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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“It goes a bit beyond 80-20. I'm now writing a book called 80-20 Beliefs. And in order to do that, I've interviewed 50 people that I know very well and who I trust to tell me the truth and they trust to tell me some of the intimate things about particularly what went wrong. And I asked them two questions very simple questions. One is, is there any belief that has really made a big difference in your life that at any stage you have changed? So you used to believe X and now you believe Y. And 90% of the people, 9 out of 10 of the people know it's a very small sample, but it's an extraordinary coincidence if they're all saying this and it's not quite true generally say that they have at some stage changed an important belief and a belief I'm not talking about something which is an academic belief”
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, and again, people, you know, some people like living where they live. Other people find it noisy and unpleasant. Other people find it too boring. Why don't you go and live somewhere that you actually really like that suits you, that has the same sort of people that you enjoy seeing in the street? Why don't you do that? Most people just doesn't cross their mind. I think in America it's one of the redeeming features of America is that people do move around a lot. But we're talking in Portugal and indigenous Portuguese. They don't move. There are a relatively few number of things that you do, and of course you have to read one of my books to find out what they are, but they're absolutely obvious.”
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. And it's amazing. I go around asking people, who are your best five friends in the world? And people come up with a list. And then I say, who are the five people that you spend most time with? And very often, the lists are completely different. And that tells you that that person, they might be happy, but they're certainly going against the grain.”
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
“Anyway, you get the picture. And then, you know, one of the things that I say in the 80-20 book, which you very kindly helped say is worth reading from people, the 80-20-20 principle, is that why don't you spend more time on the things that you like? So a lot of people say, well, pleasures, you know, this is not very spiritual, you know. People like pleasures. Would you rather spend an evening with people that you enjoy spending an evening with? Or would you rather spend an evening with people that are miserable?”
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 liabilities. It's what I said. It's not what he said. And we don't like lawyers anyway. So go away. Yeah, send your lawyers' letters, Gambits.”
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, many people don't love their jobs. And one of the reasons that they don't love their jobs is because they're doing it for money. Now, I think money is wonderful. I think money can help to make you happier. But if to earn a lot of money, you have to work for a boss who's an ogre or just not very nice or inconsiderate or makes you work very, very long hours and doesn't really care about your welfare, you're going to be much more miserable than working for a boss who's relatively relaxed, cheerful, happy person themselves. But how many people don't like their boss? It's ridiculous. Absolutely should resign or you should poison the boss or bump them off, you know, absolutely. A very, very still killing of the boss folks.”
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
“they might have different values but they're married you know well that's a pretty dumb thing to do so the first thing to do is make sure that you have a successful long-term relationship and if you do that you're going to be pretty happy the second thing that you must do according to all the research is you've got to love your job”
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 are very few indicators of whether people are going to get divorced or where they're going to have a happy long-term relationship. One of them is that they're friends. They actually like each other. Well, that's a blinding glimpse of the obvious, isn't it? But how many married people do you know who actually really don't have the same interests or they don't share the same pastimes in any regard?”
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
“I think it's very important if you're from a purely selfish point of view, if you want to be happy, you want to be in a relationship with someone who's very happy themselves. It makes a huge amount of difference. There are some people who are just incredibly difficult to live with because they're miserable. It also, all the research shows that there's a guy who's got a love lab called Dawn Gottman. I think he's in Chicago. Sure. Yeah, Gotman.”
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 argument goes much beyond that, which is to say even if it was correct, you don't have to assume that it's immutable. You don't have to assume it cannot be changed. And if you want to be happier, there are various ways of doing it. Again, one of the best documented findings of sociology is that people who are married are happier than people who are not married. Now, of course, there's no worse than an unhappy marriage or partnership. I make no distinction at all between a long-term relationship and a marriage because not everyone gets married these days. But it's a very good bet to be married rather than to be single. Throughout your life. But coming back to 80-20, that's one thing that you can do, which is to make sure that you have a long-term relationship with someone, preferably someone that you really like, it's going to make a huge amount of difference. And there are various other subsidiary things. For example,”
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
“Ever met someone who's had a really miserable childhood and then when they left home have actually enjoyed life a lot. I've met many, many people that shouldn't”
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
“Yes, I mean, the way that sociologists and psychologists do that is they ask people to rate their happiness on a one to ten scale and they interpret the results. It's a subjective rating. And a lot of people say, well, people don't really know whether they're happy or not or they pretend to be happy when they're not happy. I just don't believe that. I think that people generally do know how happy they are. And when they give you a rating, they are giving you an honest rating. If you ask people Have you actually deviated significantly from what you say now? You say eight, okay? So that's pretty good. Very good today. Was it true that you were always in a range of six to ten? I mean, that's something that, for example, UVA Harare, whom I know you've interviewed, says that there's a little bit of leeway there, but there's not a hell of a lot of leeway. But have you...”
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 dentistry actually also affects lifespan. And you look also at the fact that unless people get cancer these days, they are likely to last much longer than they would have done a generation ago, much longer. Maybe depending on the country, might be the average length of life might have been 50 years about not that long ago, you know, 30 or 40 years ago. And now it's 80. What does that mean? It not only means that people can live longer and healthier lives than they used to live, but it also means that there are fewer bereaved people, and that also is an enormous cause of pain and suffering.”
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 few children actually lasted beyond five years. And as a result of medicine improving immensely and also hygiene improving immensely, that's down to a negligible level. Imagine the trauma for a mother or a father in seeing three or four of their children die before the age of five. That's a huge amount of human suffering. removed. People forget about that. Dentistry, you know, when I was growing up, a visit to the dentist was a cause for great trepidation. And I remember the dentist having this drill, this enormous drill in my small mouth when I was about nine years old. And it just made such a horrible noise that you just knew it was going to be painful, even if it wasn't particularly painful. Nowadays, you don't get that. Dentistry has improved immensely.”
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
“Kisses, right? Yeah, driving their Porsche rather too fast. But yeah, the evidence actually on lotteries is very mixed and it isn't as simple as people say. All the evidence, if you look at it on a subjective level of people reporting, is that people who are wealthier are actually on average happier than people who are poor. And this is true if you look at it in countries. It's true if you look at it within a particular country. And it's also true if you look at it in terms of people's lives. I don't know very many people who become very rich who are much more miserable than they used to be or indeed not happier than that they were. And it's often said that the pursuit of material things is useless. But what about medicine? What about dentistry? Before the 20th century.”
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 think in happiness, and I'm very, very keen on talking about happiness because I've been thinking about this a lot recently, personally and for other people. Happiness depends on very, very few things. For a start, there's an argument which says that we have a baseline happiness level and we gravitate back to it and is connected in some obscure way to genetics. I've never actually seen a good explanation of how it is related to genetics. But nevertheless, it is intuitive in a way and people give examples of when you get married, you're suddenly very happy or when you fall in love, you're very happy when you get married, you're still very happy. A year later, you may be no more happy than you were a year before you met Mr. Wright or Miss Wright. And so that's temporary. And you revert to your habitual basis.”
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
“between the investment performance and venture capital is an extreme form of this. It's not 80-20, it's 991 or something like that. And network businesses are the same thing and wealth is the same thing. You know, I mean, just think about Bezos or Musk, you know, just think how much money they've managed to make out of essentially one investment each, which has been fantastically successful. So the 80-20 principle runs through a stick of rock with the seaside's name is sort of always running through. It runs through the whole of my thinking. In terms of my own success or money, but also things like happiness, I'm trying to think, what are the few things that I need to do in order to attain what I want? What is the 20% or what is the 1% or whatever?”
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
“I mean, this is something I don't approve of at all, which is that, you know, we tend to think about time as always disappearing and that if something's bigger, it's actually going to be to the right of the graph. BCG put the bigger thing on the left. So the cash cow and the star were on the left. Whereas logically they should have been bigger than the other side. And I don't know that someone made a mistake and it just got grandfathered in, you know.”
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
“Noticed this. I'm descending to Doguru. Don't worry about it No. The thing which had the greatest sales was on the left rather than the right. Normally, you would say if it's bigger,”
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 need to get rid of these. And one of the things that you had to get rid of were most of the question marks, which were very high growth, very sexy because they're in very high growth markets like artificial intelligence today, but never having cat in hell's chance of actually becoming a market leader. So what BCG said and what bailing companies said to those companies is sell them. Get out while the go is good because it's a sexy business, sexy market”
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
“Going to have lower costs because it's got greater scale, or it's going to be both. It's like sailing across the Atlantic and discovering that there's land at the other end, even if it's not the Indies. Once it's done, everyone says, we'll go to America. But before it's done, it wasn't obvious. It enabled BCG and then later Bain& Company to make tens of millions of dollars very early in the game when they weren't very large.”
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
“A cash cow is something that throws off cash because it's low growth and it's very profitable because it's the market leader. A starter business is a business that is in a high growth market and therefore is going to grow much faster. And because it's the leader in its segment, it's going to be very profitable if it isn't very profitable already because it's going to have either higher prices than people who have a lower market share because it has less brand reputation or less popularity.”
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
“Water okay got it cash guy honestly we drank a lot last night I haven't drunk anything today no so cash cow is the leader”
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
“Take a piece of paper and draw a line down. The axes are the growth rate of the market. Where it's high or low, below 10% or above that. And the other axis is the relative market share. So a business that is in the top left-hand quadrant because BCG drew their graphs backwards was high growth, but it was high relative market share. In other words, in very simple English, it was the leader in its particular niche. investments have all been my successful investments all been in style businesses.”
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 he went. So, Bill Bain then worked in the Boston Consulting Group. He was one of the co-inventors of the gross share matrix, the cows, the stars, the question marks. I had no idea.”
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 Bruce then hands at the end of the day, he hands these assessments that all his senior people had made of Bill Bain, all of them giving a thumbs down to actually hiring him. And he says to Bill, Bill, what do you think about what my colleagues have said? And then Bill Bain reportedly said to Bruce Henderson, with the greatest of respect to your colleagues, they are wrong because I understand how to make a consulting firm very, very successful and I know how to sell to people who've got a lot of money and chief executives of companies because I've raised a huge amount of money for the university even though you decided in your mean way and it didn't exactly spell it out quite like this not to do that. So I'm going to be very 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
“Refuses to give him any money to the university, but says, why don't you come to Boston? Because I'd like you to meet some of my colleagues and we might give you a job. The colleagues were totally aghast at the idea that Bill Bain should become Just a member, but quite an important member of Boston Consulting Group. They said this guy is really intelligent, but he's totally unqualified. He has no credentials whatsoever. And sure he's very intelligent, but lots of priests are very intelligent. We're not going to hire a whole bunch of priests, are we? So I'm sorry if I'm digressing a bit. PCG.”
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
“Wanted to dig into that. I wouldn't tell the story if it hadn't been a happy ending. The happy ending actually hinged very much on Bill Bain. ECG were going to fire me, Tim. I arranged an interview with Bill Bain and I was very lucky to do that because he was the head of the company. But they were looking for people at that stage because they were growing at 40% a year. There's a theme in this which is very, very high growth. Bill Bane was a complete genius because he was a historian. He did not have an MBA. He did not have an engineering degree. He did not have a quantitative degree of any kind. He was a historian. And he then met Bruce Henderson when he was trying to raise funds. He gave up history research. He thought that was very boring. And then he got a job with his old university in Tennessee. And his job was to raise money. So since Bruce Henderson was an alumnus of the university, Bill goes to see Bruce.”
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
“Can I just say that this question about history being important, I've got another empirical justification for this because I would bring into the courtroom exhibit A, which is Bill Bain. Now, Bill Bain was the founder of Bain& Company, which was probably the most successful strategy consulting or consulting firm in the world during the 1980s, 1970s, 1980s. It was founded after the Boston Consulting Group set up by Bruce Henderson, who was the pioneer. He was like the Charles Darwin of strategy. He believed in competition and he saw basically a Darwinian world of competition, and he worked out system for that. And Bruce founded the Boston Consulting Group, which I worked for for a time. They fired me. So I still think it's a wonderful, wonderful company, and I think they're probably right to fire me.”
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 at that stage, I'm trying to be realistic. And I might ask other people who are more sane than I am, that is less optimistic to actually make the same calculations. And then I just look at what the results of those are. But it's not rocket science”
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 some of them I've employed in the past who would go through a whole series of spreadsheets in order to try and work out. But I just say, what's my best guess? And then I will double.”
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
“Politicians would forget about the bit that they don't want you to know. But nevertheless, it was trading on gambling and gambling is an addiction. It's like alcohol, et cetera, et cetera. So a lot of people from the left and the right are opposed to gambling. So it could have gone wrong. But then you do an expected value calculation and you say, well, if it doesn't go wrong, I can make a hundred times my money. If it does go wrong, I lose all my money. Let's assume that the probability of it going wrong is more than 10%. Then you still, on an expected value basis, as long as it wasn't your only investment, but if you've got a portfolio of investment, then you could just go ahead and make the investment.”
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, they could have been closed down and, you know, there's a Labour government there, and thank God the Labour government was not a loony left Labour government. And, you know, you can just see the story. All these poor working class people who haven't got very much money being taken to the cleaners by this nasty betting exchange.”
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 a more cheerful scenario, an even more cheerful scenario would be that the growth rate was sustained for a little bit longer at a tiny percent more. And then you'd make a huge amount of money. Another scenario would be the government closed it down because there was no legislation which covered an online betting exchange.”
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, it's really saying the future is terribly, terribly uncertain. I mean, one of the great historians that was at Oxford when I was a student there was Alan Taylor, A.J.P. Taylor, a socialist, left-wing sort of guy. But he was a very, very good historian. He said the future is a land of which there are no maps. So when you look back in history, everything seems inevitable. But when you look forward in history, it's wide open. And so in thinking about an investment, you always got to say, what is the most likely thing that can happen and what are the outlying things that could happen? So the most likely thing for Betford, for example, was that the growth rate of 60% a month would go down to 10% a month or 5% a month. But all you then need to do is run the numbers or the implications of that would be for the future.”
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
“Yes, exactly. So, all these things were complete freak occurrences. I think Lenin coming to power was a complete freak. That would not have happened if the Germans and the Swiss had not given him safe passage to Finland Station in Leningrad, what became of them. Revolutionary Party would have been in power, and it was a middle of the road, I suppose you'd call it, left-wing capitalist political party. It was a bit like the British Labour Party or the Democrats in the US today.”
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 means it didn't have to happen like it happened. So a counterfactual to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 would be there was no war. The Kaiser went to see his relatives in Buckingham Palace and they had a drink and they decided that they would defuse the situation. And sure the Archduke Franz Fernand had been assassinated. But he didn't necessarily have to mobilize all the troops in Europe because one guy had been bumped off by an anarchist.”
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
“They can imagine how something will go very badly wrong and a whole lot of money is lost and they can imagine how you can make a huge amount of money.”
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
“Yes, they're absolutely tie together because history is great at teaching you to think. So history is all about counterfactuals. What could have happened as well as what did happen? What were the causes of the First World War? Why did Lenin manage to establish the communist state which lasted for 70 years? Why did Hitler, who was completely loony and a very nasty piece of work, how did he manage to become the Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and then the rest is unfortunately all history? But those questions are difficult questions and I think the teaching of history, I'm very passionate about teaching of history in schools in particular, I think it's the best possible way that people can think about scenarios and venture capital investment is absolutely thinking about scenarios.”
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 didn't even pay them any money. We didn't know this was going on. We got a call from Drink Program, BBC and said you might want to tune in at 7 o'clock in the evening. We had no idea. That was a very lucky investment and we sold it to Vinland Sprit, which was the Swedish state liquor monopoly, which owned absolute vodka. And they paid us more than they should have done for the company. And we made a 16 times return on 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
“First of all, I invested in Filofax, and that made us seven times return. This was in the 1990s. Then I invested in Belgo, the Moolfreit restaurant, Mussels and Chips, French fries. And that made me six times return. Then I invested in Plymouth Gin, where I was incredibly lucky, which is another story. We happened to get the top spot on the ratings of the experts on gin, BBC television, got together 30 experts, so-called, in tasting gin. And the gin which they selected”
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 business for them were very high. They were only taking 2% of the total amount of money stayed, but the total amount of money state pretty soon became very, very large. And their costs were a fraction of that 2%. So it didn't take a genius sitting on the fish pond to say, hey, if they continue to grow at this rate for the next five years, or even if it went down to 10% a month, then I'm going to make a fortune out of this. And I put as much money as I got into that company. It was a million and a half pounds at the time. It's all the spare cash that I had. And then when the opportunity came to buy shares from some of the early investors, I poned up again.”
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
“Outflows. If it's because What's the point? It was growing at 30% a month. And then it went up to 40%. I asked them, just tell me one simple fact. Every month since you started, over the last nine months, what were your billings? And what was the growth rate? The numbers were tiny, really tiny, but the growth rate was fantastic. And at one point, they were growing at 60% and 100%. I think this was just about the time when I put my money into it, which meant that their monthly revenues were doubling. And anyone who understands anything about arithmetic and exponential growth knows that that doesn't have to carry on for very long before you have a very big business. And if I had a very big business because they didn't have to have betting shops and other premises and they didn't have to have a whole lot of overhead, they had a fairly simple internet system and that was great. And they spent money, you know, they had to upgrade it over time as they got more customers. But the margins...”
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 gambling, yeah, exactly. Well, gamblers as well, probably. Some of them. And so they ran out of money. And then they went back to all the people that they'd seen before, professional venture capitalists, and said, we've run out of money. Can we have some more? And they said, well, we weren't going to give you money in the first place. We're certainly not going to give it to you now that you're on the verge of bankruptcy.”
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
“How do you expect us to give you money for this idea, however brilliant the idea was? And all of the professional people, the people who ran the racing post, the newspaper and all the rest of it, took a look at it and thought, you know, this idea is not going to fly. It was perfectly obvious to me as someone who was a gambler that it was really attractive, that my money could go much further, I could have bigger bets, and I wouldn't have to fatten the sexuals. It was a blinding glimpse of the obvious that it ought to grow enormously. But not only that, Tim. It was growing. So after nine months, they ran out of money. They raised money in the first round from their friends and family. And people had mortgaged their houses. And they tried to put as much money as possible in, but they weren't rich people and they didn't have a lot of money.”
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
“Didn't really know what they were doing, and no reason that they should have known what they were doing. I mean, they were brilliant in their own way. Andrew Black, absolute genius. But he'd never worked in a company as a manager. He'd never worked in financial services. He'd never worked in gambling. He'd been a professional gambler, so he understood gambling. But he didn't understand business. And they were pretty thin in terms of the other people who understood business. So they went around the city of London. This was back in 2000, the year 2000, and they tried to raise money from professional venture capitalists and anybody else that would be a professional, so investment banks and people like that. And they all came back sort of, you know, totally incredulous. You haven't got anybody who's been the chief executive of anything in your company. You haven't got any people who've actually worked in business before at a senior level.”
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
“Firstly, the concept I just thought was unbelievable because anyone who's a serious gambler should be betting through a betting exchange. They should not be betting through bookmakers. That's a really dumb thing to do. But it was easier than that because the company started, and I have to say this, and I hope they're not listening, but the people who started the company...”
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 means that your money can go much further, you can make larger stakes, and you can actually win money. With a bookmakers, it's impossible to win money over more than a very short period of time because they close the account.”
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
“They actually restrict the amount of money I can put in as the new stake. And I tried to tell them that I've got a lot of money, and I don't think they believe me. So I've never gone to the stage of actually sort of, you know, sending in my audited financial statements or anything like that. But, yeah, anyway, so I'm out of favor with Betfair and they're out of favour with me. But it's a wonderful system because if you gamble a lot.”
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
“I'm no longer on the board of Bedford, and I'm not terribly sympathetic to them because they won't let me lose enough money. And that's another story. But they restrict the amount of money that I lose. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose on a year. If I'm actually losing money,”
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