Motley Fool Money - Apple Connects

Episode Date: September 16, 2016

Apple's iPhone 7 connects with investors. Samsung heats up - but not in a good way. Bayer and Monsanto combine forces. And retailers report some dog days in August. Plus, best-selling author Bill Taylor talks about his new book, Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways. For a free preview of our Motley Fool One service, go to OneRadio.Fool.com.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Chris Hill. I'm joining me in studio this week from Million Dollar portfolio, Jason Moser, from Motley Fool One Run Gross. And from Motley Fool, Australia. Back again, it's Mr. Joe, mate. How did you? Welcome back, sir. Welcome, mate. We've got the latest headlines from Wall Street. Best-selling author, Bill Taylor is our guest, and as always, we'll give an inside look at the stocks on our radar. But we begin this week in the mobile phone industry.

US regulators have issued an official recall of Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 after nearly 100 reports of the phone's battery overheating and in some cases catching fire. The FAA has also stopped just short of banning passengers from bringing the device on airplanes. Joe, I'll start with you. Samsung has had a good couple of years in terms of reviews and in terms of sales, and it appears that that good run is now over. It's burst into flames. Yeah. Much like their phones.

They were on fire. I haven't been in the country long. I get off the plane in National Airport. as I am walking through the terminal, I hear overhead, if you have a Samsung Galaxy 7 phone, please be sure to turn it off before getting on the airplane. I was like, well, this is new to me, but it sounds like Samsung's having a tough time. This is pretty much the worst thing that could happen to you brand-wise. You go out, you sell a couple million phones right ahead of an iPhone 7 launch, you have a long replacement cycle.

It's a big bet for you, and it's a complete, utter disaster, which they don't have a fix for. Meanwhile, it makes Apple fantastic, and iPhone sales are off the charts. I just don't understand how they couldn't have caught this before they went on sale. It does seem weak. Are these things not tested? I mean, you would think they put these things through the ringer, no pun intended, before they hit the market, and especially something as dangerous as this, it boggles my mind. That's to me the biggest, I think, misstep here.

Anybody can make a mistake, a design flaw, but to let it go to market without catching something this big first, I think is a big deal. Well, and there's, to your point, show, there's no good time for something like this to happen. But this really is... There's an especially bad time. There's an especially bad time. Last week, we talked about Apple's event with the iPhone 7, and this week shares of Apple up around 10 percent because you've got phone carriers like T-Mobile coming out and saying that the, you

know, demand is through the roof for them, and they're not the only ones. It's an interesting question of who's at blame here. Is it the engineers who clearly missed something, designed something improperly? the people who are in charge of quality, or is it top down? You know? I mean, clearly these... Yes, all of those things. Yeah, I'd say all those things, but there was there pressure? We got to get this phone out the door no matter what.

The deal of the week so far is, well, it's far removed from the mobile phone industry, and it is Bear buying Monsanto for 66 billion in cash. Bear is the German health conglomerate that owns products like Alka-Seltzer, Claritin, copper tone, and of course, Bear Aspirin. Monsanto is the industry leader in agricultural seeds and chemicals. Here's my first question, Jason. Shares and Monsanto are actually down this week. Is that a sign that no one thinks that this deal is going to get approved by regulators

in the U.S. and the EU as it currently stands? Well, let me answer your question, Chris, with another question. Is it Bayer or is it buyer? I was wondering that as well. Because I think that as Americanized as we are, I believe the correct question. pronunciation is buyer. And you know what? I really don't care. Because we're going to say bear anyway. Yeah, I think that when you look at me, this has obviously been something that has been going along for some time now. And it kind of just boiled down to the dollars and

sense of it all. I think if the deal goes through, I think it's a good sign. It's a good deal, probably, for both sides. I think Monsanto has been sort of facing a little bit of a buzzsaw here and finding avenues to grow. They're kind of running into that sort of polarization in the whole GMO issue, right? I mean, I think you're either for them or against them, or maybe you're like me, and you really just don't care. But I think that generally speaking, when you look at Bayer, this is going to give them a little bit more diversity.

It's going to help sort of bring that Monsanto seed business into what they do so well with sort of those agriculture, the agricultural chemicals division. And I think ultimately for shareholders of Monsanto, they've got to feel pretty good about getting this kind of a price. least Monsanto held out to try to get as much money as they could. It sounds like it's going to be an all-cash deal, assuming it does go through. It sounds like it's going to be put under the microscope, but we're seeing a lot of consolidation in this sector, and I think scale really matters. So at the end of the day, I think it probably goes through. I think at the

end of the day, it's probably a win for Monsanto. And I think bear shareholders, they get a little bit more of diversity in the revenue stream there. It's going to be a good feeling to be able to just stroke a check for $66 billion and not have to worry about stock. And in my defense, I'm conditioned by decades of American television commercials telling me it's bear aspirin. So I'm sticking with bear. Ron, what do you think of this deal? I think it makes sense.

I do think it's going to have some antitrust trouble. We'll see if maybe they force some things to be divested. Sometimes that is a way to kind of get around the Justice Department. But I think it makes sense for shareholders. I think there's some synergies there. I know we hate that word, but I think it makes sense. Yeah, I think if you look at sort of what Bear has done so successfully at this point in pharmaceuticals business, perhaps looking forward, the agriculture and seed business is a bit

more of an attractive opportunity, just given population growth around the world, the fact that land is not something that continues to be produced, so I think is we can maximize crops and sort of aid that technology along the way and being able to feed what is obviously a growing planet. I think for Bear shareholders, that's probably encouraging. If I'm the government, instead of looking at this from a competitive standpoint, I think a little more along the lines of Monsanto is crucial to the food supply of this country. Are we comfortable with this? Unfortunately, to some people, right?

Yes. And I'm not saying that's necessarily a reasonable position. I'm sure someone in the government's asking that question right now. And there are governments in the world, I'm guessing. They would say, no, we're not comfortable with that. The retail numbers for August came out this week. And Ron Gross, they were not amazing. Overall sales in the U.S. down 0.3%. What stood out to you? Not a great report. Worse than expected. First drop in five months. The magnitude. Sales fell in seven of 12 categories. So that's kind of obviously not good news. Auto was weak, down almost 1%. Sporting goods and building materials, both down 1.4%. Not great.

Even online retailers, believe it or not, were down slightly, although they are up over. almost 11% from last year. So still healthy, but month over month, not so great. It's going to be a data point that the Fed has to look at as they decide whether they want to raise interest rates, which actually could come as early as next week. And they've got to be thinking that this type of data point, this metric doesn't necessarily bode well for overall GDP growth because the consumer is such a large part of our economy. Is it a blip? Is the holiday season going to be better. That's something we'll have to watch. I think it's really hard to count on any real robust retail growth when you have a situation

where obviously wages are somewhat capped. We know that consumer saving is just really at an all-time low. So I think a lot of people are spending on credit. We hear all about this student loan bubble that continues to get more and more out of control every month, it seems. I think we're just in a very difficult environment for retail to really flourish. so to speak. And this probably, Ron's probably right. This is something that the Fed takes into consideration next week as they decide to not raise rates. There you go. I'm making the prediction. They're not going to do it. But to take some of the other side of that, unemployment is relatively strong. Or is that the

right word to say? It's relatively low. We saw good income numbers recently. The stock market's near all-time highs. The consumer should be feeling relatively strong right now. So, I'm a little bit surprised to see the blip. It might just be. an anomaly, and it might not be a trend. I think with the high, I have a problem with making the leap from, like, stock market's doing well to, like, the general consumer. Just one day to point, my friend.

I don't think the general consumer really looks at that. So, I mean, it's easy for us to sit here and say that. I mean, it makes sense. But I think for the average consumer out there, it all just basically comes down to consumer confidence what they have in their bank account. And the stock market, albeit

at record highs, probably isn't translating into a feeling of spending power on their part. Well, and I know we just got done with summer, but Ron, you mentioned the holidays. The seasonal holiday hiring is starting to kick in, and we had UPS coming out this week saying they're going to be hiring nearly 100,000 seasonal workers, targets going to be hiring another 70,000 on top of that. So, I mean, that could bode well.

That could bode well. The UPS number looks flat when you look at it over the last couple of years, which doesn't speak to growth. But when you think about the fact that they've been investing in technologies, specifically their Orion software system to get them better at handling the flow of e-commerce. So they're actually improving so they don't need as many people. So I think they actually are signaling growth. Interesting to note that all these folks are finding it actually difficult to find

qualified workers because unemployment is low. And so they're incentivizing, raising wages, putting in retail employee discounts to try to draw people in. Coming up, we will dip into the full mailbag. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here in studio with Jason Mozer, Joe Maker, and Ron Gross. Before we get back to the news, I just want to mention that for the first and only time this year, our Motleyful One service is open to new members.

This is our All-Axcess service. And if you'd like to kick the tires on it, you can go to OneRadio.fool.com. That's OneRadio.com. We've got a site set up featuring a bunch of investing videos with Tom Gardner, Jeff Fisher, our retirement expert, Robert Procamp. So if you're interested, check that up by going to OneRadio.fool.com. Wells Fargo continues to face questions over the scandal involving the unauthorized opening of 2 million customer accounts. Next week, CEO John Stumpf heads to Capitol Hill, where he will get to spend some quality time with the Senate Banking Committee. Joe, I get that the $185 million fine that they have to pay is pretty much pocket change to them.

But in the last week, that company has also lost about $20 billion. billion worth of market cap. This seems like one of those situations that's going to continue to get worse before it gets better. Well, they've lost a lot of credibility. And Wells Fargo has historically stood out in the investment community for their ability to effectively cross-sell. Now we basically understand that there are a lot of two million or so fake accounts, more or less, that were set up. But I think this is a situation where somebody at the top should be fired. And instead, you had 5,000 low-level people. They should

have been fired, too, if we're setting up fake accounts. That's not okay. But there clearly was a structural, systemic problem. If you had that many fake accounts being set up, 5,000 people, this wasn't a rogue operation, you can't pass that off. It's certainly scandalous. I don't know anything about Stumpf. I'm not saying he necessarily needs to go. But the fact that he is both chairman and CEO of the company makes me think that at a minimum, he should split those jobs and pick one. Yeah, we always like to see the split anyway. It creates less conflict. But I remember last week when we were talking about the story, and we said it seems like that it

they had gotten away unscathed, but we couldn't imagine that that was going to continue. And here we see this picking up steam now. Now, once you get the politicians involved, Elizabeth Warren is kind of pounding the table here that heads have to roll. This doesn't go away. I think this continues to be a problem. And I don't know if the CEO will be the one to leave, but I think we'll see kind of top-level resignations. Pandora has unveiled a new music streaming service for just $5 a month, undercutting the likes of Apple Music and Spotify. Jason, I got to say, I enjoy their ad-supported service, and I'm seriously looking at plunking down five bucks a month for this new one.

Sure, and you used a word there that I think kind of sums this all up in undercutting. I think Pandora ultimately is going to fall in the category of good service, probably not a very good investment idea. And I think when you look at ideal investments, things we're looking for, like pricing power. power and even potential switching costs, substitutes. Pandora doesn't really have anything here. I mean, they're obviously lowering the price, so they're not in a situation where they're going to be able to raise prices. We're already seeing that.

Switching costs, I don't think there really is anything there. I mean, I think maybe you've built a couple of playlists you like, but there's so many substitutes out there today for music lovers, from Amazon to Apple to Spotify. So I think that Pandora basically is just stuck in this sort of perpetual negotiation to try to figure out a way to bring good content to their platform. And that's working. But I think there are other services out there that actually do this job better. And so Pandora, beyond just offering a better pricing scheme there, I think they need to come up with something on the service there that's going to allow music lovers a bit more freedom into choosing the songs that they

want, perhaps going the route of offering unlimited downloads, whatever that may be. But I think when you look at their income statement, it tells the story here. I mean, this is going to be a constant negotiation for them. And I just don't see how investors are going to be able to win, whereas consumers, I think consumers win hands down. Yeah. On the one hand, you have management sort of taking their time and saying, hey, look, we're not going to rush. We're building a service for the long term. On the other hand, to your point, when you look at their balance sheet, they don't have a lot of cash to sit on.

Yeah. And that's just it. I mean, we look at their balance sheet. We look at these investments that they're making in the long run. But these investments have been going on for a very long time. And ever since they IPOed, it's really been sort of a question of, when are they going to turn that corner and really offer us some sustainable growth? And I just don't know that investors should be expecting that anytime soon, if ever. Our email address is Radio at Fool.com from Abriel Elise, who writes, I've been investing on my own for about 10 years, and soon I will have the blessing of welcoming a baby into my family. Musseltoff. Congratulations. I'd like to start building a portfolio of individual stock

for my soon-to-arrived daughter and already have some companies in mind, including Walt Disney, Hershey, Hasbro, and Amazon. My question is, how do I go about buying stock for a child? I've never purchased stock for anyone aside from myself, and I was wondering if you could provide some information. Thank you for all that you do. Great note. And here's what we're going to do, Jason. Walk us through a couple of steps of how to set this up. And then, Abbyel's got some great ideas for her portfolio. But I think we're going to, we'll go around this. the table, we'll offer up a few more ideas for her watch list. Absolutely. I mean, I have two kids myself, 10 and 11 years old. I will say the first thing

we opened up for them when they were born with 529 accounts, so you may want to consider doing that as well. But in opening up a brokerage account where your child can actually own stocks, it's basically like a savings account. It's just one of those custodial accounts where the child's name on it and the parents name on it. And then ultimately, given that your child's not going to really have the motor skills anytime soon, you'll probably want to be clicking the button for him or her. But I think those ideas are all great. I mean, the names of the stocks that you mentioned, Disney, Hasbro, Amazon. My daughters own all of those stocks. And I think it's just a lot of fun. You're getting them at a good age where they really don't care

about what those stock prices are doing day to day. But every once in a while, you show them their portfolio, show them the businesses that they own, and you show them the actual results of patience and owning good companies. Getting them started at that age, you're going to create an investor for life, I'm certain. And with custodial accounts, your kid doesn't get access to it until they're either 18 or 21. So let's just, in terms of stock ideas, let's just think in terms of round numbers, 20 years, a company for Abriel's daughter. Yeah, so in thinking through this, I wanted to balance this with a stock that a child would be both interested in, but would also stand the test of time 20 years. So I'm going to go with Facebook.

I'm going to trust Mark Zuckerberg to continue to innovate. I think Facebook will continue to evolve as the needs of consumers and tech. technology evolves. I think they'll be here 20 years from now. Jason? Yeah, I think your child's going to be familiar with Under Armour all his or her life. I think that's a great company to own. It's going to be around for a while. Joe? I double down on Amazon.

Amazon Web Services growing like crazy. It's the future. And Amazon is just gobbling up retail. Let's go our man behind the glass, Steve Brodow, because I know he's got some ideas on this. Steve, when you think about the next 20 years, what's a stock that Abriel could consider adding to the portfolio for her soon-to-arrive daughter? I've heard good things about Carter's. I've heard that on the show. Is that one maybe to look at? Remind me what Carter's is. Baby clothes. There you go. Been around forever? Very much in keeping. You don't want to go Darden restaurants with a parent company of your beloved Olive Garden?

You know, I think that at some point the unhealthy menu may really come to be a downside for the Olive Garden. You don't think Olive Garden stands the test of time? You don't think they're going to be around in 20 years? Oh, they'll be around. Those breadsticks will be around. I'm going to go with Starbucks because, as I've said before, technologies change over time. But the production of coffee and the delivery system for coffee, I don't see that changing in the next 20 years. So, anyway, that's great that you're doing that, Abriel. And keep the emails coming. Radio at Fool.com is our email address.

That's Radio at Fool.com. All right, Ron Gross, Jason Moser, Joe Maeger. We'll see you a little bit later in the show. But up next, a conversation with bestselling author Bill Taylor about his brand new book, Simply Brilliant, How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways. Stay right here. This is Motley Full Money. Before we get to Bill Taylor, we've got to say a word about Rocket Mortgage, because if you've ever bought a home, you already know how frustrating and time-consuming getting a mortgage can be.

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Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. Bill Taylor is the co-founder of Fast Company Magazine, co-author of the bestseller Mavericks at work, and his brand new book, is simply brilliant, how great organizations do ordinary things in extraordinary ways. And he joins me now in studio. Thanks for being here. I am happy to be here. The rare in-studio guest for Motley Full Money. So prior to this book, I think it's... It's fair to say that a lot of your work was focused on what is commonly referred to as

the tech industry. Hardware, software, consumer tech. One of the things I find interesting about this book is that you're featuring what I would call some incredibly basic businesses. A bank, a small fast food chain, a parking garage. Before we dig into the book, what got you thinking about these types of businesses? So this book is coming out shortly after Fast Company Magazine celebrates our 20th anniversary. So for 20 years, I've been living the world of, as you say, digitally driven disruption,

software as a service, all stuff where tremendous innovation, excitement, creativity, but it's all fundamentally driven by technology. And as I would go off and talk to audiences around the world or what have you, one of the pushbacks I got when I would talk to people from more traditional established walks of life, which after all is probably about 90% of us, is that, hey, that may work for Google or that may work for Facebook, but we've been around for 100 years. Those ideas aren't going to work in our business. Or, you know, I'm in a pretty unglamorous prosaic field.

I can't be a passion brand like, you know, Apple or Nike or whatever. And I gave myself the challenge to say, could I bring that same sense? of imagination and reinvention, a sense that whether it's strategically in terms of the experiences you're creating, in terms of the companies you're building, really we live in a world where kind of anything is possible, but set that spirit of creativity and change in some of the most basic traditional fields you can imagine. Stuff, you said also industrial distribution, small hospitals, what have you. And once you, once you, once you, once you, you, you, go out and start looking for those sorts of things. People in ordinary industries doing truly

extraordinary things, they're actually there to be found. The trouble is, you know, if you're running a magazine, you can have, you know, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook on the cover or Travis Kalanick from Uber on the cover, and that's, you know, just instant recognition. And they've become these kind of business superheroes. What I wanted to do, because I think this is how people learn, is to introduce a new cast of characters who are undeniably doing remarkable things, but the kinds of people and companies that lots and lots of other people could relate to and say, you know what, if they can do that, maybe I can do that. All right, let's get to some of the businesses that are featured in the book.

I'm embarrassed that I haven't heard of it because I'm someone who enjoys food. And so PAL's sudden service. Okay, I don't know what it is about PAL. This is like everybody's favorite case study in the book. It really is. It absolutely is. Here's this small, and it's been around 50, 60 years. This small fast food chain in Tennessee, a few locations in Virginia.

And the speed with which they operate is astonishing, not compared to restaurants in general, compared to their direct competitors. We talk about fast food. Palsud and Sudden Service, and I'm assuming your numbers are correct. They leave everyone else in the dust. Yes. So this is, I mean, this is probably the extreme version of going to not Facebook, not Google kind of deal. Let's go to a burger and fries joint. But it's this remarkable company in Northeast, Northeast, Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, kind of the great smoky mountains kind of deal. And if you go there, or if you know people who are from there, Kingsport, Tennessee or whatever, it is truly a, I mean, this is a cult, cult brand. Talk about an absolute. passion following. Part of it is because the food is genuinely good. And I'm not a big fast food

guy, but I spend a lot of time down there and highly recommend the Frenchy fries and the double sauce burger, I think, is what they call it. But what they've developed is a way of operating that is so radical and so extreme. And also, by the way, so totally consistent and reliable that people are just amazed by it. So the deal is they've got the, for the though, these restaurants are very fun and colorful to look at. The design is, they kind of giant, it kind of looks like a giant bag of food with French. They're kind of crazy. You drive up, but you don't sit inside them. You drive up and you don't talk into a scratchy microphone like you might in a McDonald's take out a person leans out the window and takes your order.

They will take your order in 18 seconds or less. You then drive around, there might be a few cars ahead of you, but you drive around to the other side of the restaurant, and you're presented to your bag of food, and you will sit at that second window for 12 seconds or less. This is, I mean, you know, 10 times faster than the service you will get at a McDonald's or a Burger King or anything like that. Now, you would think you're taking the order and you got kids screaming in the car, you got the radio playing, you drive a, around and half the stuff you want it isn't going to be there or you're going to have a large fry you want it in a small fry. If you, one of the reasons you can get through in 12 seconds, if you are a customer and you open the bag and look to check to see if the right stuff is there, they get very, very upset

with you because part of the brand promises they never make a mistake. And in fact, they're not perfect, but they only screw up an order once every 3,600 times. This is a level of near perfection that is unparalleled in that. business to the point where they a few years ago won the baldreder role the the the the malcolm baldridge national quality war which is the highest honor for quality you could win you know fedex has won it ritz carlton has won it and now this freaking 28 restaurant burger joint in tennessee has won it and it's just this really again people who say not only we're not going to be average not only are we going to not be better than average, we're going to commit ourselves to a way of being in this business

that nobody else can remotely match. And we can talk about how they do that because there's a lot of the how behind it. But that is their aspiration. And they just set the bar very high and they managed to hit it. Well, let's talk about how they do that because passion is something that I think if you just polled 100 business leaders, whatever their business, whatever their industry, I'm guessing that would pull very hot. Sure, I'd love more passion from my employees. That's not something you can just go out and manufacture. Right.

So this is a case of passion and high aspirations meets total discipline. And surprisingly, this is one of the most intellectual companies I've spent time at. So first of all, this only works if you hire people who can play this game. So they are obsessed about hiring. They've developed their own psychics. metric tests and they at pals yeah yeah they've developed and they work with eastern tennessee state university and they've developed i don't know it's like a 70 question survey with very unusual questions that that begin to get it is this the kind of person who could thrive in this business

they then train these people at a depth that i'm sure no other facets they do a hundred and ten hours of training before you can ever actually interact with a customer or cook a french fry that that goes out to a customer. I mean, that's just a huge amount of training. In a field, by the way, restaurants with a massive, 100% turnover is not unusual in that business. Nothing like that appell's. But if you go to McDonald's or whatever, the local restaurant, 100% turn. And, you know, the CEO said to me, people say to me, how can you afford, what happens

if you spend all that time and money on training and the people leave? Turnover, right? And he says, I look at it the other way. What if we don't spend all that time and money at training and the people stay? What kind of a company are we going to have? But beyond all that, the other thing here, you're trained, you're good to go, you're up and running, you're doing your thing. And they cross-trained them in six or eight different jobs. Every day when people report to work, the computer spits out two people that day who will be on the spot retested in one of the jobs they've already been making fries, taking orders, whatever the case may be.

And if you don't pass the test, you're not punished, but you can't do that job again until you've gone back through the training. So the theory is, you know, machines go out of calibration. Well, people go out of calip. You know, you learn this six months ago. You got to make sure you're still on your game kind of deal. But here's the other deal. For everybody in a kind of managerial capacity at the company, there is a 21 book master reading list. And everybody is expected to eventually read all of those books.

And some of them are, you know, Joe Juran on quality. One of them is Sun Tzu, The Art of War. It's a very eclectic kind of interesting realist. And the CEO of the company, Tom Crosby, literally runs a book club. And so once a week, there are five managers from Cross Academy pick. They go to Tom Crosby's conference room. They spent the week before reading one of these books. And they have in the same way that a bunch of folks might sit around on a sofa,

talking about Jane Eyre or whatever the case may be at their monthly book club. They have a business book club or they talk through. What are the lessons you get out of the book? How could we apply them at Pals? How can you apply it? I mean, this is a really kind of a deep intellectual commitment, if you will, at a company that sells burgers, hot dogs, French fries, and milkshakes. It's just kind of spectacular.

So that weird juxtaposition of the business they're in and the utter both creativity and discipline and serious as a purpose with what they approach the business is, I think, what gets lots of people excited about it when they read it. about it. Before I let you go, I want to ask you just a couple things about, sort of related to your previous book, Mavericks at Work, spot you up with a... Ten years ago, next month, it made its lofty appearance. Is there going to be like a joint party between that and the 20-year for Fast Company magazine? There should be. No plans to do

this thing. Actually, this book is the third. I did one about five years ago called Practically Radical. Actually, all about how to make sort of big change and long-established companies. So this is my unholy trilogy, the latest one. Well, I wanted to spot you up with some more familiar names and companies, better known probably than Pal's Sudden Service. And just get a quick thought from you in terms of where you see this leader and this company right now, whether it's the opportunities that they have or the challenges they face. And let's start with the Big Kahuna, Apple and Tim Cook. So there are people who know a lot more about Apple and Tim Cook than I do.

For the first time, I've gotten a little concerned that the lack of the relentless and remorseless and in many ways hard to like the closer you get to the sun, but power of Steve Jobs. jobs means that Apple may not necessarily have that same uncanny impulse to do one of two things. One, deliver something that nobody really knew they needed until Apple put that in front of them and then you say, oh my God, how have I lived my life without this? or secondly, to take a product category or some offering that's been out there for a while that's been done in a really crappy way and either make it so simple and so elegant or best of all, so simple and so elegant that even though Apple, and this is sort of the iPod,

Apple wasn't the first one by any means to do that, their interpretation of it is so remarkable that it's almost as if they've invented a new product category. And I just don't I don't see those impulses coming right now. And I worry that maybe, I mean, I'm not a big believer in the great man or great woman theory of history. But it is the case that every so often true giants do stride the planet. And sometimes they're really impossible to replace. Let's go with Netflix and Reed Hastings. So I got some flack when Mavericks at work came out because it came out at a point where

and we learned a lot from Netflix and Reed Hastings and that was probably three, the first of the last three times that Netflix has been pronounced dead on arrival because of some great change in the marketplace or things. I would have to say I consider Reed Hastings one of the three or four greatest business strategists I've ever met in my life. And to me, what's impressive is that he combines a real brilliance with strategy with a deep appreciation for, for an organization like Netflix to be able to sort of ride wave after wave of technology change and business model change. You've got to build a culture that syncs up with your strategy. And so the capacity, and they made some of the,

But the capacity of Netflix to have made that transition from first the DVDs into streaming, then from streaming into also original programming. I mean, this guy has already sort of gotten through two huge waves of strategic transformation that most companies never get through in a lifetime. So I haven't looked at Netflix stock lately. I know if it's up, down, sideways, whatever, but I find it very difficult over the long term to bet against the mind of read, hate. that Stings as a strategist, but also the authenticity of Reed Hastings as a company builder

and as somebody who takes the culture of that organization as seriously as he does. What about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg? So again, people know a lot more about Facebook than I do. I am amazed, astounded, blown away by the capacity of Facebook to kind of just ooze over everything and whatever some new little burst of energy comes through, you know, comes in, whether it's messaging or snagreb, they are able to sort of like the Borg kind of incorporated that into what they into what they do without, I think, becoming sort of a hodgepodge or confusing or whatever the case may be. So I, again, I don't spend a lot of time analyzing the business models of

different social media companies or whatever. But as I think about the capacity of Facebook to keep moving and morphing and adding eyeballs and doing acquisitions that, strange enough, seem to be working out as opposed to most technology acquisitions, which don't work out at all. I'm pretty darn positive about Facebook, I think. All right. Last question. I'll let you go.

The research you did for your new book, Simply Brilliant. You traveled thousands of thousands of miles. A lot of frequent flyer miles. from England to Alaska. Yeah. I need a travel tip. It can be a way to get through airports more quickly. It can be a restaurant recommendation.

But through all of your travel, you must have at least one travel tip you can share. The next time you find yourself in Anchorage, Alaska, I highly recommend the reindeer stew at the Captain Cook Hotel. It is to die for. You're kidding. I'm not kidding at all. Best reindeer stew I've ever had. How many times have you had a reindeer stew? Only reindeer stew I've ever had, but it was really quite good.

The book is simply brilliant how great organizations do ordinary things in extraordinary ways. It is fascinating stuff, so pick up a copy. Bill Taylor, thank you so much for being. That was a lot of fun, thanks. Coming up next, we're giving an inside look at the stocks on our radar. This is Motley Fool Money. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against,

so don't buy ourselves stocks based solely on. on what you hear. Welcome back to Motleyful Money, Chris Hill here in studio once again with Jason Moser, Joe Maker, and Ron Gross. Time for the stocks on our radar. Ron Gross, you're up first. What are you looking at? Chris, you stole my thunder in the last segment. I'm going with Starbucks. SBUX, huge opportunity internationally, especially in China. That's the reason I'm actually pretty big on it right now. CEO Howard Schultz does make mistakes, but he has a track record of growing this company profitably over the long term, and I'm pretty impressed with him. Not the cheapest stock at 30 times earnings, but I think the growth will be there to support that.

Jason Moser, what are you looking at this week? Yeah, we were talking about grocers last week, and looking through United Natural Foods earnings this week, ticker UNFI. It's just sort of an interesting dynamic. The stock has really been on a steady decline since the beginning of 2015, but they noted that they just went through the lowest level of quarterly food inflation in at least seven years, and we've certainly seen that in all of the grocer's results as well. And it's difficult for them to pass through pricing there. But once that inflation starts coming back around a little bit, they'll start realizing

a little bit more of that. And as a distributor, they are not bound to just one grocer. I mean, they're distributing to grocery concepts all over the US and Canada. So an interesting company, Big Dog in the space, I think its distribution model's got some competitive advantage there. Joe Manger, what are you looking at? Interactive brokers, tickers, IBKR. It's led by their founder, who still owns almost 90% of the company.

incredibly well capitalized, growing very quickly, reasonable valuation. If you're not familiar with it, they are the low-cost provider in brokerage. They started focusing on institutions, moving towards retail, slowly gobbling up market share, big fan of the business. Steve, we got coffee, we've got food, we've got a brokerage. You got one stock you want to add to your watch list? Well, I don't drink coffee, but I do believe in Starbucks. They're everywhere.

No one with Starbucks. All right, Jason Moser, Ron Gross. Joe Mager, always good to have you in studio. Have a safe trip back to all. Australia. That is going to do it for this week's edition of Motley Full Money. Our engineer is Steve Brodo. Our producer is Mac Career. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.