It's just yes when something comes up. If there's an event, if there's a networking session, if there's a job offer that isn't exactly what they wanted, but it's an offer. They go for it. So I think it's that positive proactivity, eyes open, even when that student obviously is, you know, young, hasn't had all of these experiences yet. Just by being, putting yourself in those positions opens up so many different opportunities. You know, you really never know. You've seen now Anthony Cheung in some events, you say yes to go and help, let's say with a charity event or networking event or social mobility event. And it turns out that there's someone there that knows someone there that then leads to another opportunity. So I think just my advice would be that energy, enthusiasm, and even if it's not what you thought you wanted to do or the perfect outcome, just do it. Just do it and see what happens. What's the worst that can happen? You maybe spent a day doing something that wasn't as productive as it could have been. That's fine.

You mentioned networking then, and also You mentioned networking to me the other day because you were listening to a conversation about it. I just wondered, just briefly, could you just describe to me some, you know, because your job, you have a lot of client-facing conversations, things like that. That's something that you are very natural at, very good at. How do you, what advice can you give to people where that's not their natural DNA and they haven't really been in that professional setting before and they're a bit self-conscious and things like that?

I think the most common lesson I could sort of share with any young person is to try and get to feel the person that's speaking to you. Let them talk, look at them, listen to them, and whatever you say, try and, you know, make it about them or relevant or interesting to them. I think what some students do is and out of nerves for sure. I want to tell you everything that I've done and everything I know as quickly as I can. And if you do that, it's like the worst, the worst ever sales pitch is where you just share a 100-deck slide deck, right? And just talk and talk and talk at someone because you've not got to— there's no bond, there's nothing that's been created between you. You know, ultimately people buy people. It's all an interview is a sales pitch, right? And if you're going to sell something, it needs to matter to that person. It needs to feel personal. And the only way it can feel personal is if you're listening to them. It's a light conversation. You create some sort of connection. And I think that type of personal connection, um, is if you're, again, if you're trying to force it, it's almost impossible. Um, but it's just about my, my big advice would be Listen, take some time, share some information about yourself, but then try and see if they can interact during your discussion. So if someone asks you about your CV, absolutely tell them about it. But if you can bring in, well, you know, do you think that would be an in— you know, you could say, oh, so I had an experience here and did this, which I think would be relevant to the role because of 1, 2, 3. And then you could say things to you. Is that right? You know, is that aligned? Do you think in your experience those sorts of traits are relevant to the role? I'd be interested to know what you think. And they might say, well, yeah, and then they start talking and they might say, but then you get to, then it's a one and then it's a to and fro, um, which is much better than just a one dimensional.

Yeah. Really sound advice. So being proactive listener and really hearing their side and their problems and their desires. Working with them. All right, final question. I did mention at the top of the show that you are, uh, our business is growing particularly in the quantitative space. Uh, naturally, that's a long way in which the direction of markets are moving. Couple of things here, couple of angles on this. For one, you spend a lot of time both with students in that domain but also clients. Um, one question students ask a lot is How is trading, traditional trading, changing? And what skill sets should I have to be best positioned? And will kind of the more traditional roles like sales trading still exist? And then also, just kind of how has the game changed? Just more broadly, I mean, when you were trading, you know, we kind of use that blunt description of kind of point-click human discretionary trader. What does the world look like now and the role of technology and data?

So interesting. So I would say, I mean, when I started trading, the 2 years before I started, futures were still traded on the, uh, LIF floor, the futures exchange with hands and arm movements, open outcry. So when I started trading, it was when these things called computers started to be used for the first time. So although it look, feels rudimentary to us now to go back and say, point and click on a mouse. Even how, I mean, I remember those pit traders that were there, you know, like looking at a mouse and it's like, what do I do with this? Um, you know, that was, that was a huge change in technology.

Right.

And everyone was saying, well, that's it. You know, this is going back 20 years now that that's it. Trading's, you know, manual trading's over and it's not, you know, we're helping source more traders than ever before now. How though the role has changed is the skill sets are different. So now, absolutely having a quantitative approach to both research and trading is really important. What does that mean for a student? It means, you know, fundamentally you should be able to code. You know, that is important. And if you really don't know, just have it in your mindset just to do some practical elements of it. Just have an interest in that. I think an interest in markets is still very important as well, but it's just much more technical. So Whereas before I was trading the relationship between, you know, 2, 5, and 10-year German government bonds. I was trading that the relative value changes between them and adjusting my size to be neutral according to their volatility. We were doing that all manually and it wasn't perfect by a long ways. Now it's all quantitative, you know, the deep mathematical formula that goes into recognizing these relationships and changing these relationships and then automating strategies. So that there's a huge demand for trading talent now. It is more quantitative. That's, that, that, that's the big change. Um, do, will there still be roles for, for salespeople? Absolutely. 100%. I think that I'm more confident than ever that the skill sets are sort of going a bit like this. You're either really, really good at, uh, sales, you're a people person, and that's not something that can be automated. Well, people still buy people, or you're more quantitative on the algorithmic side. Interestingly enough, does it change the pressures that, you know, I felt? We talked about stress, we talked about pressure. No, I think because even if you're, let's say, babysitting an algorithm that's been written, you still need to make those judgment calls when the algorithm needs changing. When is it 'Ah, we've lost money 3 days in a row now from this arbitrage strategy. Do we change it now? Do we not change it? Do we—' You know, so still those behavioral elements, I would say, are still there. Um, but yeah, absolutely got more technical, which is a good thing because it means these trading roles are continuing to exist. And in fact, the trading firms and some of our clients are making more money than ever before, um, which is all, all a good news story.

All right, excellent. Well, that concludes our episode. So thank you so much, Will. We won't make it so long next time.

Thanks for letting me on. I mean, blimey.

But what we'll do is anyone listening, particularly on the Spotify platform, can ask questions. So if anything that Will's mentioned has just kind of sparked a question in your mind that you'd like to ask, just drop a comment and we'll do our best to to respond. But thank you, Will, and thank you everyone for listening. Thanks, Anthony Cheung.