YouSaid · the spoken record

Richard Koch

lines on the record: 170
first: 2023-07-05
most recent: 2023-07-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Oh, other beliefs which are important. One of the things which I found very, very interesting was that most of the people who were apparently happiest and I believe were happiest had either It should be a religious belief. But if people really did believe that there was some logic to life, whether or not it might mean that there was no logic. But anyway, something that explained everything, evolution is very good at that because people can explain almost anything by evolution, usually fallaciously, in my view. Or if people have a religious belief, it didn't matter if they were Buddhists or fundamentalist Christians. It didn't really matter whether the belief was intellectually respectable or not. If people really believed it, then it was quite effective in terms of the actions that people took. And you don't have to do the right thing for the right reason. You can do the right thing for the wrong reason. And so the people who were less happy didn't have any strong religious or philosophical beliefs.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very often the children, he said, my mother said, I particularly praise my children when they've been kind to other children. So it's kind of a double whammy from that point of view. But it's, you know, you go out of your way to make life a little more comfortable for people that you can see are suffering. And I think despite sounding a bit sexist, I think women generally are more attuned to that than...”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But a lot of women, almost half of the women mention kindness. And I knew because I knew the people that they were kind people. They weren't just saying that pro forma.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People say, I follow my conscience, which sounds very sort of goody-goody and all rested, but actually is psychologically makes a lot of sense. Because if you follow your conscience, you can make a decision and you always feel good about yourself from that point of view. Other beliefs which are very useful are karma. You know, belief that what goes around comes around, and sooner or later, if you're a bastard, it will catch you out. People will stop inviting you to dinner or they'll say nasty things about you or whatever. People's reputations are very important, particularly in business, but in any walk of life, I think in any walk of life actually, people who are disrespectful or don't behave well, eventually get found out in some way or another. So karma is another one. Kindness, just the idea of kindness. This is particularly popular amongst women, I have to say, in my sample, very small sample, probably not statistically significant.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a minor opposite and the major opposite. So the minor opposite, very important, is what I call good beliefs. So I then ask my second question of people. You remember the first question was, have you changed an important belief in your life, which I don't define as a toxic belief because it could be good or it could be bad, but it always turns out to be bad. And then my second question is, well, tell me about the three or four beliefs that have made a difference in your life where you've actually acted upon those beliefs. And which two or three or four beliefs, or maybe only one belief, do you actually believe, has that actually been a good belief from that point of view? Has good consequences for you and for other people? Then you get another list of about 10, for example, some...”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Group 70 or 80 hours a week. I was failing. The longer I work, the worse it got. And the worse the stress got to the point where, you know, I was thinking of throwing up work altogether. They are related to each other.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the general culture, that we actually must do something. And one of the things that is my particular bugbear is working hard. You know, people think there's some virtue in working hard, and of course working hard, you know, some people like working hard. But beyond a certain point, it becomes counterproductive. And it's always because they were brought up that way. You know, we used to think that If you're a decent human being trying hard to be good and all rest, you had to work hard. It was part of the package. But there are so many examples of people who don't work hard, who make a much greater contribution like Bill Bain or Bruce Henderson despite having a charmed life once they've somehow come to a major insight which can have huge consequences. And you don't need to work hard. When I was working at the Boston Consultant,”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Great unhappiness or great stress is a signal that there is a toxic belief. Now let's try and work out which one it is. So I actually had a slight disagreement with my agent about this guy. I sent her an early draft of the book and she said, well, I'm not convinced it's as easy as you say to change a toxic belief. And I said, well, actually, you're right about that, my dear agent. You're absolutely right about that. That's because they don't realize that they've got it. And once they realize that they've got it, then it is remarkably easy. Because no one wants to be unhappy and stressed if they understand the cause of it, obviously. And too often we actually think things which are not in our interest. Their ideas which have been implanted in us by our parents, by our teachers, by our schoolmates, by our friends, or that”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, once they've rumbled the belief, then it's easy to get rid of it. But if they didn't. Then they could carry on for 20 years, and then they might go through a lot of therapy, they might go, you know, and gradually discover it. But there's another method which I have discovered is very effective, which is if someone is suddenly or at least in the next last six months or last year, much unhappier than they used to be, and particularly if they're suffering stress, then there's a toxic belief. Lurking there which needs to be rumbled. You don't automatically jump to knowing what the toxic belief is. But if you say actually”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it doesn't. I mean, I actually categorized the 50 people, 40 of them said they had a toxic belief. How long did it take for them to realize the toxic belief existed and how long did it take to actually change the belief and to a more positive belief? And it was remarkable, Tim, that in nearly all cases, once someone had actually recognized the belief, once they rumbled it, as it were, then it was very easy. If people didn't rumble.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Perhaps and sit down and then hand them a list of toxic beliefs and say, I think I might be suffering from a toxic belief. Which one do you think it is? And of course they'll zoom in on the one which is obvious. It's always easier to spot someone else's toxic belief than it is to spot your own.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We could see that you weren't happy in that. Carry on. And far from it being a black mark against her, the next year she was promoted to head of English. So we build up this picture in our mind that organizations are much more ogreish and sometimes the boss is much more an ogre than they really are. Sometimes they are an ogre, of course, but very often they're not. And the organization is more realistic than the individual. But there's often the sense that people who have an overdose of the what I call the Protestant work ethic think you can't disagree with the boss, you can't disagree with the organization. And that's another very common toxic belief. And in the book, 80-20 beliefs, I will list about a dozen which I think encompass the great majority of toxic beliefs. But there's one way of dealing with this, which is to get a friend, go out, have a meal, have a few drinks.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Imagine that's not a particularly pleasant job, it's always sort of following up on a problem. And teachers like teaching, believe it or not. You know, and that's the whole point. And so they said, I love teaching in the classroom, but having this particular person I'm thinking of, having done this head of year thing for six months, I decided that it was very stressful and I didn't want to continue doing it. But I thought that I had to do it and I talked to this, to come back to your question, this is one of the ways of doing it, is talk to a friend. She said, you know, I talked to my brother about this, and he said, nonsense. They won't fire you and it won't be a black mark if you tell them that you don't want to do this. Because nobody wants to do it. And so she went to the headmaster and said, you know, exactly that. And he said, okay, yeah, yeah.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there are, such as what will be as a common toxic belief. Another toxic belief is that life should be easy. Another toxic belief would be that it was absolutely essential like me to make money or to be successful in this particular job. That would be a toxic belief. Another toxic belief was very widespread, is that if the organization tells me to do something or to move to a job that I don't really want, it will be a black mark against me to not actually take that promotion. And I remember two people were teachers, and they both had the experience of being asked to do something which was an administrative matter. And they both did it and they both hated it. One of them was to be head of year. Now, what head of year means is you're responsible for discipline. And what that means is that if a kid's a naughty, you go and talk to their parents.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From branch to branch. He was so bad that demotivating people, that all people underneath him eventually said to him, look, Bruce, this is not working. People would go to Citillus, who was the head of London office when I was there and say, do you know what he did to me and actually mentioned this during the memorial service for Bruce Henderson after he died? And he said Cy was very dry sense of humor. He said, it was not necessary to ask who they were talking about. You know, I mean, I used to joke about it. I said, if you hear that Bruce is on his way, jump out through the window, escape.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. And people would actually break into a clause and someone's budget was going up. That was the one thing that Bill was concerned about. You know, if it had been Bruce, for a start, Bruce would never have a partners meeting. He didn't see the point of that. To him, it was all a matter of concepts. And he wasn't really interested in the revenues. If they were good enough and continue opening offices and swan round the world and basically terrorize the consultants in a different office, then Bruce was happy. Bruce was not a very nice human being. Although he was a genius, the global campaign of terror.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then he was smiled and said, welcome and have a drink. So that was how he was like. He had red lines. Basically, all partners had to be there at the partners meet. Not only that, but what they had to do was to say on the clients that they were responsible for how much revenue they made in the previous months, how much revenue they're going to make in each of the next three months.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he said to me, Richard, did you not know that we were starting the partners meeting this evening with drinks and dinner? And I said, yes, I had a client emergency bill. And he said, I was beginning to start. When we have a partners meeting, you have got to be here, or you will no longer be a partner.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And all of the partners had to attend. Now, I thought it was nonsense to go from London to Boston for a one-day meeting. And so I didn't turn up for the first day of the first drinks in the evening. And one of my colleagues who was later to be partnered with me in LAK, Ian Evans, was whispering on the phone. He was saying, you've got to get here, you've got to get to Boston. Bill was furious. And I said, no, I got a client emergency. I don't want to go to Boston in any way, you know, I don't want to fly. It's ridiculous flying overnight and I don't like flights. He said, you've got to get here. So when I turn up, Bill makes a beeline for me. And I say to myself, this is great, Bill thinks I need important.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are you better than Bill Bane? And Ralph would say something this has all worked out in advice. Ralph would say, well, Bill certainly thinks so, and I happen to think that his judgment is very good. And they collapse in laughter and the chemistry would be assured from that point onwards. That's genius. I must tell you this, because the thing that was quite extraordinary about Bill was he worked out how to run a consulting firm without doing any work or doing probably about two days work a month. The way that he did that, apart from extreme delegation, was that he had a monthly worldwide partners meeting.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The chief executive was interested in that particular sport. Anyway, they'd talk about that for five minutes. And then Bill Bain would then stand up. He'd stand up. And say to the chief executive, I'm sorry, but I've got to go now. And the reason I've got to go is I want to leave you with Ralph. You're like Ralph. Ralph is really good. Ralph is better than me. And then he will stand up and walk away. And go back to Boston. So the startled chief executive.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like Bruce Henderson, Bill Bain stopped consulting as soon as he possibly could. There was a lovely story about this, which I don't think I put in my books. But the lovely story was that he would be asked by a new client to go and work on a case. And in the early days, it was quite difficult to refuse if it was done in Bradstreet or Baxter Traven. Bill Bang going to say, no, I'm not going to work on this assignment I want to have an easy life. I don't want to do consulting. So what he would do is go along with Ralph Willard to see the chief executive at the beginning of an assignment. The chief executive has asked that Bill Bain actually works on the assignment. Bill didn't say yes, but he arranged a meeting with the chief executive and Ralph Willard and himself. And they would get in and they would have some pleasantries. He would talk about sport, you know, last night's baseball match or whatever. And he would research whether”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, being capital, yeah, exactly. And Bain Capital made more money actually, including for most of the early partners, because they put money into it, which then became enormously valuable. So anyway, so Bill Bain is exhibit A in terms of proving that historians can make money. And not only that, it goes deeper than that.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In making money, and he recognised that this was highly levered because the companies he was working for were very big companies and they were quoted on the stock market. So you knew what the value was of getting a certain increase in profits and increase in the growth rate of revenues and profits. And so it was very easy to see like me sitting on the fish pond and thinking about betfare that this was a formula for making an extraordinary amount of money and that he later capped that by going into the private equity business and helping those companies that they invested in make a lot more money. So they did the same sort of analysis.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now he explained the relationship, the whole thing. You know, he explained the speech that he would give to the chief executives. You know, we won't work for your competitors. You won't work for ours. And he had various things, but one of the other dicta that he had was to say to them, we are going to make a lot of money for you. Your profits are going to go up, but we don't want you to refuse, place any arbitrary limit on our budgets. So if we recommend at the end of the study, which has been very successful, that we do something else, you are going to say yes. Basically, it's a partnership. We're going to make you a lot of money. You're going to make us a lot of money. And Bill Bain was, this is another thing about being a historian, Ron, a business person or an MBA. He wasn't really fascinated by the nuts and bolts of consulting. He was really interested.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so it was good enough to be successful within Baine Company. The reason that I was asking all these questions though, Tim, was that from the very beginning, from the very first week that I'd been in BCG, I knew that I wanted to start a strategy consulting firm. Why did I want to start a strategy consulting firm? Because they made a lot of money. And one of the things that I had had as an ambition from nine years old was to be a millionaire. But I saw strategy consulting and being part owner of strategy consulting firm having seen or imagined anyway how much money Bain& Company was making, most of which ended up in Bill Bain's pocket. I wanted to be the owner of the strategy consulting firm. So I was asking Bill what the formula was out of visceral interest. And, you know, he thought Richard really wants to understand the Bain way of doing things. That wasn't true. I did want to understand it, but I didn't want...”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I became a partner in Bain& Company in record time. I remember there were people in Boston Consulting Group who, when I was fired as a consultant, were managers and they wanted to become vice president, which was equivalent to a partner in Baying Company. I became a partner from being a consultant within a year, and that was faster than these people in BCG could get promoted to vice president from a manager. So they couldn't understand this at all. And the truth is that Bill Bain decided there and then that I could be a partner of his. So of course I liked working at banking.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Arranging silver Didn't send me to Charm School. I was too senior to hear. I think they ticked that box erroneously. But never mind. What happened in that interview was that Billbone and I got on like a house on fire. He enjoyed the interview. He went and got one of the top five people in the company beneath him, guy called Rough Willard, who was a big fat man, but enormously cheerful and enormously optimistic and can-do sort of person. Ralph looked at me and said You may be very good, Richard, but you're very expensive. Anyway.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was like evangelical, you know, and people compared to the Bainis to the Moonis, and they talked about Bainis and the rest of it. There was a lot of truth behind that because they were fanatical. And the most important thing in the performance appraisal was attitude. And when I heard that, I thought this is ridiculous. This is just brainwashing. But actually, I came to believe that it was true. All of the people in Bain& Company were on the same side. In BCG there were factions. You know, there was a faction which was the English people thinking that they were smarter than the Americans, for example. And there's the intellectual faction and there was the banking faction. Basically, it was like a mosaic. And a lot of energy was being generated, but it was at cross purposes. So in Bayman Company, there might be less intellectual firepower, but there was more energy.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Delegate that to other people. But it was incredible. He was saying, we have got something really valuable to offer. They believed in the formula. They believed in the growth share matrix, even though it involved shooting dogs.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not work with Asks that you don't work with our competitors. In fact, they put it more bluntly than that. They said, we won't work for your competitors and you won't work for ours. And the effrontery of this, you know, it was breathtaking. And of course they did it quite smoothly. You know, Bill was a great salesman. He didn't actually want to sell business. As soon as possible, he managed to...”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Minute conversation about history of counterfactual stuff. And he obviously enjoyed that. But I said to him, Mr. Bain, I really want to know why it is that your company is growing faster than the Boston's consulting group. And I really want to understand if there is a formula behind it, what the formula is. And this was music to Bill's ears because what he'd done was work out a way of having a relationship, long-term relationship with the client. BCG would work for anyone. Bain& Company, again, it's 80-20 consistent, would only work for the top dog, the chief executive in a large company, and they wouldn't work for the head of a country, they wouldn't work for the head of marketing or anything like that. And they would, again, like me on the Fishpond, they would then say, how big could this be? In other words, we don't want to continually be churning clients.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, and then afterwards, I thought, well, am I not suited to strategy consulting? I said, yes, I am suited to strategy consulting. I understand the concepts very well. I can actually work out what people should do, not bad emotional intelligence. So why don't I give it a go at another firm? So I went along to talk to McKinsey. They rejected me. So that was fine. And then I managed to weasel away to go and see Bill Bain. Now this is where it gets very interesting for me at least because I had this appointment with Bill Bain to get there. I got through the London office who were very desperately short of people. So they thought that I would do. And they sent me off to see Bill Bain. And that was so lucky for me because Bill Bain was actually historian. I didn't know this at the time. And so he said, what was your undergraduate degree? And I said, history. And we had a 20.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Weren't fitting to the template. But my point is you're pathologically addicted. I had to be successful at BCG. Right, right. That was stupid. Yeah, you had the constraint on it.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, you're very clever because you're doing this and the other. This, that, and the other was what I wanted them to do, not what they really were doing.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Always helpful, and I did a lot of work which was solitary. In other words, the case team was me and maybe a junior assistant. And I was actually quite good at selling business as long as they weren't looking to be wowed in terms of heavy-duty analysis. And I'm quite intuitive, you know, so I could come up with what the company should do, and they quite liked that. But my colleagues didn't like that. And the more successful I was at selling business, the more they frowned on it because you said, you know, you're not using a proper case team, you're not doing it the BCG way. Where's the heavy duty financial analysis? Where's the final presentation? It's got whiz bang and sort of, you know, road to Damascus stuff and there's a vision. You prove that black is white and that they're investing in all the wrong things and they're stupid. Whereas I wouldn't go along to clients and say you're stupid. I would say...”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was very important to me that I got good credentials, I got good business school degree, I got a good degree from Oxford. I knew I was intelligent and actually I was able to make quite a lot of money even in BCG because they had a system of billability which said you get paid according to how many hours you bill and I made sure that I billed a lot of hours and I had various strategies for doing it. But I couldn't do what the BCG people really admired, which was heavy duty financial and market analysis. I'm actually, I think, dyslexic with numbers. I'm not very good at mental arithmetic. I'm very good at concept. You didn't have the fish part.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not only is financially successful. I wanted to be successful. Yes, and this was my first serious job. I hadn't been successful in my two previous jobs either, but there were good reasons for that, at least I could rationalize them How much they were going to make when they retired? And could they retire at 50 rather than at 65? So, you know, a ridiculous company. And then I worked for another company, which was much, much better, but I wasn't particularly successful at that either.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, that was a bit of a problem. I suffered. I mean, I know that this sounds ridiculous, but I really suffered in my soul for two or three years being miserable because I wasn't successful.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We suffer from them. I mean, in my own case, I had a pathological need to be successful. And when I was in my early 20s, as I recounted, I got employed by the Boston Consulting Group, which was wonderful. I loved the company. I still think it's a great company. I still think the people in it are very interesting, intellectually very interesting as well. And the whole thing, you know, it was great, except for the fact they didn't like me very much”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He did make the switch, but it took him about 20 years, and he said from a time because he started a business when he was in his early 30s and from being age 40 onwards, then he got into a pretty dark place at one stage, and then he started going to 12 steps meetings where people sit around and say, you know, I've had these difficulties, I've reconstructed my life, and I'm on the path to recovery. He also took some therapy and he also reflected on why he was miserable. And he did realize it was miserable because he expected life to be easy and it wasn't. Very often, having the insight into what a toxic belief is is the first step to actually being able to overcome it. Very often we don't realize what toxic beliefs we have and therefore”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That you can take pride in getting over difficulties. But when you're confronted with difficulties, what you do is like Alexander and say, it's too difficult, it shouldn't be this difficult, then obviously you're going to be miserable, despite objectively having a great success.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and running and selling this business. And he said to me, you must be joking. Those six years were years of high anxiety. I was constantly firefighting. It seemed so difficult to me. It seemed so difficult. And I said to, well, you know, it didn't seem difficult observing it. And he said, well, actually, it was because I expected things to be easy. And you remember M. Scott Peck wrote a book which starts, life is difficult. This is one of the great things about life. If you understand this, you can transcend it because you anticipate that things are going to be difficult and you can take pride in sort of overcoming difficulties. But if you expect there are going to be no difficulties, obviously you're going to be disillusioned. And so paradoxically, this miserable sounding philosophy which says life is difficult is actually a wonderful philosophy because it means”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And circumstances and whether good things have happened to you that day or whatever. But you can't go down to a three or if you're a three, you can't go up to a ten. But there are many cases that I know where people have actually transformed themselves. You know, I know someone who was incredibly miserable for a very long time. And why was he miserable? This person was miserable because upper middle class family. He said he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. And he expected that life would carry on being easy. And of course, when he left home and had to earn a living, he discovered that actually things were very difficult. Now, things were not quite as difficult as he imagined they were. I mean, for example, he started a very, very successful business and he ran that business for six years and made a lot of money from selling it. So when I was talking to this chap who I'll call Alexander, Alexander, I said, you must have got a degree of self-confidence and good feeling from your experience in starting.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By pure chance she has met a guy that she's getting married to now. They are very happy together and she's very, I mean, you can see that her eyes line up. She's really, really happy. Three or four years ago, she was in the depths of depression and sort of, you know, she was wondering whether she should follow her husband in terms of committing suicide. So it is possible if you take charge to actually do something. And that's why I hate this concept of the baseline happiness level because Marx said philosophers have tried to describe the world. The point is to change it. And similarly happiness levels. It's no use them telling you about the baseline happiness level and saying, well, they don't say it, but they almost imply that it's inevitable and you can't transcend that. So if you're an H, you're stuck between 6 and 10, depending on the weather.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“South Africa, but then she decided to do something about it. The point is, for the first 55 years of her life, she'd followed the lead of her husband and other people. She'd gone with the flow, the way that she explained it to me was saying, I believe Kesara Sara, whatever will be will be, the future's not ours to see. Kesara Sara. So in other words, she trusted to fate, and fate was very good to her. Her husband had gone and when the COVID regime in South Africa was so unpleasant, she decided that she could no longer go with the flow and she took a very brave decision that she would up sticks, sell her house in Cape Town, and come and live as it happens in Portugal. And that has been enormously successful. It has absolutely to come back to my earlier theme. It's transformed how happiness.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then shortly after that happened, COVID happened and there are many hard luck stories about COVID, but the one which Sally tells is that she had two dogs and the dogs were very important and particularly important after her husband was gone. And in the COVID regime in South Africa, she wasn't allowed to take the dogs out at any stage of the 24 hours of the day without risking imprisonment and having the dogs shot. In other words, you couldn't take them out to do their business or anything like that. You couldn't take them out for any exercise. And if a police stopped you, they would quite likely shoot the dogs and put you in prison. So she decided that this was not a very nice society to live in any longer. She loved living in...”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“until the last five years. And in the last five years, catastrophe struck her husband was diagnosed in the very early stages of having Alzheimer's disease. And he decided that in order to give his wife Sally a chance, he would commit suicide. Obviously, an awful thing and trauma, you know, for her as well.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sunny and very nice to Cape Town, actually, which is the nicest place in South Africa, unless you happen want to track wild animals. It's good for almost everything else. It's got wonderful beaches, it's got mountains, it's got very nice food, and it's quite cheap as well. So, you know, it's a good idea to go to Cape Town if you want, it's slightly dangerous now, but that's another matter. Anyway, she had a very nice life.”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, you might believe that one politician is better than another, or you might believe in green values, or you might not. I'm talking about belief that has made a big difference in your own life. And why is it made a big difference in your own life? Well, it's because you've acted in a certain way and that's generated certain results. So I ask people, what belief have you changed? And very often that, in fact, almost invariably, triggers saying that I actually believed something which was not in my own interest and I call that a toxic belief. For example, a friend of mine who's about 60 years old, she looks a lot younger, will call her Sally, shall we? Sally had quite a nice life. She moved from England, which as you know is cold and rainy and horrible to South Africa, which you know is...”
2023-07-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #680: Richard Koch — Revisiting the 80/20 Principle, The Power of Optimistic Journaling, Studying History to Improve Investing, and The Grand Beliefs of Winners (Plus: The Toxic Beliefs of Losers) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT