YouSaid · the spoken record

Bryan Lawrence

lines on the record: 112
first: 2024-04-28
most recent: 2024-04-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Well, William, you get me to talk about stuff that is very interesting. I feel like you're almost like a therapist or something. And some of these things have been done with wine. This one's been done over Zoom. We'll see how it plays for an audience, but I've really enjoyed it. So thank you very much.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“90% of my time is in investing and 10% is in that attempt to grow a network of charter schools or Julian's very interested in helping some of the things that are happening in Israel. We could look at the investment returns of those two worlds. I suspect the one in which 90% of the time is working on that nonprofit stuff actually gets better investment results because you run into more people, you think more about the world. That's an uncertain question those two control groups. The certain thing about it is at the end of another 20 years of this or 30, 40, when you look back at what you've compounded up, you know, there's financial compounding, there's friend compounding, but boy, wouldn't it be cool if you compounded some other stuff if you'd made that community a little bit better? Wouldn't that be great?”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to have a well lived life. I really love this business. I love solving problems. And I love delivering results for people. And that's deeply satisfying. And ultimately, the money, I think it's just as important, you know, the making of it for me personally. This is a personal thing. It's just as important to have a piece of my life that's about giving it away. Like maybe five or ten percent of time, I've been involved in the charter school movement in New York. You know, Jillian and I are talking about what other philanthropy she and I might get involved in. Like, is there something that you're involved in that's making people's lives better where your money and your time make a difference? And I could run a control group of me like, let's say 100% of my time was in investing. That's one universe and nine.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly what I want to do, and I want to do it in the right way. I don't want to be told to do anything that's the wrong thing to do, and I want to do the right thing at the right time. So that autonomy to do that is very important to me. I do not want to call on a client with the wrong idea every six weeks.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, the question that we ask people who contact us, they reach out to us or we get to know them or something is we really want to know who you are and what you expect. From an investment with us, is this something that you're going to need next year for a house or is this something that you're trying to build for your family over time? And what we're looking for with that question is really a piece that's part of your long-term financial plan. Also, do we know who you are? Do you know who we are? Is there a relationship here? We really want to have that relationship because we're on this journey together and I want to know a little bit about you. And I think you should know a little bit about me. So that's where that question is coming from. And I think, you know, what's the money for for me? It's always been about autonomy. Back to that Felix Roden advice. Like, you know, I want to do exactly.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes. There's that kindness. There's also an intensity. She's from a very entrepreneurial family. The Lusari goggles business is lots of ideas all the time. She has three brothers. It's quite amazing. They all have law degrees. They're all very supportive of each other. They're all starting things all the time. It's an extraordinary family.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so what's interesting about our life is if you're genuine and you're there, you're really there and you do that over a long period of time, what compounds out. And I'm amazed by it. And you were at the wedding. I think I said, you know, it's like the people around you are a solar system of planets. They're all orbiting each other. And we're all exerting a gravitational force on each other. And the gravitational force at Jillian's character, I think certainly pulling me, and I think it's pulling others towards their better selves. It's quite something.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Live life, right? It is just farcical. Like her entire book Getting There is about getting people to open up about the tough times they've been through. I mean, arguably the 30 people she talks about and getting there from Warren Buffett to Michael Bloomberg to Frank Geary to Craig Ventner. Craig Bender sequences a human genome, tries to kill himself before doing that because he's so despondent about his life. Like, how do you go through that tough time and then up into the right? What you start to realize is getting up into the right depends on getting through the tough time. And she's been so aware of that her whole life, friend after friend, like you hear these stories, they go through a tough thing, like a tough battle with cancer or a terrible relationship thing or job loss. And the person they're calling for help is Jilliam. And so I wish there were a word for the opposite of a fair weather friend because in the dictionary, there would be Jillian's picture next to that definition and that would be the caption.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His whole life story coming out of him as he realizes who she is and what she's interested in. And it can be important to people who open up to her. Because when you're talking to Gillian, you're talking to Gillian. Like there's no artifice. She has this bracing thing called a straight talk where if she's upset with you, she'll tell you exactly what she thinks. And it's terrifying the first time you get it, but it's coming from a place of such empathy and integrity. You realize it's a gift because you know exactly where you stand. And I think lots of people respond to that. And that's amazing. The second thing about her, which is like a double word score, is that lots of people across these relationship, I've gotten to meet her friends, lots of them. When they've gone through tough times, and tough times are inevitable. Like, you know, the idea that there's no tough times in a well-loved”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm amazed by her. She's a bunch of things that are like on the surface. I call them the obvious things about her. She's smart and talented and beautiful and fun. And these are the things that are pretty clear very quickly when you talk to her. But there are two things about her that are less clear, but you get to know about her if you spend some time with her. The first one is deeply genuine. You see it in the way she interacts with people like it can be like the people at a restaurant, like at the table next to us, like we're just eating out on a Wednesday night. She starts talking to them and you can see she just engages with people, any sort of people. And their night is better. She gets some laughing about something. People we meet when we travel, like someone giving us a tour of, remember this in Marrakesh, this guy suddenly...”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Companion and your friends, and especially your children, what really do you have at the end, but also how really sustainable are you for the people who contrasted you with their money? Like, you know, if you can't bring to the office not just an intense focus on what you're doing for yourself and your clients, but like a happiness at the end of the week to go relax with people, I don't think you're doing yourself a service. I don't think you're doing your clients a service. And it may feel like that last bit of intensity to the detriment of your marriage or your friendships or your children is in the interests of some professional furtherance. But I don't think it is you've got to find a balance. And that sounds a little airy fairy, but it's deeply true. Like a lot of things.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Starting my 50th birthday, I just said, I really need to spend more time at this. And I'm lucky enough to have some friends who really feel the same way. And that's really enriched in my life. I wonder if I'd done a little bit more of that between day 10,000, day, 20,000, but I don't know. I don't know. And I think the final thing is if you screw up your children, nothing else matters. And I know I've got a couple of examples, you know, some of whom have been very close to me who I'm thinking of in particular who at the end of her life said to me, you know, she was such a mentor to me, like all of the glittering achievements that you see me having achieved, like at the end, all that matters is my daughter. And just remember that. It's very important. Back to this point about sustainability of an investment. Like if you so devote yourself to an investing track record and you neglect your life.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He said to me in private, I've been thinking about this a lot this idea of 10,000 day chunks like your first 10,000 days, you're very wide, who do you go to school with? Who are you going to marry? What are you going to be? And then day 10,000 to 20,000, you're very deep. You drive into your career. You have your spouse. You have your children. And then you pop up at day 20,000. Men, after a pretty intense career, generally don't have as much as well-developed friendships as maybe they should. They've spent so much time on being a good father, being a good provider, having the career they're going to have. And you pop up at age at day 20,000, which is like age 56 or 57 or something. And you really can, especially if you're doing what you want to be doing, like I am not going to go be an architect. That's not going to happen. Not only do I love what I'm doing, I'm not, you know, I know exactly what I'm going to do for the next 25 years professionally, but I really having that breadth of friendships.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not going to do that. I'm being tactful I'm not going to do that, but I think it's a really interesting point because the choice of a life companion is really an important decision. And if you get that wrong, it's a bad thing. And so I just be very thoughtful about that and really nurture that and do a good job with that. And the difference one person can make. This is a very interesting thing about this human condition. Like you have these friends and they can go on for decades and they're so important as a source of happiness, but especially for men. Like if you get that life companion thing wrong or if you choose a life companion and then your life changes dramatically, just really be thoughtful about that. Having a group of friends who really treat you like a friend is very important. And it's, you know, you had Chris Davis on your podcast and he said something, which”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They have Yeah, I was laughing at dinner last night with an investor who we both know and was teasing him about this time at a prior dinner last year. He had said to me, Brian, I really enjoy our time together. And your fun company and you're smart. I feel like I learned things from you. But we're guys. And we might see each other five times a year. And that's big for male friends. And he pointed across the table at his life companion. This wonderful woman he's with, and said five times a year with you, but I'm going to spend $360 the next 365 nights with her. So she's two orders of magnitude more important to me than you are. And I said, are you saying we should be more intimate? So I thought that was funny. Mathematical. I've been so generous to you.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think buying an electric or a hybrid car is a good thing. I think if you bought an electric car in a place that uses coal to make the electricity, I'm not sure what you've really done for society. So I would do some work on that. I hesitate to recommend the purchase of an electric car because it's more expensive and you've got range issues. I own a Tesla. It's an amazing car. But I drive a little secondhand Honda HRV because it just gets better range. Living in New York City, it's harder to get a Tesla charged. So I don't know. I think the choice of an electric car is a little bit of a personal choice. If they were cheaper in five years, I think it's going to be an easier decision. But saying it and doing it are different things. We need to see the electric cars get cheaper.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As bad as carbon dioxide, become a member of your community to pressure that utility to plug the leaks. I think there's going to be more and more information to be able to say, well, this company is responsible. That company's not responsible. And there's been a little bit of a lamentable trend where people buy credits. Like I hereby offset my carbon emissions by buying these credits to make sure that this forest in the Amazon is reforested or something like that. Some of that may be okay. What I really think we need is good data so that people can see the problem and pressure from consumers. Also ultimately pressure from taxes. That's what I think will fix this. And I think a lot of the oil and gas industry would welcome it.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Book to look at. I think another thing is there are now, you know, ESG is a movement is becoming much more defined. The environmental, the E and ESG, there is increasing quality of disclosure of what businesses are doing in terms of carbon intensity. The European companies are leading the way. There are now efforts underway in the United States for U.S. companies to be required to disclose their carbon footprint. I mentioned before, my friend Mark Brownstein, environmental defense fund, is about to launch a satellite into space that is going to provide free data on the methane leaks everywhere in the world for everyone to see. And so let's just drill down on that. Like if you're a utility is revealed by that satellite data, which I think will be available in six months or something a year, your utility is leaking methane, which is a terrible greenhouse gas, like 30 times.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's a great question. I think one thing that you can do is it's a little dense, but there's a pretty good summary. Get a book by a guy named David Mackay called Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air. He was a Cambridge professor of physics, wrote this book, distributed it for free. It's been described by Greenpeace and by Shell Oil as the best book on renewable energy ever. And it goes through point by point, like what you can do, what you tangibly can do and what the real impact is on emissions as a homeowner. Like one thing that stands out is heat pumps. One thing that stands out is, you know, ride a bicycle more. I mean, but you can these things are turned from gestures into actual measurable actions by his numbers. So I prize numerousy of many things. That's an amazing.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It becomes interesting, but you have to own things. If you're going to own them for the long term, especially, you have to own things that are not creating a pie, only some of which is going to the shareholders. And you just have to define that pie as being good for the environment as well. With a rational price on carbon that society can live with. And I think that this question, is it unethical to own a coal producer? That's sort of an interesting question. I think more relevant is that coal producer, if we really had a rational climate policy where CO2 emissions cost $100 a ton, would that coal producer still be in business? And if the answer is no, you shouldn't own it.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wrong thing. This is a societal price on carbon that's lowering our overall societal emissions. And some businesses are sustainable because they are providing the goods and services that we need in order to survive as a civilization and as a species for less than that cost. And therefore, it is a sustainable business. And so the two businesses at Oakcliffe owns, I believe, pass that test. So I really don't think this is ethical. I think the ethical thing is a bit of a false argument. I think it's really, do you own something that ultimately is going to survive this crazy missing money political problem and ultimately is sustainable? And in the meantime, by the way, because a lot of these businesses are shunned, if you own a business that's generating a lot of free cash flow that's run by people who are buying back the stock, and it's ultimately going to be sustainable, it can be a very good investment.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Different government policies. When a politician who is innumerate and may be ignorant of these things stands up and proposes a policy, it may damage a market or a business. And you just need to be able to anticipate what they're going to do and own something that survives through this policy of this period of, I think, muddle. And then that gets to the third point, which is you need to be in things that are sustainable, like truly sustainable, sustainable, informed by the real need to sustain human civilization as well. And so if you imagine ultimately $100 a ton carbon price, I'll bet you we could reduce carbon emissions. I'll bet you if people did better insulation of their homes, it might cost just $20 a ton. At some point in the future, I believe there'll be a general price on carbon. And this will no longer be an ethical question of are you doing the right thing? Are you doing the right thing?”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can't grow crops anymore. So you would spread animal and human waste on the land. When was the last time any of us have done that? Then it was guano. You know, you'd put it on boats off of the coast of Chile and ship it up here because it was 8% nitrogen by weight. That's extraordinary. And then this German comes along and he manages to synthesize it from natural gas, which comes out of oil wells. It's 78% nitrogen by weight. But no one knows that without natural gas, there would be 80% of the food on their table wouldn't be there. So I guess that's the overarching thing. Like a lack of understanding as to what really is sustainable, what our society really depends on is the first point. I think the second point is as we wrestle with this and deal with the missing money problem and try to figure out a way to intelligently reduce the emissions, you need to choose your investments to survive this interim period of”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The crops depend on ammonia that synthesized from natural gas. If a guy named Fritz Haber, I'm sorry, the Bosch process for creating ammonia in 1912, like if the way the nitrogen used to be put onto crops was animal and”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bring these people together at a cocktail party, they'll talk about all sorts of interesting things they have in common. None of them will be their professional experiences. Whereas two people meeting in 1780, they will have read Plutarch and they will have had John Locke and they will have read, you know, there's like a library that you could carry around. Human knowledge has exploded. One consequence is like 1% of the population farms now used to be 70%. You could have a conversation with anyone about farming in 1780. I mean, what do you and I really know about harvesting crops? What do you really know about drilling for natural gas? If we had no fossil fuels, so an interesting thought experiment. I think we would be, you and I would be dead in 10 days, 14 days? Dead. Because, you know, here in New York City, there's like three days of food in the supermarket. Like every morning, the trucks come at seven in the morning. I mean, they're powered by diesel.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess like an overarching point and then two things about investing. I think the overarching point is that we're so rich that most people, even very educated people, have no real idea where our energy comes from. There's a wonderful book that's actually on the list that I want my kids to read. It's by Vacliff Smill. It's called How the World Really Works. And he makes us beautiful point in the introduction, which is, I think it's the last time that two educated people could meet and reliably know half of what the other person knows was like 1780. The specialization of information has gotten to be the point where the glory of large language models and then genetic botany that increases crop yields. But then this person is a trial lawyer.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have to suppress your standard of living. I don't think the American people are ready for that. And so the politics of it are very tricky.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“World where taxes were 1% of GDP through import tariffs and there were like six frigates. You know, it was not like how can you have a representative democracy rework the most complicated economic machine known to man, which is called the power grid, but that's the missing money problem. And I'm just hoping we get to the answer soon. I just one other thing, and this is, it feels a little bit like a rant. You can't have a price on carbon until you have a legitimate substitute because if you put a price on carbon and you don't have a substitute, the way that your carbon emissions will go down is less economic activity. Like what you need is you need the Elon Musk of the world to create cheaper solar panels, cheaper batteries, cheaper electric vehicles, and then bring the price signal to push us all towards that substitute. But I think the way our politics are toxic already, like if you said to people, guys, you really can't drive as much. You can't buy as much. You can't.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No matter what irrationality the politicians do, we'll prosper. But you also need to own things that eventually, because I think we'll get there, the cost of this subsidization and inefficient path will grow to be so great that eventually a price on carbon will be imposed and you need to own something that when there's a price on carbon, let's say $100 a ton on all CO2 emissions, your investment will prosper. I'm really looking forward to that day. I think a representative democracy is actually pretty poorly placed to manage an economic problem of this nature. It's like the biggest engineering project ever undertaken by man. And our founding fathers, I think, if you had described to them this problem, they would have said, oh, the system is not going to be very good at this.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or the guy with a battery. Biden's Inflation Reduction Act offers $60 a ton for people to put CO2 in the ground, and they offer 30% off of the capital cost of the battery. For a politician, this is really exciting because the guy with the carbon sequestration project or the guy with a battery project is also a donor. So the donors give money to the politicians, these different things get subsidized. It's not the efficient path. The efficient path would be a price on carbon that allows the missing money problem to be fixed in the most efficient way possible. And for an energy investor, and Oakcliffe has a couple things that are energy investments, it's tricky to navigate because what you need to do is you need to recognize that the politicians are operating both from a lack of numeracy and from a need to be re-elected in a system where they're going to do these things that are economically irrational. So you need to own things that”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Politicians understand the need to reduce emissions, but they're operating in a system where they need to be re-elected. In my experience, very much a minority of politicians, by far below 50%, don't have the numeracy or the physics or the economics to understand what I just said about the missing money problem. And so they very much understand the desire to get re-elected. And so what they do in response to popular desire to see emissions fixed is rather than They basically have two choices. They can put a price on carbon, which would cause society to have a real price reflected through, which would cause people to put a price on carbon emissions, therefore doing alternative behaviors, reducing those carbon emissions, or they can subsidize the guy with a solar panel.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Emergency. $3,000 is a ruinous number. That doesn't even include, that's just your retail electric price. That's not the cost of more expensive chicken in the refrigerator at the grocery store. So that's the economics. This energy transition is not being driven by lower cost and higher efficiency. This is being driven by a need to a very understandable need to reduce emissions.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay. In Germany, Germany is up to 44%, and they're at 44 cents, 44 cents. It doesn't sound like a lot. 44 cents versus 19 cents. If you take, if you had German power prices here, if you doubled the share of our grid provided by wind and solar with battery backup, and you also have to pay for natural gas plants to sit there for the times when the sun doesn't shine for three days at a time. You went to 44 cents, German power prices. Every household in America would have an electric bill annually that is $3,000 more. $3,000. And that, who pays that is the missing money problem. $3,000 is not a lot to some members of our society, but data from the Federal Reserve Board, 40% of American households can't come up with $400 of emergency savings for a medical.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you have a solar panel You claim that the energy produced by your solar panel is cheaper than that of natural gas. But you, the solar panel developer, don't have to pay for the battery necessary to store the power at noon. And you don't have to pay for the natural gas plant that is necessary for when you have, let's say, three days of cloudy skies, society has to pay for those in some way. And so the missing money problem pops up in all society so far, whether it's California or Germany or two examples where your penetration of the electric grid goes above 30% wind and solar, your cost of electricity starts to spike. So the numbers in the United States right now, 21% of electric grid is powered by wind and solar. We have a 19 cent per kilowatt hour retail electric price.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Transitions. Now we're in another energy transition, right? This energy transition is not driven by the lower cost and higher efficiency of the new modality. It's driven by the need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gas. And so far, and there are a lot of people working on this, so far the expense of this new energy is more than the old energy. And so here's an example. And this, you know, I have a very good friend, 25-year friend, who is leading thinker at the Environmental Defense Fund working on matters of climate change. He's actually two weeks from now. He's going to be in California. They're launching this satellite into space funded by Jeff Bezos, backed by Google to monitor methane emissions all around the world. It really is doing amazing work. His name is Mark Brownstein. He calls it the missing money problem.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Economic achievement was dependent on how many animals or humans you owned. Flesh, wind. That was the first. Those were the first prime movers, right? Then we had coal and coal from 1802 onward, all the industrial revolution and the railroads and all of that. And then coal gave way to oil and gas. In 1912, the Titanic launches. It's powered by coal. I think it's pretty much the same year. Churchill, who's the first sea lord of the Admiralty, is making a decision, despite all the coal and Newcastle in the UK, he's going to have dreadnoughts be powered by oil because it's more energy dense, more efficient. So he's going to make himself dependent on the Persian Gulf, but his dreadnoughts will be as fast as the German dreadnoughts. So we move into the age of oil after World War I. Men and horses took coal to oil. That's free energy transition.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your 170 horsepower engine is delivering the energy of 3,000 people. It's like you're in a chariot being pulled by 3,000 people, right? Where wealth in Cicero's Day, he had 100 slaves. George Washington, we know, had 100 slaves. Like wealth would be 100 slaves. George Washington's one of the richest people in the American colonies. Turning on your corolla to go to get a latte. You've got 3,000 people working for you and you're paying them one penny an hour. So that is at the core of why when you look at world population going from half a billion in 1776 to 8 billion now, you look at GDP per capita exploding, it's this energy. We're a species that's deeply dependent on the physics of these hydrocarbons. The economics of it, like there have been energy transitions. So we had Cicero and George Washington and you're”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Standard of living. Cicero lived in the first century BC, Roman senator, right? His quality of life was better than that of George Washington, who lived 1800 years later. They're both agricultural societies. Cicero had toilets that flushed, right? Cicero's roads were better. If you look at GDP per capita between 100 BC and 1776 AD, there's almost no change. I mean, there are wooden ships and compasses and gunpowder, but very little economic innovation. 1802, James Watt discovers the steam engine and can start to use coal to create mechanical energy. So today, we've gone from steam engines to internal combustion engines. When you turn on a Toyota Corolla to go get a latte at Starbucks,”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of this new energy economy, these batteries, which are powering these amazing Tesla machines, the energy density of a lithium battery is 150th, 2% of that of gasoline. And gasoline, you call it a fossil fuel, but we as a society, we're 4,000 years into our civilization, have not discovered as energy dense a substance as gasoline and its cousin diesel. There isn't another one at room temperature just sits there. It's good forever. The only thing that is close to that is more energy dense is uranium and plutonium. You need a containment vessel. You're not going to see a nuclear-powered car. So if you think about the impact that this incredibly, you call it a fossil fuel, you could also call it a miracle fuel. The impact that gasoline and diesel and coal before them have had on our society. If you think about...”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Her own work. And if you take gasoline, which has been called a fossil fuel, which is true, it comes from old animal and plant biomass that's been compressed in the earth. It's basically a bunch of carbon and hydrogen atoms attached to each other. The energy in those carbon and hydrogen bonds in a gallon of gasoline is 34 kilowatt hours. So a gallon of gasoline has within it 34 mand days of work, which is an extraordinary amount of energy. And people complain about paying $4 for a gallon of gasoline. But when you work out what you're paying per man hour of work, you're paying one cent. And moreover, the kilowatt per hour per gallon, like if you say, well, let's take lithium, which is at the core.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Missing money problem. I think it's the physics, the economics, and the politics. So let's just go through this in order to organize this, the physics of it. And not many people understand this. We're so wealthy. We've gotten detached from where our energy comes from. A well-fed adult human working 10 hours a day can create like a kilowatt hour of electricity, of energy. And a kilowatt hour. Of work from a well fed adult manual labor would keep a 40 watt light bulb on for 24 hours. That's what a human being can create.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, so my father and his partners with Yorktown, 120 investments, I've helped them from 2013 till 2021. I was devoting some of my time to helping them develop a renewable energy practice because they were investing in oil and gas companies. helped them lead investments in battery companies, wind companies, solar companies, and help them recruit a new team of people. raise the next Yorktown Partnership. Energy investing is sort of the family business. And as long as I can remember dinners with people from the oil patch or trying to make this happen. So, I mean, I have a really hands-on sense as to what happens in order to keep the lights on. And so saying it and doing their different things, this is from some combination of talking about it, but also watching people do it and invest. In it. So I guess.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lenin predicted this. And so outside on the street, they were selling these surplus busts of Lenin made of steel or something for 25 cents. So I bought one and brought it home. And I've collected them since. I have this bust of Lenin on my desk to remind me of the danger of certitude, like the danger of ideology. Like that, this guy was so confident and so compelling to his followers that he took his country from 1917 until 1991 on a wild ride of insanity. And if you diverge from the ideology, you got shot in the back of the neck. And how many people were subjected to famine and all in the service of an ideology, right? And so it's just to remind her that no matter how confident I feel about something, and maybe especially because I feel confident about something, I should have a”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where the curators of the museum had said, Well, Lenin predicted this. Lenin predicted that. So there's this whole thing on how Lenin predicted the rise of the proletariat, and it had happened in these countries. And Lenin predicted this scientific breakthrough, that scientific breakthrough. There was a room where it was the room of information technology, and they had a big statue of Lenin and a whole bunch of slogans of Lenin from writings, I think in like 1920, where they cherry-picked some things that he'd said to say that he had predicted the personal computer. And on this sort of stand was a Russian copy of an Apple II computer. And it's 1988. So Apple II's, I think, introduced in 1981 or something. This is seven years late. And it's a Russian Apple II. And it's like twice the size of an American apple too. And it got bolts and it's clunky and all this stuff. And there's this big, it was translated for us.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there's two common things in each of the places that I work. One is a bust of Lenin, the other's a nap couch. You can see the nap couch behind me. I mean, if a day goes by and there's not a 20 minute nap, that's a failed day. I think our bodies, at least my body wants to nap at about two o'clock after lunch and to try to power through that with caffeine is unwise. So that's one thing. The bust of Lenin reflects In December 1988, I was studying in England and we had a chance to go on a trip to the Soviet Union before the wall came down. And we were in Moscow and Leningrad. And on the trip to Moscow, we went to the Lenin Museum. And the Lenin Museum had all these things that Lenin had said and done, but also it had these rooms.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You never know what a wormhole is. I mean, maybe at the bottom of the wormhole is an investment idea that doubles your money. So I guess it's a constant. How do we spend our time? Like, I write myself a note every morning. These are the four things I want to get done today, and I try to cross them off by the end of the day. But there is no playbook for this. It's something new every day. It's kind of exciting. I don't know what will happen. At the beginning of each day, I have no idea what will happen at the end. What will be important? Who will come in? People visit us. People call us up. We call people. We learn things. I don't know. I wish I had a good answer for you. I wish everything was perfectly planned out, but it's not”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I find to be endlessly fascinating. So it may look a little intense to other people. I don't really know any way to do it.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Squash games a week in addition to the kind of morning workout stuff because I've got three guys I've been playing squash with between two and 10 years and we're all getting older at the same rate and our objective is to play squash indoor 80s. I'm 57 now and I find it's just wonderful to have the squash club is four minutes walk from here. So it's just a nice interlude in the middle of the day. And I'm home by 6.30 or 7. I am an amazing wife who I spend time with. We have really good friends. We have four children between us, three of mine, one of hers. It's a second marriage for both of us. Spend a lot of time with our kids, spend a lot of time with our friends. But I'm working on the weekend too. I mean, it does not feel like work. I mean, reading another annual report or reading another book about an industry, reading more information about some corporate leader and the choices he's made.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I am pretty competitive. That's true. And I really enjoy this. I don't think I could do this if I didn't. I mean, I find this to be the most intellectually stimulating and interesting thing I've ever found to do in solving these puzzles has just fascinating. So it does not feel like work. I guess that's the first point. It really does not feel like work. Like if you told me I had a year to live, I think I would spend a little bit more time with my family. I mean, this is what I want to do, but I'm up at 5.30 in the morning. I work out. I'm at the office by 8. It's a bunch of reading. It's pretty unstructured. When we're in intense afterburner mode, there's phone calls with different people we want to cross-check with, customers, competitors, suppliers. There's travel pretty infrequently. You can do a lot of this with this amazing Zoom technology. And there are...”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That out of those 10 things where we turn on the afterburners, we might have two decisions a year to invest into a new idea.”
2024-04-28 · We Study Billionaires · RWH044: How To Beat The Market w/ Bryan Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT