YouSaid · the spoken record

Tracy Britt Cool

lines on the record: 121
first: 2025-10-14
most recent: 2025-10-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I actually started writing letters in college to CEOs, and I just wanted to learn. So I wrote letters to different CEOs in business and in finance saying, can I come and pick your brain? I wrote a letter to Ace Greenberg at Bear Stearns, and he graciously said, yes, come down and visit. And so I came, went to the trading floor, sat with him for a couple of hours, and he just answered my questions as I thought about investing. He was, you know, obviously a legend in the finance field, but he was gracious and willing to spend time with me. And I think that was a huge lesson for me because people want to help other people and they especially want to help young people being a student. I was able to get access to people who otherwise probably would have said no and they probably should have in terms of their time, they were very busy, but it was a really great opportunity. I'd written one of those letters to Warren Buffett to bring a group of students out to Omaha in college and got to know him a little bit through that. I wasn't actually writing letters for jobs. I was writing letters to learn. And then when I graduated, I had a full-time job.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of academically, I hadn't been in a traditional career, but I had run our family business from a young age. And so I felt like I had experiences to draw from that would help me in the classroom and be relevant. And then third, from a career perspective, I didn't know.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there were a couple components. One is I had a mentor who had done something similar at a different school and she had really advocated if I knew what I wanted to do, that it was a path that allowed more efficiency and also not having to revisit it later in life. At that stage, I had found business I had found investing I knew I was passionate about those areas. I felt like I had a clear direction what I wanted to go do. I also think going straight from college to business school, which I advise the students now is really on three metrics, you need to make sure you're ready socially, you're going to be with students who are much older than you are on average. Academically, can you bring something to the classroom that's valuable and insightful and then career-wise, you're going to be competing for jobs with other people who have more experience than you. Socially, I'd always felt, you know, like I was older than my peers. I think the nature of growing up again in a farm or a family business is you oftentimes just get more independence in you age a little bit quicker. Second, I think.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It wasn't as structured or as disciplined as I would have thought. I knew I wanted to leave the farm as much as I liked the business side. It was hard. It was very, very hard manual work. And I wanted to get off the farm and, you know, go do something else. I didn't know what that something else was, but I knew I wanted to leave in high school, decided education was the way to get there. And I had always had good grades and done a lot of extracurriculars and managed a lot on a farm. But I wanted to apply to a lot of colleges. And I didn't know which one. I didn't know where. I just knew I could apply to all these schools and I probably could get into one or two that I'd be interested in going to. So I just sort of applied everywhere because I didn't know anyone at that time who had gone to Harvard or other schools. I mean, really outside of Kansas. And so it was a great opportunity for me to just put my hat in the ring and sort of see what would come from it.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, definitely self-driven. My dad, I was the youngest of seven kids. He had been married previously, so four from his first marriage and three from ours. And what I saw in that was like he just let me help me do a lot, probably more so than your average kid because he was older and he had seven kids and he's sort of seen it all. And my brother navigated sort of the farming part of the business. That wasn't my passion. But the business side, I did love. And so it started out small. My own farmer's market stand, but over time it was running our whole store and running more and more of the business. And I think he appreciated it. It wasn't my dad's passion either. He loved the farming side. And it was an opportunity to really learn and grow and try different things in a relatively safe space, which was really amazing.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Scalable system to improve my odds of success. And I saw our farmers market stand going from making $500 a week to $1,000 to $1,500 by the time I had really scaled it up, which was great for me and really just a fascinating learning experience.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which was an important lesson for me early on. And then I also learned in Essence business from a very fundamentally young age. When I was probably in third, fourth grade, I started running my own farmer's market stand. And so my dad would take me down the morning, drop me off. I would run it for the day and he'd come pick me up at the end of the day. And we got really busy. And I started hiring my friends. And I got a practice. Do I pay them by the hour? Do I pay them a commission? Do I pay them a bonus? How do I get the best performance out of them? I started thinking about supply and demand and pricing. I saw as we grew watermelons at the beginning of the season, they were $8 each when they were very limited by the height of the season when we had a lot. They were $2 each. Learning fundamentals of a business was really valuable, even if it was a farmer's market stand. I could get better and better every week. I could build the foundation of how to have repeatable.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I joke, I spent much of my life trying to get off the farm, and now I want a farm for my own kids because I think it's such a valuable landscape to learn and to learn work ethic and commitment and problem solving, all the things that come with being on a farm. My dad, you know, he owned this farm and he loved it. And so the first lesson I learned, when you find something you love, it really is a passion and something that you enjoy and you're not really working. My dad worked harder than anyone I've ever seen, late at night, early in the mornings, all summer long, all throughout the winter. He took a small break, but that was about it for him and it wasn't working. It was what he loved. That passion was something that I recognized and saw early on. Second, I learned a lot of independence on a farm just the nature of it is you're figuring things out. There's a lot of inherent dangers or risks I was driving when I was 11, 12 years old on the farm, not necessarily on the road yet, but I learned how to navigate unfamiliar situations.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is that card? When I went to college, people would often say, Where are you from? And I'd say Manhattan, because that's what you say in Kansas. And people start asking, like, oh, are you from the upper east side? Or where? I'm like, well, there's not really an upper east side. And I quickly realized Kansas was sufficient in saying where I'm from because most people don't fully appreciate. There's another Manhattan that's much smaller.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To have. And I think for us, it's like, how do we help leaders think about that and help them see around the curves that might be challenging? But I think those are a couple of reasons that it's becoming more difficult for leaders.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a few reasons it happens. One is I think change is happening faster and faster than it ever has, and it's very hard when you're managing a business and you're focused on your customer and you're focused on your product or your service to also focus on this outside world and landscape. You have things like COVID, tariffs, supply chain. There's always something happening now AI. What does that mean for your business and how do you navigate it? It's also a lot of false starts. You don't know, is this one here to stay or is this something that's going to be gone quickly? And I think as a leader that's challenging to navigate. I think second is if you think about most leaders, they usually grow up in a business oftentimes. And when you grow up in a business, you become an expert in that business, in that field, in that industry. But sometimes you don't have the perspective of seeing other industries that perhaps have come before you that are different but similar in terms of what happened. And so you lose some of that perspective. You gain the depth of experience, but that perspective is hard.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think for a long time in the investing world on the buy outside, what you saw was there was opportunity to buy businesses at seven, eight, nine times, and then a few years later, some minor improvements, sell them for 10, 11, 12 times. I think that that has shifted because capital is now commoditized. There's a lot more capital available to sellers than there ever has been. For example, in the 1980s, there were 20, 25 private equity firms. In 2020, we got close to 20,000 in the US, so significant shift in terms of the capital that was out there. As sellers, rightfully so, gaining more of that value when they're being partnered with, that means you have to create more value after the partnership starts. And that means more of a focus on operating. Traditional private equity, the focus is very short-term.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the internet had come along in the early 2000s, which had fundamentally shifted the business. And then the customer started shopping differently and shopping online, tampered chef was originally started 45 years ago now by Doris Christopher in the basement of her home to really solve this need of providing high quality kitchenware products to families around the country through a direct sales model. So there were consultants who sold the products. So in 2015 or 14, when I took over, it had 10 years of decline. So it was an interesting opportunity to come into a business that was in need of transformation where there was this opportunity to rethink the business model, rethink the approach. But I'd never done it before. So it was a fundamentally new role for me to take on in an industry. I didn't know. Ironically, I don't cook.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was really interesting. So I took the role up Pampered Chuff having no prior experience operating a business. I had been at Berkshire for about five years. I really had a view that the investing landscape was shifting and more value would be created going forward on the operating side, but that very few investors actually have operating experience, especially on the more buyout side. You see it more venture, but less on buyout. And I thought I'd be a better investor if I went and got out of the boardroom, got into the war room, and actually went and operated a business. So decided to become CEO of Pampered Chef. Pampered Chef was a business that was in need of transformation. It had been in decline since Berkshire bought it for about 10 years. And the fundamentals were intact. They had a really strong brand and a strong channel. So the MOOT was really there in terms of the business, but it had lost its way. Not dissimilar from a lot of ebbs and flows of consumer businesses where you grow, but your customer changes or the world changes. And in that case,”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I couldn't agree more. I think when you're in a company and you set a culture and expectations and an operating system, then you say to your employees, is this what you want to be part of? And if not, we understand that and you can choose to lead the business. But if you want to stay here, you need to get on board. When I was CEO, we were going through transformation. And I said to our team, often they almost told me to stop saying it was, if you're not having fun four days out of five in this new culture and environment, it's probably not right fit for you. And we encourage you to move on. We'll promote you to customer, whatever it may be. I think you want your team to be really committed, engaged, focused on driving the results, but also that it resonates with them and they care about it.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought it was single handedly the best book in navigating a turnaround, the time in which he did a turnaround in the business, how challenging it was, the landscape in two thousand eight, two thousand nine, Ford, the auto industry, I mean really, really challenging. And just the discipline with which he did it, everything from his team coming in and with Green every week, even though he was trying to get them to celebrate having reds in the business and the challenges and how to learn from those and making mistakes is okay. So I really appreciated that insight and just how he did it, having done a turnaround at a much smaller scale, I was incredibly impressed with his focus on people, his focus on discipline, his focus on building a culture. Learning, making mistakes, I thought that was just really eye-opening and just how he did it.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's so amazing. So that's been my focus and where I've found the most interest recently. And then also several books on parenting. So The Anxious Generation, obviously a lot of people are talking about, but that has spawned me going down a path on reading more about kids than free-range kids, books like that, of how to think about parenting and sort of this new world.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So on the biographies I just read, Melinda Gates view transition book that she just came out with not too long ago, which I thought was super interesting. Rewread Alvan Lolly's, you know, American icon, which I think is fascinating in terms of a turnaround and the impact of that. Recently reread Catherine Graham's autobiography.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We very much ascribe to the who process, so by GH Smart, there's a book called Who, WHO. It is, I think, single-handedly the best simple book on hiring. And there's a few components to it, and we've augmented it and added our own. But the first is building a really in-depth scorecard for the role. And so a good scorecard in our mind has three sort of critical components. The first is The second is, and then the third are...”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We only invest in one or two companies here. We'll look at 500, so we're really selective at finding the highest quality businesses that have a long runway. I also think a lot of investors haven't actually been operators, and so it's really hard to go into a business and say, this is what you should go do to operate a business if you've never actually operated a business.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was CEO, what I felt like was it was very lonely, it was challenging, it was hard. I was out navigating and trying to find resources, support. People would come before me who could help me in that seat.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source