We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - RWH010: High-Performance Habits w/ Guy Spier (Part 2)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hi folks, welcome to part two of my conversation with Guy Spear. If you didn't get a chance to listen to Part 1 already, you may want to listen to that episode first. As I'm sure you know by now, Guy is the manager of the Aquamarine Fund, and the author of a wonderfully candid memoir titled The Education of a Value Investor. He's beaten the market by a significant margin over the last 25 years, which is a rare and impressive feat, given just how difficult it is to outperform over really long periods of time. In this part of our conversation, we talk in depth about some of the high performance habits

Starting point is 00:00:38 that have helped guide to build a successful investment career. Among other things, he explains how he's created an environment in which he can think calmly and deeply. He talks about various strategies that have helped him to focus, despite the challenge of having ADHD. He explains how he structures his life around a clear and and defined mission, how he nurtures the right relationships, and why he's so committed to being radically truthful. We also discuss his belief that the best path to success and happiness is to focus heavily on lifting up other people. Thanks so much for joining us. I hope you enjoy this

Starting point is 00:01:13 episode. You're listening to The Richer Wiser, Happier Podcast, where your host, William Green, interviews the world's greatest investors and explores how to win in markets and life. I want to ask you a bit about the downside of opening yourself up to everyone and trying to be kind to everyone and all of the reciprocation issues that come up because it seems to me you're putting yourself out there in so many different ways, right? You write white papers. You put out a newsletter. You're active on Twitter and LinkedIn and the like. And you're on podcasts like this a lot. and then people come to you and ask you to mentor them or ask you for advice. And because you're a decent bloke and you want to be loved and your kind and all of these things,

Starting point is 00:02:09 you're kind of bombarded with stuff, with people kind of encroaching on your time and your space. And I remember you saying to me recently, you said, I've had this spate of people coming at me from every angle, wanting help, wanting advice, wanting money, stuff like that. And I'm wondering how you deal with that because I'm wrestling with this a lot personally. where I feel kind of overwhelmed by the increasing complexity in my life, partly that followed my book coming out, partly that followed this podcast coming out, that if you're getting masses of messages over Twitter and LinkedIn and your website and stuff, and you really want to help people and you really want to be decent to people and you want to respond when people are really kind

Starting point is 00:02:48 to you. It's really tough because you have this sense that you're failing the whole time, you're dropping the ball the whole time. And so I heard you asking something similar when you were interviewing someone on your podcast recently and they, I don't think they felt the same pain that we do. And I'm, so I'm wondering how you grapple with this question. The first and easy answer is to say not very well for all of the above reasons. I think that what comes up for me as you're asking the question is that if I have clarity about what my mission is in life, then I at least can have a better plan to deal with it. And I think that even more than that, if the mission is the right mission, you might be lucky enough to attract people into your life who help you to deal with it.

Starting point is 00:03:33 And I think that my mission on the business side has been to build a successful fund, to protect family wealth, to compound wealth. As you're talking, I sort of say, well, if you take that one step further and say, I want to build great businesses. Now there's, first of all, that in the interests of growing wealth and protecting wealth and ensuring something that lasts more than a couple of generations, then you have a kind of a template of which I have a template of which I can engage with those people and potentially to the extent that I've been able to attract staff can also engage with those people.

Starting point is 00:04:08 And so now you're not responding them as the sort of the celebrity with his fan base, which I can tell you is an extraordinarily shallow experience and not really worth very much at all, that even in our little world of publishing and authoring is, kind of a little bit heady and overwhelming at first and kind of very shallow very quickly. But then you can kind of like engage with them and say, look, it's so nice that you want to feel touched by me or you want to engage with me. Here's my life mission. Do you want to join me? Here are the ways you can join me on my life mission. And so then they become a part of your army of your army in life, your team, the people are going to help you to get where you're

Starting point is 00:04:49 going if you like. I think that my answer is to get quite a sort of strategic about it. it and to say, well, what am I trying to achieve here? They're coming at you for a reason. And if it's just about your ego, if you have the misfortune of thinking about it, so narrowly that it's just about your ego, first will be an increasingly shallow experience. And second of all, it's not going to get you very far and sooner or later those people are going to be turned away. But if you can make them a part of your movement, if you like, your tribe, and the tribe's got to be about more than just self-perpetuation, and I think that it can become a very meaningful experience, I try to offer as many internships as I can to people who come at me at that stage in life. And I make them

Starting point is 00:05:30 very short. They're only two weeks long for the most part. I kind of tell them, look, this is enough for you to experience the environment that I've tried to create around me in Zurich. Enough time for me to experience you in such a way that I can write a genuine letter of reference if you ever need it. And I'll be happy to do that when you need it, which makes them happy. I mean, a problem there is that it's just not scalable. There's just only so many people that you can have around. I think that interestingly enough, William, so you were there at that, I think that you came to the meet and greet that we had. And that was what I experienced at the meet and greet was that it was a nice event at the Berkshire meeting. But what we're going to do

Starting point is 00:06:07 next year at the meet and greet is have people give five-minute talks. So it's going to be, you know, have an educational component to it rather than just a networking component to it. And I think that that's really the strategic way to deal with it, William. And in a certain way, I think it's an interesting question for you. So notice audience how I'm turning this around and making this about William rather than about me is to kind of say, well, actually, what is my William Green's life mission? What do I want my life from here forward to be about? What are kind of like some attractive endpoints for me? Because that will help you to kind of deal with and structure the way people come in at you. And I think that, you know, interestingly enough, William, even if you don't have

Starting point is 00:06:45 staff, I'm very impressed by people who have, David Perel is the first guy who I saw do it. And It started with Derek Sivers, who started with this now movement. Rather than having a start page on your website, you have a now page. These are the things that I'm working on. So that when you attract an audience, when you attract a fan base, hopefully they'll get to your now page and then they see what you're up to. And it'll kind of help them to decide how they want to engage with you. And you get the kind of productive engagement.

Starting point is 00:07:14 There's another guy who works at Stripe called Pat McKenzie, who wrote a blog post effectively on, he writes and he says, I like to receive emails, especially about software, because I love building software. And if you want to write me about an email about software, here's how you should go about doing it. And here's how you're likely to get a response. And I'm not promising a response to every single email. So he kind of tells people how to engage with him. And then David Perel, he kind of basically, his now page is effectively a start here, which basically says, here's how, I don't know who you are and I don't know what you bring to the table, but here's how you can engage with me in a productive way, if you like. And that's all structured around one's life

Starting point is 00:07:55 mission. I think that what you and I, probably we do realize it now, but we didn't five years ago, is that I think that you and I would want to be educators, even if there was no money in it. So that is just kind of a certain joyfulness of seeing the world unfold in a certain way. So that is certainly part of my life mission. Life is better when I feel like people have learned something around me. Building financial security, building successful fund, building successful businesses, those are all kind of life missions. I think that what's really interesting is an interesting exercise to do. So I have a document that I won't share it with the world, but I'll have, I don't, maybe I have shared it with you, is that you want to make your life mission, the document that you

Starting point is 00:08:35 write to be one that you can share with as many people as possible. And I think that what often happens is the first time we write these things, we don't want to show it to anyone, because it's personal. But to the extent, what differentiates extraordinary successes from less extraordinary successes is that Mahatma Gandhi was willing to share his life mission with the world and to the extent merely sharing what your mission is becomes a way of kind of achieving it and structuring the incoming hordes if you like. Sorry, I want to loop back to something in our destination analysis. A really extraordinarily powerful exercise for any of us to do is to write our own obituary or to write our own funeral speech. When you go, what would you like your best friend say about you at your

Starting point is 00:09:18 funeral is a kind of a good example of destination analysis. I think that I've gotten to that more meaningful and nuanced approach to kind of fan base or people coming in at me. And I'm sorry that it took so long because I think that my initial reaction all started around publishing the book was I just wanted to sell more copies of the book. And so I engaged with people in the hope that they'd buy more copies of the book because I was desperate to, in part, I wanted the publisher for it to be a success and in part my ego was involved. And I kind of morphed into something a little bit more spiritual and better for the long term. But I should have morphed into that sooner and earlier, if you like. There's a slightly related question that I wanted to ask you about ADHD. And as I mentioned in

Starting point is 00:10:04 my book, one of the challenges for you has been how to focus on the right things, whether it's investing or family or whatever, while also dealing with this somewhat debilitating challenge to focus. And you recently have been telling me that I have ADHD as well, and I have no idea. I certainly have some attentional issues that I try to remedy with about 15 cups of coffee a day. And Stacey Smith, who sent a question to me on Twitter, I got something like 100 questions for you on Twitter, as you may have seen, which is amazing. Stacey said, my question is, does he think having ADHD has been additive to his success? Perhaps it's an evolutionary advantage accompanied by a gift. Obviously, the energy has to be channeled, but there is usually

Starting point is 00:10:47 usually no shortage of it. I think it's a really interesting question, like how you cope with having ADHD, what sort of workarounds you've had to come up with to deal with it and whether it has in some ways been additive to your success. I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, although in a different life I would have loved to have been. I think it's a really interesting place to live one's life. But my understanding is that these are all labels and we have to be very careful with labels. At the end of the day, every brain is unique, every mind is unique. And so I'm happy to have the label ADHD, but the label probably doesn't communicate very

Starting point is 00:11:25 much. So every person has it differently. And there's enough commonalities between the people who are labeled ADHD for it to be called something. But at the end of the day, when we come to individuals, we shouldn't assume that they're kind of like the standard ADHD in my case. And I rejected the diagnosis, if you like, for about 20 years. I just sort of said, well, this is all total garbage. But I eventually came and actually through some things that happened recently, I started to realize that this was really, it did really strike home. But the one thing for me is that when I'm in highly structured environments and environments that put me under a lot of pressure, then I can become hyperfocused. So I can become hyperfocused on something that's deeply

Starting point is 00:12:05 interesting to me. And I can become hyperfocused when I'm under an enormous amount of pressure. In my last or second to last year at university, I got threatened with being sent down because I was performing so badly in my college collections, college exams. And I was really fearful. It was something that I really didn't want to happen. I become unbelievably disciplined and unbelievably focused. Sometimes it's not attention deficit, but it's inconsistent attention, if you like. I guess I'm just drawing Stacey's attention to the fact that at the end of the day,

Starting point is 00:12:36 we have to learn how each of individual minds functions. I think that at times when I've been hyper-focused, either because I've been super fearful or because I've been super interested, I kind of quite surprising at what I've been able to achieve. And it's a shame that I haven't spent more time in that state because I would have been able to achieve more. The book was certainly written around that state. I was just so fearful of getting to the end of the process without having even before you came into the picture, I could not have gotten that many. script out without being in that state of kind of fearful discipline, which is not my normal state. So I think that that's made a contribution, but I think that to the extent that I've achieved

Starting point is 00:13:15 some kind of financial security and independence, actually it's been an even bigger handicap, because now there's no motivation, if you like. So one way of thinking of me is like, I'm the guy in the hunter-gatherer village who sits around doing not much, who's useless for everything and it's kind of bored. And then suddenly, you know, he discovers that there's a mammoth walking around, and he gets super focused, and every now and then one in three mammoths, he actually manages to bring home, and people think, oh, that's what he was useful for. And then he sits around doing nothing for another n amount of time until another mammoth shows up in the pictures. What could happen if you had more consistent attention? Yeah, I hope that's helpful. In terms of

Starting point is 00:13:55 workarounds, the workarounds for me have been endless, if you like. And I think that ultimately the biggest workarounds for me are an extraordinary wife, Laurie, who at first didn't want to accept that this was a real thing like me. And we've come to kind of understand. So there are plenty of things that I forget, overlook, and it can be really annoying to live with that. And part of Laurie sort of like being willing to live with it is me taking full responsibility for the bits of it that I can control, because there's an element to it where people use it as a crutch or they use it as an excuse. And in some cases, I just have to damn well make myself focus because otherwise it's life's miserable for my wife.

Starting point is 00:14:37 But to have a wife who understands who's a teammate with me around how we organize the house, how I organize my day, I need clean surfaces. I need, it's not enough for me to remember to take a particular medication. I need it right in front of me every day when I brush my teeth. If it's not right in front of me, I will forget. Having a physical environment, so interestingly enough in the education of a value investor, an element of me wanting to structure the physical environment has got nothing to do with trying to be a good investor and so much to do with just not wanting to be distracted. Second huge workaround is an assistant in the office who is fully engaged with those handicaps and understands that it's part of her job to help me with those handicaps.

Starting point is 00:15:21 But she cannot do that job well, neither can Laurie if they don't have somebody like me who's willing to fully acknowledge and own the bits of it that I can't control. And also to own the bits of it that I can control is demotivational to be around somebody who you're pretty sure they can't control something, but they just can't be bothered to. Over and above that, the coffee is certainly self-medication. And if you take medication, which I've been having wonderful experience with, as we said at the beginning of this talk, I'm on 20 milligrams of Vivance or in the UK, it's called L-Vance. And William, you have the right to ask me, forever into the future. Guy, have you taken your meds? Well, what's funny, what our listeners

Starting point is 00:16:00 won't know is that right before we started talking, before we read a little Zohar, Guy said to me, yeah, yeah, I asked, are you bringing your A game? He said, yeah, yeah, I took some Vibans. And I looked at him and said, Guy, I know you so well. I know that you took them. Because there were moments where we were working on the book together where we would be sitting in your living room in Zurich, for example. I mean, we worked on it in many places, including Israel and I can't remember where else, but Connecticut, Greenwich, Connecticut, but I would look at you and you would have your laptop on your lap and I could just see your eyes wandering and I would be like, guy, step away from your keyboard, close the computer, because I could just see your attention

Starting point is 00:16:39 wandering. So the drugs have clearly helped. But that's something that I only started doing the last month or two and I got to a place where I just said, I actually want to try what it's like with drugs and I'd never really taken them. And this dose is what was explained to me by an extraordinary guy, Dr. Ned Hallowell, is that he said, look, this is just like taking your morning coffee, but what you'll find is this is more effective than morning coffee. And so you'll find that instead of wanting to drink 15 cups a day, as you said, you'll want to drink less coffee and this thing will get your attention where you want it without your heart palpitating and having sleepless nights because you've drunk too much caffeine and all sorts of other things. It's only been the last

Starting point is 00:17:19 month or two that I've been taking it consistently. And I don't really notice the difference. It's a really kind of low dose. But at the office, and you're the second person at the office, they say, oh, we see a big difference. We see a huge, huge difference. Yeah, you're locked in in a way. Yeah, you're just locked in. I can see it in your face. You're locked in a way that you wouldn't be otherwise. But one of the things that I worry about is I think part of your brilliance and my moderate talent is that our minds are kind of all over the place. And the, that we make connections between things that aren't necessarily linear and logical. And I do think that's a part of the gift of having a kind of non, a nonlinear, slightly

Starting point is 00:17:58 scattered, very creative mind. And I'm asking this completely out of ignorance. Like, do you feel like any of that goes, like when you try to medicate more so that it's more directed? So I think that the fear that you're going to have a fundamental aspect of your personality changed when you take a medication that's not a pain medication, for example, and is temporary is certainly a fear. And that may be a part of why I had been told that I ought to try it to see what life is like with it. And I was like, no, I'm not doing that. Funnily enough,

Starting point is 00:18:30 a friend is being asked to deliver a talk on the future of Judaism, and he sent me an early draft. And it's raised some really interesting questions for me. And normally, I would not really be able to focus on those questions. And now I am able to focus. And I do want to think them through. and I have been thinking them through and I've been doing some reading around the subject. And I don't think that I would have been able to engage with those questions, which I'm really interested in, but not that much in that kind of focused way. So I think that that's a kind of, you're expressing a fear, but the impact is far more hard to tell and diffuse.

Starting point is 00:19:04 It's not like something that, oh, it takes away your creativity or something like that. I certainly don't understand the medication. What I understood from my recent visit to the psychiatrist was that. that you have to take it consistently. But you take it early in the morning and the effect lasts about eight hours. So if you like, William, every evening, my body is Vivance free, if you like. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right.

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Starting point is 00:23:37 Back to the show. On a related subject, one of the things that had a huge impact on me when we were working on the educational value investor was you talked to me about wanting your mind to be like a calm pond so that you could see the ripples. And you talked about how you created a physical environment that helped you to think calmly and deeply. And I was looking at some old notes from a conversation that we had had years ago and you said, the best ideas require you to think slowly and deeply. And I wonder if you could talk a bit more about how to create an environment in which you can think in this kind of very long-term way that we've been discussing, where you're looking

Starting point is 00:24:17 for businesses that occupy the economic high ground, where you're thinking about long-term destinations, where you're trying to build an honorable and decent life, where you're not so caught up in the kind of dopamine hits of constantly checking email and Twitter and WhatsApp notifications and stuff. What's worked for you in trying to construct a calm environment? My thinking and understanding has actually evolved quite a lot since, a lot since, and mostly in the last couple of years. And it actually starts with this idea of spaced repetition. And there's this idea that I hate to tell you where I first saw it, William, because it was on the blog of Dominic Cummings. And those of us who connected to British politics or who observed British politics,

Starting point is 00:25:06 most of us don't feel much happiness or admiration when we think of Dominic Cummings, because he's actually a contemporary of mine of Williams at Oxford, although I never met him. And he was the genius behind Brexit, and he was an advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson for a while. And so he's kind of hated for being the guy who engineered the Brexit vote in the UK. But I can tell you this blog, he's got a fine mind and a voracious mind. And so what is the idea of space repetition? And the idea is that when you want to learn something, you need to repeat it frequently early on when it's not well wired into your brain. But the more well it's embedded in your brain, the less frequently you need to repeat it.

Starting point is 00:25:50 But you shouldn't ever stop repeating it. The periods between the repetition is extended over time. And so what on earth has this got to do with investing? The key is that when you're sitting in front of the computer, interruptions abound. and opportunities to examine new pieces of information or to read new things abound. So now what I've done is on the other side of my computer with no monitor visible,

Starting point is 00:26:17 I will structure my reading into, I'm constantly printing stuff out on the computer side and asking for things to be printed out. And then on the non-computer side, I'm structuring my reading into, so now next few weeks and some time. And so I will read through things, consider them and then decide whether I want a reminder for myself to read this in a few weeks

Starting point is 00:26:41 again or maybe read it in some time, meaning maybe six months down the road again. It'll either be a post-it note or it'll be a three-by-five card or it'll be a page ripped out of the annual report or of the 10-Q or whatever the hell else it is, that is sort of like a note to my future self and approximately time to arrive at some point in the future, which will remind me to consider this again. And what I find interesting about that is that, first of all, when I'm sitting on the other side of the computer and I'm sitting amongst all those papers, I think that is a calm place to sit, because you don't have all of the electronics and the interruptions. Then I'm sort of, so I find it interesting what comes up for me again and again. And I think this idea of the, the idea

Starting point is 00:27:26 from the Jewish world, from the Talmud of Turn It and Turn It Again, so there are some ideas that I'm just kind of been chewing on for a while, where I'll scribble the questions that are unanswered on it, for example. And I find it fascinating. I was asked by a friend recently about DeVita. DeVita's a company that's in Ted Wexler's portfolio. The current CEO of Nestle, Mark Schneider, was the CEO of a key competitor called Fresenius for a while. It's a dialysis company. Berkshire Hathaway, they're kind of voracious repurchase of their own shares. Share price has done nothing for the last five years. And because of this space repetition, and I've been kind of like had it on my, to have it on my radar is I've been sending notes to my future self to re-examine it

Starting point is 00:28:10 on a regular basis. I was able to have come up with the three key questions that I had about it, like in a WhatsApp message. And this friend got back to me pretty quickly with some answers to those questions. Another, so this idea of space repetition has applied to investment research is a revelation for me and I'm so happy about it. And I used the space, this idea of sending yourself a note to the future that your future self will encounter. I found that extraordinarily productive as a way of structuring that calmness and structuring the, rather than carrying around with me, the idea of, oh my God, I really need to do more work on DeVita. I can put it out of my mind because I know I'm going to come across it again in three to six weeks or whatever I've

Starting point is 00:28:55 kind of decided. That's one huge modification that is not in the book at all. So that's kind of spaced repetition. Another very powerful idea that, so now I don't remember the name of the person who, in whose blog I read about it, but it's the close open loops. So in a world of limited attention, and I would say that, yeah, take all the violence. Is this Dave Allen? Is that from the getting things done, this whole idea of closing open loops? He's talked to the guy. The guy that I'm talking about references Dave Allen. And it's all based on the same idea. So in a world of limited attention, and I'm not talking about ADHD, we all have calls on our attention. If you write something, William, if I write something, if I make some progress, how do I close that open loop? Where is it

Starting point is 00:29:42 going? And I think that all the productive people that I know have ways to close open loops. I see you, so for those of you who have not spent time with William, William will take out his phone and the most unusual circumstances, you'll start tapping away at his notepad. I'm like, you know, it's like, what are you up to? He's out. I'm taking notes. But, you know, so William has vast amounts of notes, and I suspect that you have a process by which you review those notes. And you're absolutely right. That's the David Allen system of, I don't know if David Allen said, capture habit. Create the capture habit, because a thought circling in your head is enormously energy draining. But the minute is captured on paper or in some capture vehicle, then you know that you can

Starting point is 00:30:21 take care of your future self and come back to it. I have in the investment research process, we talked about one closing of open loops, which is like the physical structure of how bits of paper moved around, but I own a small number of shares in about 100 companies. And that's a way of ensuring that once a year I receive all of their any reports and proxy statements. You know, I'm taking care of my future self that these companies will come up in my attention again. and I have ways of doing that through the Bloomberg as well, not related to price movements. That's interesting. Tom Gainner has something similar where he owns about 100 stocks, but probably like you, most of the money is in 10 or 20, probably in his case.

Starting point is 00:31:03 And so for you, you're actually very concentrated, right? I didn't realize that you had these small stakes in so many companies. Stakes, this would be an exaggeration. It's like, I'll buy one share in my Charles Schwab account. and every time I log into my Charles Chihuahab account, it says, would you like to go paperless? And they try by every way, shape, or form to convince me to go paperless because it's expensive for them to send out that stuff. And I'm like, no, I don't want to go paperless. I'm really happy receiving the paper. Since I wrote that chapter on structuring your environment, there's some kind of,

Starting point is 00:31:34 these are incredibly nitty gritty, grainy things, if you like. And I think that that's interesting, and I'm super happy with that. And then I think that the other thing that comes out for me, when you ask about creating an environment in which the mind. So just to take a step back on that, what I'm talking about is take that thing out of your mind where it's going to act as a disturbance and put it somewhere and let your subconscious work on it and know, have the confidence that you've put it somewhere

Starting point is 00:31:59 where you will inevitably come to review it again, so it's not lost forever. And that's taken an enormous weight off my mind and has made the process of doing research so enjoyable because I can leave open questions on any situation, company thing and know that I'll come back to them. And know that in the meantime, between now and when I come back to them, the question might be answered in some random way that I'm not even aware of, if you like.

Starting point is 00:32:23 And there are many of those things that I review create steps for action. And then I'll take action, which might be as simple as send the personal research report, set up an interview with them, which of course generates yet more knowledge and stuff to read and what have you. It's simply this. And I think that we did get to it in the final chapters of the book. there's something that, you know, there's this interesting thing where I wrote something which was in Kuwait and then William writes something and I say, William, that's incredible.

Starting point is 00:32:50 You've ripped the ideas right out of my mind or it's like you brain, you read my mind because I know I didn't say it, but you kind of wrote it. And it was a line in the book where kind of said, find your way into the presence of the right people because they'll teach you everything. And I think that in a certain way from the book, one thing is to become far more granular about how I structure the environment. And the other thing is just to realize that it's all about having the right relationships. And if you have the right relationships, you're going to learn everything that you need to know. And I think that's even more important now in my mind than it was then. Yeah, you once said to me relationships are the killer app. And I have no idea whether,

Starting point is 00:33:27 again, that was a phrase that you stole them from someone else. But that stuck with me. And you once said to me, there are certain people you need to have in your life who you'd be happy to fly across the ocean to go spend a couple of days with because they're really important people in your life. I flew over to L.A. for L.L.L.U's 50th birthday party. And I'm so glad that I did that. And it wasn't just Lelu. It was people around Lidu. And then this year, I was touch and go whether or not to attend the TED conference, but I knew that I'd get some quality time with Lelu. And that was a big part of why I wanted to attend the TED conference. And I can tell you, William, that the meeting that happened, it's far less likely and probably it wouldn't have happened had I not previously flown to Vancouver for the TED conference.

Starting point is 00:34:12 And for your interest, and I hope this is relevant for the listeners, but I'm having this. I've been invited to something that I think that I would learn a lot from some extraordinary people there in San Diego in the middle of July. It's in the middle of the children's school holidays. And there's a part of me that really wants to go because of all of that. and there's a part of me that doesn't want to go through the Strapatia, is what we would call it in my family. But in general, the willingness, I think that choice of where to live, perhaps the best choice is not necessarily which country or city has the best tram system,

Starting point is 00:34:45 as Zurich does certainly have the best tram system in my opinion, but where will you find yourself in a nexus of the best people that you want to have in your life? And I think that if I was setting up my environment from scratch again, I would put far more weight on the actual relationships that I have and which people do I want to be close to? It was not dumb for Ted Wexler when he started working for Berkshire Hathaway to go and live in Omaha,

Starting point is 00:35:08 not just to be close to Warren, but all sorts of other people around Omaha who are also close to Warren. You said something, it's more of a comment. Years after your book came out, you started to say to me, actually, when I talked about cloning Nick's sleep

Starting point is 00:35:25 by putting my Bloomberg terminal somewhere uncomfortable, so I wouldn't use it a lot, or I put my library in a certain position in my office so that I would spend more time there. You were like, those are great. Those are really useful things to do. But it's so much less important than building the right ecosystem of relationships, having the right partners in the fund, having the right CEOs in your life and having a good relationship with your wife and kids, things like that. And I thought that was a really interesting modification where you started to deepen your sense of what creating a good ecosystem actually is all about. there is an element of creating a physical environment that's really important. I remember you once saying to me, you wanted to have pictures of all of your investors

Starting point is 00:36:04 in your study. Staring down at me. Yeah, because it would remind you of your responsibility to them, just as Warren has a picture of his father in his office. So the physical environment is important, but I thought that was a really interesting deepening of your view of what actually makes your environment and your ecosystem work for you. What I want to share with somebody who might be listening to this is that I think it's a really

Starting point is 00:36:25 fun process because it's not like the end picture is one that we can all see. In fact, none of us can see the end picture of what it's going to look like. But my point to you, the listener, is if you come across somebody who you think is a positive influence, make that extra effort to send them a holiday card. Make that extra effort to invite them to a dinner that you're having. It doesn't mean that you kind of like have decided up front that this person is going to have this key role in your life. Just draw those people a little bit closer to you. And those people who are negative in one way or another, it doesn't mean that you have to walk up to them and say, I've decided that you no longer should have a part of my life. Just be a little less quick to respond

Starting point is 00:37:04 to their inquiries and just have them a little bit more on the periphery of your life. That doesn't mean they're not valuable to you. It's just that you've decided to place them a little further away. When it comes to these decisions about how to manage your time, how to basically take care of all of these competing interests, like your friendships, your family, your kids, whether to travel or not, what to do in terms of charity and helping other people, managing your fund, analyzing stocks. Do you have particular principles that guide you to help you decide how to spend your time and how not to spend it? It's a document that I pull out probably just a little bit more than once a year, but I found it extraordinarily powerful. And in that document,

Starting point is 00:37:46 I start off with the summary of my life mission and I then go on to, I kind of deal with things that flow from that that I'd like, it's a wish list of things that would be nice if they happened over the following sort of like one month, three months, six months, one year and it kind of just lists of things.

Starting point is 00:38:06 And then it goes in particular areas of my life with similar kind of, you know, what it would be nice to achieve. And it's got my relationship with Laurie, it's got my relationship to each of my individual children, my family as a whole, my business. And I find it very interesting how at some point, so many of the things were getting struck off the list because they were getting done. I created a list at the end,

Starting point is 00:38:27 which was titled Celebrating Success and also learning from failure. Some things that just continued to be on this document that never ever got done and I realized they weren't going to get done and they were actually a failure in one way or another and I kind of like put them in that bucket. And then kind of the list of successes has been extraordinarily long. I think that in the process of kind of like reviewing that document, and you'll have fun with this, if it's on the high holy days, in the high Jewish holy days, I think there's an auspicious time to pull that document out and review it. I think thinking through that, that's been a time when I've been able to kind of weigh and judge what to put in where I should be more or less focused. I think that what's fascinating

Starting point is 00:39:07 merely by asking, so there's an example. Williams asked a really, really great question. And when you upgrade your friendships, you'll get asked really great questions, which require you to think about them and perhaps come up with good answers. And to the extent that you come up with good answers, the result is that you'll live a more enriched life. I think that when you do that, it makes me think that I don't know how much time I've spent really thinking about priorities as I go through that document. But the mere fact that I'm being asked the question and the mere fact that I'm trying with that document, I think puts me ahead of many, many people in the game. Not the most ambitious and most successful who are also doing that, but ahead of many

Starting point is 00:39:47 people. Your life also is unusually broad, right? When I look at a lot of great investors or super successful business people or super successful writers and they're kind of narrow. And I was struck by this the other day. I was listening to one of your podcast episodes and you were interviewing, I think it was David Sumter, the mathematician. And it's really clear you're really fascinated by math. And then it's also really clear that you're fascinated by great literature and that you've been reading Stondale and Tolstoy and stuff like that. I'm wondering about that decision to have breadth in your life because it was interesting when you were talking to Sumter, you said something about realizing that there are certain

Starting point is 00:40:25 things that you wanted to understand before you died, that they were kind of beautiful problems in mathematics and you wanted to understand them before you died. I'm wondering about that breadth of wanting to read, wanting to study great literature, at wanting to read Hucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War, is that just a matter of being true to yourself? Because someone like Charlie doesn't read fiction at all, right? And there is a benefit to different types of narrow focus. So the hilarious thing is if somebody listening to this listens to the episode with David Sumter, you'll see a wonderful example of somebody who's an accomplished and successful mathematician who's just quietly humoring a guy who's very enthusiastic

Starting point is 00:41:04 and knows very little. And one of the feedbacks I got from our CFO, Mark Chapman, is guy, you didn't ask him about even one of the damned equations. Hey, I enjoyed the interview guy, but look, I can make this personal or take a personal anecdote from our interactions. I can remember asking you about, in search of lost time by Marcel Proust, and you said that the book had a huge impact on you. And what I experienced when you said that was a sense of envy, that you'd had the experience around the book. And the way I would interpret that feeling of envy that I had for William Green's experience having read that book was that my life would be richer and better if I found the time

Starting point is 00:41:48 to read that book. And I think that, you know, I can honestly say that I've not read the book, that's easy to say. But I think that my life would be a less rich life if all other things being equal, I came to the end of it not having read. in search of lost time. And I think that we need to deeply respect the feelings that come up like that feeling of envy that I had for your having read it and my having not read it, because who knows what lies at the end of that? And I'm not being curious for the sake of being curious.

Starting point is 00:42:22 I think that not to respect those feelings and to act on them is a kind of a disrespect of your own life, the sort of the mystery of who you are on the planet and who you're destined. and to become. And so for me, it's not just that Reiman's hypothesis, if it ever gets proven or not, is like a museum piece that I need to have seen before I die. It's that perhaps if I go and kind of learn more about it, I will uncover things in myself, which will enable me to live a better, richer, more meaningful life, and that I'll be denying a part of my destiny, if you like, if I don't engage with it. We have to live lives that are true time. ourselves and I'm far happier when I have the opportunity to exercise that curiosity. And I have

Starting point is 00:43:10 no interest in if somebody could point out that I would be, quote, more successful if I didn't indulge in these curiosities, my answer would be that's not a more successful life. We don't know where these curiosities lead and what insights come out of them. Sorry, I was just going to say, I had a conversation with a young, very smart hedge fund manager a few weeks ago just privately. And he clearly had modeled his fund very much on Nomad and Nick and Zach's approach at Nomad. And so he wasn't trying to maximize assets under management in any way. It was just about returns, absolute returns. He just didn't care about managing an enormous amount of money. And I remember him saying to me, yeah, it's all about what are you

Starting point is 00:43:48 optimizing for. It's actually such a simple way to put it that's really profound. Like when you look at your life just to say, well, what am I optimizing for? Am I optimizing for the highest returns? for the most money, the most profits. Am I optimizing for balanced life, for a happy life, for a richer life? And I think it's very different for each of us. And it's been hard for me to figure that out because I think there's so much external pressure to become more successful, to make a better living, to impress people, particularly from the culture we came from of going to fancy private schools in Oxford

Starting point is 00:44:20 and Columbia and Harvard and places like that. You're very prey to external pressure to be something that you're not. Does that make any sense? Yeah, it's very clear to me that maybe in the very early hours of a fund's existence or of this particular individual's career, optimizing for AUM or returns is not the dumbest thing in the world. But I think that even then, it may well be the dumbest thing in the world, or Asinine was the word that came to mind.

Starting point is 00:44:50 Why? Because how much money did the person leave when they died? The billionaire, he left all of it. And I think that a rich life or a happy life for me is one in which extraordinary opportunities keep showing up because I've invested so much in my environment where extraordinary opportunities just to have a wonderful dinner, to have a wonderful meeting, to get a profound insight, a life that's embedded with massive optionality and something I've said in, I've used this thought experiment in some talks where I compare myself to Chelsea Clinton.

Starting point is 00:45:22 who has more optionality, certainly in American political life, who's more likely to be nominated to be the head of the World Health Organization, the SEC, the World Bank, any become a senator, anything, any interesting position of high public office, but also get invited to the most interesting weddings, the most interesting parties, have the most interesting set of friends. I think that hands down, Chelsea Clinton wins that game against me. Because her parents, her father was president, but she's also a bright person who's got plenty of her own stuff to bring to the table. I can choose a life in which I create that kind of optionality around me, certainly not to the degree that it is around Chelsea Clinton. But where it's around me in one way or another,

Starting point is 00:46:08 where I don't have it, and I'm not optimizing for what number and a piece of paper, a bank balance, it's absolutely clear to me that you want to optimize, but you don't have to become like Chelsea Clinton. She's just one example. But the other example that I give William, which forgive me if you've already heard it from me, but I think it's very powerful. Assume that a very special weapon goes off that destroys all bank balances and all ownership, but it doesn't destroy actual business and actual property. So it's a weird kind of weapon. And so it sets the slate to clean. Every individual is starting from zero. Guy Spears starting from zero and Warren Buffett starting from zero. Who would have, even at Warren Buffett's age, who would have the best set of opportunities, who would

Starting point is 00:46:51 have the best opportunity to accumulate not just wealth in terms of financial wealth, but also interesting life, interesting relationships, interesting opportunities, Guy Speer, Warren Buffett, hands down Warren Buffett. And I think that what's interesting about that is that it separates his enormous financial wealth from the even more enormous, whatever you want to call it, non-financial wealth that he has. And I think that if we were talking, I think, earlier on, the relationship I was using, with regard to something or rather, the tip of the iceberg, what's above the waterline, what's below the waterline. We see, and it's extremely, it draws our attention Warren Buffett's financial wealth. But what we don't see is what's below the waterline, this kind of

Starting point is 00:47:33 non-financial wealth of relationships, opportunities, people who are grateful to him in one way or another, that creates in a certain way the wealth that's above the waterline. I think that the person who's optimizing for wealth, or who's optimizing for assets under management or return, is trying to look at the tip of the iceberg, what's above the waterline, and it's kind of asinine. But what's below the waterline, that is what's really meaty, and that's what's really, really important. And that's why it is the smartest thing in the world when you do a deal with somebody, as Warren tells us that he does, to always leave them wanting more, to always leave them wanting more, to always leave them feeling like they had a good deal. You're building this up for the listener. I, and William,

Starting point is 00:48:15 you answered it so extraordinarily well. I received a holiday card. from Warren, a Christmas card, and I took a photograph and sent it to William. My question genuinely, I said, William, why on earth is he doing this? He had lunch with me. He doesn't, there's nothing good I can do for him. And just to be more specific about this, because you're probably trying to be humble and not admit it. But the thing that Warren did is he said, your annual report is great. And so he's done this twice over the last few years. So he's telling you, basically, I read the annual report and it's great. And one time he did it and he said, and your partners must be very happy.

Starting point is 00:48:53 And so the question you asked me was, why? Why does he do it? Exactly. So this is a guy who's not optimizing for returns in Berkshire Hathaway, if he's spending even one fraction of a brain cell to send this letter to Guy Spear. And I think that the answer is that he's building what's below the waterline. He's building this enormous wealth of, so I'll tell you, I'm working on a project with an intern in which we're looking very carefully at what would it take for there to be a successful purchase by Berkshire of a rather large European business. And we're going to approach their board and talk to them about why they might want to consider selling it to Berkshire. And we're

Starting point is 00:49:32 coming at them in a nuanced way. We're not kind of, this is not going to be a crass approach. And I'm doing it without any interest in getting any fee or any personal self-benefit, but because I know that if it were to happen and I could get written into the history of that deal, that would be a way to repay Warren. And I think that he's got tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people feeling like that.

Starting point is 00:49:55 It's good for Boucher Hathaway, but it's good for a successful, productive, happy life. You want to live a life in which there are so many positive things coming at you that you can only do a small number of them. And you want to create the conditions for that. And you do that by not optimizing for returns or AUM,

Starting point is 00:50:11 by optimizing for, I don't know who originated this, you want to grow goodwill. You want to be somebody that people want to have in the room, that people want to have you on their deal, that people want to have you in their fund, that people want you on their team because you're working constantly to have good things happen around you. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination. Risk and regulation are ramping up, and customers now expect proof of security just to do business. That's why VANTA is a game changer. VANTA automates your compliance process and brings compliance,

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Starting point is 00:53:54 One of the things I talked about was this concept of compounding goodwill, which I think is it's such a simple idea that it's very easy for people for their eyes to glaze over and not really to concentrate on it, but it's hugely powerful. It has this, I mean, A, it makes you happier when you behave decently, but B, there's so much reciprocation. There are just so many people out there who wish you well and want to help in the way that you want to help Warren at this point. Many people want to help you. And it was interesting to me that I got several questions over Twitter about exactly this, about compounding goodwill. So someone is called Miko Dizon, which his tagline is at Kaysen investing said, what are the easiest ways you can compound goodwill

Starting point is 00:54:34 in relationships, both with family and friends? And someone called Stuart South said, what's the most fulfilling experience you've had in your quest to compound goodwill? And how has it changed your outlook on life and investing? And I wonder if you had any thoughts on either of those questions, given your grand social experimenting, compounding goodwill over many years. I literally, I was remembering the other day. So there's a slide of, me that's kind of slightly unhinged and it doesn't have very good social awareness, which helped me in this. I decided to buy a packet of wrapped, hard-boiled sweets, and I literally gave it to every person I talked to. I gave them a sweet and say, would you like a sweet? And I was motivated by

Starting point is 00:55:17 this idea of these damned Harry Krishna fundraisers canning out paper flowers, and I thought, well, at least this thing's edible, it's better than a sweet. And so my answer to the question, is start with what's in front of you and just do the best thing that you can see that's in front of you now. I don't think there's anything wrong with handing out sweets to every single person you meet, but there are probably more effective strategies. Start with something that's in front of you and then analyze it and figure out what's good and bad about it and then figure out where you're going to go next. So there's no simple and easy answers and what's right for me is not right for somebody else. And in the book, I kind of like the thank you notes idea is really a way

Starting point is 00:55:57 of describing all of that without having to go into enormous amounts of detail and all the ways that one can and does do it. Just something that is very motivational for me right now is that I really try and I don't think I'm doing a particular good job of it, but I actually, William, I want to talk to our small team about it. If you're an investor in my fund, I want to try and make good things happen to the extent that it's within my power to do that. You know, that's a way of creating goodwill, if you like. And so I try to reward the fact that people have decided to send me some of their hard-earned money. I mean, hopefully the returns are going to be decent, but there's somebody who's recently, he is a partner in a venture capital fund

Starting point is 00:56:36 and he's a strategic partner, actually, and he's one of our investors. And I want that venture capital fund to be extraordinarily successful. I've set it down to look over their deals and see if there's anything I can do to help push those deals forward. That's a way of creating goodwill around me that's particularly motivational, but I got a guy who sent me a short thesis on one of the stocks that I own. I really appreciate the fact that he thought of me. I wrote back to him with some research on the company at hand that he would not have been able to access directly. Again, just sort of like trying to find in a certain way that what we can see from that is that I'm not doing it in an undirected way. I'm doing it directed towards people who've already in a certain way thought of me

Starting point is 00:57:20 and been helpful to me and then try to encourage more of that behavior. But you could do it from a standing start, I mean, if there's an industry that I realize that I really ought to be engaged with, then why not start? The thoughts are endless. I think that in terms of the most transformational thing for me to answer the second question, I do think that, so I'd moved on from sweets and now was writing thank you notes. It's a well-told story. One of the thank you notes that I wrote was to Monash Pabri for having attended his meeting and that led to a lunch or a dinner that led to many other things. And that's been an extraordinary result from one simple thank you note, but it's really not one simple thank you notes from many thousands of thank you

Starting point is 00:57:59 notes. And so that's one little piece of enormous growth and success. Another example that I like to give is that I was invited onto the Harvard Business School Alumni Board, simply because I chose to write to some people and send them a regular holiday card. I didn't even know they were on the alumni board, but it made them think of me positively. And so that when a space came up, perhaps I was a little bit higher on the list than some other people, simply because I was sending them a regular holiday card. But I think in answer to that person's question, William, what is more fascinating is not the stories that I can tell, but stories that I couldn't even tell, because these are kind of like where the results have come to fruition in a way that we can identify

Starting point is 00:58:41 them. But I think that in a certain way, doing the stuff resets the playing field such that you're not even aware of the influence that it has on the environment in which you're operating. and I'll give one short idea here. And I don't know what the truth is, but I remember a friend of mine asking, I'm sort of like, I have the most incredible people working for me, especially the person who deals with my ADHD,

Starting point is 00:59:04 Chantelle Hackett, and I'm extraordinarily grateful to her. Like I asked, how did she end up in your life? How do I find somebody like that? And what I want to say is it's not like you put an ad in the paper. It's you start vibrating the world in a certain way. You start dealing with the world in a certain way, and that attracts certain people into your life.

Starting point is 00:59:21 I guess I'm giving a potted version of the law of attraction, really, aren't I? Well, look, to go back to what you were just saying a minute ago about how you don't know all the ways in which these acts of kindness reverberate, just you've helped me in so many different ways over the last quarter of a century, but we literally wouldn't be here talking now if you hadn't introduced me to Stig Bruterson back in probably 2015. And so I did a podcast interview with them. I think you had done one of the earliest podcast episodes with them, and then you kept

Starting point is 00:59:51 suggesting friends who should go on the podcast. And so I was on something like the 33rd episode or something like that fairly early. And then over the years went on again when Richard Weiser Happier came out and then became friends with Stig. And that's ended up leading to me doing this podcast and to me having you on the podcast today. So there are kind of hundreds of examples of that of different ways in which one action years ago has sort of vibrated out in all of these different ways. And I want to tell a story about Value X this year, and I don't know where the thought came to me from. And William sometimes attends Value X, and so you'll be interested here. So this is the talk that I gave, which was, or the idea that I shared, I really don't need to

Starting point is 01:00:35 own an Abramovich-style yacht in the Mediterranean. But I suddenly would love it if one of my friends did. And I got up in the room and I kind of said, you know, I really have realized that I don't care to have vast levels of wealth the way, say, Warren Buffett or other people do. And whatever level of wealth I end up achieving, I really want to get there with a bunch of friends who are also pretty rich. And I kind of said to the room, and that means you guys, I want the people in this room to end up being extraordinarily successful, because I want to get to a place, your destination analysis. I want to get to a place. The last thing I want is to, you know, the guy is optimizing for returns and for AUM? No, I, you know, what about optimizing for getting to the desired destination

Starting point is 01:01:21 in good company with great company, with wonderful friendships? And so I kind of said, I'm dedicated to helping you guys get there. I got to start somewhere and you guys are a pretty good place to start. And I hope that you guys dedicate yourselves to that. And it kind of like, it resonated with the room and made me see the room differently. Long ago gave up seeing my investing friends as rivals, which is a terribly destructive thing to do. But I went from seeing them as neutral to being kind of people on my team. So I have another thing going with a group of friends

Starting point is 01:01:54 that I meet with from time to time online, where I've promised them that when they get to a billion in AUM, I'm sending them a magnum of champagne and congratulations, and I will be so happy to send that magnum of champagne out. And it was fascinating for me to see what an extraordinary kind of people leaned forward in their seats at the ValueX meeting when I said that.

Starting point is 01:02:13 and they felt empowered, they felt loved, they felt like they were on a path to somewhere. How exciting is that? I mean, that for me is kind of like more interesting than building wealth, actually, you know? Yeah, it's a very powerful idea. I've seen you do this increasingly over the years, try to lift up other people, and I've seen you do it in a lot of ways. And the great irony of it is I think you've become happier as you've done more of it. No, no, it's not the irony, the extraordinary result.

Starting point is 01:02:43 the kind of like the deep joy is that it's actually, I mean, I don't know if I'm overstepping the description, but it is actually the best path to success for yourself. Isn't that, you know, it's a little counterintuitive. And I guess on some level, you do have to be self-interested. You can't utterly destroy yourself to help others. So you have to take care of yourself in the process. But if you can take care of yourself and then work really hard on the success of others. Sooner or later, things are going to explode for you. I couldn't sleep last night after working obsessively preparing for our conversation and I tried going to bed and I couldn't. So I get up in the middle of the night and I was reading David Hawkins book that I can't remember

Starting point is 01:03:26 reading before. I think I read pretty much everything multiple times. But he was saying at some point that when you're taking care of other people, and I'm miss summarizing this, but basically when you're taking care of other people, the universe kind of conspires to make you more successful. successful anyway. And so he would sort of argue that you actually can forget about yourself to some degree. And obviously that's a very high level of consciousness that we haven't got to. But I do think there's, I see that in someone like Arnold Vandenberg, that I see the more focused he is on just taking care of other people, the more free, the happier he is, the more the world kind of takes care of him. And it sounds very mystical and so very easy to dismiss

Starting point is 01:04:08 for people who are super rational, but it just has one thing going for it, which is I think it actually happens to be true. You know, I was telling you before we got onto this podcast that you're, again, it's this, we're kind of trying to talk about something that is not apparent and obvious. You brought something out in Arnold Fandenberg, which is absolutely extraordinary. And there's something about who you are in the world that made him want to bring that out with you. He's brought out many of the thoughts that he shared with you with other.

Starting point is 01:04:38 people and with me personally, but the way he did it with you on the podcast and the depths that he went to to reveal himself who he really is as a person was extraordinarily special. Thanks. He's a wonderful role model. I mean, he in many ways, we were talking before about who to clone and there are aspects of Arnold, the older I get, the more I'm like, yep, that's something I really need to clone aspects of his kindness and decency and concern for others and exuberance and enthusiasm. It's amazing to see. We've talked quite a bit over the last couple of years about Jordan Peterson, who I don't know a lot about, and I know it's very controversial in many ways. There's a clinical psychologist for people who don't know him. But there's one specific

Starting point is 01:05:23 idea that comes from him that's very, very similar to what David Hawkins would teach in things like Power v. Force, that I really wanted you to talk about before I let you go, because I also think it's a kind of master principle of life. And it's very related to this idea of you always being very candid about your mistakes, your limitations, not trying to sugarcoat the truth. And can you talk about what you've learned from Jordan Peterson about the importance of honesty and truthfulness? Yeah, so the thought, what comes up for me is that something that it came up somewhere on social media, we said, if you want an adventure, tell the truth, which kind of sums up David Hawkins in many ways. And so he and Sam Harris, in addition to David Hawkins, have thought very,

Starting point is 01:06:07 very carefully about what it means to tell the truth. And one of the books that he got me to read, not fully, but to dip into, is Alexander Solzhenitskens, the Gulagapag Archipelago, in which Solshinikin, somebody who was a dissident who'd been imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag for many years, wrote not about the cruelty of the system, but wrote about how he was guilty, he was complicit. You ask, how the hell are you complicit? You're imprisoned. You're a dissident. And he talks about all the ways, all the small lies, all the small untruths that a Russian citizen had to accept for the system to succeed and to perpetuate itself. And it's kind of asking Russian citizens not to rise up and revolt, but to kind of pay attention to the ways in which allowing those untruths

Starting point is 01:07:00 created a system that was basically evil and not reflective of what the citizens actually wanted to survive and thrive. And so I think that's probably the same is true of individual lives. And we start with small untruths and we start with small acceptances of something that doesn't really quite fit. And the next thing we know we're living a fake life. And as we know from David Hawkins, a fake life is not a very powerful life. And any moment you can catch yourself in either telling a non-truth and stopping it or becoming more truthful about your experience of the world as an opportunity to create a more rich meaning real life, a life that's full of adventure.

Starting point is 01:07:37 That's certainly one of his ideas. He put it in such a strange way. Can I read? Because you had quoted it in an interview and it made me go back to the source and see what he said. So this is the line from Jordan Peterson. He said, I've never in all my years. years as a clinical psychologist, and this is something that really does terrify me, seen anyone

Starting point is 01:07:57 ever get away with anything at all even once. And then he says, someone twists the fabric of reality, and they do it successfully because it doesn't snap back at them that moment. And then two years later, something unravels, and they get walloped, and they think, oh, my God, that's so unfair. And then we track it. And it's like, what happened before that? That's where it went wrong, because you can't twist the fabric of reality without having it snap back. It doesn't work that way. And why would it? Because what are you going to do?

Starting point is 01:08:27 Twist the fabric of reality? I don't think so. And I read that and I was like, whoa, that's kind of a startling and fascinating claim, right? That if you lie, you're somehow twisting the fabric of reality and it's going to come back and bite you in the butt. It's extremely powerful. And I think it's true. I think it's absolutely true.

Starting point is 01:08:45 I think it's profound. And I think around that time we discussed how the letters in Hebrew for truth all have a solid base and all that Hebrew letters for lie. It's just an interesting sort of cabalistic idea. When you weave lies, even small lies, you create a, you know, reality will bear down on those lies and destroy them sooner or later. So you want to build a life in which that doesn't happen, you know. But I think that Jordan Peterson for me is, look, he took a decision that he would take every single one of his lectures and just record them and put them online. There's 500 hours of Jordan Peterson's lectures, him extemporizing, you know, they're unedited, he's not trying to present himself in any way,

Starting point is 01:09:24 shape, or form. All his thoughts as he delivers those lectures are there for the world to see. I think that's part of, you see the same spirit when Warren has a three-hour lunch with me in Monish, and he basically tells us afterwards, there's nothing that was private there. You can share everything with the world. And so he's kind of like in a certain way putting that lecture online, metaphorically. It's the part of me that's inspired to just say, whatever it is that's an uncomfortable truth that I'm kind of embarrassed or don't really want to get out into the public, I'm better off letting it appear in the public and let the cards fall where they may because that is aligning myself with reality. And if I line myself with reality, however

Starting point is 01:10:04 uncomfortable it is, I have a better future ahead of me. That thinking weaves its way into all sorts of places. I think that quite separately from that, I think that Jordan Peterson has a wonderful, I mean, it's his concepts around order and chaos and how we deal with mishaps in life and how we deal with where we're going. And there's a wonderful article that I found of his in which he talks about the opening chapters of Genesis as being a blueprint for human creativity. And so I think he has a nuanced and very interesting view of religion that is really fascinating for me. Religion is a practical guide to how to live our lives. He has this fascinating insight that for me, I mean, I just enjoy taking out and thinking about it. He says, look, the scientific world can

Starting point is 01:10:53 describe with increasing accuracy what is. And whether it goes all the way from the beginnings of the universe to the web telescope to quantum mechanics, to biology, all those things, it doesn't have any guide at all as to what humans should do about it. And is it possible that the world's ancient texts are actually the most powerful guide to what we as humans should do? Because nowhere in the world of science is there, is the question asked, what should I as a human do, armed with all this knowledge or not, what should I do? And this idea that the realm of religion is about giving a blueprint for human decision-making

Starting point is 01:11:30 and handing things down over multiple generations. And he kind of says, he's asked the question somewhere, what is a more powerful reality? Our scientific knowledge that's been around for 200 years, or these blueprints through the great literature of biblical, but also other kind of like Homer's Odyssey and other Nibbolung-Leed, and it comes in forms of the mythologies of the various different peoples of the world. He says, those are guides to human action that are,

Starting point is 01:12:00 have lasted millennia. So which is actually more real? Now, I'm not, I'm not about to take some mystical approach to the world and discard science or anything, but he's willing to take those positions, which are unpopular, which are looked down upon by the world's scientific and rational community. He's a guy who operates very clearly by an inner scorecard, a very powerful in a scorecard. And actually, I think that he would say that the enormous success that he's achieved as an author and as a public thinker is because he's been truthful. So it's right in there with Mahatma Gandhi. For the listeners interest wrote this book, his autobiography is subtitled, A Story of My Experimentations with the Truth. He's a living example of how David Hawkins is. He says,

Starting point is 01:12:43 if you, you know, truth has power. And just inspiration of being an inner scorecard, whether you agree with him or not, his living his life, he's an example there for all to see of somebody who's living his life by an underscore card. And this fabric of reality idea for me is extraordinarily powerful that it snaps back, you know? And it's funny because we go into my family into questions of whether you should tell white lies. And Sam Harris has a very short book on lying and Sam comes to the conclusion, if I remember correctly, that even white lies, it's not worth telling them at the end of the day. You should find a way to speak what you feel without having to tell the white lie. And I think he's probably right. And I think that we're going to

Starting point is 01:13:24 getting it something profound, William, really profound. And is at the core of all success, is at the core of all wisdom and, you know, many paths to it. And just to take a, to do a short call out for your book is that what are the paths to that? Well, certainly the world's various religions are a path to it. But I think that what you've figured out is that many of these world's great investors are also figuring out a path to it. And they seem to be better at it than many other people. And so they're worth studying. And your example of Arnold Fundenberg, obviously Warren and Charlie, but also very clearly Nick Sleep, are actually getting at this idea of what's underneath and what's truthful, because from that flows everything. And value

Starting point is 01:14:09 investing is just a branch of wisdom at the end of the day. It's a branch of truth. It's a branch of wisdom. It's all one. It's all related. And so I think this was one of the things that became most beautiful and profound to me as I worked on that book was the realization that that if the way you behave in one area is going to show up in another area, as Charlie Munger would often say, if you're dishonest in one area, it's going to show up in another area, or if you're acting in a way that creates chaos, it may not show up in your financial life, but it'll show up in your family life. And so it's all, what's that line that Charlie often quotes, it's all one damn relatedness

Starting point is 01:14:44 after another. You can't separate these things out. I guess what you and I have been trying to work towards, that we work towards in your book, and then in my book, which is a continuation of your book, is really, it's all about worldly wisdom. It's trying to figure out a few principles on average work pretty well in life and business and investing. I think that it is valuable, a significant addition. My life is an example of that. Your book is an example of that. Your interest in investing, I mean the listeners interest in investing and getting rich and making money is also a path

Starting point is 01:15:19 to wisdom. And you can elevate that pursuit to be a spiritual pursuit and with the help of guides like Arnold Fandenberg and William Green and other characters in the book. And that's kind of like that makes our life, my life, far more meaningful. Thank you, Guy. You've been a great teacher to me on many fronts over many years. But I said to a friend of mine recently, I was asking him about his rabbi and I said, is he a really good teacher? And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But more than that, He's a friend. That's high praise. And so thank you.

Starting point is 01:15:53 You've been a grateful so good in my life in so many ways. But above all, you've been a really good friend. So thank you. One of these days, not on this podcast, William and I might tell the story of some interesting things that unfolded between us earlier this year, which I said internally, William, I think at least on my side, and I suspect on your side, although I can't speak for you, it made me realize how valuable the friendship was, how fragile all things. things that are valuable are and how close we were to losing it. But the good thing is on the other

Starting point is 01:16:23 side, I think that certainly from my side, I value it so much more and I didn't realize it. And we were an inch away from tragedy, basically. Well, it was a challenge and we avoided catastrophe. So thank you so much. All right, folks, that concludes episode two of my conversation with Guy Speer. If you didn't get a chance to listen to Part 1 already, I hope you'll check that out as well. Meanwhile, if you'd like to learn more from Guy, I've included various resources in the show notes for this episode, including a link to his podcast and his free newsletter. I'd also strongly recommend reading Guy's memoir, The Education of a Value Investor.

Starting point is 01:17:02 Of course, I'm hopelessly biased because I helped him to write it. But I do think it's an excellent book, partly because he's so committed to being truthful about his own flaws and the mistakes he's made along the way. One of my favorite memories of working with Guy on the book came when we were in his kitchen in Zurich, and he suddenly got really excited and said, I don't care if this book ruins my reputation. I just want to give an honest account of who I am. I have to say, I found his determination to be so candid, incredibly impressive and pretty courageous. Meanwhile, thanks a lot to everyone who wrote to me on Twitter to suggest questions for me to ask Guy.

Starting point is 01:17:40 As a way of saying thanks, I try to give away one signed copy of my book, Rich Ope Wieser Happier, per episode to a person whose question I've used. Today's winner is Stacey Smith. If the spirit moves you, please feel free to follow me on Twitter at William Green 72 and do let me know how you're enjoying the podcast. It's always lovely to hear from you. I'll be back again very soon with more in-depth interviews

Starting point is 01:18:04 about investing and life. My next guest is Daniel Goldman, whose blockbuster book Emotional Intelligence has sold more than 5 million copies. Until then, many thanks for listening. Take care. Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - RWH010: High-Performance Habits w/ Guy Spier (Part 2)

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