YouSaid · the spoken record

Hetty Green

lines on the record: 21
first: 2019-12-22
most recent: 2019-12-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Is that she prized the life that she led. And I think the key to happy life is getting to the end of your life with the least amount of regrets as possible. And she goes, I enjoyed being in the thick of things. I like to have a part in the great movements of the world and especially of this country. I like to deal with big things and with big men. Indeed, my work is my amusement, and I believe it is also my duty. And then finally she passes away at 81 years old and it says a millionaire a hundred times over. She had made her mark besides Carnegie and Morgan, Vanderbilt and Rockefeller. But she was different. She was an enigma, a blue-blooded heiress who identified with the common folk, an interloper, a female who triumphed in the male world of finance, an independent who answered to no one but herself.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is more advice. So, this is Hetty dies at 81 years old. This is when she's almost 80. I love advice from old people. I just think they know more than we do because they've obviously had a lot more experience than we have. This is really interesting. She says, when it comes to spending your life, there have to be some things neglected. If you try to do too much, you can never get anywhere. I think that's good advice for life. It's also good advice for you in business. Hetty's going to encourage you to be focused, to not like spread yourself too thin. I think Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett would say the same thing. Henry Singleton would say the same thing. Andrew Carnegie has told us the same thing. This is over and over and over again. David Ogrevy, just over and over again, you see this advice. You just got to figure out what that thing is that you want to focus on. And no one can answer that question for you, but you. Not only do I love advice from old people, but I love the fact that there's another paragraph from her from when she almost, she's almost, she's at the end of her life. And I think this is the single biggest important thing.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because this causes envy, kind of related, right? Don't fail to go to church for the church needs you and you need the church. Don't forget that riches dishonorably gained must be left behind someday. And when you depart, you will find the gates of heaven doubly bolded against you. Don't forget to be charitable and don't falsify.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was very interesting. So now she's much older. She's so old that Hetty's son is having to kind of run her business and keep track of investments. So she hands out her son. She hands him out. I love this idea of negative advice, right? I think it's usually in many cases more positive, more beneficial than positive advice. What is Charlie Munger say? He's like, me and Warren are not trying to be smart. We're just trying to not be stupid. That's negative advice. So she, she could tell her son anything. She didn't tell him, do this, do this. She says, avoid this when you're running the business, avoid this. And here's her list of don'ts. She handed out a list of don'ts. Don't cheat in our business dealings. For sooner or later, your conscience will trouble you and you will worry yourself into your grave. Don't fail to be fair in all things, business and otherwise. Don't kick a man when he is down. Don't envy your neighbors. Don't overdress whether you have the means or not.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The idea that we're so arrogant in what we think we know about a world that's way too complex for our tiny little human brains to understand that we think that we could ever cure like we've now entered the age where there's never going to be any more financial booms and busts. Like that's ridiculous. Hetty reflected on the panic of 1907. Hetty believed the problems could be traced to another source. There's one reason why we have hard times. Well, there's probably multiple reasons, but this is her reason. Money easy, coming and easy going. American children are not taught how to save money, but how to spend it. These are all direct quotes from her. Everything they want, give it to them as long as you know the price of the credit. That's the policy of the modern mother and she's raising nation of spendthrifts who's one thought is to get what they want when they want it, regardless of cost. So essentially saying they're just not disciplined financially. And then there's like this herd-like tendency for humans to react all the same way in booms and busts. And Hetty makes money just by going against her.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Banks are, excuse me, black clouds hung over the debtors. Many had little choice but to divest their holdings. Hetty watched as the rich men arrive. They arrive chemical wanting to talk to her. They sought her out to sell off their possessions. As rates rose more and more of the solidless men in solidist men in Wall Street, she said, from financiers to businessmen came to call, begging. It's a hell of a word that she's using there, right? Begging to unload everything from palatial mansions to automobiles. They came to me in droves, she recalled. She knew a panic was inevitable. That's amazing. So that's like, you know, right before the bubble burst. It also reminds me of this interview I listened to or watched or listened to. I don't remember. But Warren Buffett was saying, you know, right after the financial panic or I guess the run-up to the financial panel back in 2007, you know, got tons of calls. Hey,”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Huge boom. She owns a lot of real estate. She's like, oh, this is strange. I think it's time to convert real estate to cash. This happens to a boom before the bust. The cost of land skyrocketed around the country as people race to buy up real estate in cities, towns, and rural communities. Inevitably, the cost of borrowing the money to buy the land rose precipitously. While others bought Hetty sold. I saw the handwriting on the wall, she later said. Every real estate deal which I could possibly close up was converted into cash. Could you imagine you have that she has as huge gains from this huge real estate bubble, right? Gets out before it bursts. Then the financial markets are going to burst too. And now what's she left with? Piles and piles of cash. She earns one win into another win into another win. Let's go, Hetty. All right, so what's happening at this time? People are becoming, what's going to happen? I mean, you know what's going to happen. People that are overleveraged are going to go bankrupt and heady and they're going to sell their assets to Hetty for pennies on the dollar.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there's this huge boom that's going to happen right before it busts in the panic of 1907. So this is how Hetty maintained the composure during the run-up before the panic of 1907. It's actually really interesting. So it says in the frantic heat of the market, Hetty kept a cool head. She attributed her success chiefly to her basic rule, always buying when everyone wants to sell and selling when everyone wants to buy. Along with her unruffled outlook and good judgment, her fierce focus, endless reading and intensive research all helped her penetrate the complexities of the market, determining when stocks were cheap demanded the thorough knowledge of their history, their dividend paying possibilities, and what they had sold in the past, she said. If one can buy a good thing at a lower cost than it has ever been sold for, he may be fairly sure of getting it on the cheap. So what does she do, right? She tells you she's just, I'm going to take the opposite of what everybody else is doing. That's my general thesis in investing is what she's telling us. So at this time, there's a”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Use that wealth to buy the independence to live as we wish and the strength to battle and overcome any objections that get in the way of that is something I admire about her. This is very hard to do in my opinion. I have a really hard time of turning it off. She apparently did not have that problem. At the end of another long day, she parted from the bank leaving behind the feel of Chris new bills, the sounds of bonds being clipped, and her concerns over finance. Business never disturbs me after business hours, she said. I never worry about things. I do the best I can every day as I go along. So this time, where are we? We're in like the now we're nineteen oh one, okay? I want to introduce you to another person that's going to be a future founders episode. His name is John Gates. He's known as Bet A Million Gates. Let me tell you a little bit about him. John Gates was a smooth talking barbed wire salesman turned daring entrepreneur. And he led the merger mania that's about to occur here in 1898. He combined seven factories.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Huntington ran out the door. Okay, now I want to go back to Ned because she gives really great advice. I always say, like, if you want to get good advice with somebody and they have kids, ask them the advice they'd give their children. And this is advice she gave her son. Years of his mother's training had taught him to study every aspect of the subject. From the condition of the road beds to the state of the rolling stock to the rates to charge for freight. So he was just talking about how detail-oriented she was, right? But he was sometimes too nervous to make a decision and telegraphed Hetty for advice. You were on the ground, she answered. Mind your own business. Once when he was visiting his mother, she told him about the New Bedford whaling captain, whose two sons served as officers on his ship. They carried the titles and wore the uniforms, but stood aside while their father did all the work. When their father died, the two young men tried to steer the ship, but without experience they lost control. The bolt ran aground and all was destroyed. The message was clear. Ned learned how to take.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even though her Quaker family weren't into drinking and being wasteful, they did still, you know, they're blue butts. They were rich. And this is, but she didn't like the idol rich. She respected people that had authentic achievement, right? People that knew the value of dollar made their own money, even if they inherited some of it. Like they did something with it. There's a lot of people where they just got money from their relatives and they just sat and they parted all the time. Hetty was not, she did not respect those people. So her daughter's about to marry one of these people. It winds up not working out. But this is, I thought it was interesting. So this is what her daughter, this is her talking about her daughter's potential husband, who's an heir to a family fortune. She says, I found that your young man is very nice and proper, Hetty told her daughter. But if it wasn't for his father, the world wouldn't know a thing about him. He has never earned a dollar and doesn't know the value of money. Hetty had only disdained for self indulgent social.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“know they were a road industry right so with railroads propelling the country she wanted him at the forefront but she knew he needed an education in how the railroads functioned before before he could captain his future along the track the time had come for him to see his operations from the inside limping along the tracks with his new cork leg he had one of his legs amputated above the knee he toiled as a section hand and foreman on the Connecticut River railroad weeding and clearing the track running a locomotive and eating lunch with the working men a quick student he learned the ways of the railroad and after several months gain an understanding of the process from there he was sent to Cincinnati where he worked as a superintendent and then as a manager director of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad this was interesting about her personality she had a high disdain for self-indigent socialites which is interesting because if you think about it like”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, this was hilarious. Let me read this quick paragraph to you and then tell you what is the context. What surprised Hetty was not that Hetty took the train to save money. Rather, it was that she had secretly acquired far more shares of reading railroad than anyone knew. She was a rare person who could hold her tongue, and they sheepishly had to admit that she managed her business far better than most men. So what they're talking is she shows up at like a stockbroker. She shows up with a million dollars of stock in Reading Railroad. And for some reason or another, it has to be transferred from New York to Pennsylvania or something. I don't remember what it was. And she's like, well, how much are you going to charge me to transfer the stock? And they're like $100. And she went ballistic. And she's like, why would I do this? I could pay $4 round trip and do it myself. So that's what she did. So she's traveling.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You couldn't do that. Their offer was not in cash. Oh, and if you want my vote, you have to pay me $130 per share. Further negotiations led to her triumph and true heady style. She sold her stock for one hundred twenty seven dollars and fifty cents.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“occupied her thoughts. I want to tell you a little bit about what it was like to negotiate with Hetty Green and how she makes a quick $368,000 profit. She gets a visit from some railroad men. She goes to two men from the Richard Terminal made her an offer that seemed too good to refuse. She had bought the stock of the railroad at $70, now was selling at $100. The officers of the railroad offered to buy her $6,400 at $115. That's $15 buck market, obviously. Hetty wrinkled her nose at the cash and declared she would be willing to sell, but only if they paid her more. She would accept the deal at $125 a share. They declined and left. They soon appeared again. This time they said they would agree to that if she would agree to support their candidate for president of the railroad, they would sign a contract secured by collateral to buy her shares at $125. Oh no, she sniffed, dismissing their bid.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is what she preferred most, and it's not going to be a surprise to you. She much preferred common people to the stuffy socelites of the upper class, even though she belonged to the upper class. What she preferred most was her work. She loved digging up the dirt on businesses, and she loved the nitty gritty of finance. I have a head for numbers, she said. They light up and tell me a story. Something interesting about Hetty too that surprised me. She was nomadic. So she was used to shuttling between places. She moved like a nomad from boarding houses to flats to hotels, from Brooklyn to the Bowery, Hempstead to Hoboken, changing her name, evading the press, the public, and also the tax man. Like thousands of New Yorkers then and now, she escaped city and state taxes by refusing to establish a residence. Where she lived mattered little to her. Her days were a whirlwind of transactions, and night all she wanted was refuge. More important issues”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For dividends, read her newspapers thoroughly, scoured trade papers, perused periodicals, checked pertinent journals, essentially, those are all different descriptions that she read. This is what I was talking about earlier. Probe the men in the office and converse with her male colleagues. She said in the book that she really loved that so many men respected her intelligence, that every day people would visit and try to pick her brain stuff. She was very proud of that. When she had read, quizzed, grilled, interrogated, and investigated enough when she had studied the cost, analyzed the assets, and dug through the debts when she had found the answers to suit her, when she knew the true worth of a company and understood its weaknesses, when she was satisfied that its basic values were sound and its assets strong, that the downside risk was capped, they say low, but I use the word cap and the upside high, then she invested her money. So that's a description of how she's working.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We see her starting to lay the foundation of what she's going to do her whole life. The bonds would prove to be an outstanding investment. And now we're going to get some words from Hetty. I started out by buying government bonds, Hetty said, describing her first year in Yunnan, using the gold she received as interest, she bought the bonds at a discount and earned a solid dividend. Only a small group. Now here's also the key term to Hetty. She liked Claude Shannon, like Warren Buffett, like Ed Thorpe. She would collect a lot of information. And here's the weird thing about life. If you just read more and you're reading the right stuff, that puts you ahead of so many other people. Humans are unbelievably lazy. Like, it's shocking. And the fact is, like, Hetty read more and studied more than other people. That's in part to her success. That's a really low bar. That's not, you know, you're not running marathons every day. You're not picking up boulders. Like you're just observing.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All right, so his father dies, the will is announced, and it's not good. She would receive the income but not control of the principal. Hetty was crushed, diminished by a sweep of a pen. Her father was dead and most of her money would be managed by others. Once again, she felt betrayed. For years she had apprenticed at her father's side. For years she had shown her father how skillful she was in finance. For years she had proved she was smart as any man. Yet gone was the respect she had thought she had earned. So the note I left myself was, wait a minute, does she build her entire empire off of the investment income? Not the principle, which is what the generations before would have done. They would have given the entire given the entire principle to the person, to the heir, which is in her case, which in this case was Hetty. And she does, which makes her story remarkable in the sense that, wait a minute, she built an entire empire just off of investment income. Imagine what she could have done with her skill set and the entire principle. She ends up suing.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A carriage indeed. Perhaps you can afford to ride in a carriage. I cannot. And then another way to learn about the personality of somebody is through the quotes and the things that they are attracted to. And so this is Hetty would repeat, this quote that came from her favorite poem. And now she's quoting her favorite poem. She says, to live content with small means, to seek elegance rather than luxury and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich. Okay, so now I want to get into her early life. One thing to know about her early life is she was raised in a Quaker family that she comes from multiple generations of successful whalers, which was a massive industry at the time. In fact, the city, New Bedford, it blew my mind to find out in the book at the time where Hetty was alive and her family was operating the whaling business. It was the richest city in the world per capita. Okay, so let me tell you a little bit about our father.”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I want to go over, pulled out a couple other excerpts that will explain to you the person behind the ideas. And so if you could only, if there's only one sentence that could distill her personality down, it would be this. And this is a quote from her. She says, I never set out for anything that I don't conquer. More examples of her personality from the book. When Sylvia, who was her aunt and the richest person in Massachusetts at the time, when Sylvia warned her away from a dangerous horse, Hetty took it upon herself to break him and rode the wild animal until he settled down. Here's another idea, a little quick story that'll give you an idea of her personality. On one occasion, she trundled down with a satchel stuffed with $200,000 worth of bonds, and handed them over to John Cisco. John Cisco was her banker at the time. Her banker admonished her for carrying negotiable securities on public transportation. It's dangerous, he told her. You should have taken a carriage. Hetty shot him a look with her steely eyes and replied,”
2019-12-22 · Founders · #103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source