Good Investing Talks - How did you grow Compounding Quality to 440,000 followers in 2 years, Pieter Slegers?

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

Pieter Slegers has grown Compounding Quality from 0 to 440,000+ followers within only two years. Here, we learn more about his success story.

When I was, I think I was 15, maybe just turned 16, that I was reading a newsletter and investing newsletters, I thought, wow, it would be so cool if I could do this one day. But then, after that, I thought, well, you can't do something like that. It's very ambitious and so on. And then I quit my job, and I remembered it really well. One week later, I quit my job, right? I'm now at my home, alone in my home office.

And I was like, damn. Damn, now it needs to be good. Now it needs to succeed. I have no income. I don't know anything about marketing. I don't know anything about business. The only thing is that I love investing and I love to write a news letter.

I read everything Warren Buffett as has ever said and written, so it's 5,000 pages. And I'm 100% sure that it's way better than any degree you can get at university, any MBA, any CFA, um, study, any whatever experience in the field, just to read what Warren Buffett has ever said, everything he has ever said and written. And that will be the best learning school you can probably get. Dear viewers of good investing talks, it's great to have you back.

And it's great to welcome Peter Sliggers of compounding quality for the first time on this channel. And many of you know him already. Like he has an impressive following, uh, hundreds of thousands of people's on eggs, uh, a substack with 350,000. subscribers linked in where he has a big following and he might be one of the most followed investors in the long-term investing in value investing bubble maybe outside of the two guys he has behind him they've acquired a big bigger followership and today i want to learn with you how he built the brand

compounding quality so hi peter it's great to have you here hi it's another to be here tilman thanks for joining us where you're joining us from? I'm based in Belgium, basically near Antwerp. So 20 minutes drive from Antwerp, basically. It might be a surprising fact for some, because with this brand, many think you will be based in New York or something like this. But we might get into this later. Let's go to talk about compounding quality. When did you start with it? Yeah, sure. And before I will answer your question, Tillman, I'll just take a few seconds to generally thank you because I think what you do with a good investing community is amazing. You basically also are thanks to you. I went to Amma or the

AGM previous year, 2023 and I think all the events you do there are great. So Tillman didn't ask me for this, but I would say, well, anyone who wants to go to the AGM, well, Tillman is your person. So I'm a generally thankful for that and also as of now well i will go every year to the agm and that's mainly because of you so thank you for that and kudos to you for everything you do with uh with good investing i would say um for sure for sure um so to answer your question well compounding quality i start compounding quality in the summer of of 2022 and it's actually a very funny story in the sense that, well, I think some people might have heard this, but I used to work in the industry, but I also basically all love to share my thoughts about the stock market on social media,

Twitter and Dutch, so I'm from Belgium. But then my employer came to me and he basically said to me, he didn't put it that way, but that was the message, well, just tweet about your company and for the rest, don't share your thoughts about the stock markets. So that annoyed me, that bothered me a bit. Then on a Friday evening, well, I remember it really well. I live with my girlfriend in Gilles, which is a small town in Belgium. And that Friday evening I was staying at my parents' house. Why, I had a bachelor party of one of my best friends.

And it was in the neighborhood of my parents' house. So I decided to stay the night there. And then on Saturday, I did a bachelor party. So basically, that Friday evening, I was a bit bored and decided, let's just make a Twitter account so went to Twitter or I should say a X nowadays right but went to Twitter back then registrate and then create an account well name had no clue thought for 30 seconds well let's take I'm a big fan of quality investing so let's take compounding quality compound interest and then quality investing okay next step on the Twitter registration

process an image damn that was a problem for me because I couldn't take my real face because I wanted to do it anonymously so I could say what I wanted to say without my employer getting bothered basically and this is maybe also something we can talk about while I chose to obviously Warren Buffett is your big idol so I chose to use a cartoon image of Warren Buffett with a red background and that sale basically the account was created and maybe also to elaborate a bit on that I think many people have said at like Bill Gates and so on. I would also say regarding compounding quality probably the success is 70 to 80% luck and 20% maybe because of what you actually do. And to make that more

concrete, so I created the account compounding quality. I spent quite some time on it in the first two weeks and basically it didn't get any traction. So maybe 20, 30 followers after two weeks and and posting every day. And then I said something to myself, like, well, I will give this one more week. And if it still doesn't work out, I'll just focus on my job or go do something else. And then basically one thing or one tweet changed everything. And that was that Gotham Bates, so the author of the Joyce of Compounding, which many of you will probably know, he coach who tweeted some tweet and I said, well, this is actually quite good

this account, give it a follow. And since then, yeah, the account exploded that day. And since then, well, it has been quite a linear process. And it has been so much fun. And I think indeed today, the account has something like 430,000 followers on X. So it's a lot of fun to have been able to do so. And I'm very grateful for this as well. Yeah, the thing with Warren Buffett is I think he has a lot of like he's the I often use this picture he is a big crocodile and he has a lot of cleaning birds that jump above him clean him and they also profit from the synthesis with him and there are a lot of guys who got a career boost while hanging out with him like guys be a monish parbri and also a lot of other people who go to the agm and build like

expertise around it and build things around it and to be honest the same as with me. So for example, some of people might know it. So the red Buffett logo I used, but I just created the account on a Friday evening, like I mentioned. But obviously, it was just for fun. I had no clue that compounding quality would become so popular. And then obviously after a while you said, okay, maybe I should change this icon. I should change the Warren Buffett logo because, yeah, maybe it's just, I got an email from Charlie, a Munger's firm, Munger Tulsin and Olson saying some people think that Warren Buffett is involved in your, please, can you change the picture, which was a, on the one hand, obviously it's a big compliment

and obviously Warren Buffett is not involved. I'm 0.0001% as good as Buffett probably. On the other hand, well, it's scary, but I didn't want to change the image. or the logo before, why? After a while, the logo became so iconic in some way that I just wanted to keep it. But obviously, changing it was the right thing to do. And as you mentioned, for a lot of people, Warren Buffett is a big example.

And I think if everyone could be a bit more like Buffett, well, the world will be a healthier and wealthier place. So last year I also spent, well, really, I read everything Warren Buffett as has ever said and written, so it's 5,000 pages and I'm 100% sure that it's way better than any degree you can get at university, any MBA, any CFA study, any whatever experience in the field just to read what Warren Buffett has ever said everything he has ever said and written and that will be the best learning school you can probably get.

Yeah, he's a global household name in some effect for investing and investing is quite a faceless thing. So adding the face of Warren Buffett is like kind of the thing that gets people's attention and draws them in. And he has this trustworthy brand. It's a bit like maybe Apple from the brand positioning. He has in the world of finance, which is super interesting to see. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Going back to your brand, were there other like game change? moments as outside of the retreat of Gortem Bade. Thank you for this Gautum. Yeah, exactly. So also indeed, and I met Gottom last year at the Berkshire AGM or the day before we had Tinder together. He's an amazing person, really kind, really down to earth. So really grateful for him. Another big moment for me was when Bill Ackman engaged on some tweets of me sharing the things about Buffett and so on. But I think in general, that's what I always said, well, when I was a kid, I always wanted to become a teacher.

And obviously, you also had a passion for investing for the stock market. And I always say that, well, right now you're doing both. So on the one hand, you're following your passion for investing, following the market 24-7. On the other hand, I think social media is also a big way of teaching. And in hindsight, maybe where I was quote-unquote lucky as well is the first year I ran compounding quality. I was still working full-time. I was still doing everything anonymously, obviously. And just the fact that you kept on giving, giving, giving and trying to provide as much value as you possibly can without asking for anything in return.

well I tweeted for one year I had written something like 150 articles just freely available more general content about the stock market and so on that helps a lot I guess it's like the flywheel effect of Amazon or what Chief Bezos has done with Amazon because you give give give give give well that's the essence also of social media I guess try to provide as much value as you can and on top of that maybe what's another really important one I guess. is just to be authentic, be yourself. When you, for example, for some people who want to do something in social media here, when you create a threat or a post via chat GPT or any other AI tool, people can feel that, people can sense that. And everyone is unique. And just by being yourself, by doing what you generally think is the right thing to do, people can feel that.

And that makes a huge difference as well. that's a density and having that is really really important there what is impressive about you is the persistence and the stamina you put into putting out content working through things but it seems a bit you found your calling in this job so you're a passionate investor but you're marrying it with this teacher you always wanted to be from your childhood could this describe it a bit Yeah, exactly. I feel like I'm the luckiest person in the world in the sense that, well, one, I have had the opportunity to follow my passion and make a living from that. And my two big passions are indeed on the one hand teaching. On the other hand, yeah, the stock market. And I've always, I've also always said when I would do something completely different, so when one day I wouldn't do anything in the stock market or investment related, it would definitely be teaching.

So, indeed, combining those two things is probably the most fun part. And you also see that with other people. Like Brian Faraldi, for example, is also amazing. I think you also have some kind of teaching background. And you see that with plenty of people. So I also think, by the way, maybe to elaborate a bit on that for social media, but also for the newslet and so on, I think the key goal should be to explain complex problems as easy as you can. And when you can, for example, when you can explain the

reverse DCF or the importance of return on invested capital, just saying something in a way that a 12-year-olds can understand it, well, I think that's the big difficulty of the content creation game, to put it that way. But it's also when you succeed in that, well, it's amazing. So probably the best writer in finance and investing is Morgan Heissel, right? I think when you would give his articles, give his books to your 14-year-old niece and she doesn't know anything about investing or the stock market or finance, she will be able to understand what Morgan Housel is saying and that's beautiful. So yeah, also Morgan Housel is probably someone I really, really look up to.

So these are also your role models somehow. Absolutely. kind of become peers with them after two years i wouldn't put it that way but uh it's it's amazing to learn from other people that's also the the big advantage of the world we live in today right the big advantage of the 21st century there are plenty of books there are plenty of things available online even or often for free that you can learn from the best in the field for free so for example, I've done that. I've printed out everything Morgan Housel has written as well. So just all his articles and so on. Our blog posts, that's so, so valuable, and you can learn

so much. As Munger said, I think you should be a lifelong learner. And I've set the ambitious goal to read 52 books a year for the next 52 years. I think that's a lovely goal to aim for. I think right now, this morning, I started reading my 80th book of the year. So it's November 2024 for those who are listening a bit later and I think just doing that and learning from the best investors in the world, learning from the best businessman in the world,

learning from the best writers in the world, that's so, so valuable. Hey, Timon here. It's great that you have made it that far into the video and I think it shows a certain passion for investing you are having. If you want to dive deeper and go further down the rapid

you're invited to apply to my community good investing plus it's a place that's very helpful to people who are ambitious about investing it's helpful to investment talent as well as Experian fund managers so if you're interested please click on the link below and now without further do enjoy the conversation so how does a day in the week look like for you is it more like I would think of like you're a monk working up in the morning, drinking tea and then reading, reading, reading, reading, and then two hours in 10 social media and then reading, reading, reading again. If you replace tea with coffee, you're pretty accurate, to be honest.

I try to keep my day very, very structured in general, just because you have two books, I really love deep work and also eat at frog, just about productivity. And the key message basically is, well, two hours of undistracted work will, deliver you more in output than what most people achieve in a traditional eight-hour workday. So, and I truly try to live by that statement. How does my day look every day? Well, I try to do it to live every day exactly the same.

Obviously, in practice, that doesn't work every day. But usually I work, wake up five minutes before 5 a.m. Go to the toilet, brush my teeth, grab a coffee. And at 5 a.m. at my desk, I'm usually reading a book. So every day between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. I read a book. Hence the 80 books read so far this year. 8 till 9 a.m. Do you read them in hard copy or do you have an e-book reader?

I read them in a physical book, so hard copy. The reason for that is I'm already whatever 12 hours a day behind my laptop. So this is one of the only times. of the day that I can spend without my laptop and I also love to build a huge personal library over time. I think that's also some of my goals that would be really, really cool in general. So I spent quite some money on books. That's true, but it's an investment in yourself and we both know that, both know that that's always the best investment, right? So yeah, 5 a.m., 7 a.m. is always reading. 7 a.m. until 8, 8.30, I read a 10k or an animal report every day.

8.30 till 9 is usually, well, I have some breakfast and so on. I catch up with my girlfriends right now. 9 a.m. until 12 is usually just indeed analyzing stocks. So analyzing when a company within the portfolio published results, just finding new companies writing an investment case about a company and so on. So then it's noon. Noon until 1pm, I try to go for a run. I should confess that this year has been, I didn't run as much as I used to run

just because also what's happening with compounding quality and everything around it. But I try to do that also during the run, listen to a podcast. I think you have a lot of excellent podcasts. once again about business about investing about writing and so on after after lunch well also still the same basically one to two p.m. writing for the newsletter and analyzing stocks and then two till four it's more like social media answering emails and so on and this is also quite an

exception tillman because the internal rule i have for myself is that usually um once again doesn't work all the time but usually i don't do meetings before 4 p.m. what's the reason for that also because i've been working from 5 a.m. till 4 p.m. well that's all almost a full day my brain is a bit yeah foggy already cooked already and that's when i try to do some some more light work like like some meetings like yeah other things around the business and that's how it usually worked for for me obviously we are both based in europe and when we want to do meetings in the US obviously that's that's most of the time late afternoon for us or in the evening so so this structure works really well for me and in the end I try to structure my day as much as possible

just about keeping productivity high learning as much as I possibly you can. And it also obviously also depends on whether you are a morning person or a night person or evening person. For me, it's definitely, I'm a morning person. For some people, that also sounds weird. So your morning person, you are the most productive in the first hours of the day, right? You spent the first hours of the day on reading and not on writing investment cases or analyzing stocks. You could say something about that, but I feel like, I'm about to turn 28 right now. We need to be lifelong learners.

And I think I have the moral. And just I, the only thing, well, I'm obliged towards my readers, subscribers to keep learning and keep learning new things, keep improving as a person, as an investor and so on. And that's why I just do it first thing in the morning. Then it's done. I can't skip on the reading just before. because something else came up along the day. To me, the structure works really well in general. One recommendation, I would maybe try to do the run without the podcast

and just focus on running and being in nature. I'm experimenting with this as well because I have my midday walks. I'm an old guy. And doing that without any input is regenerating. And then you're more productive afterwards. give it a try and let me see what you think i i tried it many times but probably the the problem code-unquote i never is that i'm obsessed with productivity and learning and so to also to give you an example yesterday i ran a half a marathon it was a local event here in some local city i lived in

and after one km my my headphones broke down and i was even during the event which was an official official race. I was listening a podcast about investing. And it frustrated me so much that I needed to run for another 20 km without listening to anything. But I think it can work as well. And it's exactly true. When are the best ideas arriving to you? It's always when you are going for a walk, when you go for a run during the shower and so on. So obviously that's also very important in general. you need to love what you do and you need to have a healthy mind plus healthy body obviously that's a cliche but it works that way because when you're struggling with something yourself I think it would harm the quality of the ideas you have a lot it is it's helpful to keep

yourself up and love yourself a lot when you want to give to others because otherwise you can't do it consistently and persistently which is also important maybe let's go back to the history part so you had already mentioned you were one year in giving giving giving and building this snowball or this flywheel if you want to call it like that when did you become clearer that this could be a business and how did you start out to experiment with revenue sources? So basically, well, initially it just started for fun. What is actually really funny is that, and I recall that moment when I was, I think it was 15, maybe just turned 16, that I was reading a newsletter and investing newsletter. I thought, wow, it would be so cool

if I could do this one day. But then after that, I thought, well, you can't do something like that. it's very ambitious and so on and hence here we are so that's beautiful well regarding so the account started in june 2023 and i quit my job during the summer of 20 i'm sorry the account started in june 22 and i quit my job during the summer of 2023 what happened from me or what was the case from for me contractually from my employer back then i wasn't allowed to earn anything outside of my job in the finance industry. So basically, never try to monetize anything before I quit. So it didn't do paid subscriptions. I didn't do advertisements. Just earnings were 0.0. It was even a loss because I, you invest some, some

things in the business like buying a domain name for your website and so on. Why or what gave you the courage to quit your job back then? Well, obviously you can look up some things and network with other people. And I knew that when I quit my job, I would basically make double the money I made from a regular job just with putting advertisements on the newsletter. So I probably was also quite conservative in that and waited quite long before actually taking the job. But that's also maybe something, yeah, I think when you have a news that you can monetize mainly in two ways. One is indeed the advertisements.

Two is to have a paid subscription in place. I think to me it made not a lot of sense to use advertisements. Why? Because those people that are on your website, they came to your website because of you, because they liked you or they liked your content, they liked what you had to say and so on. And then when you do an advertisement, well, you're basically pushing the people that came for you away to other channels again while when you have a paid subscription well they came to you and you keep them with you but they get something extra and and yeah they pay for that so i choose

or i did choose to to take that route and i enabled a paid subscription for compound inequality so before i quit my job all content on the website and social media was 100% general and educational. And with that, I mean just general thoughts about the stock market. How to think about growth. How did Buffett build this empire? What are famous investors buying and selling right now? And what changed when I quit my job is I start to implement a portfolio of compounding

quality, an ETF portfolio, there was a community investment cases. So when I buy a stock, I write a 40 to 50 page. deep dive about it. So then it got more into the stock picking work, basically. So that's what happened there. I think for people who don't have the limitations for their job that they could monetize their newsletter earlier when they are doing that, I think most people recommend to turn on a paywall or whatever do advertisements just to see whether this is something feasible or

not because we also need to be honest with each other. I'm using substack right now. But I think when you look at the leaderboard, there are a lot of people who are writing investment related content on substack. But I think there are very, very few people who are able to make a living from that. I should be grateful for that. I think intensity is really important on the one hand. Second point, probably indeed the simplicity to try and explain complex topics in a really easy way. I think those are probably the most important things. And maybe on top of that,

like you already briefly touched upon, the consistency that people know what you expect from you. Every, just saying something, every Tuesday and every Tuesday, you get an article for me or another frequency. But when you would, for example, say, I'm going to do a newsletter and sometimes I have a lot of time and then that month I published six articles

and then December is really busy for me and I don't publish anything. And then January is okay and I publish three articles and a month after or whatever, 10 articles, something like that. I don't think it would work really well. So just the consistency is indeed also a very important pillar. Yeah, it's super helpful to be consistent with this. But it's also super hard to keep this up depending on the content formats you produce. So you have to find something that's repeat.

and in this sense, scalable as a content format. Exactly. And that's also something. It's a flywheel that never stops, meaning when you want, when you go on a business trip for a week, when you want to take a holiday for a week, that's good. But in the end, I made a commitment to publish every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. The articles need to be there and they need to be good. So it never stops.

and nobody cares whether you went on a weak business trip and we're stuck in the airport for 24 hours and can't make it or something like that. The content and the investment cases need to be there. So it's a flywheel that never stops. And I think that's probably the biggest challenge of what I'm doing right now. I know quite some people and I won't name names

who have had a really difficult time personally in terms of just the constant pressure, fighting burnout and so on, because it's a flywheel that never stops. So that's an important thing to take into account, for example. So one, maybe to elaborate on that as well, I love the newsletter, don't get me wrong. I love all the people involved in there. I love to do this. but basically when people ask me this question do you want to write a newsletter today absolutely do you want to write a newsletter next year yes three years yes five years yes 10 years I don't know

20 years probably not and with that I mean when you could choose between writing a newsletter and doing an investment fund for example I guess when you've done this for multiple years for a few decades, maybe even, then the fund business is code on quote. I'm sure that some people or a lot of people won't agree with me. It's more of a chill business and maybe that I'm mispronouncing myself here, but just because it's not a flywheel that keeps on running. And when you have an investment fund, like your investment portfolio and you have built your positions and you go to the US for one week next week just to talk with some with the management of some companies you own or to network and so on

or to go to the Berkshire AGM you are learning and you're working for your business and the same is true in the newsletter business but in the newsletter business your content needs to be there as well while in the fund management business it's just about like Buffett said if you have one or two great ideas a year, you're doing really well, right? While in the news center business, you need to write three articles a week, meaning 150 or a bit more a year, and the content needs to keep running, and it's a continuous flywheel. You have this entertainment component, I call it like that,

that you have to entertain people and entertain them consistently, and this is really hard for me. That's why I also gravitated away a bit from content, focusing on other. spaces because it's like it's something where you have to put in energy again and again and again and it has to be your calling to a certain extent yeah absolutely i think when you when you don't love this you won't pursue basically um so that's that's that's the case in everything in life right if you if you love what you're doing you never have to work a day in your life um i think that's really important and also just the fact that you are giving back the fact that you are

helping other people the fact that you are making them hopefully a better investor to me that's a beautiful thing and in the life it's all about finding purpose and for some people that's an investment newsletter for other people that's something completely different but finding that for yourself i think when you can find something like that for yourself you're really lucky and just go for your dreams and try to provide as much value as you can and you also made it clever to a certain aspect there is a certain duty and a certain pressure you have but you integrated in the way that it became your life yeah over the last two years and that's maybe also something funny or something i can share with compounding quality when it started i was just having

fun. I was just tweeting on Twitter, nowadays also on LinkedIn. I was writing the newsletter. I was just having fun. No stress. I loved what I was doing. And then I quit my job and I remember it really well. One week later, I quit my job, right? I'm now at my home, alone in my home office. And I was like, damn, now it needs to be good. Now it needs to succeed. I have no income. I don't know anything about marketing. I don't know anything about business. The only thing is that I love investing and I love to write a news letter. And to me, that also gave some stressful moment. Like you need to, yeah, promise or, yeah, keep your promises and continue to do well. Well, luckily I got over that after a few weeks, but that's also something that's probably sounds really some people can relate to what I'm saying right now but the fact

that you just love what you're doing it's it's fun and also for me it's also basically funny right now I'm writing right I'm writing the newsletter when I was a child when I was 10 11 12 years old I was always the worst writer of the entire class when you need to write a short story or a summary about something. I always got whatever, a five out of ten. So just be above the threshold, which is really bad when you're in secondary school. Normally you get whatever a seven or eight out of ten and I got a five. So that's funny. You can keep exploring and just when you are actually having fun, people can just sense it. People can feel it in your writing and be your own unique self. I think that will only become more important with

all the AI tools we have nowadays. Yeah, it really helps also to connect and grow your inner child in a certain way that you're aligned with these tasks you have. Maybe let's try to go back to summer 2022 and think of yourself in this time. Where did you get better since then? which are the areas you saw yourself improving and growing sounds cocky and isn't that meant that may matter just i think improved in in everything in the investment side and in the writing side and so on and like i mentioned that's also for example i'm this is a honest confession i'm going to

make here as well so june 22 um i create the account and then in the summer of 2020 one year later, I quit my job. During the first year, when I was still working, I was just having fun, reading a lot, learning a lot, all investment related, reading everything of Buffett, reading everything of Munger, reading everything of Franswater Shore, and so on and so on. Then, 2023, I quit my job, and then I had a stressful moment, like I don't know anything about business, I don't know anything about marketing, right? So that's also when I try to learn a lot about all the other aspects, about business, about marketing and so on. And for example, in Belgium, so I live in Belgium and we speak Dutch, it's the same language as what they speak in the Netherlands. I have a friend here who doesn't live too far away. We write in Dutch, which is about investing, which is a really small market, and is doing over one million in ARR, in annual recurring revenue, every single year.

which is really exceptional because it's in Dutch. The market is really small. Well, what's the reason for that, if you ask me? In the newsletter space, there are a lot of people, or in general, let's put it even more broadly, in general, there are a lot of people who are great investors, obviously. Then you have another pool of people who are great entrepreneurs, great business people. And then you have a third pool of people who are great. writers great marketeers and so on and so on but basically what is very rare is that you are at least

a reasonable investor a reasonable entrepreneur and a reasonable writer slash marketeer and combining those three when you can do a bit of the tree a bit of all i think that's very important in what we are doing right here so we'll also over the past few years, I've read a lot of business books. I've read a lot of books about storytelling. I've read a lot of books about marketing, about writing, and so on. So for example, you have a book on writing from Stephen King. I think that's phenomenal. He's one of the best fiction writers in the world, right? Just having the privilege to learn from something like that for, I don't know what a book costs, 15, 20 or 30, USD slash euro.

That's just amazing. It's the same like, well, what Charlie Munger once said. Well, there are answers worth billion of dollars in a $30 history book. I think that's truly amazing. And when you achieve reading 52 books a year for the next 50, sorry, apologies, I will a phrase that when you achieve in reading 52 books over the next 50, years. You've read over 2,500 books. I think you can't help but become very knowledgeable, hopefully become very good in what you're doing. And when you combine that with the fact that you

love what you are doing, I think that's very powerful. Did you, when you went in in 2023 also experienced this all-in effect? So once you're not in between positions, like having one job and making this as a side hustle, things change and you get more focused and more and more things open up as you step this pathway more and more. Yeah, I think two things. Before I quit my job, I felt like sometimes I was leading a double live or something like that. So for example, we met in Omaha, right? And then 2023. And then I did a lot of meetings and so on the compounding quality but also for example and that's a funny story so i had a reservation with goat and bait to go have dinner at the restaurant the day before the

berkshire atm but that morning my former employer also mentioned to me well the prime minister of belgium is also in uh in umah to attend the berkshire atm so you should meet him here give him a text and grab a coffee and so on. So, okay, that morning I texted him. Look, I'm also in Omaha. Let's have a coffee on Sunday after the Markell meeting to the Prime Minister of Belgium. Okay, he agreed, we agreed to have coffee and so on.

And then that Friday evening, I was waiting outside the restaurant to meet Gotham, Gauten Bait. And I said to him, because I was still anonymous, I said to him, well, I will wait outside. I'm wearing a blue suit, blah, blah, blah, because, yeah, otherwise he won't recognize me, right? He didn't know how I looked like. So I was waiting for Goetam outside of the restaurants.

Yeah, Wu arrived at the driveway, the Prime Minister of Belgium. And I was, oh God, so I was waiting there outside. He did some small talk and I was like, no, please, can you go inside as fast as possible? because I have an appointment with Gotham and he will be here in a few minutes and I can say to you that I'm Peter, which is my real name and to Gotham that I'm compounding quality. So before I quit my job, sometimes I had a huge feeling that I was needing a double life. And then I quit my job, right, summer of 2023.

And I had a feeling like I've been running the newsletter or writing the newsletter while working full time and I worked something like 60 hours a week for my regular job so I thought well when I quit my job I will have so much time I can analyze so many companies I can read so many 10ks there are extra 60 hours a week that are available right now and in the end that ended up being very naive because so many things are happening at the same time and things you need to take care of and doing meetings and everything that is related to running a solo business basically from back office to answering emails to accounting to you name it so that's something to take into account probably as well but in general it has been a lot of fun and to me like

like you already discussed um just structure in your day every day helps me to increase my outputs tremendously or at least i have a feeling that that's the case yeah this this energy of a double life i also had this working in politics part-time and then building investing which is also two different worlds but i could say who i am in both worlds but not fully I'm happy that phase is over for me as well sometimes it was quite stressful to live that way but when you started out you said you were in parts a bit naked not having marketing or business skills exactly exactly where did which kind of clothes did you then get over time like ideas concepts from others um would help you to build the skills

and what was like maybe a few strongly impressive concepts that resonated with you. I think two things are very important on the one hand, just the books and reading. That's really important. And also, well, money's pro bribal. I'm a shameless copycat. Just especially when you start out, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You can look at what other people are doing. people who are 10 or 20 years ahead of you are doing

and try to replicate it a bit so just look at what something is for example someone was very successful it can be in investing but maybe fpna or productivity doesn't matter that much just look at what someone was very successful as doing and try to replicate it for your own niche for us that's the investment field

I think that's really, really powerful. And what's also, it's like when you start investing, when you start a business, you will make mistakes, no doubt about that. But it's just listening to other people, what they have been doing and trying to replicate it in a successful way. It's really important. And also, to be honest, what helped me really hard over the past few years is I have a lot of great mentors in my life.

And try to find someone like that to just who has been doing this for multiple years. Like the Belgian guy I talked about who was doing one million ARR for 20 years straight. Well, when you have the ability to send him a message and say, look, Martin is his name. Well, Martin, I'm thinking about doing this and that in my business. What do you think? And to get his opinion and his insight is really powerful. And also, by the way, you met him last year, I guess. I think Chris, so from GoToValue, was also an author on Seeking Alpha.

We talk every single day. Same for him, he started him not sure, 2018 or 2019, I guess. He has gone through the bulls and busts of the business. So having his opinion as well, well, that's really valuable. So I would really recommend everyone to try and find a great mentor and do that. And you would be surprised about how many people say yes. Also, one thing I'm, for example, looking to do over the next few weeks is I live in a small city in Belgium, like you already know by now, to just invite every quarter the best entrepreneurs in the neighborhood for a dinner. I will pay for everything.

and we just discuss ideas and I can discuss some ideas I have for my business. And then you can say, for example, one person I will invite is some kind of, they basically built some kind of mini Berkshire private equity company with one billion in the AUM. It's a 10 minute drive even by bicycle from here. And then you can ask the question, why would a person like that chat with someone like me? Why would he attend a restaurant meeting when you invite him? Well, honest answer, he won't come to that restaurant meeting from me. But when you invite three or four other people who are really, really, really successful here in the neighborhood,

we have, for example, also build a business of whatever, 500 million or 700 million in a completely different niche. He will come. And when you tell another person that that other billionaire will come, well, he will also come and that's basically how you build some kind of internal audit committee where which can be really really powerful you pay for the restaurants everyone is happy everyone is a fun time the other people well they look up to the the other attendees and i think that's something really smart to do and that's taking that restaurant bill is probably one of the best investments you can make for for your general career your thoughts and so on

I guess you're underselling yourself a bit with this reach, but that's just my tech here. I feel, and I think that's really important to just be really, really down to earth. And there's one, I think I'm a very, I have a lot of empathy for everyone. But one thing I really, really don't like in people and people I don't want to engage with is people who are very arrogant. I think you should be in investing, but also just in general, be down to earth, be yourself, have respect for everyone. That's really important. So, for example, when I see someone, I can give an example. So a month ago, I was at, we were doing, for the newspaper, we were doing some interviews and so on at the head office of the newspaper here in Belgium.

And there is some guy, and once again I want to name names, was really successful, really well known. But obviously when he's on TV, when he writes a column and so on, it's really friendly, really empathic and so on. But then you see how he treated the people who couldn't do anything for him at the office of the newspaper back there. And how he treated the people who needed to take care of his eye. tea issues or bring him some drinks and so on in a very unrespectful way and then you just for me personally you lose all my respects to be very arrogant against people who can't mean anything for you directly i think that tells a lot about your personality and that's the last thing i would want to become myself and also for me the followers on the social media the readers on the email newsletters

they are just numbers on the screen and I don't try to think that much about it and I think it's a great idea to write every piece you write just with one person in your mind whether it's your 14 year old niece whether it's Warren Buffett and think and act that way I think that's the the way you should go with it maybe let's also try to look back and we already touched a bit on this, that you seem to be also an experimental guy, but we haven't worked this out really that much. We had this one conversation where you're talking that you're trying to throw spaghetti at the wall and looks what sticks.

With this, you're trying out a lot of things, but maybe let's also talk about the things that did not work since you started out. So what are things you tried that were not successful to say it like this? and exclamation marks. It's a good question. It's a difficult question. To start with, you have some kind of book series from strategizer, which is how to test business ideas and so on.

They are excellent. And I also think that's one of the beautiful things about social media and newslet or and so on. You can indeed throw spaghetti against the wall really quickly, see what works and see what doesn't work. So you can test things really quickly. That's also what makes me a bit. resistant about launching an equity fund.

With a newsletter, you can test something, it doesn't work. Okay, it took one hour of time and I lost 100 USD slash euro. But anyway, when you launch an equity fund and it doesn't work, well, you've probably lost a few $100,000 of dollars and you can't go back immediately. So that's what I like about the newsletter. To answer your question, what you, what didn't succeed, It's a difficult question. I don't think I have a straight answer. I think it's just really important to be unique and be yourself. For me, compounding quality has always been around educational content. When I would publish right now a meme about the stock market or something about crypto or something about value investing or something else, that just doesn't work. So that's something I noticed. Another thing I noticed then, I launched recently, I launched two new newsletters.

One, just the Dutch version of compounding quality because of the traditional media exposure you have here, a weekly column and so on in the largest newspaper. And another one on dividends where DJ, Josh is doing excellent work. It didn't work out as well as I would have expected. So that's a big lesson from me as well. that not everything succeeds and sometimes you will fail and I think that's for everyone in the business well most of the best entrepreneurs when they've done 10

when they've launched 10 businesses or 10 business ideas usually only two of them succeeds and same for the book by the way so I worked together with Luke cruz a great friend on the art of quality investing he did 99% of the work meaning the book was already there in Dutch. We hired someone to translate it into English and update the book a bit here and there. Two things. One, I was surprised how much work it was

even when luck and a translator did 99% of the work. So I can't imagine how much work writing a book from scratches. By the way, I think Simon Colt also just published a great book about quality investing. So, a lot of work. Second point, I was a bit disappointed with the book sale so far. So that also has been a disappointment. But once again, because when, for example, I would have written a book from scratch myself

and spent weeks or even months on writing that and it wouldn't be a success, I would be really disappointed. Now the damage is a bit smaller because we work together on it. So that's a bit about, I think in the end, it's all about testing ideas, test quickly, fail quickly, and if it works, well, bet heavily. I think that's a great way to go about those ideas. And the books from Strategizer, well, they help me tremendously with that. So in the end, it's all about keep learning, keep improving and learn from books and learn from other people. That's probably the most valuable lesson I've learned over the past few months.

Like you had this kind of coming out moment when you turned from the Buffett logo to Peter. How was it like from the perception that you're a guy from Belgium, not an American idol? What did it change? How did people react to this? You're also quite young. Some people could have thought you're already in your 40s or something like this. I understand, sir, I was before exposing myself or before getting out of the anonymity, I was a bit afraid in the sense that, like what you mentioned, I was running compounding quality

anonymously, and then on Twitter I saw some people, I think it's Terry Smith or someone from Terry Smith's team, and then, oh, no, no, no, this guy is working on Wall Street and blah, blah, blah, and I was like, I'm just a regular guy, 28 years old from Bell. but if you if you want to think that please and there was some kind of mystery against compounding quality and after a while it also resulted in the fact that I was feeling very comfortable in being anonymous and with all the mystery going on and then I said exposed myself and said I was I was doing the account right why because I felt like you are talking about money, you're talking about finances, investing, and so on. So I thought

people had the right to know who I am because trust, integrity, honesty is something really important in the industry, something that people are missing a lot in the industry. So, yeah, to give you an example, I was the right hand of a senior fund manager of managing an equity fund well there in that fund there was around 200 million message and the management i didn't invest a single dollar in the fund myself and i also didn't want to and that gave a feeling like what are you doing well what kind of life are you living if you do it that way and i think a lot of that is going on in the industry so there are people managing billions of dollars who don't invest a single dollar in the fund themselves that's just completely wrong well so many

the incentive and I'll show the outcome right so I think that's important and now I'm talking and I forgot the question so if you can repeat it I can get back to the essence how was your coming out changing things yeah so yeah so I was afraid about it and then I exposed myself but probably also a difference not sure if it's the same in Germany but the difference between the Belgium mentality and the US mentality for example when I said that I was running the account, everyone was very positive about it. So it's great to know where we are right now or yeah, you are an entrepreneur right now. Kudos to you. We are supporting you. So that's something that was really lovely. It also in hindsight, it helped me a lot like the traditional media

exposure in Belgium right now, for example, columns, maybe sometimes even TV and stuff like that, that that helps um so it has been very positive while in the beginning indeed i was afraid oh people being it's a 20 year old from from belgium it's not some big guy on wall street but in the end i didn't experience it that way the reactions were very positive in general that's great to hear um maybe for the end of the interview it's take a look at what you have current So there's a newsletter, there's a community, there's the book, what else is there? So basically, yeah, we have compounding quality. Compounding quality is mainly built on two social media channels, so Twitter and LinkedIn.

LinkedIn, I post under my real name, Peter Schlegers. There it has 210,000 followers. Twitter has something like 430,000. followers. Then we go one step lower and you have the newsletter business. So there we have compounding quality which is the main channel with there are almost 350,000 readers. We have the Dutch version, the Qualitat's Belaguer, which will be difficult to pronounce for most people with 10,000 readers and a dividend newsletters run by Josh with 110,000 readers. And then, you know,

And then you have indeed the book, The Art of Quality Investing, can elaborate on that. Well, The Art of Quality Investing has sold 8,000 books so far. I know that books like Quality Investing from Lawrence Cunningham and investing for growth from Terry Smith have sold approximately 30,000 copies. So that was our ambitious internal goal, but it doesn't look like we will make that. Okay, the R of Quality investing has only been out from April this year. April 2024, but we'll see. And right now, I'm also still seriously thinking slash looking into launching an equity fund. And also there, I think it's integrity, honesty, transparency, really important.

So when we will pursue, it will be a 0625 fund, like the Buffett Partnership structure, which will result in making less money for yourself, obviously, but it's the right thing to do to do. And on top of that, probably 25% of the commissions that will be made from our side, from the business side, will be given to charity. So that will be the goal. But it's still in the exploring phase. So not making any promises here, but that's something that might be the next phase for compounding quality. But obviously, running a newsletter and running an equity fund is a completely different thing. So still a lot of things to explore, to study.

and to be continued, I would say. And the community? The community is included in compound inequality. So partners of compound inequality, they can be, they are included in the community. So the community runs in circle, just like a good investing does right now. And there you can, people can pitch stock IDs whenever something is going on in any company in our portfolio. Well, it will be published there. people can ask questions so basically I think for compound equality the goal is very simple

look obviously there is a it's a paid subscription so you pay some money it's 399 USD for the regular subscription that's for a year and I provide you well I analyze the stock market with all my heart and passion the entire week and I provide you with as much value as it possibly can so everything is included there my personal portfolio the community investment cases EDF portfolio and so on. So just providing value. And I think when you think about business, when you think about your business or launching your business, the big question, like Simon Sanex will start with why. And the big question is, which customer problem am I solving? And when you aren't solving a customer problem, when you are making the life of your customer, to put it that way, I always call

people who read company quality partners but when you don't improve the life of your partners well then something is wrong so you should be beneficial to their life basically i guess what kind of persona do you think of when you write for your customer it's a difficult one because the partners of compound equality are very broad from a retail investor to hedge fund managers, to someone who is investing $1,000 to someone who is investing $15 million. So it's very, very brute. I think what people have you in mind, one thing, one question I ask when writing every article is, one, would Warren Buffett approve it with me sending out something like that or some kind

of investment case? I think that's a good threshold to live by. And then second point, like I mentioned, I also want to write my article. in such a way that my 14 year old niece can understand it while being accurate and not being too short-sighted. I think those are two metrics I try to live by or write by and they try to help me alongside the journey, I guess. So there's an easy quality filter on the content that is easy to consume, but that is high quality. Yeah, that's the goal at least. least. Partners can decide whether I succeed, but that's the goal.

Maybe as one of the last questions, thinking about this different elements, where do you imagine yourself to be in five years with this? It's a difficult question. Short answer, bigger, stronger, better. I think that's the main goal. Compounding quality has been around for two years right now. And I think it would be completely naive to state that things in five years from now will be the same as they are right now. So I don't think I have an answer for that. I think it's important to keep learning, keep being flexible. Because, for example, over this year I got quite some acquisition bits for compound inequality.

Two things. One, I think I have the moral duty towards partners to not do something like that. never sell my soul for money, to put it that way. And two, when I look at those acquires or potential acquires, I think the key advantage you have, the key advantage compound in Quality has right now, is that we are small and flexible. Like the spaghetti, throw the spaghetti against the wall thing,

it happens so much that in the morning I read something in a book and I'm just like, okay, let's test it one hour later, show a spaghetti against the wall, see whether it sticks or not. If it doesn't stick, we go on. If it does stick, well, you can invest heavily in that. And that's not something that a company, a big company with whatever, a market cap of $1 billion and a few hundreds of employees can do. So that's something I like as well.

I think in five years from now, yeah, hopefully I think the newsletter will still be there and hopefully bigger, stronger, better. And then let's see how the ID for an equity fund will play out. One important thing there is I should provide partners with as much value as I can. And launching an equity fund shouldn't harm that goal. So that's the most important threshold for me right now. And when I feel like I can meet up to that expectation, I'm ready to launch an equity fund. I guess.

For the end of the interview, I always give the guest the chance to add anything or raise a question we haven't discussed. So is there anything that comes to your mind? I will end as I started by generally thank you. And I think you are doing an amazing job for the entire community and I'm providing so much value. So I think you are one of the kindest. people I know and I think way more people should know you in the industry and I'm sure that

when you keep doing what you are doing it will happen one day and I'm happy to help with that as well and for the rest for people reading well just follow your passion be yourself keep learning keep reading that's the most important thing and whenever anyone made it this far and still has a question for me feel free to reach out via social media via email and I'm happy to try and help you wherever I can thank you very much I can just give that back you're also super kind and helpful and I really like your story and that you found your calling somehow that's an interesting marriage of like a lot of traits that are combined in you that shine through here passion for investing teaching and also like

learning which is the basis for teaching again which is another flywheel absolutely i had a lovely time i hope people learn something new and as mentioned always available and let's keep in touch and let's keep learning thank you and bye bye to the audience now bye i really hoped you enjoyed this conversation if you did please leave a like and a comment and for sure subscribe to my channel Traditionally, I want to close this conversation with the disclaimer. So here you can find the disclaimer. It says, please do your own work. This is no recommendation.

What we are doing here is just a qualified talk that helps you, but it's no recommendation. Please always do your own work. Thank you and hope to see you in the next episode. Bye bye.