YouSaid · the spoken record

William Green

lines on the record: 97
first: 2023-03-26
most recent: 2023-03-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Or both, and you can also get it on Amazon Prime. And so for those of us who have short attention spans and find it difficult to sit and read long books, you can treat yourself to watching free solo and can listen to my discussion with Fred about it. About what it actually means and what you can learn about how to survive as an investor based on studying this great free solo climber Alex Honold.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess, you know, you gave your five recommendations for books. I would add one recommendation that's not a book, but which is something I talked to Fred Martin about, which is I think people should watch this movie Free Solo, this documentary that I talked about at length with Fred Martin, which it's about someone trying to climb El Capitan, which is basically 3,000 feet straight of granite. And this guy decides to do it without ropes, without any equipment. He's just going to do it free solo. And Fred's point is that it's a brilliant example of risk mitigation, what this guy does. And I think it's all about survival. It's all about risk. It's all about trying to take considered risk, intelligent risk, so that you'll actually survive. And I would just really encourage people to watch it. I think it's on Disney Plus or who.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And Bruce is profoundly brilliant. Bruce is someone I was trying to seduce him into coming onto my podcast later in the year. And I think he's going to. And he doesn't talk often in public, so it'll be great to talk to him. He's a brilliant mind.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's for sure. And I saw Bruce Greenwald the other day stig, and Bruce said to me that he was talking about exactly that. He was saying that one of the things people feel when they listen to Buffett speak is, you know, he makes it sound so simple. And he's like, boy, is this not simple? This is not easy. It's really hard. And I think that's a worthy message for people to be aware of that, yeah, you can beat the market. Yeah, you can do incredibly well. But you got to be good. You've got to really take it seriously to be a kind of mental athlete to win at this game. You need to be really good and you need to be driven and devote the time to it.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The past diversify. Don't invest in things you don't understand. Like be a learning machine where you're constantly building your circle of competence, but at the same time trying not to delude yourself into thinking that you're better than you are and no more than you actually do.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Aware of the danger that things that are ascendant now are likely not to be in future and the things that are undervalued now are likely to have their day in the sun one day. And then I think Tillinghouse's idea of don't invest with crooks and idiots, that again gets back to the thing we were talking about right at the start of the conversation, which is it goes back to Buffett's point that you can't do a good deal with a bad person. You want to partner with good people. And then Tillinghouse's idea that you don't invest in things you don't understand gets back to something that John Templeton told me 20-something years ago where he said stay away from your own ignorance. And so investing is really difficult. As we've discussed in this conversation, it's really hard to beat the market, but at least you can give yourself an advantage by avoiding standard stupidities. So don't overpay. Don't assume that the future will look like.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That we live in a world where everything is prone to change, everything is prone to die. And there's creative destruction. You have to set yourself up to survive an uncertain future. And this is one of the great lessons from Howard Marks, I think. And from Joel Tillinghast and Joel Greenblatt, Charlie Munger, Buffett, all of these great investors. You need to build in some margin of safety when you invest because the future is so unstable. It's so uncertain. Things that are powerful and dominant now will not be in five, ten years. I mean, we have no idea whether Tesla is going to live up to its promise. And so should you pay a very rich multiple for Tesla? I don't know. I couldn't bring myself to do it, but maybe I'm totally wrong. But at least you have to be aware.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you think of manga, his revelation during the daily journal annual meeting, where he's just saying everything dies, everything is impermanent. And so it's really important just to go into investing and life with a sense that things are impermanent. And so a company that seems very powerful today may not be five years, 10 years from now. And so, and likewise, the conditions that are exist at the moment economically or in the market are not likely to prevail for several years, right? One of the things that Howard Marks talks about is that there's this kind of pendulum effect where the market goes from fear to greed or complacency to terror, overpriced to underpriced. And you see the same thing with the credit cycle. It goes from they'll lend money for anything and then suddenly they'll lend money for nothing. And so once you understand,”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“20, 30, 50, 100 times sales. And so there's this irrationality that creeps in, especially during bull markets, where you see other people making money and it becomes kind of intoxicated. And you lose your connection to reality, to the underlying reality of the economic reality of the business. So even with something like LVMH, I had a long discussion with Guy Spear about this when I was in Klostos, and Guy's fascinated by LVMH and by the luxury brand business. And he's like, look, it's an incredible business. And there are certain benefits that you get when you have their scale because you can kind of bully your way into the best stores and the, you know, and you get your second and third brands in there because you got such powerful brands. So there are definite advantages. But then he said, but I just can't pay that much for it. It's just too expensive. And so that's one of the things that's keeping Guy tethered to reality. It's just his sense of the valuations. And then this question of what businesses are prone to obsolescence and destruction.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By such an enormous margin over so many years. I mean, Peter Lynch said he's basically one of the greatest investors of all time. He's been extraordinarily successful. And the more that I talk to Joel about how he's done it, the more clear it became that it's partly by avoiding so many dumb things that blow up so many regular investors and professional investors. And so one thing he said to me is, look, he said, don't pay too much for any stock. don't go for businesses that are prone to obsolescence and destruction. Don't invest with crooks and idiots. Don't invest in things you don't understand. So just think about that list of standard stupidities, as Manga would call them, that get us in trouble again and again, right? Think of the number of people who overpaid for hot tech stocks in the last year where they got just eviscerated because they paid 10.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I tell you one thing that I learned from Joel Tillinghast's book is his tremendous focus on not doing dumb stuff. So, yeah, so he's focused on brands. He's focused on companies that are durable. So I think he's made a thousand times his money on monster beverage, which I talked to him about in the episode. So he's made money off enduring brands. But although Monster Beverage is probably about as far from Don Perignon as could be imagined. But yeah, a durable brand that he bought cheap many years ago and has held on to. But for me, the most powerful lesson I've learned from Joel Tillinghast, I think, is avoiding what manga calls standard stupidities. And so when I first went interviewed Joel Tillinghaster, Fidelity's office in Boston several years back, I was trying to figure out like how is this guy beaten them?”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That he really loves playing. And so I kind of admire him because of those qualities. And then, you know, the book is published by Columbia University Business Press, which picked up on the fact that he had written this self-published book. And Miles Thompson, who's this terrific editor there, who I've become friends with over the years, I think saw that there was something really good here and Kim did a new edition of it that was sort of new, improved, polished. And so I also think it reflects the fact that Miles Thompson is kind of a terrific editor that he put out this great book.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would have a line from Munga, the line where Munga said that best thing a human being can do is to help another human being no more. And so it's full of things like that where he's just distilled and synthesized so much wisdom about everything from living by an inner scorecard to delaying gratification. So I think there's something really, really central to learn from Gautam about, I never quite know how to pronounce it, Gautam, Gautam, so I'm sorry if I'm getting it wrong, but there's something really admirable about the way he set himself up to be a continuous learning machine. And then at the same time, he lives in this kind of humble way. He's not money obsessed. He's set aside a certain amount of money. He's made a certain amount of money off his investing and he's kind of happy with that. So he lives modestly and is just sort of playing the game.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of person who sets about synthesizing everything that he's learned from Buffett and Munga and Howard Marks and Kahneman and all of these great minds. And so I don't think it's not that it's a trailblazingly new book where he's gone and interviewed all of these people. It's that he's been incredibly committed about learning what all of these great minds are.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh sure. I was thinking as you were going through your list, I'm lucky that I actually know all five of those authors. So I'm totally biased because of personal relationships or interviews that I've done with these people in the past. And so Gautam is someone, is a very nice guy, really nice, really thoughtful, someone who came from a kind of modest background and was applied for so many jobs in investing. you know, he's been really open about how difficult it was him to get hired and how persistent he was in launching himself as an investor. And he's kind of indomitable in the way that he persists and in the way that he's become a learning machine. And so he's someone who's just really systematically gone about teaching himself the principles of investing. And so there's something just very admirable about that as a role model.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By sister in laws, and she cooked a really nice meal, and there was dessert, and I would have felt rude if I hadn't eaten it. And once that rule was broken, it was like the floodgates were open. And so I think sometimes giving yourself a simple rule that you can't break is actually a really helpful thing.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've invested with him for, you know, whatever it is, 22 years so far. And I've said to him I regard it as a 40-year investment. And so we'll see. If I'm wrong, fair enough. But I think in a world where most people are very short-term, if you can push yourself towards being long-term and patient, that's a tremendous advantage. And so I think having a few simple rules in life is hard. Like when I just decide, for example, that I'm not going to eat in the morning, I won't eat before noon. That's pretty helpful. And then when I decided I wasn't going to eat any sugar this year, that was pretty helpful. So when I was in Zurich and Closters and South Denno, would come with dessert and I'd be like, now I'm not eating any sugar. And it was very simple. It clarified things because there was a rule. And then I think I was at some dinner, I can't remember where it was, where there was a, oh, I think I went.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I have a five-year rule. So I'm really trying to prevent myself from doing stupid stuff because I sort of have to live with my stupidity if I mess up. But maybe that's a bad idea. I don't know. I really don't know. But I think it, I mean, Annie Duke had a good discussion of this in our conversation. It's worth people going back to because she was sort of making the point that you need to relitigate this situation, like go back and see, well, what's changed here? But I think there's something useful about having the five-year rule because it makes you less willing to make bets going in. If you know you're going to have to live with it, you'll make fewer bets. And so, look, I'm living with my Berkshire Hathaway bet. And I think of it, you know, I hope that I own it more or less indefinitely. I'm living with my...”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But at the same time, given that I'm writing and talking so much about investing, I also think it's a pretty good thing for me to have some skin in the game and to understand in a very visceral sense the emotions and the irrationality that go with making mistakes or doing well. And even with something like Seritage, it was so cheap that it's actually done pretty well anyway. So it's sort of made up for there was a margin of safety built in because it was so cheap. And so that's made up for my stupidity and irrationality.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The same flaw in a way. It's like I fall in love with Monich, who's an old friend and someone I like and admire a great deal. And then I buy this stock because he'd bought 13% of the company at a time when it was hated. And what I was realizing in my conversation with Annie Duke is as I talked about Monnish and as I talked about Charlie, I start to smile. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm so vulnerable. I love these people. I really admire these outsiders who are rebels, free thinkers going against the crowd. And so it's a tremendous vulnerability for me. And so it's smarter for me on the whole to try to outsource the investing decisions and also to try to index because and sort of system.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right? Because you're very easily sold on stuff. You have all of these hypsters who are great salesmen who believe in the future of their company and they can sell you anything. So to have a cooling off period, it's not a bad thing. And so for me to calm down, look back with a glow of affection on my meeting with Bill Miller, but not be so grateful for the fact that he treats me nicely and that I need to be treated nicely and appreciated, that it skews my judgment. So part of what I'm doing is I'm hedging against my own fallibility and idiosyncrasy. And so I'm trying partly not to buy individual stocks. I only own three individual stocks. And one of them is Berkshire, which I regard kind of almost as a fund. And one of them is Heritage, which again I bought after hanging out with Monich. And so it's...”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Close to Li Liu, who's an expert on China. And so there were rational reasons to do it. And if I was wrong, it wasn't really going to hurt me. And as a diversifier, it's not a bad thing for me to have a long-term bet on a centrally important company in China. And so I'm down by half. It doesn't mean I can't send my kids to college or retire. It's okay. So I think you have to You have to be aware of your own flaws and vulnerabilities and irrationalities and hedge against them in some way. So I was talking to a friend the other day about my mistake with Ali Barbara and then my desire to buy Bitcoin after my conversation with Bill. My friend said, yeah, we had a rule at this investment firm where I used to work where there was a cooling off period for a week after you met with management of a company. And I thought that was really smart.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To these two great investors who just told me how wonderful I am, at least in my interpretation of it. I mean, manga probably doesn't remember my name at this point. But for this brief moment, I felt this flush of importance. And so there's an irrationality in that purchase of Alibaba that's come back to haunt me. But at the same time, I think it's down about 50, 55% since I bought it. But at the same time, I didn't put that much in it, so it doesn't really matter. And it wasn't that stupid an investment because it's a long-term investment in China, which is very beaten up. Everybody hated it in a sector that everybody hated. And it had been bought by two of the greatest investors. And I knew that they had done a lot of work and understood it. And I knew that Munga is very...”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I had Munger and Lou Simpson telling me how much they loved my book and telling me that they'd both been investing in Alibaba. So I have two of the greatest investors telling me that I'm great. And here we are. We know from my personality assessment that I really crave respect and liking and admiration, right? So I'm very vulnerable to this. And I look up tremendously to Munga as like one of the smallest, most brilliant guys around. And so here's Munga saying, you know, yeah, book's one of the best investing books ever written. And so I'm like, this is like amazing for me, right? And then Lou Simpson says something really nice about it as well. And Lou's one of the great investors of all time. And so this is like this banner day for me, right? Like I'm just like floating on air. And so how do I memorialize this day? Partly by buying Alibaba that's an act of allegiance.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of gratitude to him and appreciation for him. And in a way, there's this sort of tribal sense of allegiance. And so there's this sort of emotional irrational desire to buy something almost as a way of declaring my psychological and emotional allegiance to him. That's a weird quirk in my character that probably allows me to interview people in a good way because I'm empathetic. I get into their minds. I understand how they view the world. There's a certain degree of intuition and rapport that's really good for an interviewer. But it's not very rational when it comes to picking stocks or cryptocurrencies.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tend to be calm and rational analytical. Very disagreeable. I'm not really built that way. I mean, when I look at that personality assessment, my way of making decisions is almost totally intuitive. I mean, I didn't make a super rational decision about whether to partner with you and the investors podcast network. I did some research and some studies and we talked at some length. But basically, I look at you and I'm like, I like steak. You're a really nice guy, honorable person. That's an intuitive judgment. And that serves me in certain ways in life. I don't think it necessarily serves me in investing. Because, you know, one of the things I found the other day after I spent a couple hours with Bill Miller is I really wanted to buy Bitcoin. And I was saying to this other friend of mine who's a well-known fund manager, part of the reason why I wanted to buy this, though I love Bill. And I feel like this sent.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The market. But you look at the people who beat the market, look at someone like Joe Greenblatt, who had these extraordinary returns where he averaged 40% a year for 20 years. It's just outrageous. And I've spent a fair amount of time with Joel over the years and wrote about him at length in my book. And, you know, he has a behavioral advantage, right? He's very calm. He's very even-tempered. He's super rational, very, very patient, very analytical. And he's also incredibly competitive. And that's another thing that I see with all of the greatest investors is they're super competitive. And so it's not just that they're intellectually strong, that they have some kind of intellectual advantage, or they do. I mean, you look at someone like Munga or Bill Miller or Ed Thorpe. I mean, these are supremely smart humans. There's also a temperamental advantage.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bond fund. And so you've got four funds within this one thing, and it's really low expenses. And so I bought that for my wife. And I was like, that's a really elegant solution. And it seemed kind of stupid for a couple of years because bonds were paying nothing. But I've been too lazy to change anything with it. And now bonds are paying something. And also stocks did terribly. And so over the last year. So, you know, I think it'll probably do fine over the long run. And so I just remembered this thing that Bogle had said to me where he said, look, all of these star fund managers proved to be comets. And he said they light up the firm for a moment in time. And he said, then they burn out and their ashes float gently down to earth. And Bogo was a great writer and speaker. He was very eloquent. And I just loved that line. And he said, look, this happens almost all the time. And so it's not all the time. It's not like nobody can be.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm happy to take the hit in recent years of investing equally in foreign markets, which turned out to be better last year. And then I remembered this, I wrote about this briefly in the chapter that I wrote in my book on simplicity and Joel Greenblatt. And I talked about this interview that I had with Jack Ogle, the founder of Vanguard, which now manages, what, seven, eight, nine trillion dollars, some outrageous sum. And so many years ago, I talked to the late Jack Bogle, maybe 20-something years ago. And one of the things that he said to me is, look, the ultimate in simplicity is to get a balance index fund. And you just get one fund that has bonds and stocks in it. And so while I was writing that chapter, I actually did that for my wife's retirement account. And I said, okay, there's a series of Vanguard funds where you get, I think it's a mix of a US index, a stock index fund, a foreign stock index fund, and a US bond fund and a foreign...”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Index fund. So I have the, and I'm not telling anyone they should do what I do. I'm just telling you how I'm trying to resolve my ambivalence about this question. So I own a vanguard total international stock fund and a vanguard total stock market index fund. And I think one of them, the US fund has a 0.04 expense ratio. And the international one is 0.17%. So incredibly low expenses. And I pretty much split it 50-50 between those two. And then I just keep adding to it. And it's in an IRA or a 401k or a personal 401k. And so it's structured in a way that's tax efficient. It's somewhat diversified. I'm not very low expenses. I keep adding to the pot and I'm not making a big bet where I say I'm sure the US is going to continue to do better than foreign stocks.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Me to load up on Bitcoin. Whereas for him, he's perfectly happy with situations where there's an asymmetry, where he could lose everything. But if he's right, he'll make enormous returns. For me, I'm less comfortable with that because of my personality. So I think a lot of this stuff, a lot of this stuff really stems from self-awareness. And so one of the things that I've done in terms of sort of resolving this conflict between passive and active investing is because I'm kind of torn and I have the delusion that I can probably do well by investing with two or three really good active investors. There's a portion of my portfolio in, I think it's three different active funds that are all managed by honorable people who are very smart and very driven. And then I've owned forever two.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you have to. You have to, it all starts, I think, with self-honesty and self-awareness to look at yourself and say, do I actually have any kind of competitive advantage? And when I said to Ed Thorpe, how can I tell if I have any competitive advantage? He said, well, if you're having to ask that, you don't really have a good answer, then you probably don't. And it's very deeply unsettling. And I mean, I have some competitive advantage potentially in that I know a lot of great investors. And so you could, you know, so look, like I talked to Bill Miller for a couple hours the other day. I know how Bill Miller's invested. It would be easy for me to say, well, Bill really likes this doc, this stock, and this cryptocurrency. And I should do that. But that's really hard for me as well, because my situation is different than Bill's and my temperament is different than Bill's. So I'm not playing the same game. It would be hard.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you turn out to be really good and you make money, then it'll pay off. But if not, it's a little, it's a bad analogy in some way to say it's like going to a casino but losing only a very small amount. Say you went to a casino and you said, okay, I'm going to gamble, but I'm not going to gamble more than $100. I'm going to get to eat in these really good restaurants at the Wynne Casino or whatever it is. I went to the Wynne Casino once because I was working on a book project and saying in a beautiful room there. And so I didn't gamble at all, but I got to enjoy the food. And I went to a great show and stuff like that. So I don't know. You could say it's a little bit like that. You're prepared to lose a little bit of money to support a hobby that you really enjoy. But there's upside here, if you're right. The danger is that we delude ourselves, right? So it's like people thinking they're good drivers.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of business, what are the pressures on the team in the Philippines if I can't remember my deadlines? And so I try despite my lack of efficiency or structure, at least to be kind and polite and respectful and thankful. And that's sincere, right? I mean, I do feel respect and gratitude. And at the same time, I'm also aware of the fact that, you know, I have this vulnerability and the lack of structure and the lack of systems. And it's not really my fault. Like it just is kind of the way I was built. But I have to try to develop systems to overcome it.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He says, I've never seen Charlie take advantage of anyone in 41 years. And I've seen him knowingly take the worst end of a deal with me and others. And he takes more of the share of the blame than he deserves. And I don't know. So if you go back to what we were saying before about the importance of relationships and you think, okay, so a successful and happy and abundant life is going to have really good relationships with the people you work with, with your family, with your friends. that sort of thing. How do you get that? What manga says is, look, we have a really simple system. He says, if you want to have a good partner, be a good partner. And so that's a really helpful distillation of wisdom from a 99-year-old polymathic genius. When Munger is saying, if you want to have a good partner, be a good partner. So then I have to think, well, what's Stig going through? What are the pressures on him of running?”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Managing money, whereas Zach was being tortured working at Deutsche Bank in an institutional sales job that he detested. And so in some ways, Nick could easily have demanded a better deal. And he's like, no, no, no, it'll be 50-50. And then Zach says, no, I want you to have 51% and me to have 49% so that if we ever disagree about anything, you'll make the final decision. And then Nick said, when somebody hands you a loaded revolver like that and says, here, shoot me if you want. How can you possibly take advantage of them? And so because they were both right in their judgment of the other person's decency and kindness and sense of honor, it's really worked out. And I don't know. I think it's such an interesting model for how to do business. You know, Buffett says the same thing about manga, where he says in the introduction in the forward, I think it is to Janet Lowe's biography of manga.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was long term, and you were transparent. So when I asked you whether I should be getting paid more money recently, you were totally transparent about the situation. And I was like, okay, great. And I don't know. I think that requires you to be partnering with people who are honorable and decent. And so this gets back to something that Nick Sleep said in my book where Nick and K Sakaria, who goes by the name Zach, had this extraordinary partnership that Nick said, look, it was built on kindness. And he said that originally they were going to structure it so that they would be 50-50 shareholders in their hedge fund business. And that was what Nick wanted to do, even though in many ways he was kind of the alpha dog and was on top of the world and had been in the investment business successfully for years.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He also did this nutty thing when we were first structuring our contract. I hope I'm not speaking out of school by saying this, where you were saying, well, so we'll see how many downloads you get in the first month because that's when you get most of the downloads for an episode and then you'll get paid based on that. And I was like, nah, nah, we should build in deferred gratification. So let's see how it does after a year. And so I basically structured it so that I wouldn't get paid a penny for a year over a year. That's kind of nuts, but it's sort of, but it built in a principle that I think is really valuable, which is the deferral of gratification, thinking more long term. And so I don't know, there was something very, very characteristic of both of us in the way that we handled these negotiations, that it was an act of personal trust.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so when you come across a truth like that, you need to take it really seriously, I think. If it resonates with you. And so you need to say, okay, let me figure out who I am, what I'm like, how I'm wired, what I care about, what my priorities are, what a truly abundant life means for me, and then let me try to pick a profession, structure my day, structure my activities as much as I can to play to those strengths. Because if I'm playing somebody else's game that really doesn't suit me, I'm going to be absolutely miserable.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Partnership with me. It's like people I like who are honorable, who are trying to teach stuff, share valuable information, interested in concepts. I have a lot of independence whenever I've asked you for advice on stuff, you sort of say, well, yeah, here's my view, but just do it, trust your own instincts. So you're giving me tremendous support and autonomy at the same time. And so one of the things that Ray said to me in that interview is life is really all about understanding your own personality and preferences and talents and then picking, as he put it, suitable paths. I had great trouble pronouncing paths because to me it's paths. But that's a really important insight. And like many of the great truths in life, it's actually a really banal and platitudinous insight. It's not that profound. But as Munga would say about investing, it's simple, not easy.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And break the rules. And then I'm in this tortured position that I still want them to love me. And so being aware of your own flaws and foibles and idiosyncrasies, I think is a hugely valuable thing. And so I'm not trying to be self-referential here. I'm actually trying to sort of say, I think our listeners would do really well to study what Ray said in that episode, but also really to go through the process of doing that personality test, go through that book, your personal journal, and really try to figure out like, what do you care about? What are your values? What's a priority for you? And then you look back and you're like, well, how can I possibly have taken that job with those people? Like, why would I ever have thought that would work? Of course it wouldn't work. Whereas I look at my partnership with USDG and the Universal Podcast Network. And I'm like, this actually is kind of a great.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cards and the cards that I've been dealt when it comes to thinking of new ideas or exploring concepts are weirdly high. And then there are idiosyncrasies. Like one of the things that I'm sort of embarrassed about when I look at my assessment is it's really clear to me that I care what people think of me to a really high degree. I really care about being liked and respected. And so I can write as much as I want about Buffett's idea of the inner scorecard, living by an inner scorecard and only judging yourself by your standards. But the reality is I really care what people think of me. I can't deny that and pretend to be something, but I'm also in this peculiar position that now I know from this assessment that I care what people think of me, but not enough that I'm going to do what they say. I'm still going to do it my way.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was better suited to. And I think part of the realization that I've had personally is that I've sort of set myself up in this independent way where I don't necessarily have the infrastructure that I would have if I were working for another company. So I've somehow got to set that up and bear the cost for it myself. And so things like, you know, I have, I do some public speaking. And so I have a speakers agency that represents me. And they take a big slug of my speaking fees. And I'm like, wow, you know, couldn't I do it myself? And I'm like, no, like to be able to hand that off to someone so I don't have to actually create an invoice or figure out, you know, like I need to just accept the fact that the cards I've been dealt when it comes to organizational structure are the worst possible.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That sense of organization. And when I mention this, that I'd done the test to Bill Miller the other day, he's like, oh man, I bet I would do really badly on the organization stuff. And so Bill has got really lucky, I suspect, that he's structured his life so he has this incredible assistant, Darlene, who's been keeping him on track for the last 25 years or so, so that he's free to think. And so I think part of part of what's a frustration to me is that I think as someone who's been writing books and doing podcasts and writing articles and stuff over the last decade or so and ghostwriting books, I haven't really had a structure, a formal structure that I used to have when say I edited the Asian edition of Time Magazine or the European Middle East and African edition of Time. So there, because there were people who were very, very organized and systematic, I was free to do the stuff that I”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I look, for example, at Guy Spear, I can see he's got this extraordinary woman, Chantao, who used to run a prison for war criminals, then was basically sort of semi-retired, and then came in and a sort of organized guy's life. And that is such an amazing thing to have a hugely organized person come in and organize someone like a guy who says, look, I have ADHD. I'm all over the place. It's easy for me to, I mean, he said to her when he was first interviewing her, he said, look, I can leave the door of our office open in Zurich because, you know, I just forgot. And then I'll go to the airport and maybe I've forgotten my ticket or my password. How would you deal with that? And she's like, oh, that's fine. I got one of those at home. You know, like she's used to dealing with very brilliant people who don't have.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At my personality assessment, I can see how much I dislike rules and routines, how rebellious, how independent I am, how little I want guidance, but also how obsessed with quality I am. It sort of makes sense. And so none of this is either good, good, or bad. It just is. And so I don't want to look at my being scattered or unstructured as a sort of shameful weakness, even though I kind of am ashamed of it and I regard as a weakness and it makes me feel vulnerable to admit it to you and the world. I need to actually look at it in the same way that Dalio looked at his flaws and weaknesses and say, okay, this is the hand I was dealt. How do I structure my life so that I'm playing the right games for me? I'm playing games that I can win. And so”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's also funny when I looked at the scores that I had for things like doing things my own way, breaking rules, stuff like that, being independent, being a conceptual thinker, I was like 98%, 99%. I mean, the degree to which I want autonomy is kind of extraordinary. Like the thing about not wanting guidance, I think I was 99%. And so that totally makes sense with the way that I went about my book, for example, where I just hold off for five years. I missed my deadline by two years. And I just was obsessed with trying to make it as good as I possibly could. So if it failed, it wasn't because I hadn't put heart or soul into it. I was going to put everything into it. It was all about quality. And I couldn't really explain why I did it that way. And then when I looked.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Out the deadlines. I've never really figured out the deadline for my episodes. I don't know. I sort of have some sense of it, but it's really hard for me. Does any of that make sense, Stick?”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I can now see that my deficiencies in areas like efficiency, orderliness, systematization, practicality, it's not because I'm recalcitrant. It's not because I'm not trying hard. It's actually how I'm wired. And so I have to find people to partner with who are more systematic. So even look, working with the investors podcast network, the fact that you have this amazing team in the Philippines who have all of these structures and processes in place is incredibly helpful for me. That's a structure that gives me the space to do what I need to do creatively where I'm thinking, who should I interview, what questions should I ask? How can I be present and intuitive about what they're really telling me and go in a different direction? So that all plays to my strengths. But then, you know, for me to figure out.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And similarly, there are other people who have these archetypes of technician or implementer, which are the archetypes I'm least like. And so they're really organized. They really like structure, processes. They're methodical, they're orderly. I'm just not built that way. So if I'm prepared to look honestly at that wiring, not necessarily as a shameful flaw, but as just the reality. It's part of who I am. It's part of the gift. That's how my creator made me. I'm sorry. And then I can start to say, okay, so what are the solutions? And so what Ray Dalio said in that episode is part of the solution is you work with people who make up for your own weaknesses, who are strong where you're weak. So that's been kind of a revelation to me. And this may sound really obvious to other people.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT