We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - RWH028: Lessons From Legends w/ Mohnish Pabrai, Tom Gayner, & John Spears

Episode Date: June 25, 2023

In this special episode, William Green shares several fundamental, life-changing lessons that he’s learned from his conversations with Charlie Munger, Mohnish Pabrai, Tom Gayner, & John Spears. The focus here is on powerful insights that can guide & enrich you both in business & life. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: 00:00 - Intro 02:37 - Why Charlie Munger thinks being ethical is a huge competitive advantage 17:16 - Why Munger urges you to get “toxic people” out of your life, & do it fast. 24:52 - How Mohnish Pabrai forges strong relationships based on trust & fairness and how Mohnish’s success is built on David Hawkins’ insights in “Power vs Force.” 36:09 - What William Green learned from Hawkins’ books that changed his life. 46:36 - Why Munger won’t indulge in destructive emotions like anger & envy. 57:32 - How Markel CEO Tom Gayner infuses his business dealings with timeless values. 1:06:33 - How Tom operates by initiating trust & then assessing whether it’s deserved. 1:16:23 - What Tom looks for when appraising a person’s integrity. 1:25:18 - What John Spears learned from Quakerism that guided him in business & life. Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members. Tune in to William Green’s full interview with Mohnish Pabrai or watch the video. Listen to William Green’s full interview with Tom Gayner or watch the video. Tune in to William Green’s full interview with John Spears or watch the video. Listen to William Green’s interview with Daniel Goleman & Tsoknyi Rinpoche or watch the video. “Power vs Force” by David Hawkins. “Letting Go” by David Hawkins. “Transcending the Levels of Consciousness” by David Hawkins. William Green’s book, “Richer, Wiser, Happier” – read the reviews of this book. William Green’s Twitter. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: River Toyota Range Rover Fundrise AT&T The Bitcoin Way USPS American Express Onramp SimpleMining Public Vacasa Shopify Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

You're listening to TIP. Hi, folks. It's lovely to be here with you again on the richer, wiser, happier podcast. My plan for today is to do something slightly different that I hope you'll find helpful and illuminating. We're going to look back and highlight a handful of the most important lessons that our guests have shared with us on this podcast over the last year. As I'm guessing you find in your own life, there's such a barrage of information and advice

coming at us all of the time, that it's often difficult to distinguish the signal from the noise. So I think it's valuable to pause once in a while, take stop and focus our attention on the truly robust and enduring lessons that matter most. Personally, I want to pound these fundamental lessons into my own head so that I never forget them and so that I can actually live by them. As Charlie Munger says, take a simple idea and take it seriously. Specifically, we're going to focus on several of the most powerful insights from three of my favorite guests on the podcast. All three of them are superb investors, but they're also unusually wise thinkers about what it takes to succeed over the long run, both in business and

life. The first of our three guests in the spotlight is the legendary hedge fund manager, Monage Pabri. The second is Tom Gaynor, the revered CEO of Markell, where he oversees something like 20,000 employees and has racked up a fabulous investment record over more than 30 years. The third is John Spears, who's proven to be one of the great long-term investors over the last half century. So here's the game plan. I've chosen five clips from my conversations with these renowned investors. Over the next hour or so, I'm going to play you these five clips and I'll discuss each of them in turn. As you'll see, there's a common thread in all of these discussions, because what Tom Gainer, Monich Pabry and John Spears are exploring is really the question

of how to operate in an honorable and trustworthy way that helps to build enduring success in every area of life. What fascinates me is that their high-quality behavior has turned out to be an extraordinary competitive advantage, not least I think because it's drawn incredible people into their orbit. I hope you find their insights as valuable and inspiring as I find them. 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. We're going to start by playing a clip from my interview with Monish Pabry, who's one of the leading investors and philanthropists of his generation.

When I started the research from my book, Richer Wiser Happier, the very first thing I did was arranged to travel in India with Monish for five days. We even shared a bunk pad on an all-night train ride from Mumbai, Dakota. In any case, he ended up as the star of the first chapter of the book. Over the years, Monish has become extremely close to Charlie Munger. As I'm sure you know, Charlie is the multi-billionaire vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and has been Warren Buffett's partner for nearly half a century. Charlie's 99 years old, so he's 40 years older than Monish,

but they hang out together at Charles' various homes, they play bridge together, and Charlie's become a great friend and mentor to Monish. In this clip, we start by talking about a conversation that I had with Charlie over Zoom, in which he told me that he and Monish have both figured out the simple truth that being honest and ethical is just good business. Let's listen, and then I'll talk about this clip. I'll tell you a story about this actually that involves you, which is, as I think you know, I had this kind of wonderful two-hour Zoom breakfast

with Charlie and a few other great investors back in, I think, July 2021. And crazily, they'd said the homework was to read my book and they were all wanted to discuss the book, which is, this is, you know, I mean, I can't tell you how inadequate I felt as it's like, yeah, I'm going to teach Charlie something about how to invest. And it was Lou Simpson and people like that. And I knew that Charlie was going to arrive early because I read that introduction that Li Lu had written to. I think the Chinese edition of poor Charles Almanac, where I think he talked about Charlie always being early. So I signed on five minutes early. And as a result, I'm on this call alone at the start before Lou Simpson and all these other guys, Mark

Nelson get on just with Charlie. And so the very first thing I did actually is I said to him, Monash and I are friends and speaks incredibly highly of you. Obviously, I interviewed you for my book, if you remember. And he said to me, he starts waxing lyrical about you. And he said, very specifically, he said, Monash is a very highly ethical person. And he said, he's so mathematical and he's so smart. And he said, he knows he can make more money by being ethical. And he said to me, people like Monash and me, we actually don't deserve nearly as much credit for our morality as we deserve if we were doing it against our own interests. He's like, we're both actually doing better in business and life because we're ethical. And I thought it's a really interesting insight into

life and business and Charlie and you. And I wonder if you could talk about that idea of being ethical as a competitive of advantage because I think many of us are taught as we're growing up and starting in the business world or watching succession or billions or whatever. We're taught that we need to be hard-aged and self-serving and selfish to succeed. And here's this kind of grand old man of business and investing saying, no, you should actually be decent and it's not a zero-sum game. And it strikes me as a hugely important insight. Yeah. And actually, Charlie is absolutely right. Probably a huge portion of why I'm so ethical is because of self-interest, enlightened self-interest. So I think what people don't realize is most things in life function on trust.

They don't function based on contracts. They function based on trust. So if you become very trustworthy, it gives you a massive competitive advantage, a huge leg up in life. And the thing is that this trustworthiness doesn't come over. overnight. But it's kind of like on a log scale. It's like kind of like truthfulness, right? I mean, you sometimes use that small lies, but if you eliminate all lies, you know, the power versus force we've talked about, what happens is that, you know, those attractor fields come

into play and humans feel they can trust you. And once humans feel they can trust you, the whole universe is at your disposal, we see that in spades in Bokshahathaway. You know, Bokshahathaway does all kinds of things where they just see. say something to someone and people will accept that. They don't need to have it in writing or anything like that. It just warns word is enough. And so how do you get there? Well, you get there by having a consistent life where you have demonstrated repeatedly

that you are playing the game very ethically, playing the long game, and looking at things to make sure that your business partners and vendors and whoever you deal with, is treated extremely well. You know, Ray Kroc used to say that there were three stools on which McDonald's stands. He says, my franchisees, my vendors, and my employees, right? The franchisees were entrepreneurs, right? They owned it. And he felt he had to make sure that they did really well.

The people supplying the French fries and the cups and the plates and all of that at McDonald's, Ray Kroc wanted to make sure they did really well. So he's not trying to squeeze them for the last penny. He wants them to do well, right? Because he says that it's part of my ecosystem. And I have taken those lessons to heart. So like if I have a relationship with a printer for my business, I want those relationships to go on for decades.

I want the printer to do well. I don't want to be squeezing him every time and get three quotes and take the lowest and all of that. I don't want to do it that way. You know, I want to make sure that it's fair and we don't need to go to multiple quotes. We just run our business on trust. And so what happens is that when you show trust in a company or a human being, they react

really positively. My baseline, when I'm dealing with anyone, my baseline is that the other person is a very high-quality person or a very high-quality company and I can completely trust them. Then I wait to see if they do stuff which violates that trust. If it does violate the trust, we'll move on, you know, we'll do something else. But I think when you upfront demonstrate the trust, a lot of good things happen. So I think this notion of being ethical, running things properly, gives you such a tailwind in life that it's, you know, like I think Peter Kaufman says, if crooks knew how much money

you could make by not being crooked, they would stop being crooks, you know, because basically you make a whole lot more money by being honest. you make a very little bit of money by being crooked. So it's a complete no-brainer to be ethical and honest. So the big lesson to remember right off the back from this clip is, I think Charlie Munga is really simple assertion to me that Monash is so rational and logical and smart that he just understands that he can make more money by being ethical and honest.

As Charlie told me, he and Monash are actually doing better in business and life because they're ethical. It's not naive to be ethical, in other words, which I think is a really important and fundamental lesson. As Monash puts it, this is a matter of enlightened self-interest. Now, the truth is, I think you would probably act pretty ethically regardless of whether it was enlightened self-interest, but I think it's helpful to know that it actually gives you a huge competitive advantage to do the right thing and to be trustworthy. And this clearly guides both Monish and Charlie in the way that they treat people in their ecosystem in this fair and generous and trusting way. I remember going

once to the Daily Journal meeting, this company that Charlie was the chairman of, and he was saying, look, I don't want to brutalize my vendors. He said, my view of life is win-win. That's my philosophy of business. And if you remember the biography of manga that Janet Lowe wrote, it has this It's the extraordinary forward by Warren Buffett, where he says, look, in 41 years, I've never seen Charlie take advantage of anyone. And he said, I've seen him knowingly take the worst side of a deal multiple times with me and other people. And at that same daily journal meeting, actually, I remember I suddenly realized sitting to my left was Molly Munga, Charlie's daughter.

So I started asking her questions because I was trying to get extra material for my book. And she said to me, yeah, look, money was always very important to my father, but she said to win it by cheating or to win it and lose the battle for life, as she put it. That was just never what he was about. And I've seen this also in my interactions with Monish over the years. I'll tell you a short story that I think illustrates this kind of nicely. I remember once after my book came out, Monish decided that he was going to buy a lot of copies to give us gifts. And so I had a lot of a publicist at the time who was handling bulk purchases of the book, which you can do through various retailers. And so they were giving Monish a quote for how much it would cost to buy a lot of copies to send in the US, I think India and elsewhere. And so Monish writes me this email and he says, is this a good price? And I look at the number and I'm like, well, actually, no, not really. He could definitely get it cheaper. And so I started investigating this and I realized what's happened. And I realized that the publicist has basically been directing him to buy the book through this particular bulk retailer whose sales are going to be counted towards the best seller list.

So it's actually going to help me, but it's not going to help Monash that much because he could get it cheaper elsewhere. And so I just wanted to be straight and truthful with Monash. So I email him back and I say, yeah, Monash, you can do it at a much better price. go through this other retailer and it'll be better. And I said, I explained what had happened and sort of said, sorry, and just assumed that was the end of it. And Monish then writes back to me immediately and says, no, I'll do it through the retailer that they wanted me to go through. So here's a really nice little but emblematic example of Monage knowingly taking the worst end of the deal in a way that helped me. And here I am a couple of years later.

and I've kind of tucked that away in the back of my mind as evidence of Monash's sense of honor and fairness. And it's a really small thing, but it shapes the way that you think about people. And so I think that's one really helpful thing to remember is these little things, these little actions that seem minor can actually really have a profound impact on the way that people view you. And so I don't know. I was impressed and it's had a lasting impact on the way I think.

of Monishon and the way he does business. So what are the practical implications of this teaching from Monish and Charlie about the rationality of being honest and ethical? I think the first one is simply this very clarifying idea that it's not naive, that it's actually enlightened self-interest. I think that's important to remember. That doesn't mean you should be naive. It doesn't mean that you should let your guard down and just let people take advantage of you. But I think it's It's very important to know the business and life are not a zero-sum game. There are a lot of people who play it that way and a very sharp elbowed and self-serving, but I don't think it has to be that way.

And I think it's a very conscious choice and it's very liberating once you decide that you're going to go this other direction and you just feel better and you draw better people into your environment. The second point I think that's worth making is that when you look at someone like Monish, Monish is pretty extreme about it. He talks in this clip about the importance of consistency. And yeah, we all know that being truthful and not lying is a virtue. But I feel like whenever I look at Monish, part of what's distinctive about him is how extreme

he is in applying these lessons. He'll say, for example, in that clip, you want to try to eliminate all lies. And similarly, when I interviewed him for my book, I remember him saying, you go as far out as you can on the truth variable and the payback. is huge. So Monash's view is that when you find a good idea like telling the truth or compounding or cloning the ideas and practices of people who are smarter and further along on their journey than us, he says, when you find a simple truth like this that works that gives you a competitive advantage, he said, you've got to go 10,000 percent. And I think this is a really good example

of really Charlie's instruction that you should take a good idea and take it seriously. And I think it's served both of them very well. Monish's behavior, I mean, there's no question in my mind that Munga wouldn't have become his mentor if he didn't behave this way. I think it's his ethics, his intelligence. It's the fact that he has this extraordinary foundation, the Daxana Foundation, that's lifting thousands of people out of poverty, which I really encourage you to look up if you haven't looked it up. The Daxana Foundation, I think, was originally what led Warren to introduce Monashana Foundation. It's to Charlie. So the fact that he's trying to use his ability to make rational bets on stocks to fund this charity that lifts thousands of people out of poverty is actually what drew him into the orbit of Warren and Charlie in the first place. The other thing I would say that I think is really important to bear in mind is that this emphasis on truthfulness and integrity and ethics should actually also shape who you hang out with, who you work with, who you partner with, and equally important, who you declined to work with and associate with.

I was very struck during the Berkshire Hathaway Annual General Meeting back in May when Munger and Buffett were on stage, and they really talked very specifically about this question of who you hang out with, who you have in your ecosystem. And Munger very specifically warned us that the toxic people, as he put it, who were trying to fool you or lie to you or want reliable in meeting their commitments. The great lesson of life is get them the hell out of your life. And then he said, and do it fast, do it fast, he repeated it. And Buffett, very characteristically immediately added, do it tactfully, if possible, too,

but do get them out of your life. A manga didn't let it go. He quickly replied, yes, I don't mind a little tact, or even if I don't mind a little tact, or even a little financial cost, but the key point is simply getting them the hell out of your life. And so that night, I actually had dinner with Monish in this lovely steak restaurant where he books a room on the Saturday night after the annual general meeting every year. And I was sitting to his right and he's got this enormous footballer to my left and Chuck Akre to his left. And so it's a really interesting group of people. And I start asking Monish about this whole idea of getting toxic people out of your life.

And we were talking actually about someone who that day had done something. I didn't think it was a really big deal, but it was clearly a little bit self-serving and self-promoting in a way that wasn't terrible, but it probably wasn't wise. And I think this guy is a decent person but flawed like most of us. And Monish's view was, no, don't associate. with him at all. And he just thought, there's not really anything to gain by hanging out with someone like that, by hanging out with a person who's demonstrated that he's sort of self-serving and is playing a different game. And I'm more forgiving, I think, because I have this feeling

that we're all deeply flawed. And I don't want to be too judgmental of other people because I think I would invite a lot of judgment of myself if I did that. But I think this is a really important issue and you've got to figure out the right balance for you, how extreme you want to be. And really, it all gets back to this comment that Warren Buffett made back in probably 2008, 2009 when he had this charity lunch with Monash and Guy Speer, where he said to them, look, hang out with people who are better than you and you can't help but improve. So I think there's emphasis on being ethical, being truthful, playing life as a win-win game, should guide our own behavior with this awareness that it's both morally upstanding but also

actually smart business. But it should also guide us in who we invite into our ecosystem. Because as Buffett and Munger emphasize a great deal, the people we hang out with are going to tilt our behavior either way, either to make us better people or less good people. And this is something Monish has always said to me. Monish once told me that whenever he meets a person, he says to himself afterwards, do I want to have a relationship with this person? Are they going to make me better or are they going to make me worse? And I've often thought about that because I'm like, oh, God, I don't want to be one of those people that Monish meets and thinks this guy's going to make me worse. And so that fear in a sense

of being judged to be lacking is a pretty good reminder that I want to try to be a little more ethical. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo Freedom Forum is. From June 1st through the 3rd, 2026, the Oslo Freedom Forum is entering its 18th year bringing together activists, technologists, journalists, investors, and builders from all over the world. Many of them operating on the front lines of history. This is where you hear firsthand stories from people using Bitcoin to survive

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Back to the show. The next clip that I want to play you also comes from my interview with Monash. And in this clip, we talk in more depth about where he got these ideas of being very truthful and trustworthy. And basically, he derived a lot of these ideas from David Hawkins' book, Power versus Force, which he mentioned very briefly in that first clip. And so I'm going to play you the clip from where we talk in some depth about Hawkins. And then I'm going to discuss a little more why I think Hawkins is so important and why he's had such a profound impact on me and many other people.

So, anyway, here's the clip. When you look back and you think about what you learned from getting really serious about David Hawkins and Power v. Force and this idea of building your life on truthfulness and integrity and the like, do you feel like that kind of set a lot of this stuff up, both the friendship with Warren and Charlie, the kind of partners you've got, the kind of children you've got? Because it seems like everything is built on trust and truthfulness and integrity. And in some ways, the idea that Hawkins had these very high levels of virtue and consciousness, the idea that this actually kind of radiates out in every level of your life, I think it's

kind of been borne out in some ways. Is it a sort of experiment in power versus force, this whole journey of Monash Papry? I would say that what might have started an experiment, I think the experiment has proved itself a long time ago. So it became very obvious to me. It became obvious to me when I was reading the book that that was going to work because he was giving examples of like Jesus and Mahatma Gandhi, etc. that it worked for. We are not at that level. Warren Buffett's not at that level, but 40,000 people show up every year. And I think with Warren and Charlie would really surprise me and it's really credit to them that they can see through people. I think they were genuinely able to see through that, or they must have seen through that

I'm a good person to hang out with. And Charlie is very, you know, he has a, both of them have very high standards of especially the, you know, the people that they spend time with. I still am in disbelief about that because, you know, the range of high quality people that they deal with is really high. I mean, they get the best of the best coming to them from all over the place. And so it's been really good. I think part of it is not just the ethics. I think the ethics is important. It's also extreme candor.

So there will be a lot of ethical people, but they may be reserved, right? And then I think if you're reserved, you can't build a deep friendship. You've got to be able to bear your soul. I think that's been part of it where I have found that with a few people, close people around me, I have learned the power of bearing myself and I've learned the power of candor. And I find sometimes that when I am very candid with, it happened the other day with a guy, I don't know so well, but he's having a lot of struggles with his teenage son. And I wasn't sure if what I would say to him would get received properly or not.

And I tried it. So I gave him some very direct pointers on what might be a good way to deal with his issues of the son. And he immediately became defensive. And I said, okay, this isn't going to look. The receiver is not ready. And the receiver cannot deal with the truth. So I just knew that that person on so many levels would not go to be able to get

to where I wanted to get to. It was interesting to me because I went deep down the David Hawkins rabbit hole and I ended up reading multiple books of his multiple times. And so Powell versus Force had a big impact on me. And I think letting go is also a very important and very practical and grounded book. But then I got really into the sort of more esoteric stuff, like the eye of the eye and things like that. I love that stuff because I'm a bit more of a mystic than you are. And I think you struggled with this stuff that was less logical and rational.

I was interested in that because I sort of feel like you took one idea from Hawkins that was immense. immensely powerful about the importance of truthfulness. And I think it's a super part to be truthful and candid. But I think you missed some of the other stuff that was really profound. And I also thought it was really interesting. I'm not saying this in any way. It's a criticism. I thought it was interesting.

And it also it always struck me that you took truthfulness as the virtue you wanted to develop. Because when I read Hawkins, one of the things that struck me above all was actually kindness strikes me as one of the most powerful things he talks about, where There's something where he said, I think the line is simple kindness to oneself and all that lives is the most transformational force of all. And I started to think, well, so he's talking about all of these different virtues that if you go big on truthfulness, kindness, compassion, stuff like that, it just changes your life because it changes your consciousness. And so you're going to draw different people into your life. And so for me, truthfulness is really important, although I do still sort of lie and prevaricate and distort stuff and particularly lie to myself. But kindness kind of became a very clarifying. I'm not saying that I'm kind the whole time. If you talk to my wife, you'd get a good sense of how irritating I can be an irksome. But that to me was almost the most powerful idea from Hawkins was if I just use that as my guiding light of trying to become kinder, not just to other people, but to myself, which was hard.

That would change my life. And so I was just curious how you thought about the other stuff that you'd learned from Hawkins. Yeah. So, you know, in 1999, I had these two industrial psychologists who basically gave me a bunch of tests, did 316 interviews with all kinds of people around me, and they finally gave me what I think of as my owner's manager. It sounds like somebody is getting whipped in the background in the room next to you. Is someone doing construction or something there, Monash? Yeah, so actually, we've got some lines and shades that are going through. So I'm sorry about that. No, that's fine. I was just curious. I thought that this mic would not pick. up that instant sound. It's a good mic.

Yeah, so, sorry, keep going. So yeah, you went to these industrial psychologists. So the thing is that I had heard about Warren Buffett about five years before that. And I saw that many of the things that made up Buffett's kind of what I thought were Buffett's temperament and aptitudes and all of that seemed to fit well for me. And I was trying to mirror a lot of stuff. these two guys said to me that, look, here's the problem. He said that you don't know who you are.

Okay? You have no idea. They said, we don't know exactly what went on in your childhood. But what we do know is the outcome of that is that you really don't know who you are. And they said that you have a desperate need to know who you are. And so what you're doing is, he says, you are trying on different gloves. And you try on this Buffett glove. and it fits, it looks like it fits really well.

And you say, this is it. So then I can just look at Buffett and just clone everything about him. And then that's me. And now I'm in a Nirvana state. And they said that doesn't work. They said it's almost for sure that the template that makes up Buffett and the template that makes a Monash are not the same. It may be similar on the number of traits, but it's not the same.

So like, for example, what I found in, when I heard about Buffett, fit in 94 is I had been playing bridge for six or seven years before I heard about. I love bridge. Even now I play many hours of bridge and I said, look, there's a similarity with bridge. There's a similarity with analyzing businesses. There's a similarity with investing. I seem to like all of that. Everything seems to fit. And they said, it's not there. And they said what really needs to happen is that you need to understand who you are and to be true to yourself. and part of that owner's manual helped me look inside to see who I was. And I've read that, we read that many times.

And what I've realized over the years is that, yes, they were absolutely right. It took me a long time to see this, that Warren Buffett is a very different person. There may be some areas of similarity, but they are a vast area of differences. And those vast areas of differences are not easy for me to bridge. if I were to try to do that. First of all, it would be a distortion to try to do that because I wouldn't be true to myself, so it wouldn't even work.

I think this notion you bring up about the kindness and so on is I, even when I read Hawkins, I took the stuff that was easy for me, right? I mean, I'm always looking for low-hanging fruit. I'm always looking for the shortcuts. And I said, okay, this, you know, being ethical and truthful, I can do this in my sense. sleep. It's easy. The kindness is a much harder to do. I have learned over the years to become kinder

and to be kinder. But I think I have a long ways to go. I think I have a lot of wood to chop over there. Since there's 22 years and three weeks left, maybe I'll pick up Hawkins again and give that another world. I love this long clip that I just played you for so many reasons, one of which is that you see this extraordinary mind working its way through this issue, trying to figure out how can I become more true to myself? What can I learn from Warren Buffett? What can I learn about my own unique nature and whether I'm actually being true to it or not? And at the same time, you see him being incredibly candid. I mean, I think that's an extraordinary moment at the end of this clip where he actually has the honesty and self-awareness to say, yeah, it was easier for me

to be honest and ethical than it was for me to be kind. And actually later in the conversation, in a part of the conversation that I don't play you, he says, yeah, this may be the biggest take-home for me of this month or maybe even this year. And he says, I need to go back and look at Hawkins again. He says, I agree with you. I think the kindness variable is very powerful. So here you have an extraordinary person working on himself in, you know, in this live mode. You're actually watching him working on himself, trying to become a better person. That's very inspiring to me. And it's something I see in all of the great investors, actually, this self-awareness, this willingness to learn, this willingness to keep improving. It's a remarkable thing to behold

I'd also say this part of the conversation was one of my favorite parts of any podcast interview that I've done over the last year or so, because there's something profoundly beautiful to me about an authentic conversation between two friends in this case who are trying to be truthful and are trying to explore difficult questions, thorny questions about how to live and how to operate in the world in a truthful way. And I think there's just a real beauty in that. And there's something kind of inspiring about seeing a person like Monash actually not in any way trying to spin, not trying to make himself look better, just trying to tell you the truth about himself, what he's working on, what he's trying to figure out about how to improve. And I've always been struck actually in all of my interviews with Monash about how direct and straightforward and candid he was. And I once as an experiment when I was working on Richer Weiser Happier, I sent an email asking him all of these pretty tactless questions. And one of them was, I asked him what your net worth is.

And it was kind of an experiment to see, you know, how would he respond to this sort of impertinent, very direct personal question. And he emailed me back. And it's an exact quote. I quoted in my book, he said, net worth as of 1130, 17 is 154 million. million dollars. And then he proceeds to explain in the same email what that doesn't include and how he's doing the accounting. And as I wrote in my book, it was just this marvelous display of trust in the power of truthfulness. And so one of the questions I think is worth exploring is, is where

this idea of being radically truthful, as I guess Ray Dalio would call it radically transparent, radically truthful, where this idea came from in Monash's case. And so for Monash, he read this book in the late 90s, written by David Hawkins called Power v. Force. And Hawkins, I think at one point, had had the largest psychiatric practice in New York City and then became, in my view, kind of an enlightened mystic. And he's an extraordinarily clever guy, dead now, but an extraordinarily clever guy writing about this incredible range of things. And so I've read a lot of his book, because of Monash, I ended up falling very deep down this rabbit hole. Power versus Force is a really helpful place to start.

And the thing that Moniz got from power versus force is this fundamental idea, the true power, as Hawkins would put it, stems from certain virtues, certain powerful attractors, as Hawkins would describe it, that really have an unconscious effect on people. They either make you go strong or they make you go weak. And so he would measure this stuff through kinesiology, seeing whether your muscles went strong or weak. in the presence of sudden behavior or things.

And I have no idea whether this is valid or not. I'm no expert on kinesiology. But I find his conclusions incredibly compelling. And so one of the things that Hawkins said is, well, there are these traits like dishonesty or fear or shame that basically make people go weak. And then there are these traits like kindness, compassion, love, mercy, honesty, integrity, service to others that make you go strong.

And so Monish reads this and he comes away. with this very powerful idea that is clearly in the text. I mean, Hawkins says at one point, this is a direct quote. He says, falsehood makes us all go weak. And so Monash comes out of this and he says to me, you can't get away with lying to other humans. And that's a very profound idea. And he said, most people don't understand just how important this idea is. And people will sense when you're lying, when you're not being fully candid.

You can kind of smell it. And I remember once many years ago saying to Monash, I'd interviewed some multisual billionaire who I really didn't like. And I was chatting with Monish. I think in his office then in Irvine, California, I'd gone to interview him for the great minds of investing, which is a book that I've been working on at the time. And I said to him, God, I really didn't like this guy. And I was talking to him about how this guy was kind of avoiding certain questions. Like, I remember he had an amazing, I don't want to give too much information because I don't want to identify him. But he had an amazing collection of, you know, worth obviously tens of millions of dollars of some particular

beautiful object, sorry to be vague about this. And he just didn't really want to talk about it. Monash said, that's a guy who's misaligned and you smell it and you just want to get away from him. And what was intriguing was that a few years later, this guy's career totally came unraveled, like his reputation was just sort of devastated. And so there was something that you kind of smelled in this person that didn't feel right. And so Monish kind of went the opposite direction and decides, well, I'm just going to be truthful all of the time. And so this, had kind of a big impact on me, right? I start going down this David Hawkins rabbit hole and I read power versus force and I read these other books like the eye of the eye and truth versus falsehood.

And these books have some strange names like there's one called I, just the letter I and then a colon, reality and subjectivity. And for a long time, I just kept reading these things over and over again. I've found it incredibly helpful. It would sort of give you this sense, well, this is just true. this is how I should operate in the world. So I sort of got to know these books pretty well, right? And power versus force in particular had this idea that I thought Monash was kind of missing, that I thought was hugely important. And so this is what I was referring to in this part of the conversation is there's a paragraph from power versus force where he says, simple kindness to oneself and all that lives is the most powerful transformational force of all.

And then he continues, it produces no backlash, has no downside, and never leads to loss or despair. It increases one's own true power without exacting any toll, but to reach maximum power, such kindness can permit no exceptions, nor can it be practiced with the expectation of some selfish gain or reward, and its effect is as far reaching as it is subtle. And this had a big enough effect on me that I actually, I wrote it out on a card that I stuck on my wall in my study at home. Because for one thing, if you notice that first sentence, he's not just saying simple kindness to all that lives.

He's saying simple kindness to oneself and all that lives is the most powerful transformational force of all. And that hit me very hard because it's difficult for me often to be kind to myself. and I tend to be pretty brutally judgmental of myself of all the ways that I'm falling short and they're voluminous. And so that's been a real guiding light for me. And so I was interested really, in some ways, the subtext of this conversation was, am I missing something? Why is Monash going so big on truthfulness when actually it's really clear that what Hawkins is saying is you want to go big on kindness? And I was thinking about this in the last couple of weeks, and I was thinking, well, maybe actually

in the same way that Monish said to me that it's easier for him to be truthful than it is for him to be kind, although I think he is actually a very kind person, but I started to wonder, well, maybe I'm embracing kindness because it's harder for me to be truthful. And so it's not that one is more important than the other. They're both really important. But I think there's general sense that you get from Hawkins, that there are certain virtues, certain types of behavior that represent a particularly kind of high consciousness is just a really important and simple revelation. And so basically what he says is there are these very powerful attractors like love, compassion, forgiveness, humility, tolerance, honesty, service, generosity of spirit, all of these things you'd expect.

And so what do you want to do if you're trying to lead a wise and successful life and to have true power rather than force? These are the terms that he uses. So somebody like Gandhi or Jesus would have true power, like Gandhi, he would say, operated at such a high level that he could actually bring down the whole British Empire. So what you want to do is shift your consciousness as much as you can through conscious choice towards these very powerful attractors. And as Hawkins puts it, the more that you can reject these kind of weak attractors, the better. So you're trying to move away from things like resentment or jealousy or self-pity or fear, anxiety, or greed. And I think one of the things that were striking to me when I read Hawkins that feels true to me is that things like shame and guilt calibrate at an incredibly low level. And so the practical lesson that I drew from this that I think is really valuable is that you kind of want to flood the zone with these positive emotions like love and compassion and forgiveness and the like.

And the less you can indulge in these weaker emotions, the better. And I remember talking to Munger about some of this stuff, not about Hawkins, but Munger said to me, when we were talking about negative emotions, he said, you know, he famously has said that, is the dumbest of the seven deadly sins because it's not even fun. And he said, with these things like envy, anger, really intense anger, jealousy, he's like, I just don't indulge them. I do not let them run. And I said, how come? How do you do it? And he said, well, I just know that they're stupid, so I don't let them run. So this is a really powerful and important issue, I think, because it gives you a sense of, these are sort of guiding principles. They're simple, but they're very powerful guiding principles. So this is what I got, I think, from Power v. Force. But then I started to fall down

this deeper rabbit holes. I started to read some of these other books by Hawkins. And there's, I mean, they're all worthwhile, but I'm going to pull out a page from one of them. It's not my favorite of his books, but there's a particular page that's absolutely extraordinary in a book of his called Transcending the Levels of Consciousness. And then there's a subtitle, I think, is the stairway to Enlightenment. And I don't get the idea that I'm anywhere close to enlightenment, but I'm reading this list of virtues that he's talking about. And I'm like, God, this is the most unbelievably helpful list. And so he talks about how simple tools consistently applied are incredibly powerful, which is something I write about in my book, right, the importance of simplicity

that you don't need to get that complicated. And he says some tried and true basic tools that have brought about tremendous results over the centuries are as follows. So the first one in this list, I'm not going to read you the whole list. But the first one, he says, be kind to everything and everyone, including oneself all the time with no exception, right, which is what we read from par versus four, something very similar.

Then he says, revere all of life in all its expressions, no matter what, even if one does not understand it. And then he says, presume no actual reliable knowledge of anything at all. And this has been really helpful to me because I keep thinking,

whenever I'm trying to judge someone or I'm thinking about like, I can't believe this happened to me or this is terrible or I don't understand somebody else's behavior and I think it's reprehensible in some way. I start thinking, well, presume no actual reliable knowledge of anything at all. What on earth do I know? And I don't understand these people. I don't understand the way they're behaving. And then he says something that I think about a great deal. He says, forgive everything that is witnessed and experienced no matter what.

And I just find that an incredibly helpful idea that whatever happens, and it's hard to forgive everything, but at least I know that that's an incredibly powerful guiding light. And so I was in a bit of a conflict with someone recently, not a big deal. I'm not even sure that they know it's a conflict. Maybe they do. But, you know, I would find myself sort of slipping into this tailspin of resentment where, you know, you start to replay conversations in your head and you think, I can't believe they did that. And I can kind of cut it by saying, well, no, forgive everything that's witnessed and experienced

no matter what and revere all of life in all those expressions, no matter what, even if one doesn't understand it. Because what do I know? What do I know about why that person is behaving that way? And then he says, approach all of life with humility, be willing to surrender what he calls all positionalities. So, I don't know. I've just found this incredibly helpful, really incredibly helpful. And so I just wanted to share some of these ideas from Hawkins that I think are worth exploring. And there's one other really powerful idea that's had a profound impact on me from Hawkins, which actually comes from this book, Letting Go, which is, in some ways, the most practical of his books that I've read. It's a very, it's much more based on his psychiatric practice.

And there's an extraordinary passage that I've read over and over again, which is in chapter two, I believe. Let's see. I'm sorry, I have the book here. And it's the mechanism for letting go. And this is something where he's talking about how to deal with negative emotions, with difficult feelings and emotions that come up. Maybe it's in a conflict. Maybe it's fear.

Maybe it's anxiety. Maybe it's some resentment or jealousy or hatred or whatever it might be. And I'm just going to read you this paragraph because I think it's incredibly helpful. It's been incredibly helpful to me anyway. And he says, letting go involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it and letting it run its course without wanting to make it different or do anything about it. It means simply to let the feeling be there and to focus on letting out the energy behind it. The first step is to allow yourself to have the feeling without resisting it, venting it,

fearing it, condemning it, or moralizing about it. It means to drop judgment and to see that it's just a feeling. The technique is to be with the feeling and surrender all efforts to modify it in any way. Let go of wanting to resist the feeling. It is resistance that keeps the feeling going. When you give up resisting or trying to modify the feeling, it will shift to the next feeling and be accompanied by a lighter sensation. A feeling that is not resisted will disappear as the energy behind it dissipates. And this to me is just profoundly important because it gives us a different way of dealing with difficult emotions, difficult stuff that comes up, difficult

thought patterns. And if you want to learn more about this, A, yeah, go read Letting Go. But also, I discussed this in an interview that I did with Daniel Goldman and Sokney Rinpoche on the podcast, which you can see from a few months back if you go look. And I discussed this technique with them because it's so similar to what Sokney Rinpoche, this great Tibetan Buddhist meditation master, is teaching. And it's really about radical non-resistance. It's when difficult stuff comes up. You're not suppressing it. You're not judging it.

You're not trying to change it. You're just sitting with it. You're abiding with it and being aware of where it's showing up in your body. And then for some reason, the intensity of it dissipates. And so, as Hawkins puts it, it's the resistance that's keeping it alive. And so I just wanted to share these lessons from Hawkins because I've spent so much time reading Hawkins because of Monash over the last seven, eight years. And I just wanted to make sure that I had this opportunity to share with you some of the most important and practical

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Over the years, he's also played a central role in transforming Markell from a small, pretty obscure insurance company, into a behemoth that's now a Fortune 300 company and has a market value of about $18 billion. But another reason why Tom really stands out, and is someone I love to talk to is that he's really admired in human terms. He's incredibly well-liked. And we become friends over the years. And I just have consistently found him to be an unusually wise, unsoughtful, and decent person. So anyway, let's listen to this clip and then we'll chat about it. You've had this creed at the heart of Markell, right, since before 1986, which I think Alan Kirchner, who recently retired as executive chairman, had been the lead writer of the Markell style, which is very much built.

on what you refer to as these timeless values, right? Things like honesty and fairness and hard work and the zealous pursuit of excellence and trust and a mindset of service and a win-win-win culture. And I think people tend to be kind of skeptical of this, right? When corporations talk about, you know, their virtues and the like, but it seems to me truly central to Markell. It doesn't seem like propaganda.

Can you talk about this as a kind of competitive, advantage, this idea of setting the culture, setting it in stone and having it there for, what is it now, 37 years. Correct. And Alan was indeed the primary author of the Markell style, which was done long before I got here. It was part of the process when Alan and Tony and Steve Markell were about to go public. It was a time to take a pause and to do some reflection over what the values of this company were. and again, the context of setting these things down in stone, so to speak, so that when they were no longer here, and they knew they were mortal, those values would continue to be carried on even when they weren't here day to day to day to service.

And, you know, Alan and Tony and Steve have not been here on a day-to-day basis for over a decade and all of them. Alan retired from the board a couple of years ago. Steve and Tony are obviously still involved at the board level, but they've stepped back from day-to-day-to-day. day, but yet the essence of what was communicated in the style still pervades of the company. I do think that that is a competitive advantage. And the way in which it shows up is this, and the other athlete that I talked about in the annual report this year was Bill Russell. And Bill Russell primarily was a factor on the defensive side of the game. And defense is much harder to quantify and capture in statistical metrics than what offensive contributions are.

but his team won when he was on the on the floor. So these unquantifiable type of factors, I think just like the Celtics won when Bill Wallen, I mean, when Bill Russell was on the floor, and by the way, Freudian slipped there, Bill Walton ended up playing for the Celtics too, and then won when he was around two, but a very different style of player than Bill Russell.

But we get to see deals and get exposure to people and get opportunities that come about because people who share the same basic values as what we do, they like doing business with people they know and they trust and they prefer not to do business with somebody that they don't know and they don't trust. So frankly, I think we see things from the opportunity to build Markell from, you know, what businesses we do. Plus, I think our customers have a sensation that they're dealing with somebody

is going to do their best to try to serve them in such a way that they'll want to do business with us again. One of my great friends is a guy named Shad Rowe, who is a money manager down in Dallas, Texas, and also someone I've learned a lot from over the years. And one of his phrases, and again, this goes back 20 years or so, he said he wanted to invest in companies that did things for their customers rather than to their customers. So you give these snippets of wisdom from all kinds of different sources, but they all line up in the same general direction. And they, I think they support the foundation of how it is you should do business.

And by the way, I think life works out better when you follow those rules, certainly in the long run. There was something you said to me when I first interviewed you, I think probably back in 2014 or 15, that I was very struck by that I'll read back to you where you said, sometimes people can build great careers and enjoy great successes for a period of time through bluster and bullying and intimidation and slipperiness, but that always comes unraveled, always. Sometimes it takes a while, but it does. The people you find that are successful and just keep being successful year after year after year, I think you find those are people of deep integrity. So there's a really interesting insight and I've struggled with it for a while. I think partly because I had kind of lost a political

battle at a company where I had worked. I was like, well, actually, I think kind of in some ways the snakes won. Maybe that was self-deluding and I was a snake myself. And then I would look at kind of the political situation. I would see, you know, the corruption of politics. by business and big money and the like. And there's a part of me, you know, and then also, I mean, look, Charlie Munger has talked about how Sumner Redstone was always his example of what I don't want to be in life. And he was like, look, this guy made much more money than me, but even his kids and his wives hated him.

And I never met Sumner Redstone. I'm not trying to bad mouth, bad mouth him. But you know what I mean? This question of whether it's actually better to live your life this. way or to do business this way or to look at the counter example of these people who are tremendously successful while having very sharp elbows and leaving a trail of lawsuits in their wake. Can you talk about that? Because I feel like some people just assume that capitalism is kind of vicious and nasty and self-seeking and that that's the way it goes. And I think you're pointing us towards

actually a different system that may actually work better in the long run. Right. And I do think that capitalism is a much better system than what it's given credit for. And I think businessmen oftentimes do a horrible job of communicating the positives of a capitalist system. So Adam Smith, who's given credit for being sort of the father and the intellectual creator of the system of capitalism, I believe his title was professor of moral philosophy at University of Edinburgh or Glasgow or wherever he was at the time. So he approached the idea of capitalism from a moral lens and thought it was a superior system and wrote books about it in that way.

Secondly, success, I think, is something that you shouldn't define along only one variable. It's a complicated equation. There are a lot of things that go into the idea of success. So if you were, again, the realm of athletics, because things just pop into my head from athletic stuff. So if you look at Muhammad Ali and his career is a boxer and his probably reputation well deserved or being the greatest fighter ever, well, that's probably true. But if Muhammad Ali needed to be a tennis player or a chess player, he might not have been so successful. So if you're going to define success, make sure you define what arena. you're talking about.

So just to say the word success in and of itself is, it's too limited. It's not enough. So I do not know the family structures of Sumner-Red Stone or Charlie Munger, for that matter. I'm guessing that Charlie Munger's success probably has more dimensions to it than Sondon, but that is just a pure guess on my part. And two points about Charlie Munger was the notion of,

if you want to be success, the best way to do that is to do that. deserve it. So he operated with the idea of trying to be someone who deserved the success that he has earned. And I think that's a fundamentally important way of doing these. And there's a business practice. There's a life practice that flows from that. So if I just met you, and we were talking about a deal or a project or some commercial transaction, and I said, William, trust me, trust me, trust me, trust me, trust me. You can't help it. again, if we don't know one another, that is going to cause 99 times out of 100, just a hint of doubt on you.

Because if I say trust me, trust me, trust me, you natural human reaction is, I can't trust this guy. And the notion of trust is not going to flow immediately if I started that way. But if instead I say, William, I'm going to trust you. And I've done some work or some and some basis for saying, I trust you, I trust you. and I trust you, I trust you, I trust you, I trust you, and offer the gesture of trust first without demanding reciprocation or equality. I just do that in an unconditional way. What I have observed is that you will do one of two things.

You will either honor that trust or you'll violate it. And if you're going to violate the trust, you'll probably do it sooner rather than later. and in so doing, you'll have sorted yourself and we're just not going to do business again. But if you honor that trust and start to trust back, what happens is that starts to cascade. And it's another element of compounding that takes place in your relationship for people. If you trust first, if you offer that service that value first and you initiate that, the world will sift and sort itself and orient and give you enough people and enough opportunities. we have these compounding trust relationships

that it just becomes marvelous over time. Same thing would be said in the word of love. If I say love me, and you're trying to meet somebody, you're trying to develop a relationship, you say, love me, love me, love me. I don't think that's going to work. But if you offer love and you offer it unconditionally,

is everybody going to love you back? No, but a lot of people will. And they'll do it in enduring, consistent, systemic way. So just to orient yourself to be the initiator of trust, to be the initiator of love, and then don't be stupid, reciprocate and compound and grow the trust relationships and the love relationship and filter out the ones where you're not getting reciprocity. If you stay at the game long enough, and I've been out of 40-some years, you'll find you have a wonderful group of people that are enjoyable, fun relationships that keep you coming in the office

and doing what you're doing as opposed to wanting to go play good. off instead. Chow's working out for me. One of the great lessons that I've learned from Tom Gaynor over the years is that it's not just money that compounds. And he mentions in this clip that there's also this compounding of trust-based relationships. I think this is such an important and interesting idea. When I was interviewing Tom for my book, I remember him saying that he regarded himself as a node in a neural network. And he would talk about how one of his great competitive advantages in life was actually that he's a really nice bloke and that everyone wants to help him as a result because he's always

trying to do the right thing. He's trying to help people. And he said to me, look, as a consequence of that, he said, what I found is that I have this wonderful network of friends and colleagues and associates who were just rooting for me rather than against me. And he said, they help you. And then he kind of paused and he repeated it. And he said, they just help you. And I've always remembered that because it struck me as something very similar to a lesson that I'd learned from Guy Speer, which is this idea of the compounding of goodwill. We don't just want to compound money. We want to compound goodwill. You want to treat people in a way that it's not cynical, but it's again, there's this understanding that there's this enlightened self-interest that if you treat people decently, if you treat people honorably,

if you're generous to people, if you're kind to people, over the years, it has this extraordinary impact because you meet all of these people who wish you well. And I've seen it in my own interactions with Tom. I've told the story before that was kind of remarkable for me where I needed his help on an occasion where I needed an interview basically a famous investor at a private event. And Tom was the first person I contacted. And I said, is there any way you would do this interview with me. And, you know, this is during COVID, and it would have been very easy to do it over Zoom. And he was like, no, but it'll have much better energy if I'm actually physically there. So he gets a train for six hours from Virginia where he lives and works to New York City,

where this event was. To do this event with me to have a one-hour far side chat at a private event, there's nothing really in it for him. It was just an act of real kindness at a time when I really needed help. And I just is very powerful. I've never forgotten that. And I've seen this again and again with Tom that I see the amount of goodwill that is surrounding him because of the way that he behaves. So you see his relationships with, say, someone like Josh Tarasoft, my friend who is a very smart hedge fund manager who talked to Tom about Amazon years ago and said, I don't you think you should own it given this business model. And that, led to Tom investing in Amazon. And likewise, you see the relationship that Tom has with people

like Chris Davis, who's going to be a guest on the podcast soon, who's a very outstanding and an impressive guy. Or you see the relationship that Tom has with people like Munga or Sareb Madan, who I don't know if you remember the talks on Google, the investment talks on Google, Sarab used to host all of them. And he was a senior data scientist at Google, really smart guy, really lovely bloke. And Tom meets him and ends up inviting him to come basically be his right handman running the investment portfolio, Markell, which he did for several years. And so, you know, you don't get someone like Saur to come work for you unless you're an incredibly high quality individual. And so it's turned out to be this strange competitive advantage. It's not just that Tom's smart and diligent,

hardworking and has a good investment philosophy. He's really surrounded himself with these extraordinary relationships. And he's been on the board of the Washington Post company, for example, where he was on the board with Buffett for years. And so he got to build these relationships. And I think it's telling that last year, Berkshire Hathaway invested more than $600 million in Markell's stock. And so I think that's an indication that Buffett is looking at the company and the culture and saying, yeah, I'm happy to have Tom Gaynor in my ecosystem. I trust him to do the right thing. So I think this idea of very consciously compounding good relationships with high quality people that are built on trust turns out to be a kind of superpower. But the other thing

I would say is that it's not about being cynical. You can't really do it with a cynical. It helps if it's sincere. And it's also not about naivety. I mean, I remember once having dinner with Tom and his wife, Susan, at their home in Virginia. And Susan at the time was CEO of Parkland Ventures, which was a subsidiary of Markell, part of Markell Ventures. And I think they own and operate something like 45 manufactured housing communities around the country. And I remember asking Tom and Susan, how do you deal with things like people not paying their rent? What do you do? when a person's in trouble and they can't pay their rent in these manufactured housing communities. And I remember them saying, well, look, we give them every opportunity to reorganize,

to restructure their debt, we give them time to figure out a plan. But, you know, we can't be so generous and so lax that the business doesn't work. We've actually got to make a return on the business or else we're letting down our employees, we're letting down our shareholders. And I remember Tom saying to me, look, I think at the time, maybe they had 18,000 employees or something. And he said, we've got about 10,000 families at this company who rely on us to make good judgments. And I thought there was a really helpful reminder that it's not just about being generous, loving, kind, compassionate, forgiving, all of these virtues that we would aspire to. There's also this sense with Tom of good sense, good judgment, and think of in this clip how he talked about extending kindness and love and trust first, but then seeing if the person actually reciprocates, seeing if they earn that trust.

And it reminds me of this idea from Munga where he talks about existing within this seamless web of deserved trust. And so it's not about being naive. It's about behaving in a way that's built on trust, but also surrounding yourself with people actually. deserve that trust. Our next clip is also going to be from my conversation with Tom. And it's a really important subject. We're going to talk about how to actually figure out whether to trust someone, whether they merit your trust. You've often talked about money managers as custodians and shepherds of other people's savings. I remember Chris Davis once saying to me that you'd actually freed him from the moral straitjacket of becoming a money manager because you explained this notion of stewardship

and being trustworthy and he thought, okay, so maybe, maybe as Charlie would say, it's a low vocation, but it is a vocation. And I wonder if I could ask you, like, when you're trying to appraise the talent and integrity of managers or you're trying to appraise the talent and integrity of people to partner with, what are you looking for? I mean, because obviously we need to partner with people who are going to put our interests first. And in the investment business, there are a hell of a lot of them who are not out to do that, right? they're in survival mode where they're looking out for themselves first.

What are the tells? What are the clues when you're trying to assess whether someone is going to look out for you or not? Most people have a trail behind them. There are people that they've done business with that know them that if you spend a little bit of time and do a little bit of due diligence, you can kind of get this rough, rough sense of that this is a person who makes the people around them better off. or worse off.

I don't think that is as impossible a task as what you think. And you've got to keep your eyes open and be sensitive to if your thesis is confirmed day by day or disconfirmed day by day. Again, getting back to that conversation, in an earlier point in the conversation, where you offer trust, you trust first. And that trust is either reciprocated or violated. And just through a lifetime of doing that sort of thing, both you build that network of relationships,

you become one of the nodes on that web of trust and the people that you have it compounds and becomes bigger and bigger over time. And by the way, the best way for a new person to come on to that node is for them to be douched for by someone who was already on the node. So I'm sure, again, in the diligence you would have done for the people you've written about over the years,

he didn't just talk to the person that you were writing about. You talked to other people who had dealings with that person to kind of see if you were on the right track or not. And I suspect I think your hit ratio is probably pretty good. And if you were setting out to write the book today as compared 10 years ago, I dare to say, I think you might even be better at it today because you've been at the process for the last 10 years. you've developed your own filters and spidey sense and ways and methods to think about, am I on the right track or not? I really like this insight from Tom Gaynor that one of the ways you can assess whether a person

is going to be honest and honorable in your dealings with them, whether it's a CEO of a company that you're investing in or a money manager or whatever, is that most people leave a trail and you can see whether this is the kind of person who makes other people richer or poorer. And I think it's such an interesting and obvious insight, right? When you read stories about crimes, for example, you often see that someone who's done a particular crime, whether it's robberies or sexual assaults or murder or whatever, they have a modus operandi. It's remarkable to see how often the way that they do things is repeated. And likewise, I remember Tony Robbins would often say, look, success leaves clues.

And so I think just this awareness that there are these repeated patterns of behavior, it's obvious and at the same time really, really important. And also this idea that there's a kind of triangulation that goes on where you, we do this a lot as reporters, where you talk to other people to get a sense of whether a person is honest and honorable. And I do this a great deal. I mean, I actually, one of the reasons why I decided to go big on writing about Tom Gaynor in my book was I literally, I remember interviewing Chris Davis at his office in New York City. And as we were walking to the lift, the elevator in his building in Rockefeller Center, he was talking to me about Tom Gaynor, who he's close to.

And I'd interviewed Tom before and had been impressed with him. But as Chris was talking to me about Tom, I started to realize, actually, this is a really interesting guy, really outstanding, really interesting. guy, I should spend more time with him. And so I actually arranged to go spend two days in Tom's office in Virginia because of something Chris Davis had said about him. And I do this a lot. I mean, just this week, there's another well-known investor who I'm always a little mystified by, like whether he's an honorable person, whether he's not. And I was talking to another person who's going to be a guest on the podcast soon who knows this guy well. And I was saying, you know, I've heard this about him. Is it true? Is it not?

true. And he kind of convinced me that this guy was very honorable and impressive. And so there's always this sense that you're doing triangulation on people to see whether others will vouch for them. And I think it's just a really important part of your due diligence. It's analyzing betrayal that a person has left and talking to the people who know them well to see whether you're missing something. But the other thing I would say that's very distinctive about the investment business is that there's also a really important tell, which is you can see how they've structured things financially. You can see the fee structure to see whether they've structured the operation in a way that shows that they're looking out for themselves or that

they're looking out for you. And I was very struck when I went to the Berkshathaway annual meeting back in May. There was this point where you're sitting there and you're looking at Barford and Mangar, right, 99 years old, among. goes case and 92, the spring chicken Buffett sitting there. And they have their two most important successes, I guess, sitting there next to them for part of the meeting. This is Ajit Jane who runs the insurance business, who's been absolutely extraordinary. Greg Abel, who's going to be the successor to Buffett and is also incredibly capable. And in some ways, you're sitting there and you're thinking, okay, well, here are the alpha dogs, right? Buffett and Munga. And here are there,

you know, junior lieutenants. And then I'm thinking, well, actually, Greg Abel and Ajit Jane are paid $19 million each when I checked last. And Buffett Amunger are paid $100,000 each. And I think that's a fascinating insight that Buffett and Munger have built this company into this just enormous Goliath of a business that's worth over $700 billion. And yet they pay themselves $100,000 each. And it gives you a sense that they've structured the business in a way where they're looking to make money with you, not off you. So I think this is the other great tell is to ask yourself,

has this person I'm looking to do business with structured things in a way where our incentives and our interests are aligned? Are they looking out for me or are they looking out for themselves? And someone said to me recently, the real question is, who are you serving? You're serving someone, but are you serving yourself or are you serving the other person? The next clip that we have. This is the fifth and final clip, actually. This is part of an interview that I did with John Spears. I feel like not enough people really took notice of this interview. I think it came out at a weird time. And it didn't get quite the attention that I think it really deserves because John Spears is a remarkable person, a remarkable thinker, and a remarkable investor.

And he spent 48 years at this legendary firm, Tweedy Brown, and actually Buffett's original steak that he bought in Berkshathaway back when it was a textile mill. was bought through Tweedy Brown back when it was a broker. And so John Spears has this great long-term record over almost half a century at Tweedy Brown. And what's also always struck me about John in my past interviews with him is that he seems incredibly comfortable in his skin. He seems happy, well-adjusted, a lovely human being. And I'm always particularly interested in investors who were not only successful at making money, but also seem to be successful in other areas of their life.

So in this clip, we talk a bit about some of the spiritual beliefs underlying his approach to business and life that I think gives some clue to why he's cheerful and upbeat and has had a good life. Let's listen and then we'll discuss. Quakerism has obviously been a really important part of your life. And last time we met, we chatted about this. And you had talked about how I think your wife had introduced you when you were probably in your late 20s or early 30s to the Quaker church. And I was reading last night a little bit of faith and practice, the book that you said had really kind of had a huge impact on you early on.

And I was struck it said recognition that God's light is in every person helps us to overcome our apparent separation and differences from others. It leads to a sympathetic awareness of their needs and a sense of responsibility towards them. And I wonder if you could talk about how some of these ideas that you drew from Quakerism have enriched your life and kind of been a really important guide to you on how to behave towards others, how to behave as a money manager, how to behave as a husband or father, because it's obviously been a really essential part of your life and thinking about how to live. I'm really impressed with you said you read that. That's so interesting. It has had a big influence. I mean, the idea of that of God and every person, we're all children of God, that idea is very appealing to me.

And it sets up a way of trying to live your life, of trying to behave with other people, of trying to think of people as equal under God. And not necessarily people who have equal outcomes in life or any of that, but just a kind of a common human. So I think that it has helped me in trying to deal with other people, with hopefully deal, being okay, partner with my partners, sometimes disagree, but with respect and with humility that my opinion could be way wrong. You know, I don't have any perfect track record, any of that kind of thing. trying to live in one's family with those ideas. Yeah, and also the Quakers, the religious society of friends, is both communitarian and at the same time individualistic. The founder of Quakerism,

George Fox would say to his followers, what canst thou say? Meaning, what can you say as a human being, as an individual, as a unique creature, one of God's children, what can you say? Meaning, sort of speak your truth. Be honest. Try to be honest and truthful. And try not to fake it. If you're faking it, he called it you're, it's a mask. It's, you want to be, try to be honest. That's something that has had an impact on me. I'm no perfect person, but these Quaker sayings and mottos, I think have been very useful to me. When we were having lunch a few years ago, I was looking at my notes again over the last couple of days from our lunch and for our meeting at your house.

And we were talking about this subject. And one thing that you said that really struck me at the time is you were talking about forgiveness as well. And you said, yeah, trying to forgive yourself to realize you're not perfect. And that was really striking to me because I sort of, for me, I tend to be fairly self-flagellating. And I'm always struck by all of the many ways in which I'm, failing to live up to the values that I espouse. Can you talk a bit about that idea of forgiveness

and self-forgiveness? Well, I've always liked the idea of imperfection. And I just think that humility under God, that none of us are perfect creatures. I often, when my wife or somebody does some dumb little thing, I'll say, well, you'll be perfect in that next 12. months, 12 months for now, you'll finally be perfect. And I think that that attitude applies to oneself. I mean, you try to do the best you can, but a kind of a recognition almost of God's grace of kind of your, count your blessings, try to look at the glass half full, but don't whip yourself too hard when you make a mistake or you're not perfect or you say something that was stupid or dumb and you regret saying it. Try to get over it, move on. There's a beautiful

story. I think of some old Zen monk that I'm no doubt gobbling who said something like last year, a foolish old man, this year, no change. And I always love that, right? Because yeah, right. There's another one. Somebody said, God laughed. And you can laugh a lot at all the things it have to do with human behavior, human nature. If you approach looking at the newspaper with a sense of humor. I remember Tom Gaynor, who grew up Quaker, actually. Oh, did he? Yeah.

Is he the guy at Markle? Yeah, exactly. He's a wonderful guy. And actually, he, like your wife, I think, ended up becoming Episcopalian, if I remember correctly, but it's deeply influenced by Quakerism. He once was talking to me about, you know, how deeply flawed humans are. And he said something about human foibles and flaws, and then just chuckled uproariously.

And there was something kind of lovely about it, that he wasn't appalled and disgusted by how flawed we were. He was kind of amused. There was a sort of gentle awareness of all. Right, a sort of an ironic chuckling of the humor in life. I feel like I take things too seriously. So I think I was struck when you said that about trying to forgive yourself and to realize you're not perfect.

So that helped me. So thank you. I think it's rational too. It's rational. I mean, it's just plain true. One thing I really appreciate and enjoy about this clip is John Spears tone. There's a gentleness and a wry amusement and warmth about his comments. And I think an understanding that, yeah, we should try to act with humility and respect and kindness and should treat other people as our equals and be humble and the like.

But there's also a recognition that we are going to mess up. We're going to say the wrong thing and we're going to do the wrong thing from time to time. So we shouldn't be too tough on ourselves. And I often come back to a beautiful insight from a great mindfulness meditation teacher named Sharon Salzberg, who says that when you fall off track, you should let go with self-compassion and begin again. And I find that really helpful just because, you know, we're always messing up. I literally right before I recorded this, I scoffed down some lunch and spilled jam all over my shirt, my brand new pristine shirt, that no doubt will stain it permanently. And it's just a practical and pretty standard reminder of my own imperfection on the fact that I'm, you know, as Oscar Wilde once said, we're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

And so, yeah, we're stumbling along here. We're trying to figure out our way through the mud. But it's really helpful, I think, to keep our minds on these principles that people like John Spears and Tom Gainer and Monish talking about, because they give us a sense that there are certain types of behavior that are going to help us, both in business and life. And, yeah, we're not going to live up to them always, these standards. But if, as Tom Gainer would say, we're directionally correct, that's pretty darn good. So that's my goal for the day. And also, I'd like to spill less jam on my shirt if possible.

In any case, thanks so much for joining me today. And I'll be back very soon. Until then, do feel free to follow me on Twitter at William Green 72. And as always, please let me know how you're enjoying the podcast. It's always a real pleasure to hear from you. For now, take care. And stay well. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billioners by the Investors Podcast Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin, and every Saturday we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision consult a professional,

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