TIP676: Richer, Wiser, Happier Q4, 2024 w/ Stig Brodersen & William Green
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In today's quarter to reach a White and happier episode in by my friend and cohoes William Green. We start the episode de reflect on where the opposite of a virtue can also be a virtue in both investing and in life within transition into discussion about the no my partners and why they can sack recent so deeply with us in the value investing community.

William and I have been worked together for three years now, but you also good friends and learning from the titans and industry. We talk about empowering each other, and also the pit folks were traveling along the same path with friends and business. That leads to the discussion of the intersection between authenticity, ity and honesty, and why they simplify your life when you put quality in front and center in your decision making. As always, for all our episodes, I hope you will join William and me on a quest for Rachel, wiser and happy life.

Celebrating ten years and more than one hundred and fifty million downloads, you are listening to the investors point costs network since twenty fourteen. We study the financial market and read the books that influence self made billionaire most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected now for your hosts, stick broderson and William Green.

Welcome to the master's podcast. I'm your hostile brother son, and today i'm here with my co host, William Green. William, hold you today.

I'm very well. It's lovely to see you. As always, we had our usual technological difficulties where I couldn't see you. And then you just reminded me to turn on the recording. So yeah as usual with the the William stick partnership.

you know I still don't get IT one like i've been doing this for more than ten years and all my calls start with can you hear me? I can't hear you like you would think by now we were figured that out.

But I have a particular relationship with technology, which never seems to work. I always state confusion, so he's hoping for the best.

So we have three topics for today, and let's see where we go. We always go in different directions, which is the wonderful thing about cussion. The first thing we to talk about is that the opposite of a virtue is also a virtue.

And this is something that we talked about the other day. Unfortunately, IT wasn't recorded. So now we have a chance to talk about IT and i'm a one string k benji.

I should probably come off by saying and whenever you mention IT first to me, I was thinking, well, that's just like investing. So if you want to be successful investing, you have to be very humble. You have to know that you will be wrong, not all the time, as with all your investments, but you would often be wrong.

And you have to be OK with that. You have to say god yourself for yourself to be wrong. And you have to think about risk. You have to think about position sizing. But then on the other hand, to beat the you have to be the other camp where you to be confident and you want to stay the course when things get you yeah.

there's a lota and pack here. And the first thing I should say is that I stole this idea from any duke, the auto of books like thinking and beats, and quit. And I interview dining on the podcast.

I think two years ago, what happened really is that I read books in a strange way. So I was reading, quit, let this book before our interview. I often don't start the beginning of books. I dip in at the end. I look at the bits that most people ignore, like the acknowledged and the footnotes and the n notes.

And so i'm something like two hundred and fifty pages into the book and i'm looking at the end notes, which are in tiny print, and any mentions in this end note that he spoke to fill that lock. The author of famous book super forecasting, when SHE was starting work on this book, quit, and he was saying him something along the lines of, look, i'm kind of worried because Angela dark worth wrote this famous book on grid, right, which is all about how you should stick with staff. And it's an amazing virtue, this kind of resilience and disability never to quit.

And he is handy writing this book saying, will actually quitting is also a virtue because if you have a terrible hand, for example, whether you are a poker player, as he was, he was very successful professional poke player who made million playing, or you're an investor and you've made a loud investment and you've suddenly realized that you were just wrong, which is something money start a lot right? Money shes ruthless when he figures out that he's made a mistake to get that out of his portfolio immediately. So if you figured out that you were wrong and that you should quit, quitting is a virtue.

You know, folding your hand is a virtue. And so SHE talks about this with phil, text log. And phil, who i've never met, but is written remarkable books, super forecast that actually manage, gave me once, said, the opposite of a great virtue is a virtue.

And he said, the opposite of grit is quitting, which is also a tube. And so then I was looking at the notes in the book, and I really like the fact that there was this kind of provenance for this idea that fill wasn't the first person by any means, who said this. So I think when I look deeper into those and notes in on his book, IT turns out the Thomas man is great novels.

st. Road in esa. And I think one thousand nine and twenty nine reuters, well, was going into the great depression in the crash. He read less on segment fluid, and he said, a great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.

And then IT turns out, the nobel Price winning physicist news bar also said, profound truths are recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth. And this was so important to news board that apparently had a code of arms and said, in latin, the opposite a complimentary. So this is kind, really interesting.

And then I I have a great teacher, Michael burke has been on the podcast, amazing guy, who has said recently, every important truth is paradoxically, and how moxy said the same thing, right? When you talk about the paradox of risk, for example, how is always talking about the paradox is within the market. So how does this actually apply to us? A is a much more important question.

But when you have an array of really, really smart people figuring out the same thing you like, okay, i've got ta take this idea seriously. It's not one thing that's true. The opposite is also often true. And so you think about this with investing.

And if I go back to my conversation with any do on the podcast I was talking to about the stupidity of my investment in alibaba, which i'd basically because i'd had this conversation, which ali monger and lose simpsons, who both had been buying the stock, and lose simpson, explain to me why it's it's screamingly cheap and you look, is one of the greatest investors of all time. And I had, I think, and even Better record than when he was riding guy co and was widely tipped to be buffet successor at that point. And so these were pretty amazing people, and that telling me this is an incredibly bad, it's incredibly cheap.

And so I buy IT. And then, of course, he goes horribly wrong. And so I was talking to any duke about all of the biases that were at play here, right?

All of the things that screwed up my judgment, right? So things like authority by a state where I listen to these guys were really smart and I didn't actually do any, do diligence. And then these things like some cost fallacy, right, where I was already deeply committed, I was already in the losses as and I would put IT.

And so i'm sort of throwing good money after bad. I'm not saying, okay, I should just quit sell list thing that I don't understand and that's gone wrong and move on. And also, as he pointed out to me, I think there was another really important bias there, which was the bias where you kind of you have to finally admit your mistake and take your loss.

So I think it's your loss of version, if I remember rightly, from cornyn or one great behavioral psychologists. So one of the things that I said and is, yeah, but I have this five year rule where if I buy something, whether it's a stalk or a fun, i'm allowed to sell IT for five years because this is a great virtue, right? To be patient, to insist that I should, before I make any investment, I should really understand what i'm doing and I should commit to IT in its long term.

And I know that over the course of my lifetime as an investor, i'm going to do Better if I patient rather than impatient and impetuous and trading. And so that's a real virtue, right? That that kind of behavior.

And I said to me, yeah, but you shouldn't hold everything for five years. He said, you can say i'll hold for five years unless and he said, you always need to have some unlesse. So what he said there was incredibly helpful.

I think I. And what he said is, whenever you own something and IT starts to go wrong, one of the things that saves you is that you need to have what he calls killed criteria. And so he said, you have to set these before you make the investment.

And so you say, okay, if this happens, if these terrible things happen, I to sell this investment, each quoter may be news and new kill criteria. So you're always gaging whether it's working out as you expect IT. And so he said, look, the situation has changed.

You didn't expect jack believe you didn't expect the chinese government to turn on technology stocks and become kind of brutal in its regulation. The situations change. So maybe this is one of the unless.

And so I think that's a good example of this complexity where there's a virtue on one hand, which is patients. And yes, but when the situation changes, I have to revise my opinion. The other thing that he said that I think that was an incredibly helpful practical to SHE said you actually need to have a quitting coach.

He was friends both with Daniel conomo and Richard sailor, so too, no Price winning economies, great experts on how the brain screws us up and how our prejudices to screw us up. And SHE said that conomo had actually ally, basically officially appointed failure to tell him when he was being an idiot and to point out when he was wrong about stuff. And so again, it's like it's a kind of practical tool to overcome a tendency to be blind and irrational.

But then I I don't know. I I still decided I don't want to do anything. I don't want to sell because I just think i'm Better off being patient on the whole. And also, as my position in alibaba went down sixty percent, IT became less and less important. I didn't really matter.

And then I kind of like the fact that i've made this mistake that I can talk about in a way that helpful to me to remind me of my own fallibility and stupidity and blindness, but also hopefull helpful to other people, because it's a way of pointing out how we screw up, and, as charlie would say, rubbing my nose in my mistakes. And so I haven't sold. And I took to the russia, one of the great long term about this a year ago ago and a couple years ago, and and he had trimmed his position in alibaba a and he said, look, I was wrong.

I underestimated the risk from the chinese government. And I said, yeah, i'm not selling because, you know, I have this five year rule. And he said, yeah, you will probably do Better than me.

And I was looking yesterday, and, you know, IT sort of suddenly surged in the last few weeks because the government, I guess, has become less honor and difficult. And I saw IT IT hit a low of sixty seven in the last year, and now is bounced back about a hundred and ten, a hundred and seventy and yesterday. And so all of this stuff gets up the complexity of things, right? And so I think they're various lessons here.

We should probably talk more in a bit about how this relates in other areas of life is almost more important than how IT IT is in investing. But I think I think one of the lessons is simply, life is complicated. It's not simple.

It's not this or that. And so you'd want to to be less dogmatic and more humble and more open minded and accept the fact that humans are contradictory, right? I mean, his tomb is a great investor, great long time investor, telling me why he's sold and why he's probably wrong.

And actually in the first place, when you simpson told me he had been buying, he said, here, I just bought IT yesterday, so they probably go down fifty percent immediately and IT did. And I don't know that we're always dealing with unsubtly. We're always dealing with complexity.

So it's a reminder to be more open minded, to be less dogmatic. And I I think to have this idea also that often in life it's not an either or situation. It's a yes and it's yes.

I want to be patient and stick with my decisions and push myself towards patients, and that will help me over the course of a lifetime. And I also wanted to revise my views when I can see that i'm wrong and that something, you know, something dawned on me, a risk appear that I hadn't actually recognized. And so this reminds me, I just interview Jason why on the podcast yesterday, we'll come out in a couple of weeks, possibly before our episode comes out abid, that we're recording now stick.

And he reminded me that there's a beautiful line in the intelligence and investor, which he is just revised. The book that buffett is, says is the greatest investment book ever written, where then gram, whose great classical scholar was quoting of IT, an ancient author, who said, you will go safest in the middle course. And he said, I think this principal holds good for investors.

And so he was drawing on this ancient myth actually, of, I think he was a the son of the god Apollo was going to drive his Cherry ET to the sun, or something like that. And the father, who is more experience, says to the sun, you don't go too fast. No, go the middle. And the son, of course, ignores him and is torched and destroy. It's a reminder always to take the middle path.

And even that is complicated because actually, if you think about the great investors on the hole, that pretty extreme on the hole, that people who have tremendous confidence in their own beliefs, tremendous conviction that enables them to go against the crowd and think differently from the crowd, and yet they also have the humility to guard against the possibility that they're wrong. And so one thing that I always remind myself of, I always come back to this great quote from the author of scot fitz jail, which I I wrote down here, because I tend to forget IT. And he said, the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

And one of the examples stood afsc his general gave is he said, one should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise. And I think that's really helpful. That reminder that you can you can look at the state of the world and you can say, well, the environment is totally screwed and there wars everywhere and you there's so much dead and yet be determined to make things otherwise to correct the situation to, you know, you can say, well, i'm just one person. I'm kind of useless and i'm powerless and it's like, yeah and also really powerful and effect an enormous amount of change. So both of these things, so the ability to hold two contradictory ideas, two opposing ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

we probably all want to have rules to live by to some extent. And even those people who do not want to uphold rules create their own rules about not upholding other rules. And the world is just more complex.

If I can put in A A cheeky quote here, I would quote the philosopher and kick off. He said, get married and you will regret IT do not get married and you will also regret. I don't know what to make of IT.

I don't know if I was a good thing that that I came up with IT now, but is one of those things. It's it's complex. You can't be like it's always Better to to marry and you have those relationships, whether it's it's with a spouse or with a friend, what be where you would say stay the course because it's tough.

But you go through IT and and your struggle on your side and it's so good that you I think and if you could probably say sticking to veness, that that's the word that comes to mind. But then you have the other one, which is there is a lot of toxic relationships out there and and and you actually need to distance yourself as quickly as possible and which is wait is not always one thousand twenty, twenty. It's not always easy to tell.

I think it's a reminder that as you say in an uncertain world, certain ty is very dangerous, that having total certainty that you're right and that things are one way is really dangerous. And I think we have a natural need to simplify. It's really important to simplify.

But you know I think mongo used to quote einstein ying, yeah you should simplify as much as possible, but not too much. And so I I think one of things that's a mock of maturity probably is this realization of how little we can actually be certain about and the fact that you do need some guiding principles, but you need to hold them fairly lightly. And so I think the world is set up.

So there are all of these kind of contradictions and due artist, and there's a sort of dynamic attention that you have to play with. So I think about some of the great lessons that i've learned from the best investors that i've written about and talked about over the years. And I can always come up with the opposite, right? So think about, for example, the importance of concentration on a small handful of stocks where you know that there likely to be misPriced.

So this is the monger approach of waiting patiently by the side of the stream, like a spear. Fishermen, until you see a fact, you see some sand by the new spirit. And when I spoke to monger about this, his idea, well, that's great if your judgment is good and you're right, but if you're wrong, you know, it's terrible to concentrate.

And so we also tend to focus on the small number of people whose succeeded while concentrating in a small number of positions, you know whether it's a lye or a nickleby or A A buffet or a john Green bag. But at the same time, there's a great argument for diversity and safety. And there's a very important study that I talked about with Jason's wag that i've been thinking a lot about recently.

It's a something I think is go shareholder wealth enhancement or some sexy name like that. And it's five hundred best on by me who I buy. Some been there.

I don't know how to pronounce IT. And he studied something like twenty eight thousand stocks from nineteen nineteen, twenty six, twenty twenty two. So very long spend of time, nearly a century.

And he basically said that I think IT was three point four percent of the total of all of these stocks. Something like nine hundred and sixty six stocks based accounted for the cumulative net gain of the entire U. S.

Stock market. And he said that basically twenty five stocks accounted for about a third of all of the wealth that the stock market created over that period. So you take a finding like that, right? That it's like a handful of super socks that really make all the difference, right?

Walmart, amazon. Apple, google slash, alphabet, things like that. And you could say, okay, well, the odds of my actually owning those is pretty small if I am going to have a concentrate portfolio of eight stocks or ten or twelve stocks.

And so maybe I should actually be really broadly diversified, known an index fund because then at least i'll benefit from owning them. And as they become more, more important stocks, they will become a bigger part of the index and i'll get to benefit from them. That's a very logical conclusion.

Then you look at some like Peter key for great investor, who I had on the podcast, and he said, well, yeah, that's true. But my job is to find those stocks. My job is to find the three point four percent of the total, the nine, nine hundred and sixty six stocks that created all of the culture gained to the entire stock market.

So you can interpret the same data both ways. And you can say, yes, it's an argument for diversification, or yes, it's an argument for concentration. And so I think because I naturally have maybe as a journal and as a right right, I see everything in shades of grey.

I always see the opposite. I'm not like my brother who's a litigator. He is a layer, and he he is able to take one side of the case and argued, brilliant, really aggressive, brilliant way, and has been hugely successful doing IT.

I always see the contradictions in the shade, and I think my portfolio probably reflects that. I probably have a third of my family's investments in index funds, and i'm not recommending this to anyone else. And this illustrate my own, my ability, and then I have a few actively managed funds.

And so i'm hedging in a way i'm saying, yes, it's possible to beat the market. So I want to to invest with a handful of people I trust who have very concentrated portfolios where they are looking for those great stocks because I can see that concentration is a virtue in a world where it's very hard to know much. You want to have a few opportunities to outperform and find a this Price dead.

And most of the time, the market is more or less efficient. But sometimes it's not. And sometimes you get these fat, juicy salons. And I want a position myself by aligning ing myself with people who understand that and understand that that's a great way to be the market.

But at the same time, i'm aware that i'm probably wrong and they probably will fail and it's really hard to beat the market after expenses and often taxes, and that y'll have mistake two. And so I also index. And so I think in a way, you end up hopefully structuring your life so that IT reflects your own personality in a kind of nicely aligned way. And so maybe something about my ability to see both concentration and diversification of virtues. It's very consistent with my fascination with this quote that any do came up with d about have the the opposite of a great virtually is also a virtue.

There's a lot of survival bias, and that bias comes through concentration. One where the other like it's it's so easy to look at someone like elana sa giff bases and say, this is what they've done. We should be doing the same thing.

And then, of course, there are so many of others who trying doing the same thing. And preache was luck. Perhaps those gentle was just making smarter, who knows?

And probably both of those things are true. And so I think what we're talking about is living in a world where both of those things that are tree can be true.

You know, I know you, you are seeing asleep the other day. There was something, a place in. I completely, if I could just see IT up for you. So I don't know next leap, but I like so many other who who will listen to this recess letters actually on on your recommendations and have a lot of respect for the for the process and the way they they they found those three stocks, I anna say with amazon cascine bercheny, they also had had other stocks.

But you know due to the concentration and also just, you know those stocks before, well, they they became very significant and then they just continue to compound for them. And i've i've heard a lot of different people. There are smart people talk about exley and second, including in your wonderful book, William, and trying to come up with the reason why they were successful, and as successful as they were, one of the chAllenges that I find with them.

And this is gonna sound a bit sour, not the intention at all, but we are talking about the whole thing about so I should buy, as is that we've increasingly been asking the gas we have on the show to document track records, and we want to make sure that we present the best gas. And I cannot find a relationship between what people say in the results. All the guests we have on the show say that they have good process and they want margin of safety and solid SHE is like they're saying all the right things.

The moment pardon letters are obviously very, very insight. That's not what i'm saying, but my partner is more, more like how to separate that. How do you like neck has an amazing process, not just because they say they have, but also because you can see that in results. How much of that survival bias, how do you you know them bit? And most, William, how do you see that?

It's very complicated. It's very complicated. Will will never know. I think one thing is pretty clear to me from the amount of time that I spent with nick, which is much more than I spent with that over the years, that is absolutely brilliant as well and a lovely guy.

One thing that's clear that they figured out something very important, they figured out an idea that's very important. There are array of concepts that I write about in that chapter, the book. So I think, I think quite a lot of people regard dis most important chapter something manage.

Did some concepts that I think are hugely important, whether or not you think the account for the success, the found or not, they are worth internalizing these concepts because they'll actually make a different to us in investor and in your life. And so one of the most important concepts is that they focused on things that last, they deferred gratification. And in a world that's extremely short time, when most people are focused on a federal information that has a very short shelf life, they were focused on things that were of more enduring importance.

And so they ignored all of what nick described as the wiggle, guessing, I think, was his time where they just want interested in things like, you know, does this recovery look like a nike sw show, like this letter or that letter? They were asking these very fundamental questions, one of the most important of which was to say, what's the long term destination for this business? What is a good long term destination for this business? And they would do this, what they would call destination analysis, and they would work backwards from that.

They would say, what are the inputs that would get us to this desire destination in ten, 10， twenty years? And is management doing things that will get us to that long term destination? So are they adding value to their shareholder, to their customers? They treating their employees well as they controlling costs? You know, they Operating an ethical way, they treating everyone in the ecosystem well.

And that way of thinking in a very short term world LED them to these three companies that have idiosyncratic founders who were extremely focused or idea synchro tic managers. Could sometimes the the founders also were replaced, but they had managements that thought incredibly long term in an incredibly short well. So they ended up with massive positions in the amazon.

Costco is said. And when I asked nick a couple of weeks ago if he'd found anything else like that, he kind of had, I mean, all these years later, you know, they have he has an investment in a sx, which hasn't turned out very well in which they are trying to turn around. I think he about three percent of the company, and I think, what do I know? I'm guessing there's a lot of upside there, but he hasn't worked out well so far and he hadn't bought anything else.

There was nothing else that he found that could convince him would be as good as those three anchor positions that he owns, which basically all of his money is in and more less all of IT. That's really interesting. So even for him, as this expert on what he called scale economist shared, right, companies that build scale, and as they do, they keep plowing back those benefits to their shareholders.

And so IT becomes this kind of righteous cycle where they they kind of grow by sharing. Even he couldn't find another company that really did IT to the same extent as costco or amazon butcher. That's very revealing.

So I don't know it's difficult to tell exactly what IT is, but explains that success and there can be a total disconnect. And we create stories, narratives about things that may or may not reflect reality. But I think they tapped into some very important troops.

The ability to think long term, the ability to share the benefits for a company, to share the benefits in a way that enables you to continue growing. So your success doesn't become an anchor, a weight around your neck, but actually helps you because as you get more and more revenues, you don't just keep all of that profit for yourself. You share IT with your customers and so you make their life Better and Better.

I think they tapped into some really important principles, so that, in a way, is what i've been focusing on. I because when I started writing the book, I thought, what happens if one of these people blows up? What happens if one of these people I celebrate turns out to be a disaster? And so I thought, okay, we were, given that the investing world result to really lumpy, and we live in an uncertain world, it's likely that someone's gonna really screw up terribly.

Let me focus on the ideas they embody that I think are really important, the insights that they embody that are really important. And then even if the person turns out not to be everything that I thought they were, the idea is still worth studying. And I I think that I think that's a really important lesson in life.

Like often great teachings are taught by people who are pretty oud or mediocre individuals, or people who turned out not to be nearly as good as you thought they were in many ways. And I I remember having a struggle about this personally, where I was very conflicted about something, because an institution that I really trusted was going through a terrible period. And IT IT raised all sorts questions that were problematic.

An on vana bag is very wise, who I write about at the end of the book and have had on the podcast couple of times. Said to me IT doesn't matter of Williams, he said that teachings have really helped you. And he said, you really have to distinguish between the teacher and the teachings and the teachings.

I've been really helpful. And so I don't know. I think I think you focus on the concepts, you focus on the lessons that help you. And so you don't have control over the results.

I mean, the result is an incredibly good investors who live their life in an honorable way and behaved decently and treat their shareholder honest and have good principles and a good framework which to invest are still gonna, have terrible luck or turn out not to be as talented as they thought and know. So we don't have control over the outcome. But I think it's still worth studying the concepts, the idea that s the insights and seeing whether they have enduring value.

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All right, back to the show. I've been speaking with a lot of people about your wonderful book.

And I like this sentence. I just like the way this sentence is beginning. Whatever IT goes from here is good. Oh, I should .

probably give you stuff for giving you in the downside, something I struck with all the past few days. So I I ordered another twenty twenty books because I give them away to anyone who drops by and and you you've been very, very kind and and signing a books. And so I thought I get them in book and now the Daniel authorities have like send me a letter and or like you're like an import company.

It's like i'm not an import company apparently. The reason why I am is because i've been buying so many of your books that i've been gifting to other people that there would be a registered like i'm an import company anyways. All that aside, whatever I speak with people about your book, they type mentioned three things they mention the first typed with money sh.

They mentioned chapt to six with when they inside, sometimes they they just say chapter six and then everyone supposed to know what what is in that chat and then they talk about a fan berg. But I would say that more than half this humor and they can second, I think that's really interesting why that's the case. But I want to hear your thoughts. Have you experiences the same thing, William? And why is that is really directness with people?

He had some interesting question. I do see people connecting with other chapters very deeply. To me, the most important, in a way, is the epilogue e, which is where I write about on of santa, and that that's a very important chapter to me.

But the chatter about nick enz is very important, that the one that took me longest, I took about six months working on that, which is kind of insane. And I tried to get IT as absolutely perfect as I could. I am really, I tried to make every word as perfect as I could.

And there was a certain kind of madness in IT. And partly, I think IT is IT imported some very deep principles, both about investing in life. And so part of IT is that it's about quality.

It's about leading a high quality life. It's about structuring a partnership that high quality. And so they would deeply influence by Robert purse and what he would call the meta physics of quality.

And so I would say that if you think of IT in kind of David hawkins kind of terms, and we've talked a lot about power, vers is force and other books of David hawkins. And I know you are a little bit and big little about power is force, but in David hawkins kind of terminology, IT makes people go strong. That chapter, I think reading about nick, makes people go strong. And it's because they embody something that we know is deeply valuable.

And when I when I saw, and it's funny as I say, that my whole body came up in chills, which I ve had before, sometimes makes me think, oh, that's my body telling me something is true and when I ran this by Chris bag, he said to me, ah oh yeah, truth bumps and so there's something about new contact that makes you go strong and when I saw nica couple of weeks ago in in england, I got him how that was doing, and he thought, talking to me about what's acx been doing in terms of his philosophy. Ff, and without wanting to go into too much detail, the amount of pride and joy that nick took, how does the fact that zack has been quietly giving away most of his fortune? anonyme? Sly, I mean, giving away most of his fortune, but all of IT anonymous ly, and doing these amazing things to change people's lives? IT was kind of a really beautiful thing to see if I think exact wanted to keep IT quiet.

You know, he's done IT anonymous. Ly a nick can't help himself. He's so proud of his friend. And that's a really beautiful thing that makes you go strong. And likewise, when I was fat checking the book, I was going through the chapter in a great deal of detail with the, and there was a lot of stuff that I was kind of worried they might sort of panic and say, oh my god, we were too candid about this. Like, like that was very candidate about what happened, his father, where his father was basically cheated and ripped off by yan scruple less people.

And kind of, you know, IT was part of the reason why he was so determined to be honnor able in his own financial declining, says that he saw the unscrupulous ness of these people who just totally released his father and let his father basically to bankrupt. If I remember correctly, and I don't know when I think about nick enza, oh yeah, so what I was going to say, so I was word when I was fact checking that that was gna say, you know, i've been to too honest about this. Can you delete some of this stuff about my father because it's kind of embarrassing.

I don't want to hurt my father. And in fact, if I remember correctly, the only thing in the whole chapter that that ask me to change was where he said I had basically written about what nick fortune was worth at this point. I sort of said, you know, whatever IT was a ten fig, whatever.

And maybe i've been more precise, I can't remember. And zack said, nick will never tell you this, but he'll be uncomfortable with you saying that. And could you not mention IT? And so the only change he wanted was something to protect his friend who hadn't even said this out loud, but he knew his friend well enough to know that his friend would be embarrassed portraying himself as a very rich guy in print.

And there was something kind of really beautiful about that. I think when you read about nick, that this isn't to make out that they are Angels and that perfect everything is like we all for the individuals. sure.

You know, I think it's dangerous to lionize anybody and assume that anybody is some kind of thing. But I think I really wonderful people. I said, you guys still share the office on kingaru and Chelsea and is like gea.

And they folded that funny years and years ago, and they still share the same office. They still work together. And so when you think of nick saying to me, good behavior has a Better shelf life. Their relationship is proof of that.

These these are two people who did the right thing in terms of the way they treated each other, the way they treated their shareholders, the way they focused on information that has a long shell f life instead of temporary of female superficial nonsense. And they won. And so when I was writing the chapter, IT seemed kind of moronic, like a huge risk for me to write about two unknown people who have never given an interview basically and had closed their fund.

I mean, really, you're going to spend six months righting about that. In retrospect, IT seems like a kind of moster stroke. But at the time, I felt hugely risky.

But what I figured out, you know, when I was writing what we were called the nut graph, which is the sort of the kernel of a story, whether you're writing off a chapter and you're saying this is what IT all comes down to. I think what I said is, this is a morality tale in which the good guys win. And I think that makes people go strong.

You like, wait, I can behave in an honner's, decent, kind, logical, rational way, and i'll win. That's amazing. I think that's one reason why I resonates deeply with people.

I absolutely love that, and I love whenever you talk about good behaviour, having a longer shelf life. I want to use that as a sick way into talking about honesty and authenticity. This is something that I certainly started with finding that right baLance. And it's something we talked about quite a bit here and court calls we have here in both on the earth, I should say. And I I wanted to talk about this from a different perspective today.

And so I heard you on another podcast some time ago and where you were the best I should say, and and you got asked, and I am probably parishes here, but the interview ask you if you ever have been interwar, someone you didn't like, whether I was your podcasting book or whatever was. And I I found that to be interesting for a number reasons. I've personally got my question myself many times, and i'm always uneasy about IT sort like again, going back to this whole idea of good behavior, have a long a shelf life.

And don't get me wrong, i've certainly interviewed and and done business with people that I don't like in people who this nars listening to this podcast would know. And I can easily understand why someone would ask that question. But it's also a tRicky question because you put that in the public space and again, I I don't know how how you feel, how I feel.

I probably wouldn't like someone the public space said. You know, i've been interviewed three hundred times and and being interviewed by stake, what's the worst experience I ever had like, I I wouldn't like that. And so how can I like if I I would say, oh, this investor is absolutely terrible person. Like, I I wouldn't I wouldn't want there. And so of course, and I should also say like on the record, but also being asked off the record many more times off the record, but the while investing community is very small.

And and and I would mind someone this problem, and as you, William, if you said, you know, X, Y, C, you you didn't like for every reason, even if you freed in a really, really nice way, you could still be out on on social media, at least talked about in the investing community pretty fast. And you know, one of the things that you said to me whenever you joined T P. Was, let's make sure we don't do anything.

They can be on tomorrow's newspaper like the buffet type test. And so at the time we talked about like we talk about stocks, we we have to talk about in the way and certain deadline. So people don't speculate that you know we problem up one stock to dumb T A.

whatever. And I think I think that was so brilliant. So I know i'm trying a lot of different things into into the same same story here, but you know you also get asked by good people and you want to be as authentic as and truthful as possible.

And so you might get asked, should I invest with investor X, Y, C? And whenever I get that question, i'm sure you get in Christian times, too. Is that most likely? I want to say no.

And and perhaps is because they're not as good as investors. Perhaps they are just Better story tellers and their investors and sometimes can be difficult to see through. Perhaps it's it's a brilliant an investor, but you just don't want that person in your ecosystem.

And so you dealing in with a person who ask you a question, you want to be respectful, you want to be truthful, but you also don't want to say anything bad about someone who isn't even there to defend themselves and before throw out to you because this could sound like this is like one of the evalu investing community, very small missing. I think it's we consume out of a lot more and say this is something think we might all experience in a workplace or in our local football clubs or whatever we go. I don't think that dynamic is too different whenever you're all about other people. So how do you deal with with that, William?

I've wrestled with this a great deal. I think one of the most helpful things that's been a guideline to me over the years I having always lied IT is buffett said something along the lines of praise by name, criticize by category um almost the getting that wrong but the principle is there when you're thanks very nice you can name the individual and say they did this extraordinary thing but you criticize by category.

And I think if you look at my book, you'll see but there is one person who gets criticized pretty vacuously in the book only. And that's me. I'm i'm most brutally in talking about my own mistakes, my own self delusion, my own great, my own v my own impatients, my own rationality.

And that was very conscious. I there are a couple of places where I mentioned somebody else doing something that I thought was torturing, but I did IT very carefully. And even there's a footnote where I talked about.

I think IT was IT was probably in actually the chapter about nick zat, where I was talking about the behavior of very same investment banks during the financial crisis, oh, before the financial oh, this is actually, I guess, in nineteen and ninety nine, two thousand, where they were pumping up all sorts of terrible stocks that they would take public and would totally flex their shareholders. And I mentioned a person who in court text me. I think he described various companies that they were taking public as crap, awful, and you know, using words, wear words than that.

And I said, i'm not saying this to single this person out. I'm saying this to illustrate just how careful we have to be about the incentives of wall street to take advantage, you know, the financial incentive for people, decent people in many cases. And likewise, in one chapter where I talked about a firm trying to gather as many assets as possible, even though you know that that you are probably going to hurt result.

I like these. These are not immoral or stupid people that people understand that their finances depend on kids education depends on that, you know. So I I think that's one thing that I taken pretty seriously is trying to praise by name, criticized by category. And if I make an exception to that rule, really think about IT, really make sure there's a good, good enough reason for IT.

But then the truth is that often in private i'll bad mouth someone um you know famous investor who i've interviewed who I think is kind of flight immoral or unethical or repetition or something and you get a certain burst of energy from bad mouthing someone. And there's a logic to IT and i'm discussing IT with friends who you know and i'm being provoked probably so I can get their view of IT. But I always feel bad Better after this.

I always feel like a little bit kind of solid by my own behavior. It's not something I like in myself. And I was going to someone earlier this week, please telling me I should interview a particular personal, the podcast and and it's a very the person who suggested is someone I respect a great deal and his recommended friend of his.

But the person he's recommending, I know something about him from about the way that he treated his girlfriend and IT was kind of abusive. And even though I ve heard that kind of second hand, I don't think I want to interview that person like even if he's really wise and really smart and really wanted interview him, i'll see i'll have more or think about i'll try to figure out whether whether I got wrong information or confused or something. But I take that stuff really seriously when I hear something about a person that just in some ways makes me go weak.

I like I don't I don't really want them in my ecosystem. I don't really want them on on the podcast. And so there's there's a famous investor who someone i've thought many times I want on the podcast and I I was strolling through x or what was formally known as twitter recently.

And I see this exchange where this guy with a huge following is basically rating some woman who's totally unknown and is posting a perfectly sensible comment on something he's written, any calls her an idiot and stupid and kind of bus her. And I just, so I I really wanted to write, you know, he, he write, I like, you are stupid, you are stupid. And I wanted to write, you're a bully and then just block him and he doesn't even know I exist probably and I resisted writing you're a bull because I like, I didn't need to do that.

I don't need to do IT publicly, but I did block him. And he's kind of important guy, someone whose opinions are things that I should be paying attention to be really, really smart. I don't really want him in my head.

I don't want him renting space in my head. And and maybe that was a mistake. Maybe you don't want to block people.

Maybe that's a form of closed mindedness. But I secondly don't want to give him space on the podcast if he's a bully and a frog like that. I but I have a particular horror when IT comes to bullying.

I really don't like that. And when powerful people, fully unpowdered people, I think that's particularly af. So I don't know.

I sort of trust my instincts with this stuff. I if I want someone out of my ecosystem, yeah, I just going to stick clear that person. And I I don't need him on the part cost.

But then I try increasingly to hold my tongue IT would be very easy for me to say who IT was in a bad mouth ham. And it's like what I often find is that when I have a partial view of someone, IT turns out to be so biased and incomplete. And so I think that's also really important.

It's like this, this guy who was a bully is also much else. That's great. And I I had this conversation recently when when I was in an england, I I went to this wonderful event at this beautiful mistake.

Or goodness, I got hang out with you like nk, sleep in the light. And James Anderson, this fantastic investors. And there was a brilliant guy called jb straw ball there, who I I think is still on the board of tesler r and was a cofounder of tesla and is truly brilliant.

He and runs called red wood. He's one of these great kind of Green tech entrepreneurs. He was absolutely crucial to the success of tesla as one of the coffers.

And someone, someone said to me was the one person who elon must never fired. You never wanted fire because he was basically like the smart desk I must ever met is very Billy guy. And I said to him, one evening, I sort of asked him these uncomfortable questions about, and I felt so guilty for ask, but I want to ask anyway.

And I said of, in the provoking way that the journalist does, I said to him some of the things that I hold against musk, that I my reservations about musk, and I said to him, what frustrates you about people's views on mask like, what are we fAiling to understand? And i've never, i've never interviewed a must, but I have friends to. Him and so I, you know, I read a fair amount about him and he said, well, he can be all of these things that you can say and many more.

And why do you need to put him in a box? Like, why can't all of these contradictory things be true? You know, if someone said to me recently this this wasn't jb trouble.

Someone said, yeah, musk is a bit of a bully, but he was also bullied himself when he was Young. And you know, I I think it's a reminder that people are complex. You, that beautiful hope from the the port whittman, who said, I contain multitudes.

And so again, this gets what we are talking about in the first place, about how the opposite of a great virtue is also a great virtue, that people are complicated. And so when you try to reduce someone to one thing, it's usually dumb that you can be simultaneously kind of monstrelet in one way and really wonderful in another way. And sometimes your virtues are also flaws, like being obsessively focused on excEllence, in quality and doing the best possible job as a writer or an investor may also mean that you neglect your family and your friends.

And so nothing is simply, it's all complicated. And so when i'm critical of someone, i'm constantly trying to remind myself I missing stuff is more complicated. Human nature is more complicated than that.

And even when i'm blocking someone on social media, i'm probably wrong to be blocking them. You know, I shouldn't shut so much out. And yet at the same time, I don't want a bully in my eco system like that. So I don't know it's complicated.

I remember William some time ago, I don't even IT years ago now, I was complaining to you that one of the reasons why I did not want to be on twitter was because there was too much bitcoin content out there. And I felt this was a very toxic for me. And I I just didn't want that in my ecosystem. And I found this very ironic that the big one crowd felt that the government investing community was like a cot.

And I don't even if you know, if you remember this, but I I thought like expect some kind of, I don't know sympathy or at least you are agreeable with to some extent but you really turn the table and then you starkly said to me, well, the government investing community is like a called, I actually love that you said that will your end and and then you you went down and talk about how in an increasing circular world, perhaps the value investing feel some kind of need well, yes, it's about making money, but it's also about how to live a life. And you're in the score card and you know don't do things you don't want to see on the paper next day and and what not. So just thank you for being a new Young about that, William.

Wait, it's a very interesting idea that in part comes from Brown Lawrence friend mine who who also appeared on the podcast who pointed out that when chilly mongo died, there was this unbelievable outpouring of love and admiration for Charles. And I think I said to Brown, I I don't think I was on the podcast.

I think I said him privately, why? Why do you think IT is like what's going on here? And he talked about how, in an age that's relatively secular, where a lot of people aren't going to, I M going to, aren't going to them, they're relatively agnostic, atheistic.

There was something about mongo where he he almost filled that gap. And he became like this kind of secular sage, I guess. And I think the value investing community in some way part of the appeal of IT is that there's the sort of boral underpinning that, that there's a sense the there are these values that are embedded within value investing.

It's not even an accident that it's it's called value investing, looking for true value, for intricate value in things that are often overlooked. When I was working on guys speed book with him, if I remember right, I think I think I called the lost chapter one of the lost chapters the quest for true value, or the quest for true values, or something like that. And I think that that was a moment. This, for a decade ago, I realized, oh, this isn't just about value investing, is actually about the search of value. It's about how do you live a valuable life, how do you how do you Operate in a value driven, honorable way.

When I was reading the new version of the intelligent investor that's about to come out, there's a seven fifth anniversary commemoration edition that Jason's swig is updated, which why I N on the dast day, I was very strong that when he was commenting on the post group, he has comments on each chapter and in the postcript he wrote something along the lines of the advice in this book isn't just about what kind of investor you want to become. It's about the kind of person you, anna, become. And so here is the very routine foundation of value investing background writing the interesting investor.

It's about the kind of person you want to become. And when you look at the book, IT is pretty moralistic in places. There's one place where I can remember what the example was of all of this improved dumb behavior that investors were exhibiting.

But pyi m literally right. Can such heat listeners go unpunished? There's something very moralistic about that. But he wasn't moralistic about. I mean, he sort of he was sort of whimsical and poetic about him.

He was a wonderful writer but there is something kind of you know he's not like an old testable profit you know like you know saying there's far brimstone, whatever, that's going to punish the headless. But he was also aware that when people act in an improved, dumb, foolish way, that likely to get their heads handed to them. And then IT really struck me.

There was something in the book, in Jason's commentary on IT, where he said, do you want to spend the rest of your life trading like a maniac? Or do you want to trade investing as a way to achieve serenity? And that really struck me. I was say, oh, wait a second. The way you invest, it's some, you know, tolley wood say everything is one down related this after another, so reflects the kind of person you are.

So are you investing in a way where you know you just kind of gunning the engine and you're trying to make short time profits and you're try, you know, screw your partner as much as possible and screw your shareholder as much as possible? Or are you treating investing as a way to achieve serenity and freedom and optionality in your life? And I think those are really this is really interesting in kind of moral, moral questions.

But there are also very practical questions. You know, you could say i'm going to index or i'm going to give my money. I'm going to split my money between a couple of index funds and then a couple of funds run by people I trust who have blow expenses and who I think are honor a ball and a long term and smart and have talks that I I don't have.

You could do that and say, that's gonna. Allow me to focus on the things that i'm good at and that I care about most. And i'm not going to spend thousands and thousands of hours doing something where i'm unlikely to beat the market.

And I do Better to focus on helping other people in expLoring what I best at what you could say. I'm unlikely to add any value, and I liked to be the market, but I really love this game is really fun. And so what Jason and background would say is, okay, so then have five percent of your money in a kind of mad money speculation account and keep IT segregated, even keep IT a different institution, and don't add add to IT whatever happens.

And you can gamble with up and that's an outlet, but the rest of your life Operate in a in a more disciplined, patient way. And so I think I think at the heart of the intelligent investor, which is buffet, said you the greatest investment book of all time, even though it's a little tired in parts. And Jason stone, an amazing job updating IT, making IT even more relevant today at the heart of IT are these very important moral questions about how you want to live, what sort person you want to be, whether you want to be honnor able.

And I think that's one of the reasons why throughout the book you find these quotes from philosophy and literature. I mean, is his gram's favorite philosopher was very spinoza, who wrote a book called ethics. And and there's something where he quotes spinner and he says, all things excEllent are as difficult as they are rare.

And I was thinking that i'm like, oh, wait a second. It's the metaphysics of quality. It's exactly what naka what happened into by reading person. And i'm sure that who was a philosopher would have study spinoza and would have seen spinoza talking about how all things excEllent or as difficult as they are rare. So I don't know.

I think I think even when you think about how cyclical the world is, how the market go through these periods of what background would call alternations of exhilaration in deep gloom, there's a sense that people get Carried away. They become kind of greedy, overconfident, delusional about their own capabilities. In the fact the trees, they believe, grow to the heaven. And so I think what someone like gram is reminding you of is, no, try to remain print, try to remain humble, try to understand that the world is cycle, try to understand that things are always uncertain, that you don't understand everything, that you are probably wrong about many things, that you believe that you can predict the future, that the predictions about the future kind of futile.

And so take a kind of middle way path, as he is, we were saying before, from of the, you know, the middle path is slightly likely a to lead to a good result and not end up with you being flamed like the going up in flames like the sun of Apollo as he tried to write his charity to the sun. So I don't know all of this stuff really is related. There is a moral aspect of IT.

And so do we want to call IT a cult? The value investing community? That's a little bit excessive and hypothetical, but it's a little bit like charlie like to use the phrase, you know, you be as popular as a sung cut, a garden party or he said that my my book would be, what do you say about as welcome as rap poison for many people in the financial community because you know like pointing out a different way of Operating, that's not really in the best interest.

And so I think using using hyperbolic language is okay. It's fine to call IT a cut. There is something about the value investing community that a sort of secular religion in a way.

And when we go to omaha every year, forty thousand people, thirty five thousand people IT ever. We're renewing our selves. We're reminding ourselves, oh, that's this way to behave. That's different. And guys were made this clear to me many, many years ago when I was quizzing him about owning box half wait for so many years because he owned IT since probably about one thousand nine hundred and ninety nine.

Money would always criticize him for IT and would be like, you know, why don't you invest in something that's going to give you higher returns? But also really admired the fact that guy ignores stuff like that and just holds IT. And part of guy's reasoning is I wanna have buttery in my portfolio because I want to warn charlie in my portfolio O, I want them in my ecosystem to remind me of how to behave until I think there's a deep truth here that you want to bind yourself to people who Operate in a moral, upstanding, righteous way that we aspire to Operate in ourselves.

And IT is slightly tilt the odds towards us behaving well ourselves, because, because we all have both sides in us, right? We all have the capacity to be immoral repractising. You know, put a put in a certain environment, I think we're all gonna act in ways that we wouldn't admire that match.

You know, some are more acceptable than others, but I don't think I don't think anyone is that pia and anyone is that holy. I am safely exaggerating, but I think we all have we all have these negative capabilities. And and so one reason why you want to surround yourself with people who behave well for the most part and say the right thing and mostly do the right thing and live up to those values is that IT IT lends support and credibility to these things that you believe in.

So when you, when your own conviction ravels you like, no, no, it's OK to behave in a moral way. No, no, it's OK to treat your partner, family. No, no, it's OK not to be paranoid and always assume that I wants out to screw me.

So I do you think there's a positive of aspect to being part of this value cult? But IT IT comes with a risk, which is that you can you can become over religious about IT, and you can close your mind and you can say, well, there's only one way to do IT. There's only one way to invest, the only one way to be one of the beautiful of someone like bill Miller, who who has said to me before, there's something kind of overly religious about the value investing community.

One of the beautiful things about bill is that because he's so open minded, he is able to question things that other people in the value investing community take as gospel. And so the idea, for example, that you had to buy things cheap. You buy certain measures you know, below their intrinsic value.

He was able to look at something like cas on and say, well, now there's tremendous value there. This back in one nine hundred and ninety nine, two thousand, there's even earlier. There's tremendous value there.

The people aren't appreciating even though it's unprofitable and even though IT seems to be losing a fortunate, there's something that they're doing that's very extraordinary. And so he was able to be more expensive in the way he defined value investing. And Sunny, when I talk to Charles about this, Charles said something along the lines of, well, all successful investing is about buying more.

H, you know, getting getting more, and you're paying for something along those lines, he said. But there are many ways to do that. He said, you could do that by buying cheap on love stocks, but you could also do that by buying amazon.

When I was unpopular and I saw that is kind of a reference to whether whether i'm right or not, I saw IT is almost a reference to build Miller that it's like a bill saw something that other people didn't see that there was value that traditionally would have been ignored. So I I think it's just a reminder that, yes, we want to be supported by the virtues of this cult, the fact that IT reminds us of how to behave, how to Operate. Principles are a timeless, but at the same time, don't close our minds and assume that there's only one way to jerusalem.

This is this is one of the things that um that Jason writes about in the book is that I I can know who was he quoted I think was max honey, who was Michael Prices mental? That there are many parts to juristic. And so this is one of the dangers of religiosity, both in investing and life. Is that you assume there's only one path and like there there are great volumes in this path, but there are other pods .

yeah and it's kind of interesting after you you said that there is a almost like A A code around the world investing community. I can't help but see some things in a slightly different light and I found myself and others in in the best invest community to quote buffer t.

And it's it's almost like some people sometimes we call the bible and say Matthew seventeen whatever they're saying is like teas, Candy, tangible net book value, one thousand nine hundred and seventy two like it's it's almost like whenever you listen to and you substitute words, I I think there there is something to be said about that. And I and I I can't help but wonder, especially for someone like bill Miller because he's so much an insider but also have done things its own way. It's almost like but then you're not one of us and sound like being asked those questions like, oh, are you no longer what of us? And IT probably just speaks to the contrarian and nature, uh, and and how clear the million things about things that he's like.

Yes, but I can take the good things and I I I would leave out some some of the bad things. I do think that I think it's almost a about to say right of passes, perhaps that those words are perhaps too strong. But I certainly felt there was A A period of my life whenever I could, and called found buffer among ger, which I almost make sound like when I found geese, like, again, can some of two different words.

And I I am thinking I should do things a certain way. Or what would buffet do? Would this is do? And then realized that eventually, just because buffet or mongo would do one thing or they wouldn't interested, that IT would still be OK for me to do that because IT fit in the way that I was that I was wired and you mentioned before.

And people probably have different pension and that, but I think that was actually before we started recording. Just such to make sure that the listeners follow a conversation here. And you can talked about the limitations of what we knew. And you talked about how monger, as brilliant as I was, perhaps, has had cut himself off for certain things within spirit, ality and literatures.

Well, yeah, part part of my craziness of the people don't know about that I inflict on stick every time we talk, is I always read him. I think always, I always read him a couple of sentences or a paragraph from the, so how is this ancient mystic book written in our area before we start? And there are various reasons why I do this.

I think that puts you in a different, in a different state in some way. IT probably puts sticks in a state of annoyance and battling. IT puts in. But so I randomly pick a passage. Cy, I call this so hard you like. And so the passage that I read ends with this sentence that says, but we did not have the merit of seeing deeper into the secrets of wisdom, entertaining greater knowledge. And I always think, you know, there are particular things that i'm shown when I opened books randomly may or may not be true, but IT feels meaningful to me.

And so for me, this randomly chosen paragraph from the oha, which in our make IT means the book of slender, is about all limitations, the fact, the fact that there are secrets of wisdom that we actually that are aren't granted to us. Night I went after my first interview, Charles. I sent him a couple of books.

And one of the books I sent him was by a great cabinets called RAV ash lack, and reviews od a ash like, it's called the wisdom of truth. I was very curious. I was like, here's a guy.

Rub ash. I could, can't saw everything. And I wonder if charlie, whose maybe the wise man and the investing business, will connect to IT.

Because charlie, who talked about, memorize this great twelve century, I guess, rebinding al sage, being a hero of his, because my mona LED, a very engaged life, he was a very successful doctor to the royal family. And suffix that I think in the egypt I read correctly was also a great writer. And he went this very famous works, one of a kind, an amazing title.

He wrote book called the guide for the perplex. I think IT was, or either the guide for the perplex or the guide of the perplex is amazing title. So I send this book to try, and he just sends me back, you know, like a two word latter, saying something like, thank you, which made me think is never going to read this, you know.

And he can't see that there are things that ravasi lag, but are really deep truth. And maybe that channel just isn't open to charity, or maybe i'm wrong and maybe i'm delusional and who knows. But I think I think these are important reminders that there are always limits to our knowledge.

And this is something you see again and again in background writing. Just the sense of the sense that the world is a strange and complex place that IT lodes attempts to category and be definitive. And so there's this beautiful thing that child pointed out with with bang gram himself, which has been made much of his fortune by investing in eiko with his partner.

And I cho was incredibly cheap. And he and his partner, who who Jason success really was the one driving this deal, put basically, I think, twenty percent or something like that of the fund s the gram newman CoOperation in eiko, when I was really not that cheap, but moderately Priced. And so they made this massive concentrate bet in a high quality company they held for senate twenty five years.

And that one bat, which I I think IT were not some like two hundred times, outwit all of the stuff that gram had done, really carefully buying cheap stocks using the methods of value investing that we all know is coming from great, you know. So here's the great patron saint of values, investing of buying cheap stuff. And as as Charles pointed out, actually the thing that made him most money was a concentrated bad on something that he then held for a tremendous amount time.

And Jason said that rain was kind of little bit SHE fish about that. He admitted that. In the postcript to the intel gent investor, he was onest enough to say, yeah, you know, this happened.

And he basically said, was this one true stroke of genius? Or was this just a piece of luck? Who knows? And so I think that's an admission that things are complex and contradictory and they don't fit in great categories like even the patronage of value investing was in some way the patron growth investing.

And as one n always points out, you know, growth and value, where did at the hip, they're not really separate. And so we we live in a world where we constantly thinking, do aleister ally, I think we have to, we have to say, well, this is good. This is bad.

This is moral. This is a moral. This is done. This is sensible. So we do this because it's useful and practical. But actually, once you start to look more deeply, you realize that there's a tremendous in of those category. And a part of growing up is to realize, no, no, it's much more complicated than that.

You know you think of your parents or you think of your your siblings, or you think of your closest friends, and you are like, well, are they this, or are they that? Are they moral that they decent? They kind? They are.

They flared. no. And like you of the ove, and so am I. And so is everyone you know to different degrees. So it's difficult. You don't want to drive yourself crazy and become paralyzed by the sense of complexity because we need these simple rules and guidelines, an Operating principles, so we can get by. But we also need to be honest about the fact that often they're wrong there.

You know, as time game would say, maybe they're directionally correct, but there times where you don't necessarily want to be honest because you want to protect the other person's feelings. And so if they tell you, you know, if they say, was my dinner any good you say, yeah, that was really delicious when actually IT was really awful or you know they say, you know I I I think i'm looking Better, right? You know like, yeah ah if you look fantastic and and you know you know that there is sort of falling apart and you know so I don't know guess so fruitfulness is a virtue and so is the kindness that enables you to protect the person's feelings. And so it's just it's all complex but you don't want to get paralyzed by IT. So to think again of that f Scott foot geral, where he said, yeah, you need to be able to hold these contradictory ideas in your head but he said, but you still need to function.

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All right, back to the show. I'm going to tell you a quick story about breakfast, which sounds like the worst song way you can not imagine. But i've starting to adapt this mental model that is that no one is crazy, probably comes across as crazy in the first place.

And whenever you really continue to ask the other person why they say what they say, why they do what they do, it's not that crazy to you. IT might be crazy with your, with your implicit assumptions. IT might be crazy, but in that world it's not.

So I was not going for walk with a friend yesterday, and I don't know how we came to talk about IT, what we talked about breakfast at hotels for whatever reason. And I said to him, oh yeah, I never have breakfast at hotels. If i'm traveling alone, I do you do that with my life, if i'm on the business, whatever.

And I just by myself, I, I, I never go down for for breakfast, even if it's included. And he was like, why? Like, he was like, he was like, yeah, yes, I was sitting room, have some fruit, toast, toast, whatever he was like, wow, wo wow.

That doesn't make any sense at all. You can have great breakfast or you can sit in your room not having great breakfast. Like that's the easiest decision ever.

The rule is always great breakfast. And I said to him that in his world he probably likes great breakfast. It's a very sociable person.

Yes, of course, you would always choose the Better breakfast. I come at this from a different angle. Every time I travel, I always a of a pain. I A, I usually like go there seeing people, but i'm not a very social able person.

And if my day starts at o'clock around other people just having breakfast OA myself, I start getting stressed at eight o'clock and I thought like get stressed from not waking up before from my computer answering emails. So my equation is not great breakfast or bad breakfast. Perhaps this is a crazy, but i'm coming from its til morning.

Feel that you head on points by checking your email so you're make sure you caught up or be stressed around other people and then Carry that stress with the of the rest of the day whenever you actually supposed to be on and perform, which you're not supposed to do doing breakfast. And so some of you might be thinking out there is stick, talk about breakfast like why did you talk about breakfast? But my point of of telling this story is more dead.

You might disagree, but if you really ask into why people make the decisions and really understand where they are coming from with their values, most people are not crazy. And so when Williams saying before our calls, we would start with, so how relate and he jokes about that IT IT might be him in the right out of mind, put me in instead of annoying, which IT doesn't, I should say, for the record, we, liam, like. But that's also because we come at this from very different angles and they represents very different things for us. And no one is crazy.

I have one one thought on that, that I think is well sharing, which I discussed with guy sphere when I had him on the podcast last spring. I think and we were talking a lot about the situation in israel, but we were talking about how to talk to people who disagree with you, how to talk to people who view things from another perspective. And we were dealing with this very, very sensitive topic.

That means a lot to us. And we're trying to do IT in in a sense, to have and thoughtful way that would actually be helpful for people who are grappling with this in the same way that we were and people we love who thought about things differently than we did. And one of things, so I think I quoted was an insight from David works, the new york times, the journalist who had been on a podcast with Andrew Sullivan.

It's a pocket I really like that really recommend people you have to subscribe to. I think about fifty thousand a year to get the full version go dish cost and and solon is still really smart person, and his politics and views are very different than mine. And I like the fact that I can, I can listen to this guy who makes tremendous sense.

Who can doesn't come from the same background as I do. And he was interviewing David broke and David Brooks s had been around the world to talking to people who saw things differently to him. And the question that he basically used a lot, if if i'm getting this close to, right, right, that'll be good, was what experiences, what persons experience LED you to that belief? And so you're not saying you in india, I don't understand you would have this really foolish political belief.

You're saying what personal experience LED you to that belief. And once you're open and then you shut up and then you listen and you actually have the person explain what, here's why I hate this politician, or here's why I love this politician, or here's why a ambivalent about this politician, then you can start to learn. And I think it's, I think it's a respectful way to go about things. And IT IT invites understanding rather than division and separation.

And so if we started to unpack me, if you, as a journal, said to me why you so crazy about the oha, like why do you do that? Why do you why do you have IT on your desk when you write? Why do you have IT on your desk when you do an interview? What LED you? What possible experiences LED you to that experiences? You got time packet you like?

H, I mean, I literally one of things that I fitted with while we're talking is a rock from the ceiling of the cave in which the zha was written or review in the north of israel, and the rock fell on my mother's head, and from the ceiling of this, know, this cave that thousands of thousands of years old. And I have the rock on on top of the oha here. And for me it's like there's something kind of beautiful about the fact that like something literally fell on us from the ceiling that i've taken with me.

So I have a piece of a piece of this um this room, this cave that is out of the source of the most powerful spiritual teachings that i've started. Probably that's strange. Life is just strange. And so I want to I want na be rational and I want to explore ideas in a rational, thoughtful way.

But I don't want to close off the side of myself that open to stories and mysteries, an intuition and all of these things that rents so provable aren't so imminent to just sort of straight logical analysis. And it's one of the reasons why I think probably pronger is the wrong word. But I was going to say why Charles was wrong not to read literature.

I think it's a mistake to close yourself off some of the greatest minds of all time to what they wrote, where they are, writing about human nature, writing about the way we live our lives. And, and, and I think part of part of background greatness was the fact that he was steeped in literature, that he was translating a eugen novel from spanish, that he he spoke multiple languages and could read a fluently in latin and greek and translate into latin and greek. So he gave him this breath and this expensive ness but at the same time, by being narrower in certain ways um mongo was able actually to go really deep within non fiction and to study science and mathematics, many other fields you know engineering, all of these things that are novels typically wouldn't study.

So again, it's like two virtues, right? Go you go broad or you go narrow and deep and both are good, right? You wanna read very, very broadly and expose yourself to literature and philosophy and spirituality and you also want to go really narrow and be like, yeah, i'm just onna really understand this one this one subject and both both of those things are true.

And in some ways it's deciding what you're optimizing for. So i'm optimizing for this kind of mad breads. So after my conversation with reasons why I yesterday about the intelligence and investor, one of thinks he was mentioned as well.

So and grand's favorite philly oha, was also a so like I hadn't read much, but also at all, like a few quotes s here and there as far as I can remember. So this morning I spanos collected works and IT IT was like eighty something dollars for this beautiful hard back condition. And it's it's kind of stupid.

I'll probably dip into IT. I might forget that I have IT, but I might actually change my life for IT might deeply enrich my life. And last night I ordered on my kindle this book, the invention of solitude, which is a note, biography and memory, by this great novelist poster.

And I just saw reading IT last night. Oh, this guy really right. I hadn't read a novel of for maybe thirty years where I had a beautiful novel called the the music of chance, as americans would say, the music of chance, we all about randomness. And my friend john g. Garta, who's great writer, who who wrote this book on bell labs, the idea factory, said to me, you know, we were talking about coincidences and synchronicity and and he's one of the great writers about science, right? He's a new york times magazine science reporter.

He said to me, or you should really report as memo the invention solitude because it's full of all these strange synchronous s that he's he is talking about and so i'm just constantly looking for new stuff, but may or may not resonate deeply and may may enriching mind and my understanding of things. And i'm not doing IT in a way you like. I have to buy this book and then finish IT and then move on to the next.

So both of those approaches are totally violent. Neither is Better or worse. It's just you're always trying to decide what am I optimizing for optimization? Your breakfast stanic do is just a microcosm of this question.

What what are you optimising for a me? For me, I just came back from three or four weeks of traveling in england. Why did I eat a lot of poach eggs in the morning? And I don't know. I kind of enjoy that when I go away. And then I came back to new york.

Can I as I, I couldn't have any more pottage since I ordered an online the other day and they rob an online with ham in IT and i'm vegetarian and I don't powis's and IT was russia shana and and so here I am sort of returning for my sins, trying to stop my new year and and I bite into a thing of of ham. So again, it's like IT seems kind of meaningless. But for me, IT has a much bigger meaning.

You know, for me, I think I I went later in the day to Michael book I mentioned for and I. You say everything comes from the creator and i'm like, so my ham this morning in my in my home is that from the creator? He's like, yep, everything that's from the creator to even the thing that violates your religious belief, your spiritual belief, you, your traditions, that also is from the light of the cradle.

And so I don't know you can in anything that you do, there's this sort of narrow, superficial meaning to IT, and there's this deep meaning to IT if you look a bit that wool. So I don't know everything. Everything is a kind of microcosm of something bigger.

I was speaking with my, my, my wife about this interview here a few days ago, and I said to the most exciting thing about this discussion here with Williams is going to to be about how to travel with friends. And so I really want to make sure that I will talk about that.

And then my wife asked me, because we bought the first newspaper, and I don't know, fifteen years, like a physical newspaper, where the generation that don't sell have done that. And he asked me if I want to read that. And assad, the opportunity costs are so high compared to these non fiction books I can read.

And then I thought to myself, is probably good thing that I speak with William soon, so you can set me thread. So as I become a little less structured, so i'm going to see if I can dive into this topic here about traveling with friends, and I come at this from different angles. IT has been such wonderful journey so far.

Traveller with you, William. Because we see, I think most people like to say that they're very different from their friends, but I also think that it's very difficult to be friends if you don't have some shared values and probably from the outside that look like you're very similar, such as business and such as life, I guess. But this has been absolutely wonderful to learn from you and to continue to engage with you about life, about business and the intersection between the two.

And that's what I really want to talk with you about here today. And I I remember you said something to me, which I I think was even I call for someone else but going to give you full credit just just so you know Williams and so don't travel with friends until you're forty and only travel with friends after that. And obviously that completely restoration with me because I could put put a check mark and say, now i'm forty.

So in my Normal way, I, I, I took that snippet that I could could check matter, which was problem, not the intention at all. But i've been thinking a lot about that recently, ten, forty. And I I felt that I or I know I spent my, my, my thirty is building A T, A P.

I. I started roughly, but less a month, two before after. I don't even remember exactly when was around the time as I turned thirty.

And I feel like the time is right for me to engage in a another, bigger project. Not that i'm leaving G I P by any means. I should say hopefully it's a project that will complement G, I P in some way.

But I want you to talk a bit about the self story. And then I, I, I, I wanted to to hear how you engage with that, because being in that mindset of driving with friends, I thought about this next venture. I should start, I should do that with with friends, which was a bit different than the way that G.

P. I was started. Like, I, I, I knew president, we became good friends. But like, we were close when I stt p like, we didn't really know anyone else interested more.

And buffett, we want to to write a book about buffett, and we want to go to o maha. And I was like, it's to a part cast. So IT was a bit different.

And one of the things that i'm i'm looking into right now just is the point of reference, not because that is the time point of this conversation, but i'm looking into acquiring a smaller prior businesses in the U. K. And i'm really thinking about how to incorporate this idea of traveling with with friends.

And so I come at this from many different angles. One of them is that I have the strong, have the strong sense of of responsibility when never IT comes to the T. I. P. team. And one of the things I really want to do by acquiring a number of different companies is not only to make money, which obviously would be very, very nice, but I also have this selfish mission of providing life long employment for good people at the jp team.

And I come on this to some exchange with the idea that having a number of different businesses, especially if you would team up a really with good people, you can typically find good jobs for them, not any cost, not any, but very good people. Can you usually create a position around them? And one thing I want to say that I don't want this sound like to appear by any means is like a charity.

But we don't we don't really optimize for shareholder of value. And there there are many profitable projects that I just don't want to take on, partly because I think the team couldn't enjoy them. And I like working with happy people.

And if people are not happy, i'm not happy. So it's kind of office for me to say, let's not do IT. But and i'm really worth is going to to we broke the D T A P culture and that being sad.

You know, the idea of acquiring small private businesses, traveling with new friends is also a very different journey that among right now with T I P, because to some extend, I am trick by the idea of how how would you be actually to run the business where you optimize for shareholder value, and then bring bring friends on that journey. And if you, if you just allow me to go a bit of attention, like haven't done that already, I find IT a bit ironic. How many people, including myself for many years, were especially if they come from a business background like I fort, but they would swear that the purpose of a company is to optimize the shareholder.

Ue, that's what you're talk that was not a frequent told us, but then they are also the first people to say, oh, these companies calling costs are not compensated well enough. We don't have great food in the cafeteria, whatever they they're saying. What is the two sides of the same kind of optimizing faccio ld value anyways?

I can I can't help but notice that, but I think it's been it's been an interesting experience so far traveling with friends. Most people us i've talked to have actually said don't travel with friends like don't the worst thing you can do whenever you start up a new business is to travel friends. And I found that to be an interesting take.

And perhaps the right, i'm in the very early inning of of this venture. I probably come from this eve perspective that succeeding with friends is just more fun. But i'm also not completely blind to the fact that if friendship can really sour, if the powerful doesn't work out, and unless you have some kind of mental mente type relationship, I always had the idea that friendships are best if there is some degree of equality.

And IT doesn't by any means have to be financial equality. As i'm saying this, even though this is the investing show, that's not the point, but there has to be some kind of equality in a in a friendship, at least for me. And one of the things that i've found chAllenging now as i'm entering this new venture with friends is that money solar becomes front and center, and then over a sudden, IT might not be equal.

And so let's say that I would invest a million dollars vice round number, but the million dollars represent one thing to me and something different to another person. So to me, a million dollars is definitely a very significant amount of money for me. I would pay a lot of attention, and then at the same time, I wouldn't change my life if I lost a million dollars.

I don't know if I come up like a complete jerk when ever I say that, but IT wouldn't. Then he brings this interesting dynamic. Well, I might be bringing a friend on this journey who doesn't have a million dollars and then would put in perhaps more time, whatever you might be, but that's sort like I failed some extent that could mean that the person is sort like working for me.

It's a kind of feel kind of out because we're friends, right? But then and then see other thing, which is if you're going to buy businesses, a million dollars won't get you anywhere. So you have to team up with people with ten plus million dollars to spend to just a quite small businesses.

But then is also like, so am I then working for my friend who put in fifty million dollars in this venture? Oh, that that also feels off because we're proposed to be friends. I can't really be working for friends.

I want to be working with friends. And so I found that dynami C2Be sur prisingly chA llenging. But also IT pegs my interest in so many ways.

And I want to ask you, William, how you have experienced that? Because your friends with some of the wealthiest people, like certainly a million dollars or fifty million dollars, is nothing to them or very, very little to them. That's one thing.

But you also significant, more financial, successful than so many other people than your peers. So how do you travel with friends in business? I know that's a very big question, but I wanted throw over to you.

William. Yeah first all i'd see the the origin of this idea that is a conversation that I had with Chris Davis, who's on the board of bug half way and who's a very successful investor in his own right and he's been mentored by buffet monger and bill Miller and is very close to town gana and and he he's one of very close to base and hawkins mean he he knows very well the sort of a lead of great investors and is a lovely bloke, very thoughtful guy and he said to me that he given this advice to his kids recently, where he said, he said, i'm a little blurry on the number, on the actual age.

I used giving this advice to my kids, but he said, either before your forty or possibly before you thirty five never do business with friends and then he said, after your thirty five or maybe forty only do business with friends and he said, basically there's a turning point where you hit the age of about thirty five or forty or whatever age you you want to choose. There's a turning point where you ve built up enough insight and wisdom and also data about the people you know, that you are able to make Better judgments about who to avoid and who to work with and collaborate with. I think that something really wise that that I think it's it's funny, I think about an investment that I made many years ago.

This would be in my thirties hi with A A really close friend who totally lied to me and i'm not even sure this friend realised that these things that are saying what lies, but i've lost a fair amount of money because of the persons self delusion and lack of morality. And this was an extremely talented person, very, very talented. And they are other very well known institutions investing at much higher Price than me.

So could have worked out very well. And so and that really did kind of react the relationship with this close friend of mine. But then another time, I invested with a family member and IT didn't work out, but the person had been very honest.

And you know, IT was just bad luck. IT was a perfectly good idea, and IT didn't work out for various reasons, but they lost money as well. They put in, you know, they were aligned and they were truthful the whole way through.

And I saw I A very good relationship with that person. It's not someone i'm close to. But there was something about the fact that they they were truthful and Operated in good faith.

The man, you know, I did you know, i'm just like, well, so this happens sometimes. Things don't work out. Not every venture works out that's fine. So I think that points out that there there's definitely danger to investing with friends and relatives. But then I think about someone like I thought who I interviewed for my book, who when I asked him, you know what's the secret of a of a happy and abundant life, given the a soup is, you know, not only one of the great investors of all time, but one of the Grace game players all time.

The guy who who beat the casino, black jack and back out and reality and a boniface genius as a game player was like, so how do you stack the odin your favor in life and he said, well, who you spend your time with is probably the most important thing of all. So that's the case. Why would you not want to do business with people you like and admire and who are honest and talented and honourable? And I look at all of the the great investment partnerships that then clinton put that way of Operating.

Think of nick left in case the korea, who we talked to out before the you think about warn, and Charles, who clearly, you know, mean were friends for sixty five years, right? It's an extraordinary friendship that beat, you know, that built this company just with extradition amounts of value. And IT was based on on this kind of honorable partnership, right? And think about, when I asked chilled, what the secret of a happy and successful lifts.

And he starts talking about relationships. And he said, look, we have a very simple model. If you, if you, anna, have a good partner, be a good partner.

And so very profound practical advice on how to do business with friends. You know, be the thing that you want them to be. You be, be honner's, be trustworthy, kind, be compassionate, be rational.

Then you look at a partnership by john Green black and rob gold stein, who've worked together for decades. And and john, when I had him on the podcast, he talked about this idea of Charles being like the abominable no man, for one, the ban could trust charity to chAllenge his views. And he said rob, his partner, respected him enough to do the work and chAllenge everything that joe thought was true.

And likewise, joe respected rob enough to do the work and chAllenge his ideas. And they were searching for truth in a in an honest way, and with treating each other as equal partners and with with great respect. And you think about how IT Marks and Bruce cars, again, a great partnership.

And when I was fact checking my chapter about how Marks in Richard wise are happier, I think pretty much the only thing. But how IT was really anxious for me to to do in that chapter remedy, if I remember correctly, is he really wanted to make sure that I gave enough credit to Bruce cash. Really interesting.

Again, it's like the point I made before about that, looking out for nick when I was fat, checking the chapter about him here was how about wanting to make sure the Bruce, his partner of a decades, got equal credit. So you get, you get a sense from those relationships of the power of a lining yourself, with high quality people who wish you well, who are honest, who don't let the ego get the Better of them, who treat the other one is a true partner, and who try to be a great partner to them. So I think that's really helpful in practical terms.

You you want to know that you're are lining yourself with someone who is truly high quality and wants the best for you, and that's difficult. And and so I think about when i've invested in in funds, I mean, one thing i'll tell you is part part of the lesson I learned from investing with that friend to kind of lie to me about this private company that I was investing in is just never to invest in private companies again. Just doesn't play to my skills.

Why would I do that? I don't have any particularly expert. I didn't really want to do to do diligence. And so I just stop doing that, basically have a rule that I hope I never violate, which is I just not to invest in private companies and doesn't play to my stringent.

I do think I have some advantage, perhaps summit, possibly in analyzing funds run by people who understand the value of concentrated value investing, that kind of contrarian long, more like the spear of Fishermen, the monga k spear Fishermen waiting for those RAM miss Price bats. I think that's an area where I understand the principles behind IT. And I also, I know a lot of those people who do that.

I know them personally. And so i'm able to triangulate, as a journalist would, and say to one person more about this other person, what do I need to know about them? And so I have a sense in that ecosystem, I think, of who's good, who's honnor able. And so I think I have some advantage that. So I i've invested in a few funds over the years within that kind of speciality of concentrate long term value investing.

And there, I think there's a very important there's a very important clue in the fee structure, right? So it's not just i'm aligned with people who have the same kind of beliefs and concepts about investing, i'm also looking to see what have they actually structured IT in a way that favors them over me. And in each of these cases, the people who are perfectly happy to forgo more profits for themselves by closing the fund when it's very small, by not marketing the fund, by having a by being very honest and open in there in their communication about their mistakes and having reasonable fees, you know, so they're only getting paid if they do well, basically.

So sort of unreasonably pragmatic there in looking to see whether it's structured in a way that's that's reasonable. I think i'm just more equipped to do that than I was when I made investments in private companies, and I just not equip to do that. But then I also I also a little bit irrational about IT in the sense that I i'm collecting funds and money managers who I wanted my life.

So in the same way that guy beer has berkshires in his portfolio because he wants buffet in his life. I also burker partly for that reason, to a great extent for that reason. But I also want people like Chris back.

So I had on the podcast, or josh, a guy I want them in my life. So people I really like, I like to associate with them. And so it's a little bit irrational, but not entirely irrational because I think that high quality people, I want na spend time with them.

I like playing out with them um I know them well enough that I think they're unlikely to do anything onest or dishonorable or recklessly stupid. But i'm also aware that I have great problem in my own wiring, which is that I tend to see the good in people and to look for the good in them. And that maybe great as a human being and as a friend, but as dangerous as an investor.

And so i'm conscious of the fact that I might I might be blinded by I I guess mongo called that the liking tendency, right? I think IT was one of one of the biases in his twenty five courses of human misjudgment. S A.

And so I also actually head against my own fallibility and blindness by oing several funds and and a very wary of not wanting to over diversify, because then I basically just create an index fund with much higher expenses because I ve still got na trail the market, but with my tire expands. So i'm wary of that. And I think that that's a problem, that the funds I owe a probably a little too similar because that sort of long only somewhat value oriented, but also you buying high quality companies that can not do up for many years.

So there there's a little bit too much correlation there. But then I think about what surgeon on temperton said to me, which is that you should have you know, a regular investor should probably have about five or six funds, but hamilton said they should be investing in different parts of the market. So they're not too correlated.

I I think that's a problem when I when I into that a peria on the politics recently, one of things he said to me both on the podcasting off, I think, was that, that would be great if I had more exposure to things like private equity or private companies venture capital that just one correlated in the same way. And that's just not really available to most people unless they're rich enough. And I I don't have those of resources to be able to have so many different funds that aren't correlated.

So I don't know. I'm i'm slightly i'm getting in bed with the people who I trust. I'm on the road with people I trust, who I think I have the right principles.

But i'm aware that I I might be blinded. I'm heading against my fabling. I'm checking with other people to see where I might be wrong. So you not really allowed to disclose what's in people's holdings, for example.

But in one case, I when I was in vancouver going to the ted talks, I ask, manage to take a look at one of the portfolios. And I think, can you just look at this and tell me if you think these guys very good? Yeah, yeah, you're in good hands.

It's smart. You know, IT wouldn't be the same portfolios of money, but he was a way of me, of me just making sure my of my blind hair and like why I was thinking about doing another. Project where i'm i'm going to do some editing for someone which i'm very resistant to doing because it's very easy for me to do too much of IT.

I get kind of side trap away from my own thing. But I asked my wife yesterday, do you like this person? what? What do you think? And she's like, such a lovely person, such a lovely person. And so that's really important to me. I'm using her judgment to check my own.

So and then, you know, one of the just very simple piece of practical advice I would give when you're thinking about kind of whether you, anna, travel with friends, whether you want to do business with friends. Radi o said something very helpful to me where he said, you trying to sound yourself with people who have qualities that basically compensate for your own flaws. And so he said, if you can recognize your own flaws and deficiencies, that's really important because then you can compensate for them with the people you you surround yourself with.

So so I just think as you're trying to figure out whether to partner with friends, you want to keep some of these things in mind, right? So manger saying to have a good partner, be a good partner, using almost like journalistic techniques of triangulation to ask other people what you might be missing, hedging against your own, the ability so that you are not placing too many bets on your judgment, you not placing too much of your financial well being on this one bed, and simultaneously making sure that the people you are surrounding yourself with have different and complimentary talents to your own. And also I I think just people who are honest with you, people who like Charles for warm or Bruce cash for Howard Marks or rob goldman for john room, but who are going to tell you when you're wrong, who are going to tell you I think you're missing this.

I I hope there's some practical advice in there that's helpful. But I have to admit, when I when i'm trying to decide whether to partner with someone I knew and I ended up partner and with each other is very deeply intuitive tive for me. I mean, i'm really i'm thinking, do I like this person? Do I trust this person? And then you go back to something that tom gainer said to me, which is, I think this was on the post related with him, where he said, you start by extending trust and extending love to the other person, and then you see if it's violated or honor.

And so I think you start by, with any part of you, have you behave well, and then you see whether they are worthy of that behavior. And if they're not, as charlie would say, you get toxic people out of your life very, very quickly. And IT doesn't mean that you have to badd of them or get in a lawsuit with them, but you just sort IT is like, yeah, I I don't really want to be in a partnership with this person.

But I think tom's point, which is very well taken, is the when you act in that way and you filter out the people who violate your trust and your generosity and your kindness quickly, you end up with this amazing ecosystem of trust based relationships, the compound. And so I think you, you and I have seen you and i've seen over the last three years what the other one is like to deal with. And so there's nothing I I mean, everything i've seen in the way you've dealt with me has been like sticks.

Really lovely and really honorable able guy. And so long he continues still really lovely and honorable guy. why? Why would I? Why would I not want to keep being partner with him? You know, when we came up with the idea recently to do a ritual wise, a happier moster class, we discuss the times.

I don't think we ever did anything in. I mean, you send me an email at one point laying out the terms neither was ever signed anything or anything like that. That's just I mean, that's kind of reckless in some ways. But in a way, it's like a test that both of us are seeing whether the other one will behave honorable.

Yeah, that's a good point because I I was actually going to send you or did send you an email the other day. Well, I wanted to recap some of things from the first email. Actually, I couldn't find that.

And here I am printing myself of being very structured. But I I think I spent like two minutes looking after that. And then I was thinking to myself, IT doesn't matter. At the end of the day, IT doesn't matter. I couldn't find IT.

I mean, I can probably find that I spent more than two minutes, the world doesn't run on contracts with runs on trust, and very much in the spirit of the receipt, has a happier aster class. That is the case. And you know, I am happy, I I should say for the record that I pass your your filter.

Think of, think of the thing the they sleep in cassia aria said to me, they said that once you decide the quality is your is your filter is simplify, so many decisions, so many things become really clear.

So once they decided, okay, what's the quality move in this situation, then you can look at so many things, I will, how am I gonna charge my shah lda? How am I gone to communicate with them when I make a mistake, or when i'm uncertain about IT, how I going to treat my partner, how my, how I gonna spend the money that I make if the venture goes well? Is IT all for me to buy by a yot a plane? Or am I onna share with society to make society Better? Well, also making sure that my family is okay.

And so I think that simple filter of wanting to make high quality moves is really helpful. And you again, it's kind of contradictory, right? Because we talk before about the complexity of life, how everything the the opposite of a virtue is also a virtue, how everything is so uncertain.

But we do need these simple guiding principles. And so to pick a few, a few simple guiding principle that you're onna stick with, like, what's the quality move here? Remember once said, a great spiritual teacher and london listening to a lecture of his and israeli guy, and he said, so you can really just ask, is this good for my soul or not?

I remember a thinking, I ve never written about that, but I member thinking, wow, that's a good film to. Is this good for my soul or not? You know, think, think of destination analysis. Is what nicos was sing.

Does this move me closer to a good final destination, whether it's for a company of business or you know, when we key over or people gna remember us fondly? And so I think we need we need simple guiding principles, whether we are going into a business venture or not. And and so maybe one of the great shortcuts in life is to go to people like buffet among ger and see what they're written and see what they've said and have that be your default position.

So then you like a bill minute, you have the open mindless to question everything that they said. But your defauts position is what these guys are smarter and wiser than I am. Let me understand what they figured out.

And then you look and you think, OK, well, who did they study? Well, Charles study. Ben Franklin. Let me go back and read and Frankland see how he would have Operated, and then at the same time, be aware that he was flared as well.

I mean, I remember Charles saying to me something about how, and Frankly, I think he said that to me not, but maybe he was at the daily show meeting, which I attended during the bit afterwards, but we were all asking questions. Well, Charles said the ben Franklin never made up with his son who had different views than him, like they remained alien, strange for the rest of their lives. And Charles said, so i've done a Better job than banded of letting go of my resentments.

And so that's really interesting to me that charlie was actually benchmarking himself against ben, Frankly, because he couldn't find that many people who were as smart as he was. So he had to go into history and hang out with the eminent dead in order to civil. So how should I I behave? And then you go back, you see, will buffett wrote his protest, the intelligent investor, that nobody other than his father influences him as much as being gram.

So like, okay, so let me figure out what had been ground do that was special. And and buffett talks about how generous spirit he was in sharing his ideas and his wisdom and his insights and his time. So like, okay, so learn about generosity of spirit from the graham.

Then you like, so we had been gram land. And like, oh, he learned from books spinoza this great philosopher. So let me study that. So I don't know. I think with all of these things is is a is a great shortcut to study what people who are wise are and smarter and older than us figured out.

Well, i'm going back to this idea here of being friends, working together. How is the dynamic different? And how do you handle, let's say, scenario a, where you are to some extent, doing business with a friend? Let's say yes, right? But no money are changing hands whenever you're interview nation because Jason is, I would imagine, happy that the work is out that that they simply five year book.

Now the intel investig comes out, you are happy you you get to speak with with Jason, do a brilliant interview is going to be amazing. Uh so it's sort like that's a soft all question but like that's the easy one because he is really like when when and then there's the other one when when money exchange hands. Let's say that in this case decision, we accepted the work.

This is a completely another example that ever been the case, but you would have to spend hundreds of hours doing hard work, probably fund work, but also really hot work. And and you will need to be compensated like in dollars. And and and it's it's not a win win for you to edit.

It's a win for you to get paid to edit, but you still want to work with a friend because you want to spend time with good people. How the dynamics is different from scenario a to scenario b? And how do you handle that?

I don't know. I mean, one thing i'll say when I invite people on the podcast, for example, when I think about people in the book, i'm not doing stuff just as a favorite to anyone, right? If i'm inviting someone on the podcast, I have to believe that there's something very rich that the audience can learn that merits them spending two hours in this persons company or an around three.

And it's a big investment of my time. I spent days preparing usually, and that person kind of fills my thoughts for days. So their ideas and insights have to be worth sharing.

So the fact that their friend means unlikely to know them and trust them and think that they have deep wisdom or practical insights that are valuable. But I have a sense of maybe slightly self request duty to the reader or listener that I think comes from my history. As a je, I went journalism school, which the best journalism school, and what where you learn all about journalism at ethics.

And you, you're supposed to be, must be serving the reader or listener, not yourself, for your own business relationships, anything like that. And in some ways, i'm in a very unusual position where since I became an author and a podcast host and alike, I kind of cross the line in interesting ways where i'm writing about of focusing on people who I tend to like or admire. It's not something that I could have done if I were a journalist, the new york times or the world street journal, where you supposed to have more objectivity.

It's a different, it's a different approach they's tremendous value to that sort of relatively objective. I don't think you ever are truly objective. But the relative the objective approach, the new york times, the wall street journal of the washington post, I mean, I remember some when I was editing the asian edition of time, someone wrote a profile of a famous person who had turned out with a friend of her.

And but you absolutely cannot do that. You can't. You never. You know, it's totally a button for magazine like time, at least IT was then.

I can't speak for what it's like now to having distance. Journalistic distance is very, very important. I'm in a socially unusual position because i'm trying to highlight certain ways of thinking and living and investing that I think instructive. So so I I i'm not objective, but at the same time, I do still have that deep sense that i'm serving the reader or listener and I and i'm not onna violate that by doing something well, I would put a person I really like, but who I think is a terrible investor who I really like, but is immoral and repetition.

So you know, i'm not gonna do that and I if if a couple of months but I had an opportunity to into you someone kind of famous on the part cast who had a new book coming out and I said to look out like is we could media interest and stuff like i'm i'm not letting this person on the part because like, you know, there are a famous kind of billionaires. You can believe their figures about themselves because they could lie about their wealth in the past and they got all these non disclosure agreements with their x wives that now i'm not going there. I I you know I would be good for the podcast IT would be good for unit, have this famous person on a china spotlight on this person.

So I just walked away from that. When IT comes to editing or writing projects, you know, where you're collaborating with someone have a really simple rule, which is that I only work with people I like. So I think in the past, that wasn't always the case.

There were times where I actually couldn't afford to walk away and and it's not like i'm so rich or successful that, you know, I can do what I want and walk from everything and be totally high minded, but I mean a comfortable enough position and I live within my means enough but i'm you know and i'm wearing enough of that that hopefully I can just say i'm just not going there anymore. I'm not working with someone I dislike someone who I think is kind of an is unpleasant or who could have make my life worse. And that's been tremendous.

That's an amazing gift. And I think the freedom, the freedom only to work with people you like and admire is a really wonderful thing. So because I feel like I got burned a few times over the years, either in the magazine business or the book writing business, where I worked with someone I didn't, you know, who I I didn't feel behave very well.

They probably felt same about me. But I that that that that's been a huge gift. Only work with people you like, admire.

I don't think there are any Better way to any episode, William, yet. I should ask if you have any concluding reMarks. I kind of feel like I stole that one.

but IT was a wonderful way of ending device de, we should let people recover and not listen to me drowning on anymore. But I really enjoy chatting with you. It's always, it's always a real treat.

likewise. Well, thank you so much for for making yourself available for this wonderful conversation. Thank you. Really appreciated.

Thank you. Lovely chatting with you. Thank you for listening to T. I. P. Make sure to follow.

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