Good Investing Talks - What is your advice for Emerging Managers, Guy Spier?

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

In this last part of my 2023 interview series with Guy Spier, we have collected helpful thoughts for emerging managers and investment business builders. If you are building an investment business, please check out www.good-investing.net/plus/

In this last episode of my interview series with Guy Speer, I traditionally discuss emerging managers and fund manager questions. In this episode, we have discussed how managers can break through the noise, how Guy Speer made investment decisions in his fund management business, and the power of the indirect approach. If you liked this episode, please leave a like and subscribe to my channel. Thank you. A warm welcome to the Good Investing Talks podcast. I'm I'm your host, Tillman Fersh, and I'm very happy that you're discovering underfollowed investors and underfollowed companies together with me. Before we jump into this conversation, I want to thank my supporters.

They help me to keep this channel free and public for everyone. Thank you very much. If you also want to join the Good Investing Supporters Club, please click on the link below. You're very welcome. And now, one last step. Here's the disclaimer for you. All we are doing here is no advice and no recommendation. Please always do your own work and now enjoy the video.

Guy, welcome to the last part of our interview series. It's nice to have you back and last time we were sitting on your balcony. This time it's winter and it doesn't make sense to sit on your balcony and in our last series we're talking about your or some advice points you can give to emerging managers and I want to continue this tradition. As a fund manager, you're also the capital allocator for your own fund and for your own business. Over your life as a fund manager, what have been the best investments you did out of a return perspective for you as a fund manager?

So I guess we could talk about return on invested capital, so multi-bagger investments. More on the business side, reputation return, visibility. helped you to grow the firm. Yeah. And I think that, so the experience that I had in retrospect when I look at it is that it is the nature of life that we are faced with gatekeepers. And gatekeepers exist for all sorts of reasons, and that's probably worthy of a study in itself. But the key thing that we're looking to do as somebody who wants to be successful in the business of managing other people's money is to break through the kind of the gatekeepers who are there to kind of, they can't let everybody through to whatever they're gatekeeping to. And so my experience

is that from writing the book, which basically it took me, it was an effort that lasted five years and over the last year or two of the book, it was kind of like five or six hours a day, pretty much every weekday at least. That investment was probably the most transformation. for me, in that once I had a book, once I, in the words of Prince Harry, owned my story, could tell my own story my own way, I could send that to people or people could discover it, and they can find out who I was not through third parties, so I got a direct relationship to them. So in my experience, one of the best things that one can do, I believe, is that an emerging manager is to write either a book or to write and to write honestly from one's heart and soul and to get that direct

connection to people who will potentially then either recommend you talk to you invest with you all of those good things and i think that i have not talked about it i don't believe i've talked about it to you i have to believe talk about it elsewhere i've never met david perrell i've never taken any of his courses but he's a guy who has a course called the rite of passage. And his idea is that when we write or when we produce content, we are now turning the algorithm on its head. Instead of when, if I go on the internet and look for something, browse, whatever it is, I'm being consumed by the algorithm. But if I create content that is of my own hand and my own voice, and I put it out there, now I can put the

algorithm to use in that the algorithm will go out and find the people who have my own particular version of crazy and bring them into my life. And so that idea of creating content, ideally I think when you're an investor by writing, I think is extraordinarily powerful. Let me ask a bit of a mean question for being in a library right now because you published your book in a time where we didn't have that much interviews, we didn't have that much videos, we didn't have much videos, we didn't have much podcasts and how do you think also like from your observation as a business builder this new funnels you also have YouTube channel what did they bring to you is maybe the value in comparison to the other channels of the book decreasing over time yeah and it's a great question

and it was during lockdown that I decided to try my hand at a podcast and part of what gave me the courage to do that was it's from a punk rock band, I believe, or a heavy metal band where they talked about in their jamming sessions having the courage to suck, have the courage to suck. Or my former politics tutor who's just been made a son, Vernon Bogdanor, he said, you have to write when you're drunk, edit when you're sober, write when you're drunk, but loosen yourself from the constraints that you would normally have. I think that I think that the podcast has brought me a lot. It's just an enormous investment of time and energy to do the podcast because really

you need, in order to interview people, you need four or five hours at least of preparation and then you have to take the time to interview them and then edit it well. But again, then you have a conversation between two minds that goes out there. And I think that those are extraordinarily valuable channels. I think that what will always be the case with writing is that we don't know what we think until we've written it. And in this conversation that we're having and in other conversations that we've had, you and the listener are benefiting from the fact that I've been writing my annual letter. And it's through writing stuff down that we discover

what we think. And so I think that the act of writing improves the quality of our thought and the quality of our content, no matter what else we're doing, whether it's giving interviews, doing podcasts, all of those things. So I think that it's not one or the other, it's probably both. I think that I'm not been thinking about it a lot recently, but original thought is what's most lacking in the world. And the ability, an original thought doesn't mean that you have to have an Einstein moment of discovering relativity, it could be as simple as assembling together things that haven't been

assembled before. But that happens not when we're in interviews and podcasts or TV interviews, that it happens when we're sitting quietly in a room thinking. I think that to name somebody else who's got a close relationship with David Perel, Tiago Forte, has talked a lot about Well, David Perel talks about how when it comes to content, we want to create it from a place of abundance. And most of us, when we sit down to write, we're faced with a blank sheet of paper, and that's extraordinarily painful. As the famous phrase goes, writing's easy. You just stare at a blank piece of paper until blood clots form on your forehead. But actually, that's not the place we want to be.

We want to be collecting observations about the world and thoughts wherever they occur in the shower. and we're walking, and we want to capture them because they're a bit like butterflies, and we want to note them down and just put them in a place where we know where we can find them and review them. Because when we review them, that's when the thoughts and ideas will come. And content is exploding and knowledge is exploding. And I believe that content is exploding at a faster rate, The amount is at a faster rate than our capacity to assimilate, understand, organize, make sense of. So the capacity for people to look at what is happening in the world, to look at the content that's out there, and to make sense of it for the world, to become curators, editors, explainers.

I think there's enormous space for that. And I think that one of the most important ways in which that happens is through writing. but also through these other ways, and once one has developed thinking in one way or another, what is amazing about the world today is there are all these channels through which to communicate it to the world, whether it's through a tweet thread, whether it's a blog post, whether it's an interview, whether it's writing a book. All of those things can be done in parallel in various different ways. But that's a long answer to a short question. And the short answer is that probably the value of a book, well, I was about to say the value of a book has gone down,

but here's the way in which it hasn't. So I've been studying a little bit the music industry. And I think that, if I'm not mistaken, 22 million songs were written and produced in 2022. If I didn't get that number wrong, that is just an enormous number of songs. And you know it because they all go on to Spotify and other streaming services. And strangely enough, whereas one reaction to the advent of streaming services is that now the creator content creator, I was going to say curator, I meant creator, has an easy and direct access. to the end consumer. But actually what I believe that the music labels are discovering

is that because of the explosion of content, the capacity to edit, sort, attribute, quality, and bring some of it to the fore, which is what, for example, the music labels and the music companies do, is even more important. And what a book does, it's not just writing a book. Anybody can write a book, set it to text and self-publish. But there's actually huge value to getting a label on the book.

So, you know, Pallgrave Macmillan is a label that's on my book. Wiley is a label that's on some of Vitaly Castle Nelson's books. But William Green's book, Richer Wiser Happier, has a better label that's called Scribner. And those labels actually make a difference. So I think that by writing carefully and by getting those right labels or the best possible labels attached to your work can actually help you to break through. This labels and this kind of work you do, they are quite costly, time costly. And this brings me to my next question. Which investment that on the first clients seem to be very costly for you as a manager and allocator has brought you something great

or was really worth it. You know, so here's a counterintuitive idea. And I presume you're talking about investments in the business rather than investments, in financial investments, is that, you know, early on in the development of a brand, we may have to make very large investments. And then as the brand gets going and develops its own steam, the investments we make can be reduced. And so to the extent that we can afford it,

it's very possible that I might have compared myself to Warren Buffett and said, well, he doesn't have to do anything and he gets invited on CNBC. And he doesn't spend any money on, quote, let's call it, say, promotional activities. So I should be the same way. But I'm not Warren Buffett. I'm not being invited onto CNBC.

And it may be that I have to, to the extent I can afford it, make very, very high investments to get myself to break through the noise. And so I think that there are multiple investments that I've made that have helped me to, I guess, break through the noise to the extent that I've successfully done that. One example, and it wasn't really me who did it. And it wasn't the core motive for doing it, but there was certainly an aspect to that was, you know, a charity lunch with Warren Buffett that got me exposure in ways I didn't have before.

And one level, you sort of say, well, what a wasted amount of money for lunch. On the other hand, there's the famous logic that, yes, but it's going to a very good charitable cause. And over and above that, you could see that as an investment that kind of broke through the noise. I didn't see that at the time, but in retrospect, I did, and it makes me realize that investing in, so what does that mean, what would that mean practically, what are analogous things that one might do? It might involve spending the money to go to a specific place where you know that you're going to meet the right people. It might mean, I think that if you take

me back 25 years and somebody says, hey, guy, for this large amount of money, you could attend the Sun Valley Conference. Whereas in the past, I might have said, well, that's just too much money. I can't do it. There's another version that says, oh, I'll absolutely take the opportunity to put myself into that group of people. So I would say that the Buffett lunch was in a way in investment. I would also say that the decision that I took, that was pretty much any, rather than just send holiday cards to a core group of friends, I said to myself, I will send holiday cards to not every single person I've met, but every person I've met that I liked. And that's an expensive thing to do, but I think that it's brought me a richness of interactions

with people that I would not otherwise have had. And I think that it's perfectly legitimate for those of us who are at the beginning of our careers to make much higher investments in all of those different positional assets, if you like, than, somebody who's in the middle or the end. Another example would be investing in a great education. So it's very expensive to attend some of these branded schools, but it gives you a stamp of approval, it gives you a mark. Or if you're in mid-career, if you're not at a stage where you're going to university, to attend the Columbia Value Investing Program or to join a conference or to go and do, you know, Harvard Business School has the owner-president manager program. Those are

all ways of positioning ourselves. And I would argue that, so I think it was the Ford who said that he didn't, you know, you need to invest in yourself until you're 40. Well, that was a long time ago. We could now say until you're 60. And so to continually find ways to make investments. It's time for a quick advert Tillman. Here we go. Are you looking for a beautiful and efficient way to analyze stocks? Then please check out what my friends at Stratosphere are building. They have build a great tool to visualize data, to get ideas about ownership of stocks, and many more information that's helpful in your analysis process. You can find that tool where the link below and feel free to sign up, it's free.

Thank you for your attention. And now, Edward Tillman, and I sometimes get emails from you and I have the feeling that you run your fund or your partnership a bit like an exclusive club. You offer other services for people who are invested with you. How do you think about this additional services and what is the idea behind offering this? You know, it's a story that I've told before. It's a secondhand story for me. But Monash has told me of the experience of sort of becoming friends with Charlie Munger and the

feeling that he had that he was being pulled into a very, very special, warm place. And by the way, Charlie Munger, we know, has a pretty graphic steering. and I think that that was one of the first indications for me that people who are extraordinarily generous can't necessarily show that generosity to the world because they're just going to have too much noise. And so I see that or I thought I remember attending. Lelu used to live in a place in Pasadena that was developed by Charlie Munger where in order to buy the place, and it was just a condominium, but in order to buy a unit in the condominium, it was like you were becoming a member of a club.

And I thought, you know, that was clearly a fun way to live your life. And I've heard of partnerships where in order for a new investor to come into the partnership, every existing investor in the partnership has to approve of the new investor. So I realized that life is more fun and more interesting. if you kind of run your life in a certain way like a club. And so I think that it extends beyond the investment partnership, but it extends to as many other areas of your life as you possibly can. So if there's something good that I have to offer that's of limited quantity,

I look to offer it up to people who are central in my life first, if you like. And yeah, so if you're an investor in the fund, I mean, there's no promises. There's no like sort of, if you invest in the fund, you get all these things. But to the extent that good stuff comes up, I do try to offer it up to my quote in the circle, if you like. Something that I've expressed in various places is that we know the famous story of that Warren Buffett tells, because all the best stories are told by Warren Buffett. And there's nothing I've learned today that I haven't learned from Warren Buffett first.

Forgive me for bringing him up so often. But the guy who died and all these people came to his funeral, and they all came to see that he was really dead. And that's a very, very sad state of affairs. And I think that Warren also talks about how he doesn't need to own a beautiful yacht, but he doesn't mind if his friends own beautiful yachts and they can invite him onto the yacht. So I don't need to own a beautiful yacht. I just need to be friends with Jeff Bezos, if you like. And so one can ask the question, yeah, but you're not friends with Jeff Bezos. and you're not friends with Bill Gates or whoever else has yachts or nice positional toys.

And there's no guarantee of success. But what if I live my life in such a way that I try to help every single person who's close to me become as successful as I possibly can help them to become? Because I'd really like, I don't ever want to own a yacht, but I really wouldn't mind if some of my friends do. And there are some people who have been very successful at doing it. that. I'm thinking of, I'm sorry that his name is not bouncing to the top of my head, but he was the chairman of, oh, I'm so sorry to do this. He's Ken Langone. He was the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, I believe, or at least on the board. He was also not of Costco, but of a company that

does household goods, big, big immovable household goods, very Home Depot, I believe, very successful company, but he very clearly was an absolute genius at not just creating relationships, but becoming a person where all of these successful people wanted Ken Langone in his life. And so, you know, you want to get to your grave. I certainly want to get to my grave with people saying, I'm so glad that Guy Speer was in my life. And why would people say they were so glad that Guy Speer was in their life because all sorts of good things happen to them because I was in their life. And so if you actually want to get to that end result, you need to start trying to make good things happen in the lives of the people who've chosen to be close to you and who else

to do it for than one's investors. But it's not done as some kind of, quote, marketing program. It's just, and actually, Tillman, I believe this is for emerging managers. I mean, I really do believe this. So, you know, I don't know if I've successfully done it with you to make it personal, but Tillman gives me the honor of investing your time and energy to come and talk to me in my office. I'm extremely grateful because it gives me all sorts of great opportunities. It's a wonderful thing.

So my goal should be to look to make good things happen in Tillman's life. I don't even have to let Tillman know that it's happening. Just need to try and do that. So with that perspective, you know, I probably probably... can deliver better for you, but to take an example of my investors, I realized that I really enjoyed the investors who are doing interesting things. So some of my investors are venture capitalists. There's one investor who's a former surgeon that was prevented from continuing to be a surgeon through a sort of repetitive stress injury that happened through surgery. He's also become

an angel investor. I take close interest. as close interest as I possibly can in the activities of our investors. And where I can, I try to promote their interests. And I think that, first of all, it's fun and exciting. And if I can, at the margin, improve the probability of success in their goals, in their lives, then it's more likely that I'll attract great investors into my fund, because somewhere people will figure out, wow, if you invest with Guy, or I heard this story that somebody invests with Guy,

these good things happened. I mean, it's at very, very early stages, but I think what's beautiful about that idea for emerging managers is that, you know, the fact that I'm doing it and the fact that I'm sharing the idea to somebody else to do, it doesn't diminish anything about what I'm doing. We just, in a certain way, make the world a more beautiful place. And I think that it is kind of like deep investment in success. By the way, Warren Buffett does this. It's just incredibly. incredible. He does this all the time. He's understood that, I believe. And if I was interviewing him like Becky Quick, I'd ask him about that. And he'd probably kind of just smile and go, he would kind of just brush it off. But I've seen him do it for me. And he's written me a letter I've already talked about where I'm like, why on earth did he do that? I'm not that great. And I really say that genuinely. And he's saying, I believe that he's saying and it was William Green, author of Richelweiser Happier, that explained this to me, and I think he's right.

Warren is saying, if somebody's in my life and I like them, I want them to have a better life because I'm in their life. You know, and there's this story. It's a parable, I believe. I heard it in assembly in high school. You know, basically what's the difference between heaven and hell? Both heaven and hell have lots of plenty full food around. But in heaven, in hell, the fourth.

There's plenty of food, but the forks are so long that you can't feed yourself. And in hell, they haven't figured out that you need to feed your neighbor. And in heaven, they've worked out that if you feed your neighbor, there's more than enough to eat. And this principle can play itself out in its own life. So I'm trying to do that not just for my investors. I'll, you know, just for fun. And if you don't mind, and for those of you who don't see it, Tillman's nodding. So I'm kind of like continuing.

with this. So, you know, my children were at Zurich International School, and we've taken interns over the years from Zurich International School. So now Zurich International School has a publication, Voices, and they said, would you like to buy an ad? So in the past, what I would have done is I would have bought an ad that said, we're aquamarine, we're great, here we are. Instead, What I did was I said, thank you, and named in the ad every single one of the interns who'd come from Zurich International School. So it's like a way of trying to give them a boost in their careers because their name is mentioned. Then more recently, we took an ad where we named every single one of our service providers. So it's kind of like this idea of which I learned from American Express, because one of our investments, they have this phrase,

membership has its benefits. And so it's in a certain way trying to seek to implement that in my own life. Membership has its benefits. And once you figure that out, there are a thousand different ways you can implement it. I mean, I think that I did this, somebody who you must know investing with Tom. He did something where he did a summary reel for the year, and he named every single person that you'd interviewed. And it was a little promotion for himself, but also for every single person that you'd interviewed.

Or I can remember that I did a, well, here's an example of a simple, small way to do it. So I gave a talk at Oxford University. And there's the Oxford University, they call it the Alpha Fund, or it's the Investment Society. And the Investment Society has various different people who volunteer to work as officers of the society. And how wonderful it is. So instead of saying I'm going to be giving a talk to the Oxford Alpha Fund, I said, thanks to the work of, and I named all the committee members, and I tagged them within LinkedIn, they've invited me. So I'm giving them just a little bit of prominence. I'm giving credit.

And this beautiful idea that giving credit to others never diminishes you. It's this fascinating thing. It never diminishes the originator. And I'm blown away at how many people think that if they give credit to somebody else, it's somehow going to diminish them. It never diminishes you. In fact, it enhances you. there's this question how the giver then survives the phase of intensive giving that you have to do at the beginning and there's also a question that was coming from the internet how you kept yourself like your fund expenses and your personal and family expenses when you switch to this zero six 25 structure yeah and how do you go also about this general fear of like giving and giving and giving while the the reward sometimes takes time to get back to you. Yeah. So to start with the last part first, so it is a delicate and also one has to be really smart about it.

So if you go into giving mode mindset, one of the first things that's going to happen is you're going to attract a lot of takers. I think that's what causes a lot of people to give up on the giving because you're like, I don't want this. You know, I just got a bunch of takers in my life. And so the work to, so you have to do a lot of screening. the screening cannot insult the takers because they're just part of the world. And in a certain way, we probably need a relationship with them. They're not evil people. They just have a different

strategy for success. And so that's why Charlie Mungers, I believe, developed this gruff exterior. That's one protective mechanisms. There are other protective mechanisms that allow you to screen out and to screen away the takers that you're going to attract into your life. So you have to start becoming far more careful. So it's an evolution of one's strategy of success. As you start becoming more of a giver, you're going to start attracting certain kinds of people. You need certain ways to keep them away, keep them at bay, all of those things. So there's no point at which you can implement any one of these, anything that's going to work in your life. For that, you have to implement it intelligently and you have to evolve in the way you implement it. And it's constantly

evolving and constantly changing. And so that's just, it's not just like, apply the rule and then close your eyes and be blind, but apply the rule, apply the idea, observe carefully to see what's happening, act intelligently in response, evolve the rule, evolve the implementation of the rule, keep seeking. I have realized that through, at some point with holiday cards, I said, well, I remember the time that I signed a thousand holiday cards and my back was aching. And I wanted to increase the number of holiday cards. So I decided not to sign them, any of them. And now next year, I want to go to signing, at least some of them,

because I think that I've lost a little bit of the personal touch. So you know, there's the strategy evolves. When it comes to fee structures, there's this kind of like, it's kind of a barrier to entry. How do you charge a zero management fee when you've got to live? And that is, that is a real, challenge. I don't want to pretend that that is in any way, shape or form easy. And I grow a huge distinction between the way Monish is where he is and the way I am where I am. Monash has

extraordinary entrepreneurial talents. Before he became an investor, he ran multiple businesses at which he was very successful. And he's got an incredible focus on practical things. And he's got incredible human people intelligence to get things done with people that I'm far more of a kind of an impractical academic mindset. Point being that I don't know where I would be if I had not had some kind of starter sum that was being invested with friends and family money. Monish started with the proceeds of a business that he sold. And so he was working initially with his own money and then took outside money. Those are very different paths. In Monish's case, the proceeds from the sale of his business was sufficient to allow him to continue to live

for a year or two or five or maybe even 10 without getting any fees. And so that was the way that he did it. Now, if you go into the other category and you don't have that, what can you do? I think the best example that I know of, and it's just through talking to him about it, is Josh Tarasoff where he said, look, I need to charge a fee to survive. But here's the way in which the fee will decline to zero as the funds under management grow. And so that's another way to do it. In my case, what I moved to was that the family funds, the funds that under family control do pay a fee. And so, you know, I charge myself and my family, and it's kind of an internal accounting, a percentage of the assets, but the external investors have the choice to invest in an

asset class that does not charge them a fee. So I think that, it's a long answer. Sorry, Tillman. All of my answers are long. I think that it's a difficult question and one has to address it in an intelligent way and it's a problem to solve and it's not an easy problem to solve. Is there anything you could think for the end of the interview you would give at hand a young person or even a talented person, so to say, it could also be person in the 50s who's starting a fund that you would recommend to this person. It's something that I would give to them physically, you mean. No, no, an idea. We haven't discussed maybe something you want to add to.

Yeah. And what is a great final closing thought? I try to think of something really mind-blowing. And maybe it works good. If you take the first week, what comes to your mind. I think that, so I just want to kind of like add in some thoughts around what I've already been saying. So I think that some of the most effective ideas that have cost money that I've implemented, like sending holiday cards out, like Monash does and sending books out, are ideas that if you came to a market, manager inside a for-profit business that is, especially if it's publicly traded and you came with that proposal, the marketing manager would say no way we're doing that, because there's no way that we can earn a reasonable return on that, or we can show that we can

earn a reasonable return on that over a reasonable period of time, so we just can't do that. I think that when you're starting out or when you're running your own business, there are investments that you can intelligently make that have an unusual return profile that could never be made in any kind of setting where there are multiple people looking at it and who want to make sense. And I think that that idea, that whole opportunity set that exists is a very, very rich opportunity set to explore. And each individual will come up with their own ways to do it. But I can make investments in myself and in my family and in people around me that might only have a payoff

10, 20, 30 years down the road. And because it's me and I will always be me, it will always, it will make sense for me to make those investments. But many people would say, well, that's a ridiculous waste of time. And I go back to the story of, I believe it's Mexico sending a team of people to help Israel with some disaster that happened in Israel. This is in Robert Chiladini's book, The Psychology of Influence. And the question was asked, why did that happen? And it was because Israel had sent a team out to Mexico to help them with a disaster that had happened 20 years prior. So the reciprocation can even work across countries over multiple generations. So the ability that I can take or that somebody starting out in their careers can take

to make investments in positional assets, in human relationships that may only pay off decades down the road. And the thing is that if one starts making those investments and one does it consistently enough for long enough, eventually you'll, and I think I've maybe expressed this even to you, Tom, and eventually you'll start reaping the rewards of those or you'll see things coming back to you. And so I think that what I would urge

somebody in sort of like if you have a long career ahead of you start doing as many of those things as you possibly can and because other people aren't doing them or because they're not written up in some kind of marketing book don't assume that it's not a worthwhile thing to do it's just that very few people may have the time horizon that you can afford to have how important is persistence in giving um that's a that's a that's a Well, so what comes up for me as you ask that question is that we have to have an open and generous spirit towards the world. But at the same time, be very carefully observant of how people are reacting to that. And in some cases, persistence is just not going to work.

And I think that in many cases, the persistence may well eventually work, but one has to calibrate it. You know, some people, it may be worth coming back at them with some opportunity for them once a month. But for the vast majority of people in the world that I'm in, if there's an overture that is made, first of all, the overture should be made. Let's say it's an invitation to a meeting or an invitation to join on a podcast. That overture needs to be made in a way that doesn't make them feel obligated. So in the past, I'd write somebody a thank you note. And at the end of the thank you note, I'd say, I hope you would come on my podcast, or I hope you'll dot, dot, dot.

That is trying to put them under a sense of obligation. And many smart people will react very, very badly to that. But so carefully calibrating your overtures that, they should never be too frequent because that can put you into a bad relationship with the person where you will never get anywhere, but that they're frequent enough. And they say that it takes seven touches before somebody pays attention to a brand or an individual. But to find the right way to touch the person is that is subtle work, but it's fun work. And I think that something that I've learned Tillman is just a whole area of exploration in itself is that, and I

don't fully understand why this is, but I've found that invariably the indirect approach is better than the direct approach. Indirect meaning that we have an idea of how this person might make a positive contribution to our lives, but if we ask them directly for that, it's not going to happen. So I'm tomorrow hosting a lunch here. Actually, it's called luncheon And it's being hosted with the benefit of the Khabad rabbi here, or the son-in-law of the original rabbi's name is Nochum Bernstein, has this amazing wife, Stelny. Stelny has a 40-minute video in Swiss-German that you can find on YouTube, very, very interesting, that goes into the details of what it's like to be an Orthodox Jew.

And I'm inviting people to this lunch at my office who are people I'd like to have in my life and for who I believe I could help them, but they could help me an awful lot. But I'm not saying to them, hey, I'd love to see if you can help me in this way. I'm saying, come to a lunch and learn in my office. And I'm inviting. So that's kind of an indirect approach. And there are all sorts of ways to do an indirect approach. The key with the indirect approach is that the person should never feel obligated.

They should feel like it's a genuine invitation. many people who won the Buffett lunch auction, I have the sense that they approached it with, we're going to get our full value out of the lunch. So in a certain way, they're approaching it with a certain sense that Buffett was obligated. And I think that this is part of the genius of Monash Pabrai is that he took a different approach.

He said, we're here just to thank you. and he genuinely made the lunch about thanking Warren for all that he's taught us. Of course, Warren could help us in a thousand different ways, but we were making it, and I learned through Monash, to make it clear in the whole everything, that there was going to be nothing like that taking place. Again, it's sort of saying creating the possibility for a relationship to happen and for positive things to come out of it, but it's created indirectly through saying, thank you, not for us, not through asking for something, for example. So just for what it's worth,

all of these insights, or so many of these insights, are insights that I learned through traveling through India with Monash, visiting Dachana Foundation locations around kind of some of this we call deepest, darkest India, we'd be in a car, and I would ask to put my feet up, I'd take my shoes off, and I'd put my feet up on the seat between the two seats with the driver in the front, we'd have these conversations and these things would come up. And I've said this, I'll swear, but I've learned, you know, the launch with Buffett was valuable, so valuable for me, because I, in many ways, learned more that is of practical use to me from Monish and the relationship that was created with Monish than I learned from Warren, which was also great. But so much that I

learned about how to be in the world of business, I learned from Monish. And in that, he's a genius. He's really extraordinary. In fact, Tillman, I wish I could just call Monash up and ask him to do an interview with you, but you maybe one day the stars will align and it will happen where you basically say, tell us what you talk guy. You get it straight from his mouth. But by the way, just to sort of share with you this kind of idea of not putting people under obligation, the reason why I can't direct Monash to do that is that that would be. asking for something that was inappropriate for me to ask. It would diminish my relationship with him. It hasn't happened for a long time, but I'd get people who approach me to ask me to ask

something on their behalf to Warren. And I did it once or twice. And as Monash explained, you're diminishing your relationship with Warren. Not a smart move. A huge part of succeeding in relationships is creating a protective space around the relationship where the person can trust you not to make what I call are indecent proposals. But I don't know why I ended on that place. But for those who are interested, Tillman is not nodding.

He's got his hand in front of his mouth like that, which basically means, okay, guy, bring this to an end, which I'm now doing. No, no, it doesn't mean it. But I mean it, yeah, that I also want to thank you, also want to practice it.

I can wait to thank you because you delivered a lot of, like, good points for further podcasts and also for other podcasts to ask you. I think if they want to attach to the stories here, feel free to. But anyways, or outside of this, also want to thank you for coming on a podcast again and sharing the experiences. I just want you to know for what it's worth that when Tillman first came to interview me, I was happy to do it. And then I was blown away, first of all, because he had this camera set up.

But then the quality of what was produced was off the train. charts. And so this time till then, it was like a hands-down note, you know, so happy to sit here and talk to you. And by the way, I think that, well, I think the quality of the questions last time was very high in the, and it's worth saying that, you know, if you get asked high-quality questions, then you learn. I learn through the process of doing this because it forces me to clarify my thoughts. So thank you for doing that. Thank you.