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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“Kind of shocking. I know you've done personality assessment tests before and are a big believer in them. When I do it, I come up, they're all of these archetypes that describe different personalities. So mine not surprisingly tends towards creativity, right? So excited by novelty, intuitive, curious, original thinker, all of that stuff, fascinated by new ideas, comfortable in a chaotic and disorganized environment. And so on creativity, I'm like way up there. And then I think on the thing, on the measurement for organization, I don't know, I think I came, it was something like 2%. I mean, it was so embarrassingly low. Like the lack of systematization, it just, it's just not part of my wiring.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Difficult enough and opinionated enough and feisty enough that he can say to Warren, no, I think you're totally wrong about that. And so part of the power of that relationship is that they've structured it so that you can be challenged by someone who's really, really smart. So when I'm kind of self-referential about this and I think, okay, so what What do I take away? How do I apply these lessons from Dalio? One of the things I did is I went away.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So one of the things that he did was develop this habit of writing down principles to, I think, in a way to guide him because maybe he couldn't remember certain things. I don't know. It gave him a way to force him to reflect on what had gone wrong. Another thing that he did is he would see, for example, that he'd messed up in 1982 because he was too audacious. He was too bold, too arrogant. There was too much hubris, too much self-confidence. And so his workaround, once he knew that that was a flaw in his character or a vulnerability rather than a flaw, his workaround was to surround himself with incredibly smart people who were not afraid to say that he was wrong. And in a way, you think about Buffett and Munger, and they've done the same thing, right? Buffett, Buffett has said that manga is the abominable no-man because manga is smart enough and”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thinking about really intensively in recent weeks, both before the interview, because I was preparing for it and thinking about what my biggest obstacles are in life. And since then, and one of the great lessons from Dalio is that you need this self-reflection. You need to stop by looking at your own wiring, looking at your own values, looking at what's important to you, looking at your strengths and weaknesses in a really honest way. And so instead of being ashamed of it, look directly at it so then you know what you're dealing with. You know the hand that you've been dealt. And so one of the things that Ray said to me in that interview is, look, I have a terrible rote memory. I couldn't remember things. I did badly at school when it was about rote memory. And so I started writing down principles because it helped me deal with my encounters with reality.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your new book, this thing, your personal journal, you talk about how to find the biggest obstacle to your success. And I look in my own life and I feel kind of ashamed to admit it, but I'm not systematic. I'm not process driven. I'm scattered. And I felt kind of flushed as I said this to him. And his response is like, no, no, that's great. And so he's not looking at my embarrassment about this flaw in my wiring and my personality or whatever it is. He's looking at it and saying, what a fantastic thing. You've identified this enormous thing that's an obstacle for you. And now that you've identified it and unearthed it and not been ashamed of it and buried it from view, you can actually deal with it. That's an immensely important idea. And that's something I've been.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So much, I mean, I think start with that idea of him saying when he looks back on this incredibly painful failure in 1982, where basically almost loses his career as an investor right at the start and has to borrow four grand from his father, who was a jazz musician. I mean, wasn't like a rich guy. So it was a very humiliating and painful thing. And so Ray's response of saying, oh, it was so good. It was such a painful experience is incredibly revealing because what you're saying is you actually want to lean into your pain and not bury your own mistakes, your flaws, your failures from sight. So most of us, most of us want to hide from the things that went wrong or that feel wrong with us. And so there was a moment in that interview where I sort of, look, when I look at you.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the new one is called Your Personal Journal. I think it's Principles: Your Personal Journal. And it's about how to develop your own principles”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You want to do the playing Opposite. It's a trick. Can you do the things that are And so Of those, and from those lessons that I Learned”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let's go back to that example from 1982 where I think there was a debt crisis where Mexico defaults on its debt. We have the worst debt crisis since the Great Depression. And you bet, I think, that the stock market and the economy would be battered by this. And instead, it actually strengthened. And it was sufficiently disastrous that you had to fire almost everyone at Bridgewater and ended up borrowing foregrand from your father. When you think of that process in that case, how you went through this process of reflection on what went wrong, what happened, what flaws of yours this exposed, or what misperceptions of yours, and how you develop principles based on that, how would that be a good microcosm of what we should do when we screw up?”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A sort of fellow travelers who can support you when you're miserable and down and who enjoy your successes and you can celebrate their successes. So I think I don't know that to me is absolutely central aspect of a happy and truly abundant life. Good relationships and peace of mind. That's the other thing. And so you've got to figure out how are you going to get peace of mind. So you've got to structure your investments in a way that gives you peace of mind, right? I mean, in my interview with Bill Miller on the podcast a few months back, I was asking him, how do you deal with stress as a regular investor, deal with the tension? And he said, you know, follow the advice. I think it was from JP Morgan himself where he said, invest down to your sleeping point. You've got to invest in a way that allows you to sleep. And so having peace of mind in your investments, in your schedule, in your things.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What does that consist of for you? And I'm pretty sure that an enormous part of that is actually about relationships. And so then you have to really ask yourself, what are the inputs in order for me to get good relationships where I have to behave better? I have to show up for my friends. I have to try to be more decent. I have to invest time in those relationships. And there have certainly been times in my life where I got off track and I was so busy working that I didn't invest much time at all or much energy in my relationships. It felt like they were kind of a distraction. And maybe it was necessary at the time, but I look back and I'm sort of trying to make up for lost time because I think it made for a poorer life, even though externally it probably felt more successful. But I don't think it made me happy because you need people on the path with you.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And kids hated him. And I have no idea if that's true. But when I asked manga what we could learn from him and Warren about how to have a happy life, he immediately started talking about relationships. He was talking about the people in their lives, the people they'd partnered with, how they had so many honorable, decent people in his life. And he said, look, I've been a good partner to Warren and he's been a marvelous partner to me. And so his entire success is built not just on his intellectual brilliance, but actually on his partnership with Warren. So I think that gives you a clue. And so when you're thinking of the desirable destination that you're working towards in your life and you're thinking, okay, I want to look back at the end of my life.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The richest, most successful people in the world. You don't want to clone the wrong thing, right? So you don't want to assume that enormous amounts of money are going to make you happy because then finally you'll be independent and autonomous and can do everything you want and don't have to fly on commercial planes and stuff. Yeah, that stuff's true. But what I think is much more important is the relationships. It's who you're hanging out with. And manga said this great thing where he was talking about Sumner Redstone, right? Who I've never met and he passed away now. But Munga said that he went to Harvard Law School, I think, with Sumner Redstone. And he said, you know, he was a tough tomato. And he ended up richer than I was. So some people would say he's more successful. But he said, when I think of Sumner Redstone all my life, he's an example of what I didn't want to be. And he said, even his wives.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he's a true genius and an amazing game player. And so I said to him, look, if you were approaching life as a game, how do you stack the odds in your favor so you win? And one of the things he said to me is, well, look, who you spend your time with is probably the most important thing of all. And manger once, I think Munga gave Ed Thorpe's book, Man for All Markets, to Moniche at one point. And he said to Monich, you'll notice it's actually a love story. And it's not really a love story, but there is an element in there of Ed's love for his wife of more than 50 years who passed away and now he's remarried. But I think of Ed as somebody who never underestimated the importance of relationships. And so when you're thinking about what you want to clone from the greatest investors or the”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In certain ways, for example, in terms of peace of mind or friendship and great family relationships, it's pretty barren. And this was one of the interesting things that I learned from interviewing someone like Ed Thorpe. We've talked about Ed before on the show, right? This is a guy who's probably the greatest game player in the history of investing. He's a guy who beat the market at Blackjack, beat the market. so many different games, right? Even at roulette. Yes, I was just about to.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'll tell you a great phrase that I spent a lot of time with a multi-billionaire who I helped him write his memoir that hasn't been published yet. And I have no idea whether it will be. But he's a very, very interesting guy. And he's said to me at one point, he talked about, you know, he knows a lot of the richest people in the world and knows how miserable many of them are. And he said to me, he used the phrase poor rich people and rich poor people. And I thought that was really revealing that there are people who are incredibly rich externally, but actually are incredibly poor. And it's difficult because there's some part of us, as you were saying before, people like to gloat about the problems of the rich. And I don't think this is about that. It's about understanding that if your life is empty,”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. I mean, how it had, I know at one point he bought a home in New York for $52 million or something. So he lives very luxuriously. But really, I think, again, he's somebody who really loves ideas. In my book, I said it's real drug is ideas, not money. And I think that's true. He's someone who loves to read, loves to think. And he gets great pleasure out of teaching people stuff, out of sharing ideas. So again, he's structured his life in such a way that he's, you know, I think he has probably about a thousand people working at Oak Tree, but they're not really reporting to him. So he's not got any management responsibility. He's really like the philosopher king at Oak Tree, whose job is to think about things like risk and uncertainty. So again, structuring his life in a way that's true to him.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think that's another really important component of happiness. There's got to be some element of sharing built in, some bigger purpose. It's not the yacht and the plane are not enjoyable, right? Those are fun things to have for him. But he's sharing stuff. He's giving back. So I think I hope that gives a few clues to the role of money in the lives of these people. It's not enough just to be rich. Yeah, they're very competitive. There is a sense in which the money is a kind of scorecard. It's a marker of success. But it's much more than that. I mean, how have Marx once said to me that being a billionaire had made him less fearful? So there was a psychological benefit for him. But it's not...”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's on the investment committee at Johns Hopkins. So he's helping his alma mater. He's learned an enormous amount from the Santa Fe Institute where they study complexity science. And so that helped him to invest very early in things like AOL and Google and Dell and Amazon. So he's given them, I think, a gift of $50 million. And so it's not just that he's got a yacht and a private plane and stuff, which he does have, which is nice and he's got a really nice house in Maryland and a really nice house in Florida. I haven't seen the house in Florida, but I know it's on an island. And I think I'm sure it's pretty luxurious. He's got an amazing book collection. So he's got the toys and baubles, but he's also giving money away to things that are that have helped him and that he thinks are going to help others, the study of complexity science has all sorts of implications in terms of climate change, AI, things like that.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Similarly, when I look at Bill, he's structured his life in a way that suits him. And I see that again and again with the happiest investors that I've seen, that they're doing what they want, right? So he's doing intellectually enriching work, working with people he likes, totally independent, true to himself. And then also he's doing a lot of charitable stuff, right? So Bill has given, I think he gave $75 million to Johns Hopkins, to the philosophy department. So he's a philosopher himself. He came out of the PhD program at Johns Hopkins, couldn't complete his studies because he couldn't really afford to because he came from a very modest family. His father was a taxi driver, among other things. And so he didn't come from money. And studying philosophy has had a profound impact on his success. So he's given back to the philosophy department at Johns Hopkins.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so for me to be able to spend my morning chatting with you as a friend talking about interesting subjects to you and me, that's a real joy. That's a source of pleasure. I mean, as I was coming into my office here, I sort of started beaming and I was like, this is great. You know, I get to chat with Sig. I get to be in this beautiful office space that I share with this friend of my MATLAB, who's a really lovely guy. I'm in charge of my own structure and my own time. And there's no one really to tell me that I can't drink coffee as I'm on the podcast, even though it looks unprofessional. I'm kind of wearing a semi-clean shirt or whatever. You know, it's like I'm sort of in charge. And for me, as somebody who really values autonomy, who really values not being told what to do, that's incredibly valuable. I value that more than the money. And so I think Bill.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Keynote speaker at a gala event. And he said, Well, what's the dress code? And they said, well, it's black tight, you'd have to wear a tuxedo. And he's like, no, I threw out my tuxedo and I'm never buying another one. And so he structured his life in a way that he's got rid of a lot of the stuff that he doesn't like to do. And so I was talking to his wife the other day and she was like, well, it's amazing now he can really just read and do the things that read and invest and take advantage of the fact that he's got this really brilliant brain. And it's just great. You know, it is like Miller Unbound. So I think, you know, when I look at things like that, that's clonable for me, right? It's not like I have the wealth of Bill Miller, even a fraction of it. But I can say I want to structure my life as much as I can in a way that's true to my own weirdness, my own idiosyncrasy, my own values, my own sense of what's enriching.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he's made so much money off them and he's owned them for long enough that his cost basis is almost zero. But so he's investing in a way that's totally true to himself, total autonomy. And I think there's a real clue there to what actually makes for happiness. It's living in a way that suits you with all of your idiosyncrasies. And so there was a, I think I've told you this story before. There was a time when I was interviewing Bill at his home in Maryland a few years ago when I was working on my book, Richard Wiser Happier. And I spent about a day and a half or two days with him in Maryland where he has a home. And he would come in wearing the same black t-shirt or the same type of black t-shirt and jeans every day. And he had kind of a hole in his cashmere socks. And he's like, you know, he's dressed the way he wants. He's in charge of his time. And he said, somebody had asked him to be the”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he basically, you know, he's the biggest investor in the funds that his company manages, and he still has an ownership stake in the company. But he's basically responsible now for his own portfolio, which basically consists for the most part of three investments. And so he's able to concentrate massively in a way that he couldn't for regular shareholders. I mean, he's got an enormous stake in Amazon that he's owned for more than 20 years, an enormous stake in Bitcoin. And so most people would be like, that's crazy to have all of your money to have, you know, 70, 80, 90% at times of your money in two assets that are fairly risky. But his cost basis for both is tiny, right? Like $200 a coin, he started buying Bitcoin at and bought much of his stake at $500 around there. And Amazon, you know, basically his cost basis now that after the split is something under a dollar a share.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he's worked with great people. He's got the same assistant, Darlene Orange, that he had when I first was writing about him, when I was writing a profile for Fortune of him back after 9-11. So he's got people he really likes around him who are really decent and who he trusts and who trust him. So that's really key. So the relationship part is really important. Then he has tremendous autonomy increasingly. So there was a period when he worked at Leg Mason where it was a public company and he had all of the accountability to the board and even writing shareholder letters. There would be like a big process, right? There were things you had.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've really seen him in all of these periods, like during the glory days when he was totally on top of the world during that 15 year streak, then during the, you know, in the aftermath of the really difficult time when he got crushed during the global financial crisis, then during the rebound where he got kind of vindicated. And now again, I'm seeing him now. He's probably about 71, 72, something like that. And I was really struck when I saw him the other day just how happy he was. I think there are some observations about what I think makes him happy that might be kind of to some degree universal. The first thing is, hey, he just got remarried to a really lovely woman who I met who's just great. So he's got great relationships, right? And he's worked with Samantha Macklemore for 20 years. He's worked with his son Bill IV for all these years.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I'll give you a couple of very specific examples of people I've talked to about this sort of thing or people I've observed. So I got to spend a bunch of time with Bill Miller the other day and I've spent a lot of time with Bill over the years. And Bill, as most of our listeners will know, is one of the great investors of our time. He had this incredible, unprecedented streak of beating the market for 15 years. Running, then had a terrible period during 2008, 2009, and then has had this unbelievable recovery rebound where his fund was like in the top 1% of funds over the next decade or 12 years or something like that. And he just retired at the end of the year. And it's now at the end of 2022 and is now handing over the reins to his son, Bill IV, and to Samantha Macklemore, who I'll have on the podcast very shortly. And so I've interviewed Bill many times over the last 22 years for the best part of 100 hours, I think.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Figure out well, what are the inputs that will get you there? And the inputs that'll get us to being financially independent and secure, I think are saving living within our means, investing responsibly, diversifying so that we don't blow ourselves up, not trusting one person or one country or one bank or one brokerage firm or something to an absurd degree so that then if you're wrong, you get blown up. So I think start with the destination and then work backwards to figure out the inputs that are likely to get you there.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know is it does it mean I actually have to supplement it by continuing to add to the pot myself, by saving more? Maybe. Maybe there are years where you make minus 10%, but you add 20%. So you just keep beefing up what you're investing. But if I act in that way, investing in a sustainable way, trying to get a decent return, I'll be fine. So I actually don't need to make huge compromises where I take wild risk or invest with someone who's kind of scummy but will probably do really well. So I think part of it actually just requires you to know what the destination is that you're heading for, that you're aiming for. And then you work backwards from there, which is something I write about when I write about Nick's sleep in my book. This idea of starting with a desirable destination.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, without wanting to sound judgmental, I would be slightly embarrassed to drive a Ferrari. And it's not, that's not a judgment on the people who do. I just think it would be kind of, it wouldn't suit my personality. So for me, when I think of my goals and my financial ambitions, which are sort of basically to live the way I want to live without being answerable to anybody, to be in charge of my own schedule, my own time, where I go on vacation, whether I stay in a really nice hotel, I'm a sucker for a really nice hotel. So it's not like I've taken a vow of poverty. You know what I'm a sucker for really good food and stuff like that and expensive clothes that are not flashy, but they're really well made. So it's not like I'm some kind of monk. But to get that sort of lifestyle, if I were to make 10% a year, that would be amazing. I'd double every seven years. And I don't know, is that before tax? Is it after tax?”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I think it's a really important insight. And look, we're not being totally naive here because it's not like we would invest in a lousy company or with a lousy fund manager who we thought was lazy and incompetent just because we thought they were a nice guy or that the company was a really ethical company that treated its employees fabulously. You want to invest with talented, capable, driven people and in good businesses. But I think you're not just optimizing for profits. I mean, that's not the most important thing for me. When I think about my financial goals, I want to be financially independent and free and able to do whatever I want to do. I don't need to drive a Ferrari. I don't need to have the fanciest house. It just, that's not interesting to me. And so it's not uninteresting. But actually, no, I...”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of manga talking about hanging out with the eminent dead by reading certain things. And so you want to structure your entire ecosystem so that you're less likely to succumb to the less noble side of your character, I think.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Switzerland. He lives very nicely. But it was really interesting. We drove back from Klosters in the mountains to his home in Zurich. We were in his old Porsche, which is the same Porsche. He picked me up in from the airport all those years ago when we were working on his book, The Educational Value Investor. And it's now 16, 17 years old. And so still a really nice car. But it's not kind of glamorous to drive a 16 or 17-year-old car. And so I think he's structured his life. So he's not put himself in a situation of jeopardy where he needs to behave in an unethical way. And that's important for me. I need to think about how to structure my finances so that I'm not going to panic. But also how to structure other aspects of my ecosystem so that I'm likely to behave well. And so this gets at who you invest with, who you hang out with, who your friends are, even what you're reading.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm much more unpleasant than when I'm unstressed. And so I think you want to structure your life in ways that are more likely to tilt the odds of your behaving decently. And so that means living within your means, not having an excess of debt or you'll panic, not being such an expensive lifestyle that you need to take advantage of other people. A guy once said to me, look, you have to move the candy away from you, which is metaphorical, because in both of our cases, we've not been very good at moving the chocolate and the cappuccinos away from us. But I think it's true you want to structure your life so that there's not as much temptation to behave poorly. And so if you're investing with somebody who, when I went to stay with Guy recently,”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We'll also stick. Remember that thing that Buffett said to monish and guy at their charity lunch back in, I think, 2008 it was, where they paid $650,100 to have a charity lunch with Buffett. And Buffett said to them during that lunch, I don't want to be in debt because I don't want to see what I'm capable of doing. And Guy has said to me, look, if even Warren is vulnerable under certain circumstances where he could behave, he thinks he could behave poorly if he were under pressure financially. What about the rest of us? The rest of us are that much more vulnerable. And so I think it's not just a matter of partnering with honest and honorable people. It's also that even decent people can do terrible stuff when they're in vulnerable situations. And I see that with myself where when I'm stressed.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, welcome to the world of aligned interests. And I think that's really interesting when someone's prepared to do that. That just makes me feel good. I don't know how good his performance will be, but there's a record of behaving in an honorable way that I like.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Year last year, they could actually offer existing investors or new investors the opportunity to invest at a previous high watermark, which I'm not explaining well, but it basically meant that you got the benefits of the fact that it had done poorly so that you would be investing with lower expenses, lower fees going forward. And so they basically figured out a way to take money out of guy's pocket and give it to the investors. And I remember once Guy was talking to Mark Chapman, I think it was, who works sort of, I guess like the CFO at Aquarine Guy's company, and had said they were talking about the new fee structure where you could be in a five-year share class where you would get, no guy would get no money at all if he didn't perform well. And Mark was like, are you sure you want to do this? Like, you might make no money for the next five years. And I go,”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look for the fee structure. You don't just want to believe someone because they say the right things. I think there's usually, it sounds like an odd analogy, but it's like when you see someone who's committed a crime if they're a rapist, for example, sorry to use a sort of dark example, you tend to see that they had the same modus operandi multiple times. And so I think when you see people behaving poorly, They behaved poorly multiple times. And when you see people behaving well, you know, I've seen it with Guy multiple times where that same instinct that he had with returning the incentive fee early on, he did something recently where he and you have to accept the fact that I'm totally biased on this because he's a good friend. So I'm not trying to say this is a shill for Guy, but they did something recently where they figured out that basically because the fund had had bad”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think there are clues in someone's past behavior. I was discussing this with Tom Gainer on an episode that will come out shortly where I was saying, how can you tell whether the person you're dealing with has integrity? And he said, well, look, there are clues in their past behavior. And so you look at Fred Martin. And many years ago, he closed his small cap strategy to new investors when it had something like $400 million in assets. And so in the 15 or 18 or whatever years since then, he could have made tens of millions of dollars in fees that he was willing to forego because he wanted to keep it small because he said it was really impossible to manage a huge fund that invested in small cap stocks. So there's someone who actually has demonstrated in his past behavior that he cares really a great deal about his investors. So look for the clues. Look for the past behavior.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Honorable and decent, and have aligned interests with my interests. But I still want to want to diversify in case I'm wrong.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so that's critical, but then you have to kind of also hedge against your own blindness. So what if I'm wrong in my assessment of those people? And so even though I'm trusting certain people to behave in an honorable way, I'm still diversifying in case I'm wrong. So I remember John Tembleton telling me many years ago that for regular investors, you should probably own five or six funds that give you exposure to different parts of the market. And so anytime I get carried away and I fall in love with some investor or some fund or some stock, and I think I should pile into this, I just remind myself, well, I've been wrong before. Why should I assume, as Templeton would say, why should I have the arrogance of believing that I found the one fund, the one money manager, the one asset class? And so, yeah, I want to invest with people who I think.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And actually, Buffett cloned it from Ben Graham. And it's something that most people can't afford to do, right? Most H fund managers are just they'd rather have a structure where they get 2% of the assets in a management fee regardless of whether they do lousy or not. And then 20% of the profits. And so as Monish would say, it's heads I win, tails you lose. I want to be partnering with people who are looking out for me. And for the same reason, I invest in Berkshire Hathaway, not because I think it's going to have the greatest returns on earth. There's no fee. You're not paying them expenses. Their munger and buffet are making $100,000 a year to run this enormous business and you're getting the benefits of the float and all of their expertise and brilliance and the competent, honorable.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whether the person you're investing with has your back, or whether they're just out for themselves. And I think one of the easiest ways to tell is just by looking at the fee structure. So I look at, say, guys and the fee, the share class that I'm in. There's no annual management fee. And so he gets a percentage of the profits if he gets good performance. But if he doesn't perform, He doesn't get paid anything. And Moniche Pabrai, who I think you invested with at one point, has a very similar structure. And it's cloned from Buffett's structure in the 1950s partnerships that he had.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Uncles, aunts, lots of family members, and then friends and partners of his fathers. And I just thought, okay, so there's an alignment here where if he messes up, he's going to suffer more than I do. And I think those two instincts were actually correct to align with people who are prepared to go against their own interests in your favor and who have who are eating their own cooking. This is something that Nassim Talib talks about, right? You want to have skin in the game. You want a money manager who is going to get hurt alongside you or benefit alongside you. And so, if there's some kind of takeaway for our Listeners, I think it's really to think hard about”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Someone like Guy, when I first invested with Guy many years ago, probably 21, 22 years ago, one of the reasons why I invested was not just because I thought he was very smart, which he clearly is. It was actually partly because if I remember correctly, he had just got an incentive fee for having really good returns in some period. And then immediately the fund had gone down. And much to his lawyer's annoyance, he returned the incentive fee because he said, well, I didn't really earn it. You know, like it's unfair for me to take it. And I thought that's such an eccentric thing to do. And so I want to be partnering with someone who's willing to go against their own interest. And then at the same time, he also had basically half of the money in the fund was his family's money, his father, his sister.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm deeply idiosyncratic, so I'm not saying anyone else should do what I do. But I sort of surprised myself with my answer, which is that I wouldn't hesitate to take the lower return to invest with the person I trust and like and to avoid the person that I think is kind of shady or unpleasant or selfish or just out for themselves. That's a pretty idiosyncratic answer. But I think you have to really think hard about who's in your ecosystem who I mean I remember, look, I'm totally biased on this front as well because Guy is a very old friend. He's someone not only who I've invested with for over 20 years, but he's one of my closest friends. So I just spent a week with him in Switzerland. So I'm totally biased here. But I feel like I want to have people in my ecosystem that I like and that I trust and who I feel have their interests aligned with me. And so when I look at”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm very well. I'm delighted to see you. I sound a bit raspy because it's earlier in America and I'm just on my third cup of coffee. So I'm still waking up.”
2023-03-26 · We Study Billionaires · TIP538: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2023 w/ William Green & Stig Brodersen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT