Founders - #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

I sent a friend this text: I'm working on another Li Lu episode but this one is about his remarkable investing career. Can be summarized by: 1. Studied Buffett and Munger. 2. Did that. Last episode was about how Li Lu survived one of the most horrific childhoods imaginable. This episode covers how he thinks about investing and entrepreneurship—in his own words. Sources: The forward to the Chinese edition of  Poor Charlie’s Almanack written by Li Lu Li Lu's Colombia Business School lecture 2006Li Lu’s San Francisco State University lecture 2012Graham & Doddsville interview with Li Lu 13th Colombia Business Conference 2021 Li Lu's Reflections On Reaching Fifty ----Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more. ----Build relationships with other founders, investors, and executives at a Founders Event----Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here. ----Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book----Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube (Video coming soon!) ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

I sent a friend this text this week. I said, I'm working on another Leeloo episode, but this one is about his remarkable investing career. Can be summarized by, number one, studied Buffett and Munger. Number two, did that. In all the talks and interviews that Leeloo gave over the last two decades, he's constantly referencing the lessons that he learned from studying Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, and he shares their obsession with finding great companies. So many times when I was reading the words and listening to the words of Li Lu and I was researching the podcast, I thought of this book, which I've mentioned multiple times in this episode. I think it's the best book on Buffett and Munger I've ever

read. It's called All I Want to Know is Where I'm Going to Die So I'll Never Go There. Buffett and Munger, A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon Common Sense. And there's a few sections from this book that I want to read to you because it's really Buffett describing what makes a great business. And he says, with indifference or tolerate bloat, which means don't watch our costs, our businesses will wither. On a daily basis, the effect of our actions are imperceptible. Cumulatively, though, their consequences are enormous. Later on in the book, Buffett is asked, how should you be running your business? He says, just do what you always do. Widen the moat, build enduring competitive

advantage, delight your customers, and relentlessly fight costs. On the same page, Munger talks about that most people don't do this, especially companies after they get successful. So Munger is now describing the other side of this, what happens when you don't do this. Successful places tend to get bloated, fat, complacent. It's the nature of human life. Most places, when they get rich, they get sloppy. And there's another great line from Buffett. He says a great manager must be a demon on cost. This is something I've been talking about with my friend Eric, who's the co-founder and CEO of Ramp. Ramp is now a partner of this podcast. I've gotten to know all the co-founders of Ramp and have spent a bunch of time with them over the

last year or two. They all listened to the podcast and they all picked up on the fact that the main theme from the podcast is on the importance of watching your costs and controlling your spend. That is the reason that Ramp exists. Ramp gives you everything you need to control your spend. Ramp gives you everything you need to be a demon on cost. Sam Walton in his autobiography summarized it perfectly. He says, our money was made by controlling expenses. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation, or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient. Ramp helps you run an efficient organization. Ramp is everything that you need to control your spend and optimize your financial

operations all on a single platform. So as your company gets more successful, you can avoid the fate that Munger said, that successful places tend to get bloated, fat, and complacent. Not if they use Ramp. Ramp's website is incredible. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business control costs. That is ramp.com. 20 years ago, as a young student coming to the United States, I couldn't have imagined having a career in investing and would have never thought that I'd be fortunate enough to meet Charlie Munger. In 2004, Munger became my investment partner and has since become my lifelong mentor and friend, an opportunity I would have never dared to dream about. Charlie and I first met at a mutual friend's house while I was working on investments in LA

after graduating from college. The first impression he gave me was distant. He often appeared to be absent-minded to the presence of his conversation partners and was instead very focused on his own topics. But this old man spoke succinctly, his words full of wisdom for you to mull over. Seven years later, at a Thanksgiving gathering in 2003, we had a long heart-to-heart conversation. I introduced every single company I've invested in or researched or am interested in to Charlie, and he commented on each of them. I also asked for his advice on the problems that I was encountering. He told me that the problems I've encountered were practically all the problems of Wall Street.

The problem is with the way that Wall Street thinks. Even though Berkshire Hathaway has been such a success, there isn't any company on Wall Street that truly imitates it. If I continue on this path, my worries will never be eliminated. But if I was willing to give up this path right then to take a path different from Wall Street, he was willing to invest.

With Charlie's help, I completely reorganized the company I founded. The structure was changed into that of the early investment partnerships of Buffett and Munger. Investors who stayed made long-term investment guarantees, and we no longer accepted new investors. I then entered another golden period in my investment career. In the next 12 years, the capital grew more than 20 times. Buffett said despite the countless people he has met in his life, he has never encountered anyone else like Charlie. And in the years that I've known Charlie and was fortunate to be able to intimately understand him, I am also deeply convinced of that. Even from all the biographies of people

from all the ages, I have yet to see anyone similar to him. Charlie is such a unique man. His uniqueness is in his thinking and also in his personality. When Charlie thinks about things, he starts by inverting. To understand how to be happy in life, Charlie will study how to make life miserable. To examine how a business becomes big and strong, Charlie first studies how businesses decline and die. Most people care more about how to succeed in the stock market. Charlie is most concerned about why most have failed in the stock market. His way of thinking is, I want to know where I'm going to die so I will never go there. That is actually my favorite book. I've probably, I don't know, read 10, 15 books on Warren Buffett

and Charlie Munger. My favorite one is on episode 286. It's called All I Want to Know is Where I'm Going to Die, So I'll Never Go There. Buffett and Munger, A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon Common Sense. Let's go back to this. His way of thinking is, I want to know where I'm going to die, so I will never go there. That's episode 286. Charlie constantly collects and researches the notable failures in each and every type of people, business, government, and academia, and arranges the causes of failure into a decision-making checklist for making the right decisions. Because of this, he has avoided major mistakes in his decision-making in his life and in

his career. The importance of this on the performance of Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway over the past 50 years cannot be emphasized enough. Charlie's mind is original and creative, never subject to any restrictions, shackles, or dogmas. He has the curiosity of children and possesses the qualities of top-notch scientists and their scientific research methods. He has a strong thirst for knowledge. And now rereading this again, these are all traits that Li Lu has imitated and adopted. So let's read that again. Charlie's mind is original and creative, never subject to any restrictions, shackles, or dogmas.

He has the curiosity of children and possesses the qualities of top-notch scientists and their scientific research methods. He has a strong thirst for knowledge. To him, with the right approach, any problem can be understood through self-study, building innovations on the foundations led by those who came earlier. Charlie advocates studying all the truly important theories in all disciplines and building on the foundations of the so-called worldly wisdom as a tool for studying the important issues in business. Charlie's way of thinking is based on being honest about knowledge. He believes that in this complex and changing world, there

will always be limitations to human cognition and understanding. You must have the correct understanding of knowing what you know and what you don't know. The true insights a person can get in life is very limited. Correct decision making must necessarily be confined to your circle of competence. A beautiful lady once insisted that Charlie use one word to sum up the source of his success. Charlie said it was being rational. Charlie can see through to the essence of things. Buffett calls this characteristic of Charlie the two-minute effect. He said Charlie can, in the shortest time possible, unravel the nature of a complex business and understand it better than anyone else can. The process of Berkshire's investment in BYD is an example. I remember in 2003 when I first discussed BYD with Charlie, despite having never met the founder, never visiting BYD's factory and being relatively unfamiliar with the

Chinese market and culture, his questions and comments about BYD remains to this day the most pertinent questions a BYD investor needs to ask. Everyone has blind spots and even the brightest people are no exceptions. Buffett said, Benjamin Graham taught me only to buy cheap stocks. Charlie allowed me to change my thinking. That's the real impact Charlie's had on me. I needed a powerful force to walk out of the limitations imposed by Graham's theories. Charlie's ideas were the source of that power. He expanded my horizons. That is the end of Buffett's quote.

This is Li Lu talking about this. I've also had this profound experience. Charlie pointed out the blind spots in my thinking. He is not just a partner. He's a role model in my life. Not only did I learn from him the principles of value investing, but I also learned from him how to live life. He made me understand that a person's success is not accidental.

Timing and opportunities are, of course, important, but the inherent qualities of people are even more important. Charlie likes to meet people for breakfast, usually starting at 7.30am. I remember the first time I had breakfast with Charlie. I arrived on time only to find Charlie sitting there, finished with the day's newspapers. While it was only a few short minutes away from 7.30, I felt bad letting an elderly man I respected wait for me. For our second date, I arrived about 15 minutes early and still found Charlie sitting there reading the newspaper. For our third meeting, this is one of my favorite stories. It's hilarious. For our third meeting, I arrived a half an hour

earlier and Charlie was still reading the newspaper as if he had been waiting there all year round and had never left the seat. For our fourth meeting, I arrived an hour early and began to sit there waiting at 6.30 a.m. And at 6.45 a.m., Charlie leisurely walked in with a pile of newspapers and sat down, not even looking up, completely unaware of my existence. Afterward, I came to understand that Charlie will always be early for meetings, but he doesn't waste time either. He will take out the newspaper and read. One year, Charlie and I were attending an out-of-state meeting. After the event, I unexpectedly met Charlie at the airport

terminal. His plane had already departed, but Charlie was not in a hurry. He took out a book and sat down to read while he waited for the next plane. As long as I have a book in my hand, I don't feel like I'm wasting time, Charlie said. He always carries a book on him. As long as he has that book, he'll have no complaint. Charlie spent his lifetime studying the causes of human failures, so he has a profound understanding of the weaknesses of human nature. Because of this, he believes people must be strict and demanding on themselves, continuously improving their discipline in life in order to overcome the innate weaknesses of human nature. This way of life to Charlie is a moral requirement. He is such a unique person.

But if you think about it, if Munger and Buffett weren't so unique, how could they have built Berkshire's performance over 50 years into one that is unprecedented in the history of investing and one that has yet to be replicated? Over the years that I've known Charlie, I often forget that he's an American. He is closer to being the traditional literati, which is the scholar officials of imperial China. Charlie is the best example of a businessman with a literati soul. He is extremely successful in

business. However, in the deep, intimate interactions I've had with Charlie, I found Charlie to be essentially a moral philosopher and a scholar. He reads widely, is knowledgeable over a broad range of topics, is truly concerned about his own moral cultivation, and is ultimately concerned about society. Charlie's value system, from the inside out, promotes self-cultivation and self-development to become the saints who help other people. Charlie very much appreciates Confucius.

I sometimes think that if Confucius was reborn in America today, Charlie would probably be the best incarnation. If Confucius returned 2,000 years later to the commercialized China, his teaching will probably be, have your heart in the right place, cultivate your moral character, fortify your family, acquire wealth, and help the world. That was an excerpt from the foreword that Li Lu wrote for the Chinese version of Poor Charlie's Almanac, The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger. And it is an excerpt from the book that I made myself. As you and I covered last week, there's only one book on Li Lu. It was written by Li Lu, and it only covers his early life and his escape from China.

What that version of Li Lu that was writing the book could never have predicted was what the next few decades of his life was going to turn out. The fact that he attends a lecture from Buffett that changes his life, becomes partners with Charlie Munger, founds a wildly successful investment company that produces billions and billions of dollars in returns. So what I wanted to do for this episode was, okay, we already covered his early life, his surviving one of the most horrific childhoods you could possibly imagine. Now I want to learn how he thinks about business building and investing. And so to do so, I had to make my own book. So what I did is I found all the lectures I could find and all the

interviews I could find of Li Lu in his own words. Most of them are on video. I found all the lectures I could find and all the interviews I could find of Li Lu in his own words. Most of them are on video. I would take the video. I would then transcribe the video. I then printed out the transcription. Then I organized them in chronological order by the year that he gave the talk. And then I treated that giant stack of paper just like a book. And so the result is I kind of have like a homemade or handmade, almost like autobiography of Li Lu, where he's discussing his investment career. And when I'm done, I'm going to put this in a binder, three ring binder and put it up on my bookshelf. This is something when I went to Charlie Munger's house and actually got to see his library.

This is something when I realized it's like, oh, I'm still a biography amateur, because Charlie would make his own biographies. There's this very hard to find interview that John D. Rockefeller gave towards the end of his life. It's like, I think, 1,700 pages. I think the transcript is 1,700 pages long. It's the William O. Inglis interviews that he did with Rockefeller. And on Charlie's bookshelf, you see that he had printed out the transcript and then put it into multiple three-ring binders. So I'm going to put my own version of Leeloo's autobiography when I'm done in a three-ring binders. So I'm going to put my own version of Li Lu's autobiography when I'm done in a three-ring binder on my bookshelf.

And so the first part of this homemade book is going to be, obviously, the foreword that Li Lu wrote for the Chinese version of Portrait of the Dominic. The next thing is Li Lu's Columbia Business School lecture in 2006. I briefly mentioned this last week because the lecture is like an hour and 45 minutes long or something like that. There is like a 17-minute section that is just Li Lu completely lighting up and being very disappointed in the lack of effort that the students in the class and the lack of just rigor that the students in the class were exhibiting. But that I'll touch on later because he actually goes through and describes his process of how he selects and the research that he does. He uses Timberland as an example,

which is a very successful investment of his. But that comes later. I want to start. He starts out like, why is he doing this? Why is he even bothering to come to Columbia Business School and to give this lecture? And his whole point was that the fact that he attended a lecture by Warren Buffett when he was a student at Columbia, when Lely was a student, changed his entire life. He says, this class in many ways is really what made my career. At the time, I wasn't even a student at the business school and I was accidentally brought into a lecture. And in the middle of that speech, listening to Warren, a light bulb kind of just went off. And I figured that I can do something in this business. At the time, I was pretty desperate. I had recently escaped from China. I didn't know anybody. I had no connections whatsoever, and I didn't have

any money. I was horribly worried about how do I ever make a living in this country, and I really didn't grow up with a capitalist culture either. I think this is why last week's episode is so important, why it's one that I'm going to re-listen to any time that I feel like any self-pity kind of creeping in. We have no excuses. Li Lu went from one of the most horrific childhoods you could possibly experience to a billionaire. He moves to America, no money, doesn't know the language, no connections. And so right away, you also see the similarities in the thinking between Li Lu and Charlie Munger. He says, if you live long enough, bad things are sure to happen to you. Self-pity has no utility.

Get up, dust yourself off, and keep going. And so we go back to this young Li Lu sitting in this lecture from Warren Buffett trying to figure out, what the hell am I going to do with my life? I was horribly worried about how do I ever make a living in this country, and I really didn't grow up with a capitalist culture either. What Buffett said about investing really was just so different from my perception of the stock market. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, well, gee, this may be something that I can do. And so one of the first things that he learned from Buffett was that you should really see yourself as more of an owner of a business and therefore tie your fortune to the outcome of that business. Your fortune will rise up and down with the nature

of the business. And if you're an owner of the business, you don't trade all the time. And so that line, if you're an owner of the business, you don't trade all the time, this is something that Leeloo is going to repeat throughout the lectures, that it's really Munger's idea of sit on your ass investing, which Munger says, sit on your ass investing. You're paying less to brokers, you're listening to less nonsense, and if it works, the tax system gives you an extra one, two, or three percentage points per year. This important investment philosophy assumes that one is better off buying a business with exceptional business economics, working in its favor and holding it for many years than engaging

in a lot of buying and selling, trying to anticipate market trends. Constantly buying and selling means constantly being taxed. So that's something that Munger will repeat. That is something that Li Lu will repeat as well. And so Li Lu is telling the students, hey, turns out this Buffett guys, you know what, let me, I'm going to read this to you real quick. I was texting a friend of mine as I was doing research for this podcast. And I said, I'm working on another Li Lu episode, but this one is about his remarkable investing career. It can be summarized by number one, studied Buffett and Munger. Number two, did that. So he tells the students like, I'm listening to Buffett. Turns out this Buffett guy is pretty smart, kind of knows what he's doing. I should just do that. And so then he hits on the advice that he has, which I think is the

most important. I think is the main, one of the main themes that you and I talk about why we read biographies, not business books is because general business advice is useless. It has to be tailored to who you are. It has to be authentic to you. And so he's saying you're interested in investing. Well, guess what? 95% of the stock market is made for traders. 5% is going to think maybe 5% or even less. We're going to think like, like Lee Lou, like Buffett, like Munger. So you have to figure out who does this make sense to you? Cause if you're not, if it doesn't fit, if you're not authentic to, if it doesn't fit your temperament, you're going to fail. And so he says, if you're thinking like us, you are really not the majority. You are actually a very, very, very small minority.

And the stock market is not created for you. And that's really where your opportunities is. And that is where the challenge is. And that is what I first learned when I listened to Buffett. That is one of the things that stuck in my mind. I really know, I really knew by then what kind of person I was. Your biggest challenge is really to understand whether you're that 5% of people or you're like the 95% of the majority. And I think this is overlooked and really excellent advice because this is key to enjoying the game. His whole point is like all the values in the long term. If you're building a business that's not authentic to you, if you don't enjoy it, you're not going to last decades. And that's where all the money is.

And in many cases, and in Li Lu's case, it takes an experiment. You have to know what you don't like to do. So he's like, listen, I always knew I was going to run my own fund. That he knew. But he didn't know how he was going to run the fund. And so one of his early backers was Julian Robertson, who was the founder of Tiger Management. And so he tells Li Lu, he's like, hey, come into the office, work out of here with all these other trainers. Li Lu is going to talk about this in more detail in another interview later. But this is where he realizes, I'm not part of this 95%. And so he says, Julian invited me to share office

with him and invited a whole bunch of other fund managers that he also invested in to share ideas. And that's when I sort of got a much better understanding of how the 95% of other people operated. And so most of them were trading all the time. They were shorting stocks. And Lelu's like, I don't like this. Lelu is much more like Munger and Buffett, where he wants to sit in a room, read, think. He compares his job to an investigative journalist. But he's like, this doesn't match me. And so after describing this period of time where he's like, I don't like this, this, this kind of this version of the business, he gives excellent advice. Again, that I think too many people miss, especially people that don't read biographies miss. So my first point I want to leave you with is really to understand

who you are because you will be tested. You are going to really have to ask yourself, you're going to have to face yourself, whether you're a value investor or you're not. And he says, if you want to be like, you know, if you want to be in a value, value investor, you want to be like Li Lu. If you want to be like Charlie Munger, if you want to be like Warren Buffett, that means that somehow you're probably genetically mutated. You are very comfortable being in a minority, which is not natural to human beings. Most of us survive because we stick with the group. And if you're like Leeloo and Buffett and Munger, you would naturally adopt the attitude that you're right,

not because other people agree with you, but because your reasoning and your evidence showed you that you're right. When I got to this part, I searched this because I was like, I know Buffett said something about other people's opinions over and over again. And that's what I was thinking about when I got to this paragraph.

So in that book that I mentioned earlier, which I feel is the best book that I've ever read on Buffett and Munger, which is All I Want to Know is Where I'm Going to Die, So I'll Never Go There, written by Peter Bevelin. Buffett says two things about this. First quote from Buffett, we don't read other people's opinions. We want to think. We want to get the facts and then think. And then later on, the second thing he says, Buffett says, I would say that if Charlie and I have any advantages, it's not because we're so smart. It is because we're rational and we very seldom let extraneous factors interfere with our own thoughts. We don't let other people's opinions interfere. And so we go back to Li Lu. He says, this is common sense,

but of course, common sense is the least common commodity. That is a great line. Common sense is the least common commodity. Most people don't think that way. And so he's like, you have to ask yourself, how do you want to spend your time? And for Li Lu, he's like, I want to spend most of my time or your time truly being an academic researcher instead of being a so-called professional investor. Most of the time, the job really is to be a researcher,

to be a journalist. And then he describes the traits that you have to have if you want to go down this path. He's really describing himself here. You have to have insatiable curiosity. You have to have an insatiable curiosity to really try to figure out about how everything works. The more you know, the better off you are. And so you have to be naturally interested and curious. He matches that intense curiosity with the fact that he reads everything. There's a line in a young Churchill's biography that I read that talked about the difference between, I think he was like 26 when he was in parliament. He said the difference between Churchill at that time and his competitors, or I guess his fellow lawmakers, was they would contend to read like today's newspapers where it said, there's a line in the book where it says Churchill

devoured entire shelves. That's how I think about Li Lu devouring entire shelves. So he's like, of course, you have to have this natural, intense curiosity. He says, this will help you. You're obviously reading everything. He says it will help you because then occasionally you will find a few insights. All of your studies would really just give you a handful of tremendous opportunities. And so when he talks about all this reading, all this thinking, all this research will only produce a handful of opportunities.

And obviously when you find these opportunities, you want to bet really heavily. In fact, I have a coffee mug of Warren Buffett's wisdom. And it has like quotes. And I just pour espresso into this thing all day long. And there's a line that I was thinking of because on the on the coffee mug, it's a quote from Warren. It says opportunities come infrequently when it rains gold. Put out the bucket, not the thimble. And the reason I thought about this is because multiple times people ask Li Lu because he takes questions in

almost all these talks. It's like, well, how much money do you put into this investment? And like, what large percent of your, what percentage of your portfolio and everything else? And my funny, his funniest answer to this was like, how much money did you put into this? He goes, a shitload. And so I was thinking about that because my first introduction to Li Lu came when I heard Charlie Munger describe the fact that he said reading baron's magazine for 50 years made him like 400 million dollars and and he described why because he's like i read baron's magazine for 50 years the entire 50 years i read baron's magazine i found one actionable insight that i could actually uh i could i could

make an investment in that insight uh gave him $80 million. And then he took that $80 million, gave it to Li Lu, and Li Lu turned that into $400 or $500 million. And so I think that's a great illustration for what Li Lu, the point that Li Lu is trying to make here. It's like, you're going to do all this reading, all this learning, all this research. And over your lifetime, you're going to have a handful of insights. And if you act on those insights, you're going to be fabulously, fabulously wealthy. And so he's going to start walking the students through how he found and how he thought about this investment in Timberland, which I think went, I think he returned like 600, 700%, maybe even more. And so he's doing this research. He's like, okay, you have to find out the opportunities you're given. Is the business

a good business? Is there a margin of safety? Is the management somebody that I can trust? And why is this opportunity presented to me? And so the first thing that he tells the students is like, listen, I no longer talk about what we own. In other words, bad boys move in silence. But I can pick a couple examples of something that I owned in the past. And he's using this as an illustration or I guess an example of how he thought about, how he thinks about investing. And so during this, he's holding this giant book. So it's the Value Line Investment Survey, which is a stock analysis, tracks approximately 1,700, something like publicly traded stocks. It's this giant book. And he's trying to walk the students through on how to analyze businesses that are in this book. And so again, Li Lu, just like Churchill,

just like most of the people you and I studied, they devour entire shelves. So he's like, I got hooked on Value Line, and I would read the entire thing from beginning to end. He says that's really the best kind of education. If you want to have an encyclopedic knowledge base, you have to go through page after page after page. Doing so is just enormously helpful. And if you really think about the idea behind the idea, like what is he trying to tell the students? He's like, how bad do you want it? That right there, the amount of people

are going to read cover to cover this giant book. It's in the video. It looks like you can work out with the thing. How many people are willing to do that? Right there, it's gonna eliminate like 95%, probably greater than 95% of people. It's going to eliminate most of the people who are sitting in this Columbia. These are MBA students, and they're not even doing it. And this is why studying the early lives of these entrepreneurs, investors that you and

I are studying is so important, because this guy had, I don't know if I mentioned it on the podcast, but it's in the book last week. He had 500 books in his dorm room. This guy grows up in unbelievable poverty in the communist country with no opportunity at all. What do you think that kind of person is going to do when they get to America, they go to Columbia? He hears Buffett speak and then he realized, wait, there's a book that does this in-depth

analysis on all the stocks. Okay, yeah, I'm going to read every single page multiple times. Wait till we see the analysis that he does for Timberland. This guy's going to devour entire shelves. So he pulls this up. He shows the value line sheet on Timberland. And he's like, listen, you don't really care where it traded before. The first thing I look at is valuation. And if the valuation doesn't fit, I don't even really want to go beyond that. So he is walking through the class on how he starts understanding a business. And he makes the point, if you've done this work, if you have this encyclopedic base of knowledge, if you've read every single page, then what happens is it speeds

up your learning process later on. So you can pull up a page. He says, listen, if you're skilled, it shouldn't really take you more than a second to find it. And then the next thing you want to do is you says, or next thing he does, he says, I always think of myself as a business owner. And he thinks if I could buy the entire business at this price, then I probably want to own it, meaning buy the stock. And so he senses there might be an opportunity with Timberland. Timberland's got a brand name, a good brand name, but the stock is just getting completely killed. At the time, there was the Asian financial crisis and all the shoemakers that were like, they were depressed. The prices were depressed because they thought their sales in Asia are just going to fall off a cliff. And he mentions this is also happening to Nike and

Reebok at the time. And so he goes and tries to find analyst report on Timberland, what's going on with Timberland. He says, it turned out there's no analyst report. Nobody was even covering this. And that didn't make sense to him because he said, the company's doing about a billion dollars a year in sales. It's a big brand. Why is nobody covering this? And so he walks people through this.

He's like, well, it's always been really profitable. And therefore, they didn't have need. Their need for the financial market is very limited. Any other reason? He's constantly like, you'll answer one thing and he'll go, OK, more, more, more. Any other reason? Well, the ownership structure. What's the ownership structure?

Well, it's family owned. They own about 40 percent of it and they control 98 percent of the vote. And so Leloo says immediately that turns a bunch of people off and he brings up the point. He's like, you really should think of yourself as an investigative journalist. And he says, you've got to have a very active, very curious mind, a mind that wouldn't be satisfied with any bogus answers. Otherwise, you can't be in this business. So he's like, OK, we have the Asian financial crisis. We have the fact that there's no analysts covering Timberland. What else could be the reason why he feels there's an opportunity here? Why are they keep, why is their stock getting absolutely battered?

Turns out there's a whole bunch of lawsuits. So what do you do next? You already know. We're going to pause right here. You already, what do you think Li Lu is going to do next? He says you'll download every single piece of the document for every single one of the court cases, every single case, and you read them from page one. If you do not have a curious mind, you're not going to do this. I am just so curious. I want to know what's happening.

This doesn't add up. And so you have to dig into every single thing and you have to read everything as I did. He's talking about effort. There is so many times. So obviously, as you know, like I underline things as I'm reading them and I jot down to myself, like what comes to mind? Sometimes they're past ideas. Sometimes it's stuff I have to search on. Sometimes it's like, oh, this is an idea related to something else.

He said multiple times. If you were able to see this little handmade book that I made, you're going to see the word effort in all capitals in a big, giant-ass circle because that's what he's talking about. He's talking about effort. Just like Munger and Buffett talk a lot about human nature and human psychology, so does Li Lu. Remember what he said? You know, common sense is the least common commodity. You know what else is the least common commodity? Effort and hard work over a sustained period of time.

Most of humanity is incapable of doing so. So this continues, and I have a big smile on my face as this continues to go on, because just the effort that this guy is going to do. Remember, when he pulls the trigger, he's not dabbling around. There's a great line where it says, Walt Disney seldom dabbled. Everyone who knew Disney remarked on his intensity when something intrigued him, he focused himself entirely on it as if it was the only thing that mattered. That's the same description for Leeloo too. Okay. So at this point, he's like, all right, I found, oh, there's all these lawsuits. Cool. I'm going to print out every single case and read it front to back. And what he realizes is like, oh, this is fantastic. You see the owner of the

business, right? It's kind of like getting pissed off. There's like this fight between him and some other investors. And Li Lu says you get a sense of his personality by reading those documents because you can vividly see his defense. And so the owner is like, I'm not going to talk to the street anymore. I'm not going to give you any guidance. I don't need a damn dollar from anybody else. This business is wonderful. And so the people that didn't do the work, right? How many people, let's say there's a hundred people that knew about the lawsuits. That's going to scare a bunch of people away. How many of those hundred people actually read the dot, every single word and every single document like Leloo? I don't know, one, two, maybe. And so this is beneficial for people like Leloo because these lawsuits

served a purpose. They scared, they scared the superficial people away. And so now Li is starting to get a little bit more comfortable with them. He's like, okay, well, that's nice. We still have to find out, are they actually good managers? How do we know that they're decent people? And this is where he goes back to. He's like, I view this job as an investigative journalist. Most people who have built businesses also have a big personality. Yes, they do. And they have a history that you can go and audit. They've left a trail of evidence of what kind of person they are and what they've done, how they deal with different situations. And so this is, I mentioned this last week, he goes to their community, he goes to their church and he says, you go visit everyone. You spend a few weeks there. So let's use that example

again. There's a hundred people may be interested in this potential investment in Timberland. How many people out of the hundred are doing what Leloo did? Now it's not even two or three. It is one. And Leloo doesn't stop there. He says the fellow actually, I think this is the founder of Timberland. He says this fellow actually only graduated high school. He's a relatively simple guy, but he's a nice, decent guy.

It turns out he has a son who actually went to business school. Now, I'm going to have a hard time not laughing at this. It's inspiring to me. He's just like, I want to be the best in the world at what I'm doing. I want to give full effort always everywhere. And it's like, I wouldn't even think to do this. Listen to what he does. So it turns out the Timberland founder, right?

He has a son. His son actually went to business school. His son was actually my age at the time. So I go and find out all the boards that the father and the sons sit on. And I find one of these boards that the son is on is run by a friend of mine. So I get myself invited onto the board. I joined the board along with the son and we become very close friends. And then I really know what's going on in that family. It turns out to be one of the most admiring families I've ever met. They are wonderful.

And they also happen to be brilliant businessmen. This is incredible. This is also related when I got to this part. Think about Charlie Munger would talk about the dangers of multitasking for decades. And this is a perfect example of this, because this is why multitasking is so dangerous. You don't have time to go to the extremes and the values found in the extremes. So in addition to this, he goes to all the different stores. He talks to all the store managers and he does the work for us. He summarizes this for us.

Think about how much effort you put in to get the damn thing right. And so now he realizes he has a margin of safety. He understands. He has a very in-depth, thorough understanding of the business from A to Z. And he makes his investment. And they ask him, well, how much did you put in? He goes, I put a shitload on them. And over the next two years, the damn thing went up seven times.

That's Charlie Munger. Charlie Munger said, you should remember that good ideas are rare. When the odds are greatly in your favor, bet heavily. That is the same idea that Buffett has on my coffee mug. Opportunities come infrequently when it rains gold. Put out the bucket, not the thimble. Go back to the text message I sent my friend. I'm working on another Leloo episode, but this one is about his remarkable investing career.

Can be summarized. Number one, study Buffett and Munger. Number two, did that. Munger and Buffett said, good opportunities are rare. When I find one, go all in. Leloo's version is, I found a great opportunity. I put a shitload on them. And then over the next two years, this damn thing went up seven times. He talks about the beginning, makes the investment. This is before this giant increase in value. He goes, the CEO goes and starts doing analyst meetings. So Leloo's going to, you already know, Leloo's going to show up at the analyst meetings. You know how many people are at the first analyst meeting? It's the CEO, Leloo, and one other guy, three people.

And then after the increase in value, which is I think the end of, I think this is happening in the year 2000, he says the room was just absolutely filled. And then he says, so that's when I know I have to sell. So I sold everything. Think about that. The stock goes up 700% or whatever it is, and then the meetings are packed. And then he's summarizing exactly his thinking and this thinking it's coming out of Lilo's mouth, but this, these are, you know, Buffett and Munger's ideas. You don't, you just have to sit on your ass. You don't have to do a damn thing. That's the good thing about buying a really good business. The business will take

care of itself. The opportunity opportunities like that don't come very often. So when it comes, you have to seize it. When opportunity comes, you have to jump on it. And that's what I did. He continues a few paragraphs later. When opportunity comes, you can tell. You can smell it. He's assuming you did the work necessary, right? You can smell it. How can you really develop that smell? The only way to do that is just reading page after page after page. And then he's asked again, he was asked, what percent of your fund did you put in Timberland? He said, a shitload of money. So then we get to the part, this is when they start analyzing. Keep in mind, he just went through how he analyzed Timberland, right? So he's like, okay, we're going to pull out Value Line. We're going to analyze some of these businesses together.

This is when they start analyzing together. And this is when he absolutely lights them up. And so he starts, think of yourself as an owner. This is when he absolutely lights them up and so he starts think of yourself as an owner this is something he tells over and over again and he asks like very simple questions right like what is the market cap and he goes come on it's simple come on i thought you guys did all your homework did anybody do homework not one hand raise your hand if you did homework one person in the class one hand goes up and i think that guy even gets the next question wrong. So we have to question if he even did his goddamn homework. And he says, how the hell are you

going to make it in this business? And I wrote in the column, in the margin, that they would not be one of three at the analyst meeting. So it continues. I'm going to just talk. I'm just going to talk about his reaction to them, right? Because this is effort. How bad do you want it? Come on, guys. You're the Columbia Business School. What do we pay you for? Come on, guys. You have work to do. This is not good. Bruce, the teacher, he goes, I don't know what the hell you're teaching them. Come on. This goes on for pages and pages. So I'm going to skip over this. It's so bad. This is his response. This is why all my employees I had never went to business school. They never worked in an established management firm.

And some of them never even had accounting because I find it's easier to train them than somebody who did. This is something that pops up in the biographies a lot that in many times, especially if you're running your business differently, these are, you know, from very, I hate to say this, but like very much like first principles thinking it's better, no experience than bad experience, better, no habits than bad habits. And so they're going back through this stock. There's just one thing I want to pull out that I think is a really important point, that you shouldn't be fooled by what things are called or how things are described, but you should be asking how do they actually function. And so

there's this business that they're analyzing that has a bunch of other businesses. And one of the businesses that they own is like this department store. It's called a department store, but it's not like you and I would think of a department store that's holding all this inventory. Therefore, the book value of this department store, it's worth more than the book value, in his opinion. He says it's not a department store like we understand here. They don't take any inventory. It's more like a shopping mall that would take a percentage off the top line of all the merchandise and all the stuff that they sell there. And so it's clear from his description when he's talking about this section, he's like, oh, I don't care what you're calling it.

I don't care what you're describing it like what you describe is like, what does it actually do? How does it actually function? And so after like struggling through this and kind of, you know, criticizing them or just, you know, chastising, I guess, for lack of effort is the way I would put this. He makes the point again, this type of approach is not natural. However, if you come to the conclusion that your personality somehow will fit this mutated gene pool, this is something you might really be looking to do. The only thing I can add to this is that there's a lot of money in it, as has been repeatedly proved by people from Ben Graham to Buffett and everybody else. I took this class and it really changed me fundamentally. But one thing you have to do is you've got to do it. That's why I was somewhat disappointed with the amount of

work that you have put into this. I made hundreds of thousands of dollars just taking this class, just listening to the 14 or 15 people. But I did a lot of work. I'm telling you, you can make a lot of money if you're really into this. Not only just listen, but do it. I benefited hugely, hugely,

just by listening and actually doing it. That is the difference. There is no bullshit theory. All everybody's telling you is what works. It's what works. You guys have a terrific opportunity. And if you don't really use this, then shame on you. You've got to do it. You've got to use it. You've got to do it. I mean, you're young. You have energy. There's nothing to lose. And he starts talking about what becomes his mantra that other people describe as his mantra in his investment company.

You want to provide accurate and complete information. Accurate and complete, that is his mantra. Most people will fail on both of those scores big time. And you have to go that extra length in order to get it done, the extra length he described in the Timberland, right? If you can't succeed on that, you cannot succeed in this business

because most of the time you're going to stand alone and you're going to be against just about everybody else. And if you're not really confident about what you know, you can't possibly be putting that kind of money into something. If you want to do the Buffett and Munger type, which is more of the kind that I want to do, he's describing, this is Lee, and you want to be that way, your return is going to come from a handful. Great ideas are rare. There's going to be no more than the number on two hands your entire life. And he says over a course of 50 years, you might get tremendous insight, no more than 10 insights, essentially. Tremendous insight. And what he means by tremendous insight is we're just going to bet the entire house. How do you really build that insight?

There's no other way than basically continuous curiosity, intense curiosity, and continuous study your entire life. I would also say this is why founders that still run and control their company do so over a long period of time have such a massive, massive advantage. Because think about it. It's like Sam Walden talks about, I never really had to invest in much. I never really invested in much outside of Walmart. And how many people understood Walmart the way Sam Walton did? Probably nobody on the entire planet. And so therefore, he can direct not only all of his money, but all his time and energy into this thing because he knows it better than anybody else. And just by getting that one insight, getting that one fundamental understanding of his company, he didn't need anything else.

Even if he never invested anything, never bought a stock, never made an investment in another company, he's still fabulously rich. That idea, that fundamental truth gets me fired up. And then Lee talks about the other side of this, that his mistake, because he hounds on the margin of safety, right?

He's like, you know, he's lost some money, but in very rare cases. And he says his biggest mistake is actually not making a big bet when he had that tremendous opportunity. So he says the biggest opportunity came or the biggest mistake or the missed opportunity came from this company that I had an absolute insight on.

I had the absolute insight. I knew the management. I knew that they were trading below cash. And subsequently that went up 50 to 100 times and I missed it. I couldn't bring myself into it. That was the biggest, biggest mistake I made. The biggest mistake is not how much money I lost. It was how much money I forgone. That is the biggest mistake. I cannot forgive myself for making that mistake. And so then Leeloo is going to elaborate on why. And this is going to sound a lot like Warren Buffett's punch card idea. So Leeloo says,

you go through your life, you might not have more than five or 10 insights. You developed that over many, many, many years of study. Some of the things I'm doing, I really found myself doing first 15 years ago. So what he means, I studied an American company 15 years ago, and now I found the Asian counterpart. But I studied that business for 15 years in between. I know everything about that industry and what really makes that business tick. You need to have that kind of insight in order to really swing with conviction. And if you cannot do that, either psychologically or because you're ill-prepared, you would just never really make any real amount of money.

So I got to that part and I was like, oh, that's another one of Buffett's ideas, Munger's ideas, essentially coming out of, you know, Li Lu is just echoing what he learned from them. And so Buffett goes, and I think he speaks to University of Florida MBA students, but this is from the biography Snowball. And so it says, to the students,

Buffett explained his 20 punches approach to investing. You get very rich, he said, if you thought of yourself as having a card with only 20 punches in a lifetime. And every financial decision used up one punch, you would resist the temptation to dabble. You make more good decisions and you'll make more big decisions. I need to actually read something to you. I watched this video of Charlie Munger. It's like 90 seconds long and it's titled Charlie Munger on what's different about Li Lu. Not only did I watch it 20 times this week, but I sent it to a bunch of friends and I transcribed it. And this really is, and now it's like making me

pause this week and really analyze how I'm spending my time and really making sure that I'm analyzing everything through opportunity cost and only taking the best opportunities available, right? So Charlie Munger says, Leeloo, I'm getting off of the text that we have, the Leeloo book that I have in my hand. I'm going to this transcript of this Charlie Munger video because I really do believe in 90 seconds he gives us like a lifetime of lessons. There's a bunch of great ideas in here. And so he says, Li Lu is not normal. He is the Chinese Warren Buffett. He is very talented. In 95 years, I have given Munger family money to an outsider to run once. Once in 95 years, and that is Li Lu.

And he has hit it out of the park. And that's pretty picky. Once I have Li Lu, if I am comparing to him, who else am I going to pick? By the way, that is a good way to make decisions. And that is what we do, meaning him and Warren. If we've got one great thing to do more of, we are not interested in anything that is not better than that. That simplifies life a great deal. And so when I hear that, when I read the transcript, I know Munger has talked about this over and over again, talks about making all

of your decisions to opportunity costs. And if you would do so, you're obviously going to be, your bets and what you invest in, your time and energy is going to be heavily concentrated. So I go and I search and I was like, okay, I know he's talked about this before. I go to Founders Notes and I search opportunity costs. First thing I find is a quote from Munger from that book. I keep mentioning All I Want to Know is Where I'm Going to Die So I Never Go There, episode 286. He says, decisions, this is Munger speaking now, decisions in your life are all about opportunity costs. And wise people think in terms of personal opportunity costs. In other words, it's your alternatives that matter. That is how we make all of our decisions. The genius in Buffett's advice to the students, if you really think about it, he's just like,

well, what's a good way to make sure that you're thinking through opportunity costs and saying, hey, I'm going to limit your entire life. You have 20 opportunities and no more. That forces you to weigh them against the alternatives, does it not? So now we go back to Li Lu and he's talking about the fact that, hey, if you didn't do the work, if you're not psychologically, you don't have the temperament to it, you're not ill-prepared, you're never going to make any real amount of money. You're not going to make the outsized returns that Buffett has been able to achieve. Why should it be easy? Opportunity that gives you 10,000 times your money.

And he says their biggest ideas, meaning Munger and Buffett's, their biggest ideas really gave them 10,000 times their money. An opportunity like that, if done once in your life and you're set, why should it be easy? And then he ties that back to how he started this. He's like, you got to build something that is authentic to you. Because if you're not deeply interested, if you're not obsessed, you're not going to do what he did. They just go back to the Timberland example. It's like he downloads everything, goes to their church, finds out what boards they are, and then gets elected to the board. You're just not going to do that. And he says, this is what really drives me in the business. It's exciting. It's utterly exciting. And he

extends this to everything. He treats the really the Lilo treats the world like a classroom. He's like, you know, I was interested in physics and mathematics and history and economics and law and politics. I like everything. I'm interested in everything. And that's what you need. You might need models for biology. Some of them help my investing. You have to be intensely curious about everything. And occasionally you're going to stumble into a big opportunity. You want to go through every day learning something. It's a good mental discipline to have. And as time goes by, you have learned a great deal. So when I read biology, when I read physics, when I read history, it's all searching for ideas. He even talks about the development of

his daughters, like seeing them, seeing how human cognition develops, he found enormously important. He says it's important to understand psychology. I guess it's all work anyways, essentially saying the entire world is his classroom. And he goes back to the fact that people like him, people like Munger, people like Buffett, they don't belong to the stock market, meaning that they don't want to trade all the time. People describe them as investors, but they really are. They're business builders. And so then he's asked a question like, what drives your decision to sell? And so I need to be clear. The Timberland investment, he made a lot of money on these like seven, six, seven, eight X investments.

He's like, you'll find a bunch of those maybe. But what he's really going for is like these things that return 5,000, 10,000, like the ones that one of those can make you, you know, unbelievably wealthy. So when you find one of those, you don't sell. So he's going to talk about his evolution of thinking on this. So he's asked the question, like, what drives your decision to sell? I used to have a philosophy. If I don't want to buy at the price I'm offered, then I sell. And so he talks about how he evolved away from this and the fact that if you're in a really great business, like, first of all, there's just not many truly phenomenal businesses out there. And if it is a phenomenal business, that leader is going to take a disproportionate amount of the capital, even more so in the future than you could

possibly guess. And so there's like an indirect way he kind of continues to answer this question. And he does that while he leads the students on a way to analyze the business of Bloomberg, even though Bloomberg is a private company you can invest in. But he's going to talk about his analysis. He has a lot of respect. In fact, he mentions the business of Bloomberg multiple times throughout the years. And later on, when he tries to compete with them, he even realizes they're even better than he expected. But he's really trying to educate the students on like, well, you know, how do you know you have a business that you shouldn't sell? And part of this exercise is like a series of questions you want to ask yourself, like, is there an actual moat here that is defensible for many decades to come? So they go through a bunch of questions.

Why is it so sticky? And a lot of students answers he doesn't like, but one of them he loved. And they said, well, they have high switching costs. And so they talk about people that use the machine have a high opportunity cost for their time. And it takes a long, long time to learn all the functionalities of Bloomberg. Anything that is hard to learn and that is highly, highly, highly relied upon to do your daily work. Once you learn that damn thing, you do not want to learn that again. And besides, then they add another advantage to have.

And besides, everybody else uses the same thing. You have to be able to communicate with your partners, with your colleagues. Anybody you collaborate is using it. This business is winner take all. And he talks about one of the genius marketing ideas that Bloomberg had is that they would introduce them, I think either free or unbelievably cheap to every business school student. So then you're in college and you're learning how to use the machine. And Li Lu talks about what you could expect to happen after. He goes, okay, I have this thing available cheaply to me. I'll learn this thing. But once I graduate and I go into the world, I don't want to learn that again. And besides, everybody else is using it. And so he makes the

point that at some point, Bloomberg had stacked up all these advantages. And at one point, he crossed the line. And then once you cross that line where everybody's using it, they have high opportunity costs at a time, high switching costs, takes forever to learn. Everybody else is using it too. It's just like he's stuck in there. And so Lee says, suppose that was a public company and suppose you had to develop that insight, that insight is worth a shitload of money. That's the kind of insight I was talking about. That is a virtual monopoly business. He's telling them, look for this kind of insight. Do you even have a choice today of not using Bloomberg? He's asking the question, what is the cost of Bloomberg?

What is the cost? Nothing. You can almost call that zero. Now, obviously he knows it's, you know, 30,000 a year or whatever the number is. It's a very expensive, but his point is every trade to these kinds of people that use it can mean millions of dollars gain or loss. So they don't care if you call, if you charge them $30,000 a year, and if they don't really care, or they don't really have a choice. If you decide that next year, the price is going to be 10% a year more, they don't have a choice. That is why it's a fabulous business, a fabulous business. He repeats that over and over again. And I'm going to pause here.

I'm going to come back to what he's saying here because I think it's really important. But the point of his hounding on this, that you need an encyclopedic basis of knowledge, you should study all businesses, all industries. You should read all the time. It's because you realize this is not, it has nothing to do with financial services, technology. It's a type of business that has pricing power because there is no other alternative. And again, this sounds a hell of a lot like Charlie Munger. When I just did, it was episode 355. It's on this very rare Bernard Arnall interview, right. It's the exact he has the same exact characteristics. And they talk about the fact that Bernard Arnall bought Tiffany starts raising prices. I think the average customer used to spend five hundred dollars per like visit to the store. Now it's like four times that, you know, they rate they immediately start raising prices. And when I got to that, right, I thought of that when I got to this and the Li Lu.

But when I got to that, I thought of what Charlie Munger said. So I'm going to pull this quote from Charlie Munger that I think Li Lu obviously understood when he's analyzing Bloomberg. He says, there's actually businesses you'll find a few times in a lifetime where any manager of the business could raise their return enormously just by raising prices and yet haven't done it. So they have huge untapped pricing power that they're not using. That is the ultimate no-brainer. Disney found that it could raise prices a lot for the Disney parks and attendance stayed right up. So a lot of the great record of Eisner and Wells came just from raising prices at Disneyland and Disney World. And so Munger continues, at Berkshire Hathaway, Warren and I raised the prices of See's Candy. And of course we invested in Coca-Cola, which had untapped pricing power. And so back to Li Lu. That is why it's a fabulous business, a fabulous business. That's

what I mean by insight. You study every business. When you have things like that, you do not sell. And then finally, he ends this lecture where the vast majority of my highlights in this little handmade book is going to come from this because he's remarkably consistent in how he looks at things and what he talks about. So obviously, he'll repeat some of the stuff in future conversations and future transcripts I have in front of me, but I'm obviously not going to go over it over and over again. So he says nothing, he really just talks about business as change and you need to welcome that because change equals opportunity. So business as change and change equals opportunity. Nothing is constant. That's the interesting thing about business. Nothing is constant. And that's why you have

to keep relearning things. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing. That's why people who have an active mind and are actively prepared and have the psychological temperament to be able to act when they see an opportunity will always, always have a chance to be fabulously rich. And that is a good note to end on. Okay, so the second talk is a lecture at Columbia again, but this one happens four years later. And I'm not going to repeat the ones we just went over, but he does tell slightly different stories in this where after discovering, watching that lecture from Warren Buffett, it's not going to surprise you, he read every single thing he could about Buffett. All of his shareholder letters, every single book, every single talk. He says he embarked on a two year intensive study, learning everything about Buffett. And so he says, after I graduated Columbia, I worked in an investment bank for a year and realized that was a mistake.

I tried to start a fund. The first year I managed money, I lost 19%. That's when he goes into building the business or a life that's authentic to you. If you could ever find something you can do well that you really like, this will be your best investment. You will do better than competitors. If you can do it with intrinsic passion, that really over time will add enormous value to you. And again, I need to point out, I don't even know I'm going to name this episode. Maybe it should be just like the Lee Lou and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, because it's like they all have the same ideas. Lee Lou saying,

hey, find something you have an intrinsic passion. Charlie Munger in Poor Charlie's Almanac says, another thing that I found is that an intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you're really going to excel in it. I could force myself to be fairly good at a lot of things, but I couldn't excel in anything which I didn't have an intense interest. Going back to Lee Liu, the game of investing is really continuous learning. I cross that out. I really think the better way to say that is the game of entrepreneurship is really continuous learning and excessively profitable because finding an edge really only comes from a right frame of mind and years of continuous study. This is really difficult, but on the other hand, the rewards are huge.

Warren says, if you only come up with 10 good investments in your 40-year career, you will be extraordinarily rich. That's really what it is. This idea of finding an edge comes from years of continuous study. So one of the craziest things that kind of smacked me in the face is when I read that other biography of Sam Walton. So I think I've read Sam Walton's autobiography twice, and then I read this biography by Vance Trimble on him twice. So I think my fourth reading really smacked me in the face of the importance of like fast and then are slow and then really fast. So he's talking about, you know, studying companies, reading about them, figuring out the management, figuring out the opportunity. You know, it's just like you need years of continuous study. For a founder that can use a continuous study, it's obviously going to happen inside and

outside of your business. So like Sam Walton had seen more retail stores than anybody else on the planet. And the edge came from, he was relatively slow, right? Think about this, Sam Walton, greatest retailer ever lived. He had one store, a single store for five years. And then you look at how fast he learned. So that was his, this is prehistory of Walmart. It wasn't even called Walmart. It was like a five and dime, which we would think of as like a dollar store today. And then you have success of Walmart, and then he sees the success of what he wants to do, like a Costco, when he starts Sam's Club. And so at the beginning of his career, before he had this years of continuous study, one store for five years. This is fascinating because the faster you learn, the faster you compound your knowledge, the faster you can actually move in real life. So then four decades later, he starts Sam's Club.

He goes from zero stores to 105 in seven years and $5 billion a year in sales. And the edge came from this like slow continuous study because Sam Walton said the key was that they started out underfinance, undercapitalized in these remote communities. And it turned out by running these experiments in these small remote communities that there was much, much more business out in these little communities of like 6,000 people, 10,000 people than they could have ever possibly imagined. That one insight is the foundation of the Walmart financial empire. That is Walton's version of Li Lu's idea of finding an edge only comes from the right frame of mind and years of continuous study. And so Li has some advice for us. How do you understand and

gain that great insight? Pick one business, any business, and truly understand it. I tell my interns to work through this exercise. Imagine a distant relative passes away and you find out that you've inherited 100% of a business they own. What are you going to do about it? That is a mentality to take when looking at any business. I strongly encourage you to start and understand one business inside and out, just like obviously Sam Walton understood Walmart. That is better than any training possible. It does not have to be a great business. It could be any business, but you'll need to be able to get a feel of how you would do or what you would do as a 100% owner. If you can do that, you will have a tremendous leg up against the competition. Most people don't take that first concept correctly, and it is quite sad. If you did, you would really seek out

knowledge on how it should be run, how it works. If you start with that, you will eventually know how much that business is worth. And then he talks about the temperament you need to have. He's like, you know, I started my first business in 97. That was in the middle of the Asian financial crisis. Then we had the internet bubble. And then a few years after that, it was the great financial crash of 2007, 2008. He says, these are billed, these financial panics are billed as once in a century disasters, but they happen every few years. This is really where the insight and temperament come in. You have to have a certain confidence in your own judgment and not be swayed by other people's

views. It is not easy, but that is life. That sounds just like Charlie Munger. It is a given. It happens to everyone. Berkshire has had at least three times when the stock went down 50%. It happened to Andrew Carnegie. It happened to John D. Rockefeller. It happens to everyone. This happens to even mighty companies. Look at the top 50 companies in America every 10 years.

By the time 20 or 40 years go by, two-thirds of them are gone. By the time it goes to 100 years, there might be only a couple left. That's just the way it is. This is why he kept saying business is change. Change equals opportunity. He says capitalism rewards people who are talented at capital allocation. It is a great game. He loves it. You know, he refers to it as a game, as a passion, as an obsession over and over again.

He just absolutely loves what he does. And so then he continues. Once you understand a single business inside and out, then you start examining the entire industry. If you can understand a business inside and out, then eventually you can extend that knowledge to understanding an industry. If you can get that insight, it's enormously beneficial. If you can then concentrate that on a business with superior economics in an industry, with superior economics, with good management, and you get it at the right price, the chances are you can stay for a very long time. And then he says something in passing that I hope I never forget, and that superior businesses produce a lot of positive surprises. You know,

bad businesses are going to throw up one headache after another. And so he talks about, he starts analyzing BYD. And the crazy thing, I think BYD is now like, I don't know, 80 billion market cap or something like that, maybe more. But he started his position in BYD in 2002. He's going to mention the founder of BYD and BYD a lot throughout the talks. But this is Leloo on BYD in 2010. And so he says, when you get into situations like BYD, you see a lot of good surprises. And so he says the founder and his team have this fabulous culture. This is nuts. I didn't know this, that the founder only raised 300,000 in venture capital before the IPO. He raised money in an IPO and then Buffett gave him $200 million. And so at this point, they had 160,000 employees, six to 7 billion in revenue and 500 million in net profit. It is amazing. He has this ability to adapt in a competitive environment.

He has demonstrated that ability again and again. The way he does automation is far cheaper than anyone else and more reliable. He continues to surprise me with his ingenuity to figure out ways to do something better than anyone else. But you cannot truly understand everything about our business in one week. It took me 10 years. He's a business in one week. It took

me 10 years. He's talking about BYD still. It took me 10 years and I'm still learning new things about BYD. It is a continuous learning process. You build this knowledge base by continually learning. And it's during this section, he's asked a lot of questions from the students in the audience. And he talks about the importance of staying within your circle of competence, of not being intellectually arrogant. And so there's a bunch of times where they're giving him like, hey, are we in a bubble or like some kind of macro economic call? And so I just want to pull out a couple of things. He's asked a question. The question's irrelevant. It's outside of his circle of competence. He says, that's too big of a question for me. I don't know. Few questions later, asked another thing like this.

That's just not my game. I don't know. And then he ties it back to just not taking shortcuts and just realizing you have to build this base of knowledge. The process and progression is like compounding money. In fact, you can compound knowledge faster than money. If you truly love this game, I would suggest that you don't take shortcuts.

It might take longer, but it's more rewarding. And then he ends this with saying, you know, the truly great businesses in many times will grow even bigger than you could possibly expect. And he gives the example of Microsoft. With truly great companies, it only looks logical in retrospect. Think about Bill Gates, how Bill Gates started Microsoft. I don't think he knew up front that he would take the entire market because at the time the market didn't even exist. Okay. So the next talk he gives in 2012, he gives it at San Francisco State University. And I found this and I thought the quality was terrible. So I went looking for like another recording of it. Turns out somebody had like remastered it and made it sound better. It still doesn't sound fantastic, but enough that I could transcribe it. And on that, the remastered

version, there's a fantastic comment that I think tells you a lot about Li Lu. This is the comment on the YouTube video. Thanks for creating a higher quality version. My team and I actually hosted this event in 2012. Not only is Li Lu a fantastic investor, he's also a great and humble person. We had reached out to him over a cold email asking him to speak at a student conference in San Francisco. Although he didn't know who we were, nor did he have any connection to the school, he flew to San Francisco, gave this speech, and then went right back after LA after his speech. He's a remarkable person. And so I just want to pull out a few of the ideas he had. He spoke for like 30 minutes, took questions. And, you know, it starts with really,

this is just about the fact that general business advice is useless. It depends on who you are, depends on the personality, depends on it's hugely important to build a business that's authentic to you. And usually that requires experimenting with things and realizing what you don't like first, which was obviously true in Lee Liu's and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett's case. And so he says, why is the practice that is being publicized by tremendous successful examples such as Mr. Buffett, why do more people not follow what they do? It turns out it has a lot to do with human psychology. And he says, it is human nature to love gambling. Even if everybody knows the odds are stacked against them, that has never prevented gambling from becoming a very big business. It has also endured throughout the centuries. But he says this goes against the track record that Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have. But virtually all the successful investor practitioners do not bet often. I need to pause. I found another quote from him, I think that relates to what he's saying here. So Leloo says, in the short term,

there will be winners and losers. But in the long term, there are very few winners. If someone can produce outstanding results over 15 years or more, we can probably say that they're something exceptional. So his whole point is just like, you should just study the greats and then do what they do. So back to this, many of the very successful investor practitioners do not bet often. Most people really do not have the necessary discipline, mental discipline to do that. I would strongly encourage you to study successful practices in real life and in examples of history. What you are looking for, what he is looking for, is you're talking about an enduring, earning, generating franchise, a compounding machine, in other words.

To know what to look for, he says, I would have first studied all the great examples in the past. And so he just pounds over and over again the same idea. Like, hey, only go for the best. You might only have five to ten shots in your entire life. Make sure you do all the work. Make sure you have the temperament. And one of the students, God bless him, just God bless him. But he goes, I have to say that's a pretty high hurl rate. Come on, man. He just got done explaining why there's this flaw in human nature, why so few people are able to do so. And you just prove his

point. And I wrote in the column, yeah, no shit. Yeah, no shit. It's a high hurdle rate. That's his entire point. And he's trying to explain why this is so important, because if you actually have a great opportunity, you only need one. When you turn out to be right, the upside is just enormous. It could really surprise your wildest dreams. He repeats, it is extremely rare to find no-brainer great opportunities. You certainly do not want to diversify away from the opportunity that you have been waiting patiently for a long time to discover for some really inferior other opportunities. Investing is essentially opportunity cost. Does that not sound like that 90-second video from Charlie Munger, right? So any other alternative, you really have to justify itself

by comparing with the one that you already have. Charlie Munger is not going and looking to run Munger family money with other people that are inferior to Li Lu. And when you make that comparison, you tend not to really diversify too much. All decisions ought to be looked at through the concept of opportunity costs. So I'm going to go and summarize. This is the note I left on this page, right? Because, you know, I may never read this entire page again, but I'll go back and look through them and through my notes and highlights. And I want a summary, like a quick way to understand what did I learn from this page?

Number one, all decisions should be looked at through the concept of opportunity cost. Number two, if you do that, you will not diversify too much. Number three is how you should make all of your decisions. Okay, so the next year he gives an interview with Graham and Doddsville. And this one's written out. And so in order not to repeat what we already covered in the other talks, we're going to skip to the second page of the interview.

Part of the game is to come into your own. You must find some way that perfectly fits your personality. It is a competitive game. So you're going to run into a lot of very intelligent, hardworking fellows. The only way to gain an edge is through long and hard work.

Do what you love to do so you naturally do it or think about it all the time, even if you are relaxing. Over time, you can accumulate a huge advantage if it comes naturally to you like this. The ones who really figure out their own style and stick to it and let their natural temperament take over will have a big advantage. This game is a process of discovering who you are, what you're interested in, what you're good at, what you love to do, then magnifying that until you gain a sizable edge over all other people. One of my favorite sentences out of every single thing that we've talked about so

far. And even though that's one of my favorite sentences, I feel he does even a great job of summarizing the idea behind that with another sentence. That's one of my favorite. I let my own personal interests define my circle of competence. So then Lee talks about the influence, the same influence that Munger had on Buffett, Munger had on Lee. When Charlie died, Buffett was writing about the fact that Charlie's the architect of Berett, Munger had on Lee. When Charlie died, Buffett was writing about the fact that Charlie's the architect of Berkshire. So Lee talks about it. He's like, listen, I started out looking for cheap securities, but over time, I really fell in love with strong businesses. And I think that's super important. He mentioned earlier, strong businesses,

wonderful businesses, great businesses, they produce positive surprises. You want that than a shitty business that you get for a good price. And so I want to read from kind of like the eulogy that's posted on Berkshire's website that Warren wrote after Charlie died. And so he says, Charlie in 1965 promptly advised me, Warren, forget ever buying another company like Berkshire. But now that you control Berkshire, add to it wonderful businesses purchased at fair prices and give up buying fair

businesses at wonderful prices. In other words, abandon everything you learned from your hero, Ben Graham. And Charlie said, because Ben's ideas only work when practiced at a small scale. With much backsliding, I subsequently followed his instructions. Many years later, Charlie became my partner in running Berkshire and repeatedly jerked me back to sanity when my old habits surfaced. Until his death, he continued in this role, and together we, along with those who early on invested with us, ended up far better than Charlie and I ever dreamed possible. In reality, Charlie was the architect of the present Berkshire, and I acted as the general contractor to carry out the

day-to-day construction of his vision. Charlie should forever, and this is bold, they bolded this on the website, Charlie should forever be credited with being the architect. So Leeloo continues, I've become more attracted to looking for great businesses that are inherently superior. And actually he mentions this because he's going to talk about Bloomberg again,

which again, we already know he thinks is an inherently superior business. So he was the first investor in this company called Capital IQ. But what was fascinating is the insight that he learned about Bloomberg through Capital IQ because they started Capital IQ to compete with Bloomberg. We wanted to create something just like Bloomberg. And in the process, we grew to appreciate Bloomberg much more because it was so hard to compete with them. We learned quickly that we couldn't really compete with Bloomberg. I think one of the best ideas for figuring out who is really great inside of an industry, you identify who is really great by asking who I do not want to compete with. And I think it was Mark Andreessen. Somebody said one time that you could survey the industry and it's the one bullet theory, I think is what it's called, is you sell all of the CEOs in the industry. If you have a gun with one bullet, which one of your competitors are you shooting? And that's a good indicator that I don't want to compete with that guy. And if everybody's saying

they don't want to compete with that person, that's an idea that that's who's truly great inside the industry. So what we learned quickly is that we really want to compete with that person. That's an idea that that's who's truly great inside the industry. So what we learned quickly is that we really couldn't complete compete with Bloomberg. And maybe that insight is transferable to his BYD investment. So talks about, you know, how were you able to get he's asked the question, like, how were you able to get Charlie Munger interested in a company like BYD? Because Berkshire Hathaway shies away from technology oriented companies. Keep in mind, this is 2013.

This interview's happening. And Lee's insight on that is different. He says, I don't think Warren and Charlie are ideological. They are not ideological, neither am I. It's really how much you know. The story of BYD is relatively simple. The guy is a really terrific engineer, started the business with $300,000,

takes no additional money until they IPO. He creates a company that has $8 billion in revenue, thousands of engineers. He solves a whole bunch of different problems. The engineering culture there consistently demonstrates its ability to tackle big, difficult problems. BYD plays in a big field with open-ended possibilities and has a reasonable chance of being successful. Berkshire is not ideological against technology stocks. They're just against anything they don't feel comfortable with. There's a line Buffett has on that.

Buffett says that they're individually, individual opportunity driven, individual opportunity driven. And I would say Li Lu is too, because multiple times he's asked questions and they're kind of like, are you only investing in Asia? Are you only investing in this? You're only investing in that. He's just like, I go where the greatest opportunity is. I'm individual.

He doesn't use the word, but that's what I would describe. He's individual opportunity driven. Li Lu continues on BYD. The company is a learning machine. And by this point, I'm so deep. Obviously, I've been deep into Buffett and Munger for years, but so deep into Li Lu, I realized like this company is a learning machine. Okay. That applies to BYD, but it applies to Berkshire too. It applies to Munger, applies to Buffett, and applies to Li Liu too. This guy's a learning machine. He also has a great line hidden in here that I really think speaks to the importance of focus. I don't invest anything outside of the fund. I put all of my investment capital into my funds. Li Liu going back to focus, really concentrate on the ideas where you truly have

the time and energy to fully understand the situation better than anybody. And I believe the best founders know this instinctively. That is why Sam Walton was not doing a bunch of investing outside of Walmart. Why? Because he's concentrating on the ideas where he truly had the time and energy to fully understand the situation better than anybody. Back to the importance of being a learning machine and constantly adapting. There is not a single business that I know of that will never change. Business is change. That's the fascinating thing about business. Successful businesses have some combination of things that enable them to adapt to changes better than anyone else. I think you could switch out. That's definitely true for businesses, right? What about successful people, right? Let's run that sentence back with people inside of businesses.

Successful people have some combination of things that enable them to adapt to changes better than anyone else. I think that statement is still true. He hits this again on the next page. Successful companies are able to deal with change consistently. And then remember, several times he's repeated, you know, the fact that Munger and Buffett are rare. Greatett are rare. Great opportunities are rare.

It's not supposed to be easy. In fact, he repeats over and over again that the future is excessively hard to predict. And he has a bunch of examples in trying to illustrate that point. And, you know, it's obviously important to him because he repeats it throughout almost every single one of these talks. But this is the best way that he framed it. I was like, wow, this is a great way to summarize that idea about, you know, the future is hard to predict. He says, if you went through the American Civil War, the country killed 2% of its population.

And yet not only was it rebuilt, but it was rebuilt at a furious pace. After that, it went through two great world wars. After World War II, if you thought Japan and Germany were doomed, boy, were you wrong. It is hard to predict the future. Okay, the next talk he gave in 2021, and it is the 13th Columbia China Business Conference Fireside Chat. And he mentioned earlier that the more like foundational, like the encyclopedic base of knowledge you have, the faster you can identify things. And he was using specifically like the more you read value line, the easier it is to spot the opportunities and the faster you can do so. It's also true if you're studying this person. So by the time I get to this, you know, I think the transcript here runs, I don't know, 30 pages

or something. I had an understanding of Li Lu and how he thinks to where there's only one insight that I want to share with you from this talk that we haven't already covered. And it deals directly with focus. But I think more than that, it's like, once he obviously has this ability to trust his own judgment, and he knows his path in life. A lot of what he's telling you is like, you have to learn to think for yourself. And the only way you can trust your judgment is actually do the work that you should be able to trust your own judgment. And so he's asked the question, like, what other dimensions do you do things differently than other investors? And he says, I don't spend my time studying other investors. We spend our time studying industries and studying specific companies. In other words,

he's keeping the main thing, the main thing. He is focused. He knows that if he does, if he studies great companies and great industries, he will develop those rare, you know, five, 10, 15 insights in an entire lifetime. And that's all. And if he does that and only does that, he will be successful. And doing things that are not that, spending time that is not that, you know this, he makes his decisions through opportunity costs. So studying other investors, instead of the way he makes money and his main business, which is studying great companies, identifying insights for great companies and great industries, the opportunity cost to study other investors is too high.

So therefore, he doesn't do it. Okay. And then the final thing is he turns, when he turns 50 years old, he writes this post about reflections on turning 50. And I think this is a perfect place to end. I could never imagine my life would turn out this way. It takes countless bridges, roads, means of transportation, and years of effort to travel this far.

The countless people in my life, kind-hearted strangers, well-wishers, mentors, partners, friends, are my bridges, my roads, my transportation for getting here. Without your help, friendship, and constant encouragement, I simply could not travel this far. If I have anything to do with that journey, it's simply that I took it. Woody Allen is right. 90% of success is to show up. At various stages of my life, I could have stopped or took the long rest, but for some reason, my heart told me otherwise. I just kept going. Half of the time, I wasn't sure where I was heading. The other half, I was probably taking

the wrong turns. No matter. But I was on high alert to correct mistakes along the way. I was careful not to be influenced by emotions that I know are poisonous and counterproductive to the journey. Things like envy, resentment, hatred, jealousy, greed, and self-pity. Again, that's very much Munger and Buffett-esque. Munger says self-pity has no utility. Buffett says that the world doesn't run on greed, it runs on envy. They both said that you need to cure yourself of envy. My early life experiences may require me to work even harder than others to guard against these human vulnerabilities. And when I did fall to their prey, I was fortunate to be able to correct them quickly.

Socrates was right. The unexamined life is not worth living, certainly not living well. Every once in a while, I would sit down alone to figure out where I might be wrong. In my experience, every five to ten years or so, I had to change so much about myself that at times, it felt like almost a reinvention. And when I fail in self-examination, I'm even more blessed to have some strong friends who could point out my blind spots. I would have been lost in life's various mazes if I had not gotten that help. So through the tumblings and the zigzags, I kept going while at the time insisting on sitting in the driver's seat. It is my life and my journey after all. According to Confucius, at 50, one should know his purpose in life, what your life was meant to be. I believe in Confucius's dictate. Having done relatively well in additions in my life, I'm slowly learning the art of subtraction

and focus. I would have failed in a lot of professions. For example, I wouldn't be good at ballet or basketball, but my temperament and experiences prepared me well for a career in investment. I have to pause there. I really do think one of the main themes that reappears in the teachings of Li Lu is you pick a career that you have an immense passion and that suits your personality and how you want to spend your time. I was extremely lucky to be introduced into the field by the greatest investor who ever lived when I accidentally stepped into a lecture by Warren Buffett at Columbia nearly 25 years ago.

And it was even more magical 13 years ago when Charlie Munger became my investment partner, mentor, and lifelong friend. To this day, I don't know to what I would attribute this extreme fortune. It is something even the wildest imagination or the best fiction could not conjure. Now that I've compiled a record of my own for over 20 years, I still enjoy the game even better than when I started. I have three lovely children. They're beautiful, talented, and kind-hearted. I'm most proud of them. Reaching 50 probably makes me closer to the end than to the beginning. Regarding my age, my favorite quote comes from Norman Lear. At 94 years old, he's still active in so many different things,

collecting fans who are in their 80s, their 60s, and all the way down to their 20s. I once asked him how old does he think of himself. Without missing a beat, he said, I'm always the same age as the people I talk to. Now that is a cool answer. Now that I've officially crossed the halftime line, I really need to make more young friends as my new teachers so that I can stay fresh. So my friends, may we all grow wiser with age and younger at heart, always.

And that is where I'll leave it for the full story. I will leave links to all of my sources. You can watch the talks, read the interviews. They'll all be linked down below in your podcast player and also available at founderspodcast.com. That is 363 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.