We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP603: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2024 w/ Stig Brodersen & William Green

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Every quarter, I look forward to speaking with a friend and co-host William Green. We talk about what has made us richer, wiser, and happier. In today's episode, we talk about what works at Heatherway director, Chris Davis, has taught us about the three phases in life, and how each phase is both wonderful and challenging. In life, the destination isn't the goal, rather the journey is the best part. William outlines why you should not partner with your friends until you're 40,

Starting point is 00:00:28 and after that, only partner with your friends. And he also tells us what he recently learned about kindness from the late Charlie Munger. I hope you'll join William and me on a quest for a richer, wiser, and happier life. You are listening to the Investors podcast. Since 2014, we studied the financial markets and read the books that influence self-made billionaires the most.

Starting point is 00:00:54 We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. Now for your hosts, Stake Broderson, and William. Green. Welcome to the Amster's podcast. I'm your host, Stake Broderson. And today, as always, for these quarterly calls that's called Richer Wiser Happier, of course. I'm joined by William Green. William, how are you today? I'm great. I'm very happy to be here with you. So, William, I want to continue this conversation where we left off last time. And perhaps the audience is sitting out there thinking, I have no idea what they talked about last quarter. But the thing I wanted to get back to here is,

Starting point is 00:01:39 It's not so much what we talked about last quarter, but I remember we, whenever we chat and we end the recording, I usually say something along the line says, William, you know, I'm going to let you go here soon, but just one quick thing. And then we end up talking for like an hour or whatever. And we talked about authenticity last time after a call. And I remember thinking, and I think I also mentioned that to you, William, we should probably have a longer discussion about that. So that's going to be the first segment here of today's episode. And you know, I don't know if it's a law of attracting kind of thing, but I kind of feel in the world that I'm navigating right now, I continuously hear so many people talking about that we need to be authentic. And I would also

Starting point is 00:02:21 say that I used to drink that Kool-A completely. After all, who doesn't like to be told, don't change anything about yourself? But perhaps that's also not what authenticity means. And so I remember Mani's Pop-Ras. He talked here on the show about, you know, having met up with Warren Buffett, having met up with Charlie, and he said that, you know, what you see is what you get with Warren Buffett. Like, whenever he's sitting up there during the Berkshire meeting, that's who he is whenever you're having dinner with him. Whereas he said that Charlie was quite different. He was filtered whenever he was on stage, which I remember to me, it came as a surprise because he doesn't seem that filtered, at least not compared to Buffett. But I, it also, I think also raises the question is then, there's anything wrong with that. And I should probably also put that over to you, like as introduction now that we talk about authenticity, you recently did a wonderful tribute to Charlemonger and you also had the chance to interview him. And would you say with Charlemonger, what you see is what you get with your interactions that you had with him? Yeah, I mean, people are complex,

Starting point is 00:03:23 right? That's the first, there's a, there's a beautiful, there's a beautiful teaching from a great teacher I've studied this guy called Soapenier Mbichet, who I've had on the podcast before, who talks about the different forms of eye like me. And, you know, there are different, there's a kind of public eye that I remember saying to him once, you seem incredibly free. And he said, well, it's a kind of dance where, you know, not really attached to this kind of public eye, the way the public sees me. I don't really, I don't really care about it that much.

Starting point is 00:03:53 You know, I just, I play with it. And so I don't, I think to some extent, Munger and Buffett have always been kind of playing with their public persona, right? I mean, Munga had his kind of gruff, I have nothing to add kind of persona. But I think in private, there was a different part of him. It's not that it's inauthentic, it's that there are so many parts of us and a different part of him came to light. I had an extraordinary thing yesterday, an email exchange where a venture capitalist who was part of the Zoom call that I had with Munga wrote to me with his response to the episode that I did about Charlie. It was really beautiful. And one thing he said to me is that in his, he obviously had a very close relationship with Charlie. He'd known him for a long time. And he said, in his final conversation with Charlie, Charlie said to him, I may have been a better investor than you, but you've been a better father than me. And that's, that's an extraordinary thing to tell someone. That's an incredibly generous thing to tell someone who you're mentoring. And that's a side of manga that we haven't seen. We haven't seen that part of him in public. The bit that is so honest,

Starting point is 00:04:59 and so self-aware that he's basically saying, yeah, you've been a much better father than me. And it's very helpful because it's also, it's reorienting for us because it's him saying that may be more important in a certain sense. Like here we are, we're all sort of focusing on becoming successful investors and becoming richer and more financially independent and more successful in the material world. And here you have this guy just shy of his hundreds birthday, this great sage, one of the greatest investors of all time, saying to the guy he's mentoring, you've been better father than me. I may have been a great investor, but you've been a great father. So I think you're

Starting point is 00:05:35 seeing different aspects of their personality. It doesn't mean they're inauthentic. It means they're playing a public role. And you know, you and I are playing a public role here. There are things that maybe you have to be more careful about saying in public or maybe you're worried about people judging you in a certain way and maybe you sense of yourself. I don't know. I try not to. But I think there is a kind of different persona. So I think it's just more helpful. I find increasing the older I get, the more I look at people, and I just think, you think of that beautiful line from the Pope Walt Whitman who said, I contain multitudes. We contain multitudes. We're so complex. We're so contradictory. And a person is simultaneously kind and decent and loving and probably immoral and full of lust and desire and judgment and competitive spirit. And you know, and these things can coexist. And under different circumstances, different parts of a personality will come to the fore. So I don't think it's really a matter of authenticity of a different part of that person's personality shows up in public or is different to different people. And this is one of the reasons why you read literature, right?

Starting point is 00:06:42 I started doing battle again the third time in my life with Marcel Proust, who I think is my favorite novelist of all time. And you start to read Proust, who's really amazing and an incredible observer of human nature. And you see there's this extraordinary character, Charles Swan, at the center of the novel. I mean, it's a million and a half words. It's 3,000 pages, this novel. This is why I've failed to get to the end twice in the past. And you start to see that everyone is viewing Swan through a different lens. And they're kind of constructing this character. They're creating narratives about this guy that aren't a very partial. They're not the whole truth. And so you're kind of, and he doesn't even understand himself. He's deluding himself. And so I think when you're trying to judge a person, you need to be aware there's a public persona. There's the private life, there's the bit they don't even understand about themselves, there's the virtues wrapped up with the flaws. It's all there. And it's kind of humbling. I think it means that we should be a little more tolerant and a little less judgmental and maybe a little more compassionate towards ourselves as well, because we also contain all of these different aspects. We're not,

Starting point is 00:07:49 we're not one thing. I don't know. Does any of that resonate at all for you, Stick? I think all of it risen this with me. First of all, I think that there's something to be said about potentially defining what authenticity is. You know, sometimes whenever I hear people arguing about something, I very much think about, do they have the same interpretation of the word, the situation, like whatever it is, and perhaps that's where the miscommunication happens. And, you know, I thought a lot about it here, here on TAP, for example. You know, authenticity gives us this warm and fuzzy feeling and it sounds good. It's almost like, you know, don't give up. Like, it sounds good. Yeah, I'm not a critter. And then, you know, there are probably a lot of things you should

Starting point is 00:08:32 be quitting. You know, there was, like, if you're 42 years old and you want to be a professional football, you should probably be quit a long time ago because that's not who you are. And, you know, I remember, oh, I don't even, it was probably like four or five years back, whatever. Like, we, we started our Bitcoin show. And I remember Preston got a lot of flag from that because he set it up. And Now, whenever you come from the school of Buffet and Munger, you're not supposed to say anything about Bitcoin. And but I, whenever I look back, well, there's so much to say about that. But if now that we're having the angle here authenticity, wouldn't it be terrible if Preston talked about Buffett and Munger if his life was, you know, more centered around Bitcoin or his, not life, but you know, his professional journey is more surrounded about Bitcoin. That, that seemed to be a very inauthentic way of living your life. And that's, that's not what you should be doing. And so I thought a lot of

Starting point is 00:09:22 about that situation. And also, I was meeting up with a relatively new friend some time ago. And it was, it was someone who'd been listening to the show for, for years. And then he sent me an email. He asked me if I wanted to meet up with him. And, you know, he promised me lunch. So I said, sure. But, um, but like, there was, there was interesting. And, and, you know, we, we became good friends. We are still good friends. And then after, I don't know, we probably met four or five times, something like that. And he said one thing to me. And I should probably ask, and I should probably asked me if it's good or bad at some point in time, but he said to me that he thought that I was a good suburban dad. I don't know if he used to the word good, but he said like, he thought

Starting point is 00:10:01 I had a life like a suburban dad. And now that he got to know me, he realized I lived just like Mick Jagger. And again, I don't know if that was good or bad. But a small part of me was like, this is not good. Like the first thought I had was this is bad, not because I have anything against Mick Jagger. But there was something about the person tells me, that he was not. The person, me that I was not authentic or he was not who I believed I was where I thought to myself, that can't be good. And so leaving Mick Jagger aside. Let's probably just do that. And what is it that he thought it resembled Mick Jagger and you were going off and sleeping with tons of groupies and traveling around the world? I hope that wasn't the case. I actually had to look up

Starting point is 00:10:51 afterwards. I should say, like, I always listen to the stone, so I don't want this to come across as. I actually had my first concept with the stones when I was like 13 years old or something like that. So, big fan, I think it was very much that I, I think the reason why it happened was that I told him about the way that I lived my life in the sense that every time I make a decision, I try to project, I'm not always successful, but I try to project how happy it's going to make me. and I put, it's going to sound really, really nerdy, but I can't help myself. I'm going to put a number on from one to 10 for the remaining time units of my life on that decision, whatever it might be, big or small.

Starting point is 00:11:32 And it's not like an Excel sheet type of thing. It's more like a mental exercise. And then I'm going to make my decision based on that. And that's how I made all my big decisions in life. And he felt it was such a hedonic treadmill type of way of doing it. it and it kind of like, Mick Jagger, like, isn't that? And I don't know, because I think he said, I don't remember the right number, but I think like Mick Jagger has like, I don't know, eight kids with five different women or something like that. I had zero kids and one wife and I'm

Starting point is 00:12:03 very happy about her. So I hope it doesn't come across like in any kind of wrong way. But anyways, yeah, I don't know if that was a good response. It's more the focus on pleasure and happiness that he's drawing the connection. Probably, yes. But I should also say that whenever you do that, I think it's natural to think that you're very short-term focused. I don't think it is. I think if you play that game, well, depending on their temperament, I think you're very long-term focused. It's the same reason I only own five stock in my portfolio. I think it would drive me crazy to own 20 stocks.

Starting point is 00:12:37 Like I would be too stressed about all the competitors and 10Ks I have to read and all of that. It just doesn't seem to be a good life for me. And then they're probably somewhat saying they're not diversified enough. probably depends on your temperament whenever it comes to that. But I think what I wanted to get back to here. And actually, William, you had a very good point here before we started because I prepared like a six page page outline. And one of the things you said to me was we should probably just see where it takes us and not always stick with the outline, which is something absolutely love about you, William. And it's also because I'm capable of sticking with an outline.

Starting point is 00:13:14 So I mean, my point to you was, look, you prepare. But then let's just just be present and talk and see where it goes. And so, you know, do you remember in my conversation with Annie Duke, I think we discussed the fact that the opposite of a virtue is also a great virtue, right? So as she pointed out in her book, quitting or quit, the ability to fold when you have a bad hand in life or in poker or in business or whatever is actually really smart, but also the opposite of that virtue of being able to quit is grit and resilience and sticking, which is also a virtue. And so I think one of the things that's difficult and complex and nuanced about life is that whenever you talk about a virtue like authenticity, there's a sort of polarity to it, right?

Starting point is 00:14:00 Like, it can be a problem if you're so authentic that you're antisocial or a sociopath and you just say anything that comes to your mind and you're just brutal to people. Likewise, if you're so prepared for something, so maniacally prepared, and then you stick totally to your strategy, you can't just be present and go with the flow. And if you're so committed to going with the flow and you're just present and you don't do your preparation, it's also out of whack. So there's always got to be this kind of dynamic tension between two virtues, I think. And even there, I'm wrong as well, because there are times where you have to be really extreme, right? You listen to the episode that I just did with Rick Reeder, who's this guy who, as you know, manages $2.6 trillion,

Starting point is 00:14:43 which probably means he manages more money than anyone else in the world. And, and he's, and he's very extreme. He's like an extreme mental athlete, a guy who only sleeps, you know, four and a half hours a night. He just has like this weird wiring that enables him to be like this super intense mental athlete,

Starting point is 00:15:01 just driving himself to extreme. So even here, when I'm saying, you should be balanced, you know, it's always balancing to the two sides of a virtue because it can be a floor as well as a virtue. Even that's kind of wrong. Sometimes you do really well

Starting point is 00:15:13 when you're just incredibly extreme. So I think it becomes really, I mean, I don't want to tie us up in knots, but I think it becomes hard to make rules in life. And so one of the real challenges is, you know, I think this is really what we're talking about with authenticity is, is groping towards a way of life that's true to who you are, that's congruent with who you are at the deepest level. So when you just mentioned that you own five individual stocks, because it would drive you nuts to own 20 stocks, you've found a way to invest that's congruent that's aligned with your personality, with your mind, with your temperament.

Starting point is 00:15:53 That's very important. Likewise, with Preston, the fact that he's so focused on Bitcoin in some way is deeply aligned with who he is. And I remember, like, before I started my podcast, I had a chat with, with Preston over the phone. And I was asking him about Bitcoin. And it became pretty clear that he didn't want to tout any other cryptocurrencies on the show because he was like, well, they're just not safe enough. People are going to get hurt. I'm kind of paraphrasing him in a way that's probably misrepresenting him. But there was a real sense of responsibility. You know, he's a guy with a sense of duty and responsibility. And so even though he's, you know, in some ways violating the code of, you know, the value investors like Buffett and Munger by exploring

Starting point is 00:16:38 a cryptocurrency, which, you know, doesn't, you know, it's hard to value in the way that you could value a business. It's a different type of asset, different type of investment. more of a speculation, probably in Buffett and Munger's view. It's true to Preston to who he is. And the fact that he's doing it in a way that's kind of responsible in a weird way and dutiful is also true to Preston and his nature. To your point before about being authentic, like it's difficult to do something if it's not congruent with who you are as a person.

Starting point is 00:17:09 And I think one of the challenges that you're going to face, whenever, for example, the 20s, you make a lot of mistakes and you do a lot of things that probably seems like it's not you, but I think it still is you. You just, you can't skip your youth. You have to figure it out who you are. I think that's another element to it. And so, for example, for me, it's not uncommon to spend 30 hours preparing for an episode, which probably sounds ridiculous. And it's not uncommon for me to perhaps type up 10 pages of what I'm going to talk about throughout, like whenever we're having an episode, like with you, William or someone else, I don't know if I can work any other way. And I can't help but wonder if

Starting point is 00:17:48 I should do it differently or if that's just my way of doing interviews. And I look at, for example, you, William, and it seems to me that you're extremely prepared whenever you speak with your guests. At the same time, you're willing to take the conversation in whatever kind of way without preparation, without thinking, you know, for hours about which question you've got to ask. But the same time, you spend five years on your book, Richard, or why's a happier? which is in a way extremely authentic, but at the same time, so perfect into the very detail. How much do you prepare and curate before you say anything? And how is that perceived in practice?

Starting point is 00:18:24 And I want to throw over to you before I paint myself too much into a corner here, William. Does that make any sense to you whenever you're thinking about your own process as a writer, as a podcaster, as a business person? Yeah. There's a very important insight from Ray Dalio, who I've interviewed a couple of times on the podcast. And Ray, who's an important figure in your life intellectually as well, did this book, principles, your guided journal. And one of the things that he said that I quoted back to him in my interview, because it's

Starting point is 00:18:55 so important, and it's a really important guide to what you just said, is he said, life is a journey to learn about your own nature and find the right paths that are consistent with it. And when I said that, he was sort of horrified because he's like, people need to understand your accent. And he said, life is a journey to learn about your own nature and find the right paths, not paths, that are consistent with it. And this is such an important insight, right? I mean, it's really important. This is something I think people need to internalize, or at least that I need to internalize,

Starting point is 00:19:26 which is this all starts with self-awareness, right? So you need to start by understanding your own nature, understanding your own talents, your own principles, your own beliefs, your own priorities, your purpose, your mission. what your skills are, what you're wired to do, what game you're equipped to succeed at. And then having figured out your approach, whether it's to interviewing, to investing, to writing, to combining work and family, whatever it might be, then you have to find the right parts that are consistent with it. And so that's very helpful because it adds a little bit of a system, a process to this kind of vague and co-ate question about how to be authentic, which I, you know,

Starting point is 00:20:14 can be interpreted so many different ways. And so one of the things I liked about the guided journal that Ray put together is he would list various goals and priorities in your life. And he would say, okay, so you figure out which of these things matter most to you. So he would say, for example, is you would pick, I think it was the top three. So there would be things like one desire might be to be liked or loved. One might be to be ethically good or to create something new or to have an impact on the world or to help other people or to keep learning and evolving or to understand the world or to have good friends or to have a thriving family. And so once you start to look at what actually matters most to you, then you can start to construct a life that's consistent with that.

Starting point is 00:21:07 And one of the things that I figured out as I was working on the book, Richer, Wiser, Happier, particularly when I was writing the epilogue, which is really about what constitutes a truly successful and happy and truly abundant life, is this very, very basic, fundamental mundane point, which is that this is different for each of us. It's so different. And I remember how having this conversation once with Tony Robbins and he said he was talking about what constitutes a beautiful life and I remember him saying well so for one person it might be having two or three kids and just having this beautiful life at home with their two or three kids or another person might be having a really beautiful garden it's about leading a life that's consistent with your values

Starting point is 00:21:49 he also once said to me that every morning he thinks about I think his phrase to me was he said he'll ask let me let me be a blessing to everyone I meet today and And so that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's pretty congruent with me. I mean, I, I, I hear that. And I'm like, I understand that. I, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll often think to myself, let me be a force for good. Please, help me to be a force for good. And so I'm not just going out there in the world thinking, let me sell more books. Let me become, you know, more powerful. Let me become richer. I'm thinking, help me to be a force for good, please. And so that's very idiosyncratic. my sense of priorities. And so I like the fact that Dahlio with his, with his system of doing things, because he's much more process oriented than me, is getting you to really probe who you are, what's important to you, what your values are, what your priorities are. And then you find paths or paths that are suitable to it. And I think when I look at the great investors, there's a kind of, there's an ability to harness their own idiosyncrasy or craziness or crazy talent.

Starting point is 00:23:03 I mean, look at Bill Miller, who I've become friends with over many years of interviewing him over probably 23 years, the amazing investor. And when I think of Bill, I had this revelation where I was interviewing him for richer, why he's a happier. And I spent a couple of days with him and I was at his home in the suburbs of Baltimore. And he also lives elsewhere. but I was in his home and we were sort of walking into his garden. I was looking at where he plans to have his ashes scattered and stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:23:29 And I had this revelation as we were walking into the garden that what I've observed over 23 years of interviewing him on and off is the process of Miller coming unbound, like that he's become more and more true to himself. And there's a, I think in some strange way, I felt kind of sense of pride in Bill doing that, in the fact that this brilliant guy had gradually become more and more true to himself. And so he's so idiosyncratically brilliant. And so when he was at his peak of fame, when he beat the market for 15 years running, which is impossible and unprecedented, and he did it and then got to something like

Starting point is 00:24:13 $77 billion in assets under management, he was sort of, there was something extraordinary about it, but in some ways he was part of this big institution. at Lake Mason. And so he had to report to the board and he had, you know, he had constraints in what he could say and what he could do. And then when he left and set up his own company and he was working with his son and he was working with Samantha McElmore, who we've also interviewed on the podcast, it was much smaller. He only had a couple of billion dollars in assets under management, but it was very true to who he was. And then he got to a point over the last year or so where he retired and he's just managing his own money. And I was chatting to him,

Starting point is 00:24:51 a few months back and he's like, yeah, I have the holy trinity of investments now. He's like, I've got my Bitcoin, which he bought massively early between $200 and $500 a coin, much of it. He had his enormous stake in Amazon, which he'd owned for more than 20 years, which at one point, he was the biggest individual shareholder of Amazon whose name wasn't Bezos. And then he had a private investment in the company, clear that, you know, when you go through an airport, it checks on you. Now, he has lots of other investments. So he's not as concentrated as it sounds, but that he described as the Holy Trinity. And so there's something about how he's become more and more true to himself. And so now, I remember talking to his wife as well, he got remarried. And she was so excited about

Starting point is 00:25:37 this new chapter of his life because he was really free now to manage his own money, to read and to think. And so there's been this process of becoming more and more congruent with his inner self. And so I think in some ways what we're wrestling with here is this practical question of how do we find our own place in the world where there are so many compromises, right? You need to work with other people. You need to have a job. You need to make money. You need to have a family or whatever or friends. And their interests may not be the same as yours or maybe you have your mortgage to pay and stuff like that. How do you do all of that while also being true to your own nature and it's hard? But I think that's what we're really wrestling with.

Starting point is 00:26:21 And it helps to start with self-awareness to know what's really valuable to you, what's really important to you, what really constitutes a beautiful life to you. What you mentioned there about becoming more and more true to who you are, if I can push a big back on that. And the reason why I'm doing that, it comes from a mindset of we tend to, perhaps for better for worse, put a lot of emphasis on what we would say on our deathbed. Like, this is what was right. This is what was wrong.

Starting point is 00:26:51 And I, you know, there, whenever you read about it, like, there are certain things that people say on the deathbed that are super, super important to them. I can't help but think whether or not we are true to a self. We're just true to different types of cells throughout our life. And so, let's say that you are the AIDS dev of Bill Miller today. Should you regret that you work so hard whenever you're 28? Like, one of the things that we say to each other on a. deathbed is I should spend more time with friends and family. I don't I'm not trying to to say you shouldn't

Starting point is 00:27:23 spend time with friends and family. You should spend more time working. But I also can't help but think some of those people like the really successful people, they've really achieved their flow state whenever they were working and loved what they did. Was that a mistake necessarily? And I don't know. There's probably a middle ground. I'm not trying to say either or but I wanted to I wanted to throw it back over to you, William, sort of like open up whenever I say perhaps authenticity. and being true to who you are. Yes, you have to learn who you are. But even whenever you reach a certain age

Starting point is 00:27:53 and you are quite sure of who you are and what makes you happy and what doesn't make you happy, even that changes as you grow older. Yeah, it changes a lot. When I look back on my own life now that I'm 55, I can see that, and I think we'll talk about this later in more depth, this idea of the phases of life.

Starting point is 00:28:13 I can see that my own ambitions and priorities have changed. So this isn't a set thing. You're constantly readjusting. And partly you readjust because you see that certain things didn't work. So, you know, when I got to 40, well, I got off to a very quick start in my 20s, right? So I left college at basically 20 because it's only three years in England and I was young for my year and I didn't take a gap here or anything. And so I left Oxford at 20. I started writing for things like The Spectator, which is great English magazine.

Starting point is 00:28:47 the New Yorker when I was in my early 20s. And so I, and back then the New Yorker, the talk of the town section that I wrote for didn't have byline. So I used to joke that I was anonymously famous. So it wasn't like I was such a big shot, but I was doing well, writing for these good magazines. And then, you know, I went to Forbes and a place like that. And I wrote a place like fortune. And I felt like kind of a big shot. And I really wanted people to notice me. It was really important for me to get my byline in big magazines and have people see how smart I was and how smart I was and how, you know, I would sometimes write these kind of investigative pieces where I would take people down. And so it was like I was fearless and I was tough and I was combative. And at a certain

Starting point is 00:29:27 point, that part of your character just doesn't exist in quite the same way. I'm just not as combative now. And so one of the things you see in Rich or Wiser Happier in the book is I really only write about people I like. I kind of intentionally didn't give much space to people who, were just rapacious billionaires who didn't care about how they behaved and didn't care about other people and had no depth to them, were only interested in the money and just winning this game, maximizing that performance. That's a reflection of my own weird idiosyncratic value system that I just wasn't interested in writing about people I regarded as shallow or so deeply flawed or immoral or that they, you know, in David Hawkins terms, they make you go weak. And so I was

Starting point is 00:30:17 writing about people who make you go strong. And so choosing to write about, say, Nick's sleep in case Sicaria was a very idiosyncratic thing because they were these young guys who had retired at the age of 45 and closed down their fund and nobody had ever written about them because they'd never given any interviews. And so that, I was taking a huge risk spending probably five or six months working on that chapter about these two unknown guys who represent an extraordinary way of operating in the world, very high quality way of operating in the world. So I don't know. I feel like when I was a 26-year-old hungry, hard-edged journalist desperately hoping for people to notice me, I wouldn't have been as impressed with Nick and Zach. But as a middle-aged journalist, I look at them and I'm like,

Starting point is 00:31:07 those guys embody so much that's right about how to operate in the world. Let me hold them up as a counter example for all of the people who think that capitalism is just scummy and hard-edged and selfish and mean-spirited. And these were two guys who, you know, made a fortune for their investors, kept closing the fund to new investors whenever it got too big. They first closed the fund when it was like $100 million in assets when it was tiny and then returned $3.5 billion to their investors because they were like, you know, well, we only really own Amazon and Costco and Berkshire and a couple of other positions that are less important. Why should we charge you for that?

Starting point is 00:31:48 And when I talked to Charlie Munga, Munga said, I've never talked about this publicly, Munga said, can you imagine those two guys how ethical they were that they did that, that they returned all of that money? You know, what an unusual piece of behavior that was. I mean, that was one of the things Charlie liked most about the book, I think, was the chapter about Nick and Zach, because they represented this different way of doing business.

Starting point is 00:32:12 And in an industry that kind of appalled Charlie in many ways because people were overcharging for lousy products that were too complex and self-serving. Here were these guys who had this very simple product, this very simple vehicle that wasn't designed to maximize their assets under management or their fees. It was just maximized. It was optimized to get great performance and to turn a dollar into $10. And they decided they were just going to treat people ethically and treat each other ethically. And that really impressed Charlie. And so I think as you evolve in your own life,

Starting point is 00:32:48 the things that impress you and interest you just change. And maybe some of that early ego driven stuff where you're just like, I hope people notice me. And I hope I beat these other guys. And I hope I'm better than my brother. And I hope, you know, I get more clicks or more, you know, there's still that part of me. I mean, it's not like it's all gone. But it's less insatiable. and a desire to do something that's good and helpful becomes much more prominent. And so focusing on people like Nick and Zach is a way of, in a way, promoting a different form of capitalism that's kinder, more decent, more honorable. So I would have rolled my eyes at that 20 years ago.

Starting point is 00:33:31 I would have thought, really, you're going to be out there on your soapbox, proselytizing for how to do things more honorably. I would have been exposing the scummia side of capitalism because it would have made me feel good to kind of take people down because I think I probably had more of a chip on my shoulder back then. 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

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Starting point is 00:37:56 All right. Back to the show. William, if I can just paint a bit more color around, this chapter with Neg and Sack. And I don't know if it surprised you, William. And obviously, you spoke with a lot of people about your book. But what I hear people mainly talking about is chapter six, which is very telling here. It, which is about Nick and Sack. For those of you who are not as nerd as me, it's like, oh, that's so much. Chapter six of the book. Perhaps you haven't read or perhaps you have. And this is probably healthy. You don't remember what all the chapters are all

Starting point is 00:38:26 about. But so Nick and Sack has this amazing track record. So over 13 years, the benched is MSCI world index. They returned 117 or the index returned and they returned in their portfolio, which is mainly Amazon Costco and Berksha, like you said, a few other positions, but those are the three big positions, 921. So it's like the return was just amazing. And then whenever they could, you know, could chart all this money in performance fees because it was poor performance fees, you know, they decided to close down the fund probably because I think you mentioned that Nick wanted to travel and, you know, spend some time with his kids.

Starting point is 00:39:04 And he wasn't like, like we say here on the show, you don't need to be financial independent 20 times over. Like if you do, if you're financially independent once, that's enough. Yeah, and they wanted to quit so they could give back the money to society in a way that created enduring value. And Zach said to me at one point, he said,

Starting point is 00:39:23 I felt like we had solved the problem of investing. We'd figured out the best business model. We'd figured out what, worked. And it would have been a bit more like rinse and repeat if we had just kept going. And I, I mean, there's more about this that I could say that I don't really want to say. But I think, I think Nick would have happily gone on a little longer. I think Zach, for various personal reasons and for intellectual reasons, kind of wanted to be done and to focus on family and the like. So that's interesting as well, right? It was, it was about the solving of the problem. It wasn't about the maximizing

Starting point is 00:40:00 of money for them. And that's very idiosyncratic. And so that gets again at this issue of authenticity. One of the reasons why Nick and Zach make you go strong is because they operated in such a ornery way where they were like, no, we're just going to do it our way. And there's this wonderful story that they told it, I think is in the book where the heirs to the Tetrapak fortune

Starting point is 00:40:26 had some people managing money for them and they came through to the offices in Chelsea and London. when Nick and Zach were working. And they were like, yeah, we'll invest a big amount. I don't know, maybe it was 100 million or something. It was a big amount. But they wanted to see Nick and Zach's research on each stock so that, you know, basically they could piggyback on the research and use it for themselves.

Starting point is 00:40:48 And I'm guessing a lot of people who ran a small fund would have said yes to that. And Zach said to me that he was watching Nick get more and more irritated by these guys coming in and demanding this. And he said, you know, Nick is such a nice guy. And he's sitting there, like, crossing his legs and crossing his arms and getting more and more irritated. And Zach, because he knows him, can see that he's getting more and more irritated. And he said, after about 15 minutes, Nick just showed them the door.

Starting point is 00:41:15 That's an extraordinary piece of self-awareness, right? That they knew that the fees didn't matter that much to them. That they wanted to partner with people who were aligned with them. They would get people to sign a piece of paper saying they understand. understood, this is I recall anyway, that they understood that they were going to invest for basically at least five years. And it wasn't binding in any way, but it was placing in a different mental space, this fund, this investment, that it wasn't about short-term trading. This is a long-term thing. And even five years, not very long-term. And they had a lot of institutional investors who were

Starting point is 00:41:51 extremely long-term. So there was an alignment in the way that they chose their partners. There was an alignment in the type of investments that they had, which had a very long shelf life. These were companies that were, you know, think of something like Costco, right? I mean, it embodies this business model that they loved that was their favorite business model, which is scale economy is shared, right? So as it grew in scale, as it had more revenues, instead of pocketing all of that money for itself and giving it to its shareholders, it would give a better and better deal to its customers. And so it was sharing those scale economies. And as it did that, the customers became more and more loyal, loved the company more, did more business there. And so it became kind of this

Starting point is 00:42:35 virtuous cycle where instead of size becoming an anchor, it became actually a strength. And so it's a really interesting thing, because if you think about the principle that that embodies the way Costco was behaving, it's very long term, right? It's long term, greedy, right? It's long term, greedy, rather than short-term greedy, as Buffett might put it. And so it's saying, well, no, if we defer gratification and we don't line our pockets as much as possible now, and we just keep acting decently and keep creating a great product, in the end, it'll benefit everyone.

Starting point is 00:43:09 They were trying to take care of all of their stakeholders, right? They try to keep their employees happy. They try to not squeeze their partners so brutally, their suppliers so brutally that they're going to hate doing business with Costco, although obviously it's super efficient and tough. place to be a partner with. They treat their customers very well. And Wall Street couldn't stand this, right? Because it meant they had very low margins. And so when Nick and Zach boarded, it was very cheap because Wall Street couldn't understand the benefits of this long-term principle. And built into that

Starting point is 00:43:41 long-term approach is a focus on sharing. It's that you receive these great bounties from your customers, and then you share those spoils with them. And so it gets at a kind of deep principle in life. So the companies that Nick and Zach were investing with were deferring gratification, were treating people decently and honorably. The partners they had in their fund were long term and were deferring gratification. The way that they read and studied material research was congruent, was consistent with who they were. So Zach said to me at one point, yeah, we would get all of this Wall Street research and we'd let it kind of gather in a pile and then you'd dip into it once in a while for a few minutes and then you'd realize what rubbish it all was and you'd tip it into the trash can and then you'd go off and

Starting point is 00:44:29 you'd just do your own research and so they were doing independent research they were visiting masses of companies and they were studying business models and they were reading a lot and so their research process was consistent with their character and then the way they treated each other the way they structured their own partnership was very consistent with with their values so the partnership was built on kindness. And as Nick said to me, kindness has a, you know, good behavior has a longer shelf life. And so all of these things in a world of short termism, they had chose a longer term approach, a high quality approach over the low quality approach. And so if you look at them, one of the reasons that make you go strong is, is that there's an authenticity, even in their in their

Starting point is 00:45:18 oddness, their idiosyncrasy, that in every area of their life. in where they had their office. Their office was above like, you know, a Chinese herb store on King's Road. Everyone else is working in Mayfair in London in like these fancy offices. And they're working, you know, in this light-filled office full of art, full of books in Chelsea. And when I went to visit them there, Zach didn't even have a desk. Literally, he's so idiosyncratic that he just has like a kind of lazy boy kind of chair. and they have like their beekeeper suits that both of them had hanging on the wall next to each other.

Starting point is 00:45:56 So these guys were like these two beautiful oddball humans who didn't really care about the money so much and didn't really care about publicity, didn't care about marketing. All they cared about was this intellectual experiment of, let's see if we can turn a dollar into $10 and perform in a really ethical, decent way. And then once we're done with it and we solved the problem, let's figure out how to give the money back to society in a way that creates the most enduring value for society, while also taking care of our families. So, you know, it's not like they've taken a vow of poverty, but they decided that there was going to be a certain number that they, you know, X that they needed. And above that, everything was going back to society. So something beautifully consistent about that. And all of us are going to make different decisions about what really is valuable to us, what values we're living by, how we want to treat other people. But knowing that there's this example of Nick and Zach is an incredibly helpful thing because you can say, I want to be more like that. And William, can we talk a bit more about the intersection between authenticity, values, principles?

Starting point is 00:47:04 And the reason why I bring it up is that you mentioned Dahlio's book, Principles before, which is just such a wonderful for book. and the idea of principles, something that is timeless, something that, you know, in all cultures would be perceived the same way. And I thought a lot about that. And I also thought a lot about as I was reading your book, and I'm sure a lot of people have been reading your book thinking about, how can I apply the teachings from the book? And I think it's different for everyone.

Starting point is 00:47:33 I also think it has to do with the obvious fact that you were speaking with these extraordinary people who are just wired a certain way that not a lot of people are. So we can probably not all, for example, Rick Reader, I don't think he was a part of your book, as I remember it.

Starting point is 00:47:48 I don't think we can go out and just say, four and a half hour sleep, brilliant. Like, that's enough for me. That's, like, there are some people who can do that.

Starting point is 00:47:57 Perhaps we probably not all us can. Yeah, it may be one in a thousand. It may be, it may be that he's a physical anomaly. I used to work with this multi-billionaire who I helped write his autobiography. And he survived on four hours sleep.

Starting point is 00:48:11 And he was just, he was a, he was a very, very unusual man. He was wired, very unusually. You felt like if you, if you went into a market, like a souk or something where they had carpets and artworks, and he went in with $5,000, you knew that he would come out with $100,000 worth of stuff. Like he just, there was something very idiosyncratic. So a lot of this is about understanding your own strengths. And so, you know, Nick and Zach had very different strengths. Nick was very broad in his reading.

Starting point is 00:48:44 Zach was narrower and was more mathematical. So again, with all of these people, it's understanding what your strengths are, what game you're equipped to win. And so, William, I wanted to talk about, perhaps my favorite part of Chapter 6 year with Nika Sack, where the talk about the way that they structured their investment company.

Starting point is 00:49:04 And so how the story goes is that SAC insisted that Nick should own 51% of their investment firm because if there wasn't a disagreement, then he trusted Nick enough to make the right decision. And Nick said that to him it was impossible to abuse a partner who were basically handling him and a loaded revolver. And pastor across the table said, go on, shoot me if you want me or shoot me if you like. And I think that's such a wonderful story.

Starting point is 00:49:27 And I've been telling everyone and their mother about this wonderful book. And I won't be your blast because I think I already praised it 10 times. But I really have mentioned, especially this principle. And I think the more affluent my friends, like, I have a group of friends or more than perhaps another group of friends. And especially if they're part of the value investing community, that part like really resonates with them. You know, they've seen the way that Buffett and Munger interact and, you know, having a business

Starting point is 00:49:57 partner and Charlie Munger in this relationship has been the junior partner, the way that everything was structured back in the day. And it makes a lot of sense to them. And then I've spoken with other friends about this wonderful, which I thought was a principle that perhaps even transcended, you know, cultures and time. And they look at me and at best they look at me as scalable. Because who would ever hand someone a loaded gun? And that's just ridiculous.

Starting point is 00:50:24 And so one of the things I wanted to mention here, which is going to sound perhaps a bit like a nog on Negan Sack, which is not at all of the probably wonderful human beings, is that perhaps it's easy to have principles whenever you can afford them, which by definition, means that they're not principles. Again, please for free to challenge the very premise of me asking you this question. It's very complicated. I'll remind people of a quote from Ben Franklin that Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett often used, which is an empty sack can't stand straight. And I think it's difficult when you come from a place of emptiness, when you feel a lack, when you feel a sense of poverty in your own life, it's difficult to stand straight. And

Starting point is 00:51:08 they've talked about this in terms of countries as well, that if a country has a lot of poverty and lawless nurse, you know, it's difficult for the company, for the country to operate in a really upstanding way. Then there's also this opposite side of it, which is that, as Guy Speer would say, you know, people would often say to guy, well, look how, look how kind you are, look how much you spend time, you know, helping other people and trying to be decent and trying to be honest and stuff. And they would say, you know, if I were successful, if I were rich, I would do that too. And Guy's point when I've had this discussion with him in the past is you have to kind of make the decision before you're really rich and successful that you're going to operate in this way. And then good things tend to follow. And Tony Robbins once said the same sort of thing to me where he was talking about philanthropy and charity. And he was saying, look, if you, I'll get this slightly cobbled, but he was basically saying,

Starting point is 00:51:59 if you won't give away $10 when you have $1,000, you're not going to give away. you know, whatever, 10,000 when you have a million. You know, it's you start giving money away and helping others when you have almost nothing and you just give a small amount. You don't wait until you're rich before you start helping others. And I think there's an act of courage and trust in deciding that even though my sack is not full and I don't feel a full sense of abundance, I don't feel fully secure, I'm still going to help other people. I'm still going to try to operate in a decent way. I'm still going to give money away. I think comically you get more brownie points for I mean, it's a ridiculous way to put it, but comically you get more brownie points for operating

Starting point is 00:52:46 well when it's harder, I think. And I remember, I mean, I talked to Chris Davis years ago, I think for the book, we also had him on the podcast recently about Munger and I was asking Chris, who was close to Munga about Munga's spiritual beliefs and whether Munga had any, religious belief or whether he was agnostic or atheistic or whatever. And he said that he thought that for Munga operating in a really moral, upright way when he didn't think he was going to get rewarded in the afterlife, actually was kind of made Munger almost happier. There was an aspect of wearing a hair shirt, like not, he wasn't doing it to get his reward in the afterlife. He was doing it because it was right to behave in an ethical way. And so I don't know, it's, it's complex this stuff.

Starting point is 00:53:33 but I think I would encourage people not to fall into the delusion that you should wait to behave decently and honorably and charitably and the like. You know, I wrestle with this myself, right? Because there are times in my life where I was struggling more financially or where I'd been laid off from a job and I had enormous expenses because I was living in London and had two kids in private school and the like and lots of, and big rent in London and the like, which is a very expensive city. and I felt that sense of lack and that sense of fear. And when I look back,

Starting point is 00:54:06 I'm really glad that I did certain things during that time where I look back and I'm like, that was really irrational, really. I gave money to that or I did that. And I'm not saying in a self-righteous way, like a self-congratulatory way, I look back and I'm like, it was almost kind of nuts.

Starting point is 00:54:20 But actually it was very important because it was an act of trust and faith in the future. And so, yeah, don't wait. Don't wait. and don't assume that for very rich people, it's really easy to give stuff away. Because I think part of what you're doing

Starting point is 00:54:39 when you help others and you try to be charitable and you try to act ethically and the like, you're breaking your addiction to money, your dependence on money, your delusion that the money is going to be the thing that's going to make you happy. And when you let go of it by giving some money away, there's a kind of psychological free.

Starting point is 00:55:00 that comes with that, where you're trusting that there's going to be more. There's a, I often talk with you about the Zohar, this beautiful ancient mystical text, which is written in Aramaic, which I try to read almost every day a little bit of. And there's a bit in it where it talks about being one who gives and yet increases. I love that idea that you can, you can tap into this consciousness where you're one who gives and yet increases. It's not a zero-sum game. And so as you give money away, or as you help people, or you give you,

Starting point is 00:55:30 your time away or whatever, strangely, you can tap into this system where you end up with more, you end up with greater abundance, however you define it, not just financially, but in terms of your happiness, your relationships, all of these things. And so it's a different type of consciousness and it's a leap of faith. And it can seem kind of gullible to do that. But you and I have done this in our business dealings ourselves, right? I mean, when you and I were first negotiating to be partners on the Rich or Wise Happier podcast. I mean, because you're open about these things, I don't mind telling our audience.

Starting point is 00:56:03 You said, well, let's base it on, you know, the number of, what you'll get paid will be based on the number of downloads over the first month, which is when most of the downloads are for any episode. And I was like, no, no, no, let's do it for the number of downloads over a year and don't pay me until after a year.

Starting point is 00:56:21 And so we were building in deferred gratification. It wasn't me trying to get money immediately. It was like, this job that's a ridiculous amount of work, and I'm not going to get paid a penny for over a year. And then when we started to renegotiate, after a year, I think I just, I just wrote you a message and I sort of said, have I been paid about the right amount? Or should it be more or should it be less? And you told me, you know, here's the situation. And you're like, okay. And I didn't question it or anything. And then at a certain point, you told me, oh, I'm giving you 10% more and I'm making it

Starting point is 00:56:55 retroactive. So it's like we were very much taking the spirit of Nick and Zach in deferring gratification and operating as if the other person was looking out for us. And so neither of us was trying to get an edge over the other one. And I think there's something kind of beautiful about that. And we'll see. We'll see in two or three years time whether we look back and we're like, God, that was naive.

Starting point is 00:57:19 But I'm hoping not. I mean, I'm hoping that it's a model of how. Charlie and Warren treated each other and a model of how Nick and Zach treated each other. And we'll look back and we'll be like, yeah, it requires you to have good judgment and to be partnering with people who are honorable. And I don't know that I'm that good at judge of that. And so I'm also making a slightly sort of mystical judgment where I'm just like, I feel like the universe, the creator, however you want to see it. I feel like I'm going to be taken care of. I do remember, because I was sitting in this very chair and you said, this is the type of relationship

Starting point is 00:57:57 that I want to have where you say X number and I just say yes. And I've used that principle with other people too. But I would also say that it has not always been successful whenever I've done that. But I think if you team up with the right people, it can be a very beautiful thing. Also, I think it's important not to judge. To your point before about wealth and how it magnifies who you are. You referenced, you know, Tom Robbins before. I think that's even his quote, or I think that's where I heard it the first time that you really magnifies who you are. And I think that's, that's true. But you know, I've been, I've been traveling to a lot of different, different countries. And one of the countries that I visited was probably back in 2019, it was before COVID.

Starting point is 00:58:44 it. I think one of the things that was extremely stressful, and I don't know if this example resonates with all the listeners. I think it might do for those of you who have businesses. Whenever you go there and I'm clearly, you know, I'm a tourist and I do touristy things and I was there with a friend and then someone would walk alongside you and start to chat with you. And I've read about it already, you know, before we got there, there's a very common practice. And it's kind of difficult for me, you know, wanted to be a well-behaved Dane, not to, you know, if someone's asking me to have a good day and ask me what I had for breakfast or whatever, it's really difficult for me not to ignore them or if they wanted to be helpful. It's hard for me not to say yes, you know, you're wonderful.

Starting point is 00:59:29 And so the quote-unquote trick is that the person will, you know, walk alongside you for like five minutes, whatever, start chatting with you. Perhaps he's going to say something like, oh, so where are you going and you're going to say, I'm going to this mosque, whatever. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, remember, you know, go, go ride whenever you were at the end of the street, whatever. And so whenever you end there, he's going to tell you, so you need to pay me X amount of dollars for the service that I provided you. And you go like, what? Like, you didn't provide me any service. It's like, no, no, no, I was your tour guide and it's going to be like 30 bucks or whatever I raise this amount.

Starting point is 01:00:08 And you go like, and this happened, I don't know how many times. Like, it happened everywhere. And so my friend and I have read about this, you know, going there, but it was like, it was really unpleasant. And at some point in time, it was, I was starting to get worried that it became a bit physical. Like, it was like people ganging up on us and stuff and there was a group and like the wanted money. And it wasn't nice.

Starting point is 01:00:32 And I remember like leaving Morocco, which otherwise was a great trip and thinking, I am never going back here because it was kind of like felt I was a target every way I went or everywhere we went. And to this very day, dependent on which mood I'm in, I'm thinking, what a wonderful trip and some unfortunate incidences. And I'm also sometimes thinking the person that I've, like, especially this group, were they bad people or was that just, was that their job? Was that just the circumstances that made it so? And what if they said to me, it's going to be like 30 bucks? And I said, no, no, no, you're so wonderful. Here's a hundred bucks. With that person have said, No, no, no, you actually don't have to pay me at all.

Starting point is 01:01:13 Because, you know, we have this wonderful connection. So you don't have to pay. No, the person would probably have said, give me a hundred bucks. And so my point of all of this was not to tell you about my holiday experiences, but just more being in the mindset of being more forgiving. It could just be the circumstances that those people are in. Yeah, I mean, there's a beautiful Buddhist phrase. I'm no great expert, although I spend a ridiculous amount of time.

Starting point is 01:01:41 reading and studying Tibetan Buddhism, there's a beautiful phrase where they talk about causes and conditions. And once you start to understand the causes and conditions that put someone in a particular circumstance and make them behave that way, you can be much more compassionate about it because you're like, well, if I had had education, the culture, the parents, the financial situation, whatever, I would have developed different survival skills, different priorities, different values, whatever. And you can apply that sense of understanding the causes and conditions that determine everyone's behavior, also to yourself, because you can see, oh, well, I lost my temper in that situation. I behaved in a really poor way.

Starting point is 01:02:23 And you look and you're like, well, yeah, but this is what I was going through at the time. And this is the background I had. And these, I once said to my son, Henry, I was a good father, right? And he said, yeah, you did the best you could with the tools that you had at the time. And it was a, it was a wonderful put down that was sort of honest and smart and thoughtful. and I didn't know if he was kind of taking the Mickey. And I looked at him and I was like, no, I think he's kind of serious. And so, yeah, I did the best that I could with the tools that I had at the time and the character that I had at the time.

Starting point is 01:02:50 And the other thing I would say that's been very helpful to me, I had a great teacher, Karen Berg, who passed away a couple of years ago. And she once said, she was a very tolerant, very unjudgmental person, a very joyful person. And she said, there's so much good in the worst of us and so much bad, in the best of us that you really can't judge. And I found that very helpful because, again, it kind of goes back to what we were saying at the start of this conversation that we contain multitudes.

Starting point is 01:03:20 We're all of these different things. You know, Charlie could be Graf and Bruce and Rood. And yet there's that incredible kindness of that statement that he made, where incredible kindness in his behavior to Monash over many years and to Lee Lou and the like. But also that incredible kindness. incredible kindness just that I learned about yesterday and saying to that venture capitalist, I may have been a better investor than you, but you've been a better father to me. That's a side of him that we haven't necessarily seen publicly because he has this public face

Starting point is 01:03:53 that's different. And so for me, I was doing my wife about this the other day that she was upset by someone's behavior over something. And I said, I just think I have lower expectations of people. I don't expect people to behave. particularly well because I know that under certain circumstances, under different conditions, I can behave pretty poorly. I mean, particularly when we're under great stress, we can behave pretty poorly.

Starting point is 01:04:20 And so one, I mean, I have an upcoming episode of the podcast with Dan Goldman that may or may not have come out by the time this comes out. And I talked to him recently. And he's a very wise man. He's someone I kind of regard as a mentor and a role model. And we talk about this about how you actually deal with your own flaws in your own combustibility and the like. And one of the things that he's done that's just helped him massively is 50 years of meditation.

Starting point is 01:04:46 And it means there's a bigger gap between stimulus and response to put it in terms that Victor Frankel, the famous psychologist would use. You know, there's a stimulus, the trigger that makes you want to behave in a way. And then there's a response. And in that space, there's an opportunity to choose how to respond. But if you've had a different type of training, for example, where you, you, you know, you you've learned to meditate or you breathe differently or you count or whatever it is. You know, you count down or whatever to give yourself some space.

Starting point is 01:05:17 You're less likely to behave badly. And I had a long conversation with a friend of mine yesterday, a guy called Adam Kane, who's a wonderful meditation teacher and just a really wise guy, really lovely guy. You can see him. If you look at my interview with Sokner-Rimpchet and Dan Goldman, he was the guy translating for Sokneur-Rumpur-Pichet. And this is a really special guy. and he was saying to me, the wave of emotion is still going to occur, however evolved you are,

Starting point is 01:05:44 you're still going to have that wave of anger or sadness or self-pity or whatever it is that's your particular flavor, flavor of emotion, of excessive emotion. He's like, it's not going to disappear because you become more evolved, but he said, you can actually be present with it. With a sufficient amount of training, you can be present with it as the, wave crests and not behave in a lousy way. And so that to me is kind of an important insight that it's not that we're going to become so evolved that we're not going to feel anger or resentment or jealousy or sadness

Starting point is 01:06:21 or self-pity or whatever our particular flavor of emotion is. It's going to still exist, but we're going to become wiser at dealing with it, more equipped at dealing with it. If we use various techniques like meditation or whatever, you know, breathing techniques, whatever else it might be that helps 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,

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Starting point is 01:09:54 prospectus at fundrise.com slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right. Back to the show. I wanted to talk to you about what you said there about low expectations and your whenever you and your wife, Lauren, were talking about this specific situation. And you know, Buffett has this wonderful quote that the secret to good merits is low expectations. And then, you know, Munger have talked about, you know, how to get a good spouse, deserve a good spouse. And I think I come at this from different angles. I'm very curious to hear your thoughts. And so one of the things that always upset me a bit in corporate life has been bosses who said, I have really high expectations of other people, but I would never have expectations

Starting point is 01:10:40 of them that I wouldn't have for myself. I always kind of felt that was a, that's a terrible point. You know, because perhaps I have ownership of the company. In any case, there, their conversation might be a hundred times bigger. And they can more or less determine their own job description, whereas another person, you know, five tiers down, they just don't have that flexibility. And, you know, they have a job because they need to pay the mortgage and feed their kids. Like, I always kind of felt that type of argument of, yeah,

Starting point is 01:11:10 I said high expectations, but only what I said to myself, I can set that to other people. I kind of felt that standard was wrong. Again, I'm terribly biased here. there's a great observation that's been very helpful to me which is actually by the son of karenberg michaelberg who i had on the podcast who's been an incredible teacher for me and i in some i mean i've been very lucky in having a set of different teachers from different spiritual and philosophical paths that i think have tremendous wisdom that's been handed down to them over you know through centuries

Starting point is 01:11:41 of their lineage and studying these great ancient books and like and michaelberg said years ago And again, I had him on the podcast. I really encourage people to listen. He is a very wise person. He said, you should be very precise with yourself and not with others. And so when you're looking at your behavior and other people's behavior, be much more precise in your judgment of your own behavior than your judgment of other people's behavior. And so it's almost like an inversion of that focus of saying, you know,

Starting point is 01:12:12 the boss has to, has to beat himself up in exactly the same way that the employee has to beat himself up. It's like, no, let me be more demanding of myself, my own behavior, than I expect other people to be in their behavior. And I think it's good because it places you in a position where instead of constantly judging other people and complaining about other people, you're taking responsibility for yourself. And there's something very stoic about it as well, right, the idea of controlling what you can control and letting go of the rest.

Starting point is 01:12:42 And so I can take control to a great degree of my own behavior. and my own ethics and my, I can keep working on that, despite how flawed I am, despite my wiring and despite my tendency to be irascible and to be irritable and self-pity or all of these different flaws that I have. I can take responsibility for that and can keep working on it, whereas I don't really have control over other people's behavior. And so there's something, so it's not naive.

Starting point is 01:13:11 It's actually very pragmatic to say, well, let me focus on trying to become better myself. And then there's also this. very mysterious thing. Maybe it's not mysterious. Maybe it's like the most practical and mundane thing that when you see people who behave really well, they draw remarkable people into that orbit. And so think of that great quote from Janet Lowe's biography of, of Munger at Damright, where Buffett wrote the forward. And he said something to the effect of in 41 years, I've never seen Charlie try to take advantage of anyone. He said, I've seen him knowingly take the worst side of a deal

Starting point is 01:13:46 with me and others countless times. And when there's blame to be a portion, he takes more of the blame, and when there's credit, he takes less of the credit than he deserves. If you have a reputation for operating that way, you're going to draw extraordinary people into your orbit who want to do business with you,

Starting point is 01:14:05 who want to deal with you. And we still shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that those people are going to be perfect, because like us, they're deeply flawed, under certain circumstances, are going to behave poorly. Maybe there are some exceptions, but I think most people will behave poorly

Starting point is 01:14:20 under certain circumstances and things like money or divorce or, you know, sexual desire or whatever have a way of kind of distorting people's values and their behavior. So everyone under certain circumstances can behave pretty lousily. But I think this is one of those things

Starting point is 01:14:37 that, as Tom Gaynor would say, is directionally correct. If you keep operating in that way, trying to be better, trying to improve, trying to be more honor, trying to be fair, trying to be ethical. You're going to draw great people into your orbit. And so this is something I spoke to Monish about in the podcast, right?

Starting point is 01:14:55 One of the great lessons Monash had learned from Munga was that it's actually enlightened self-interest to be ethical. To be ethical is actually, you're going to do better. I mean, I think, I think if you felt that I tried to take advantage of you in some way, you would have less warm feelings towards me and it would be less of a good partnership. And likewise, the other way around. And so I think,

Starting point is 01:15:20 I think as with Nick and Zach, our partnership is built on kindness, wanting the other one to do well. And as Nick said, good behavior has a longer shelf life. So it's really profound, but it takes a leap of faith. And it also probably takes good judgment.

Starting point is 01:15:35 So Tom Gaynor said, I'm very helpful on this front, where Tom said, you extend trust first. you extend love first and then you see how the other person behaves and whether they reciprocate. And so he has a kind of sorting mechanism where if people show that they're unworthy of that trust, then you're just like, okay, great, go do business with someone else. So I don't think this is about being naive and credulous and gullible.

Starting point is 01:16:03 I think this is about behaving in a decent way that you can respect yourself. You want to have self-respect. so you want to feel like you're trying to behave in a decent way yourself. And then trusting that there is a system at work in the universe where you're going to be somehow rewarded in practical terms because people like to cooperate, they like to work with people they trust. There is something kind of magical about how this works. But it's an act of faith to leap from the dog eat dog zero sum game to this other model of saying, no, I'm going to try to be decent and we'll see how it works.

Starting point is 01:16:41 And you could say that is just a luxury, that it's a luxury that you can only afford when you're rich and successful. But I think it taps into a deep power principle of the universe. There's something I may be naive and overly mystical about this, and you could explain it scientifically. I mean, you can explain it in terms of the evolution and the desire to cooperate and the like. But it's a very beautiful thing when you observe it and you start to see incredible people working together, collaborating together, helping each other.

Starting point is 01:17:12 And you see this sort of alignment of people. So you see Buffett investing in Markell, the Tom Gaynor runs. And you see Tom Gaynor working, you know, being close friends with Chris Davis and being chairman of the board of Davis's firm. And, you know, and Monish becoming close to Charlie Munger. And so you sort of see people being drawn together,

Starting point is 01:17:34 almost energetically, it seems, because they have this same kind of consciousness, the same kind of mindset, the same kind of philosophy of life. And so then you just have to choose, like, well, how do I want to operate? And Tom Gaynor once said to me, look, I'd operate this way,

Starting point is 01:17:49 even if I didn't think it really worked. And I think that's probably true. I feel like what you're grappling with Stig in this whole conversation actually is, I feel like you're wrestling in your own life with trying to figure out how to operate in the world in a decent, honorable, kind way while thriving in business

Starting point is 01:18:11 so that you can run a company that employs lots of people and people you care about in the Philippines who maybe don't have a huge resources and are trying to support their families and the like. How, you know, you're trying to figure out how to operate in the world in an ethical, honorable way without being a mug, without being a dupe,

Starting point is 01:18:30 without being naive. And all of these questions really about authenticity, and principles and integrity and quality and the like and partnership. They're all really about the same thing. It's all you trying to figure out, am I being naive if I behave in this way? Am I fooling myself if I try to be authentic? You know,

Starting point is 01:18:51 and I think part of what I'm trying to do is sort of reassure you and kind of say, no, no, stick, you're on a great path. You're doing the right thing. These things aren't simple. It's not, you know, it's like, yes, extend trust. and then see if the person reciprocates. Don't be a fool.

Starting point is 01:19:07 Don't be naive. But you're, you're directionally correct. You're, and have trust in this past that I think you've intuited and you've seen by studying successful lives. You can see it works. But there's a part of you that's like sort of on the ledge trying to decide whether

Starting point is 01:19:28 to leap or not and really, and really embrace, you know, like, be like, no, no, if I leap, the universe is going to catch me and I'm going to be okay and it's going to take care of me. And so I can really trust that if I behave honorably and decently and selflessly, and it's not just naive and I'm not going to jeopardize the future of this podcast company

Starting point is 01:19:50 and the lives of the people who are dependent on me and I'm not going to take, get taken a vanshe of and seem like a fool. Does that resonate with you at all? I think what I realized is that this is the right path. You will get some brew. So it's really important with every extent trust that you only do it to a certain extent. And I also realize that as much as I like to think I'm doing it for other people, I'm doing it for myself. It really makes me feel good to help other people if I can. And yes, of course, you know, there was something about helping other people.

Starting point is 01:20:22 But going back to what Alan Fent Burke said in that wonderful episode you did with him, you know, I, it's sort of like the, the, whenever money is and you talked about, it's crazy to do illegal stuff in business because it's so much easier just to be ethical. It's a competitive advantage. And it's the same way, like if you really want to make yourself happy, I talked about this framework before, about putting a one to 10 only time units for the rest of your life whenever you're making decisions. And of course, those decisions might be different because we all wired differently and we all have different values. We all appreciate different things. But one of the things I realized a long time ago and I'm going to come across as crazy selfish

Starting point is 01:20:59 as I'm going to say this is that it just really, really makes me happy. to be kind to other people. And I don't know if I'm doing it for them or if you're doing it because it makes me feel good. You know, Lincoln has this wonderful quote where he says, do good, feel good. That's my religion. And I kind of feel I'm on the same team as Lincoln on that one.

Starting point is 01:21:19 I think I'd like to focus people's attention on one idea that comes from Monish, where he said in the chapter that I wrote about him, chapter one of my book, he said, when you come across a good idea, like compound. or like doing good because you'll feel good or being ethical or just telling the truth, which he learned from studying David Hawkins and power versus force and like.

Starting point is 01:21:43 He said, you want to go a thousand percent on that idea. And he said, most people, they learn about something like cloning, for example, the power of taking other people's ideas, their insights and reverse engineering them and then replicating them. They learn about these powerful ideas like cloning or compounding or being truthful. and they say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds good. Let me try that out. And Morni said, that does not work.

Starting point is 01:22:07 He said, you go a thousand percent. And I think that's a very interesting insight that, you know, think of that great line from Munga that I quoted in the book where he says something to the effect of take a good idea or take a simple idea and take it seriously. And that's one of the most important lessons that I learned from Munga when I was writing the book is when you find a good idea, take it seriously.

Starting point is 01:22:30 So if any of these ideas resonate for you that we've discussed, you don't want to just take it for a spin around the block. You want to kind of say, okay, this is a way of operating in life that I believe in. Let me have courage in doing this and let me persevere in doing this. And there's something about that intensity, that ferocity that has great power, the consistency. I remember when I sent an early copy of the book,

Starting point is 01:23:00 an early manuscript of the book to Guy Speer to read. He sent me back a note that I think I quote in a footnote in chapter one where he said, I worry about your use of Monish's phrase where Monash describes himself as this shameless cloner. And he says, you know, I never had an original idea in my life. I just clone other people's ideas. Guy said that doesn't convey the ferocity of the way that he's cloning. It doesn't convey the intensity. here. And he said, when you look at these kind of charming, polished, affable investors, you know,

Starting point is 01:23:34 like a Joe Greenblatt, right, who's a very nice man, or Rick Rita, who's a very nice man, Will Danoff, very nice man. I mean, you know, I tend to see the good in people, but I think, you know, I've tended to focus on these people. I think they're really, they're are good people. Underneath what Guy is saying is, there's a ferocity there. There's like this ferocious intensity. I think that was what I was trying to bring out in the interview with Rick Rita, is, you can see why he's so successful. Boy, is that guy intense. And he's a nice guy, but boy, is he intense. And Joel Greenblatt, who's a very nice man, very comfortable in his skin and has five kids and has written terrific books and has, you know, has an amazing investment record. There's a deep

Starting point is 01:24:18 competitive spirit there and an intensity to his desire to crack the problem of how to invest. And so this gets at something important. It's not just about finding these principles for how to operate in life and then say, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's nice. And then moving on to the next thing. It's about taking one or two things, three or four things, and making them central to yourself. And so this is one of the reasons why Dahlio's guided journal is kind of a helpful thing, because whatever the process is that you go through, you want to start to figure out the operating principles,

Starting point is 01:24:55 the guiding principles that you're going to stick with through time. And so for me, the phrase that came through as I started to think about this more and talk about the book more in public, as I started to think, you want to find principles that approximately true on average over time. And so I don't think there's, I don't think it's that there are things that in all circumstances, this is going to work. If you decide that you're just going to be extend trust and be decent and be kind, and do good, and you get in bed with a sociopath who's very, very good at concealing their

Starting point is 01:25:31 sociopathy, it's not going to end happily. And so it's not that it's always right. But if it's, if it's approximately true on average over time, and you keep applying these principles, and you set yourself up so that you'll survive when you're wrong, so that it's not like you go into business with one person and everything that you have is going to crumble. Your whole life is going to crumble if you have misplaced your trust. You need to hedge. That's why we diversify. I had an extraordinary taxi driver a few months ago when I was in London who came back from a vacation and discovered that his partner in their construction business, which is a very successful so landscape design business, had literally fled the country with all of their money,

Starting point is 01:26:18 all of their money, bankrupted him. And this is a guy he'd been partner with for like 20 years and was his closest friend that used to go on vacation with their families together. And the guy, he thinks he went off to Australia and just like, and he's never tried to track him down. And he was a remarkable guy, the taxi driver, and he's just sort of rebuilt his life in a different way.

Starting point is 01:26:35 And he's like, no, no, it's good, it's fine. I almost fell apart, but I discovered, you know, that I was leading my life wrong and I've constructed a different life. But so even there, like this idea of trust, I'd rather be a little bit naive and overtrusting, but I also, I want to hedge my bats a little bit just by diversifying, just by making sure I'm going to stay in the game if I'm wrong. But this idea of finding a few operating principles that you really believe in is vital.

Starting point is 01:27:08 And I would suggest that people write them down, that you put them on Post-it notes, that you put them on your phone, that you put, you know, put them in a prayer book or a meditation instruction manual that you use, something that you're going to come back to again and again. And because you're trying, this is a very jolly monger-esque kind of technique, you're trying to pound them into your head through repetition. There's a reason why prayers and meditation, you know, like loving kindness meditation, for example, the instructions are repeated over and over again.

Starting point is 01:27:39 And so I think repetition is hugely important. So when you find a good idea or good principle, you stick. with it. I was thinking of this, you know, because I have a lot of them on post-its and the like. And so I can, I can sort of go in and I can find certain quotes that I just go back to again and again. So I have, literally someone wrote, I got, I got a guide to write in Hebrew, this sort of pyramid of short lines that had particular phrases that I know the meaning of that, that get me to think about certain things. And it's on the wall of my study, framed. So I can look at it every day. And I also, have it in my phone as well. And so, for example, there's a phrase,

Starting point is 01:28:18 Gamzula Tova, which basically translates as, this two is for the best. This two is good. And so it's like, whenever anything difficult happens, whenever I'm hit with a challenge, I can be like, no, it's only like, it's only good. I know this in some way is for my benefit. I know that there's something I have to learn from this.

Starting point is 01:28:38 Maybe it's not what I wanted. Maybe it's not what I hoped would happen. But it's in some way for my benefit. Now, that may be delusional, but I think it becomes self-fulfilling. And so that's become a very core belief of mine. There's another one from this woman, Sharon Soulsberg, is a great meditation teacher who would say, let go and begin again with self-compassion.

Starting point is 01:29:03 And so this idea of every time you screw up, every time you trip up, every time you behave in a way that you don't admire, or you're embarrassed by, or you lose your consciousness or whatever, just be like, okay, or you fail at something. You trip up and you have an embarrassing failure at work.

Starting point is 01:29:19 Be like, okay, let go and begin again with self-compassion. And that's really important for me. And I say that to my kids a lot because another thing she would say is all is not lost. And so that, I think, builds in a kind of resilience where when things go wrong, when you screw up, when you mess up, when you make a mistake to be like, no, all is not lost. let go with self-compassion and begin again. And so I think there's great wisdom in these, in these old aphorisms, these old sayings. And they're different for each of us. I mean, when I mentioned a couple of these things to Dahlio, he didn't respond. He wasn't like, oh, yeah, that's a good one. I should add that. But he's looking at like Martin Luther King,

Starting point is 01:30:00 and he's seeing things that Martin Luther King said that really resonated deeply for him. So he said at one point, I remember Dahlio quoting on Twitter, this great line from Martin Luther King, where he said, every person must decide at some point whether they will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. So Dahlia, who's the ultimate pragmatist, right, is going around the world looking for lines like that and saying, okay, what can I internalize from Martin Luther King? So it's very different for each of us. But you want your collection of guiding principles that you can keep coming back to. and you want them, you want to repeat them and you want them in a place where you can see them frequently so that they guide you in every situation. I think this has been very helpful to me anyway.

Starting point is 01:30:50 I have in my calendar every day and know that I need to look at my principles. I have 20 principles that I carry around my wallet. And for example, one of the things it says is seek first to understand than to be understood, which is one of them I shamelessly cloned from Stephen Coffey's book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. To me, that has been really helpful. I don't, this is the only thing you need to learn that. Well, at least the way I know you, it comes very natural to you. It doesn't come natural to me. And I've, you know, gone through all those personality tests and also the one that

Starting point is 01:31:22 that Ritalio suggests, which is completely free and you can find online. And I know I'm quick to make judgment on different things. It's just, unfortunately, it comes very natural to me. And so I need to look at that every day, see first to understand, then to be understood, which to me has been, has been very helpful. it's deferred gratification. Like you're broadening that gap between stimulus and response, right?

Starting point is 01:31:45 You see poor behavior. And like, let me judge that. And you found a technique that's allowing you to expand that space between stimulus and response. It's an incredibly wise thing to do. One thing that I found very helpful, I drew a lot of things. I think I talked about them in one of the podcasts.

Starting point is 01:32:02 I can't remember when. I drew a, oh, maybe when I was talking about things that I'd learned from Monish, I talked about a lot of things that I'd learned from David Hawkins. And there's a list of things in one of his books called something like transcending the levels of consciousness or something like that. And I have a list of principles that he wrote out at some point that are basically these very profound, timeless spiritual principles. And one of them that I loved is he said, forgive everything that is witnessed no matter what. And that's really powerful.

Starting point is 01:32:34 Like when you see someone behave in a way that you're like, that's unforgivable. Like, why is it unforgivable? Like, why? What? I don't know. I mean, yeah, there are things, no doubt, they're unforgivable that humans can do to other humans. But it's not for me to, you know, in like regular life in New York.

Starting point is 01:32:52 I don't know. That's pretty helpful for me to say, forgive everything that's witnessed no matter what. Or another one that's been very profoundly important for me from David Hawkins that I think came from power versus force. It was where he said, simple kindness to oneself and all that lives is the most powerful transformational force of all. And that to me, that's something I think about hundreds of times a year. I mean, that, that idea of simple kindness to oneself and all that lives, that's the most powerful transformational force of all. Because then, however confused I get,

Starting point is 01:33:24 or however poorly I behave, whatever, I can just be like, just try to be kinder. You know, like I can look at my kids and I can see that they're irritating me in some way, or I can see that, you know, I look at someone I think they're delusional or kind of, you know, whatever. And I could just try to be kind of. I wasn't sure whether or not I should play a clip from your episode with Red Alio or where he talks about the three stages in life or Chris Davis. He talks about the three faces in life. And I opted to play the latter with Chris Davis. And I think that both Chris and Ray would forgive me for saying that they're more or less the same thing. At least I'm

Starting point is 01:33:58 going to group them into the same thing. Where phase one, that's whatever you depend on other people. Phase two is whenever other people depend on you. And then they're phase three where you can live and die without sin. And so with that said, and we're going to explore that a bit more. I wanted to play this clip from episode 35 of the Rita Wiser Happier's Show. And you interviewed Chris Davis. And I just keep on saying Chris or Chris Davis, but perhaps as a quick segue into us playing this clip, could you please make a short introduction to who he is? Sure, yeah, Chris is a very prominent investor who spent basically almost all of his career at a firm called Davis Advisors, where he manages something like $19 billion. And what's unusual is that he's part of this family of legendary investors.

Starting point is 01:34:45 So his father, Shelby Davis was a famous investor. And then his grandfather was an extraordinary private investor guy called Shelby Cullum Davis, who turned, I think, $100,000 into something like $800 million over the course of his career. And Chris is a very charming guy. He's immensely likable. And we all have our superpowers. In Chris's case, he's very affable, garrulous, amiable guy. And so he's become close friends with this amazing array of the world's greatest investor. So he's really, you know, he became close to Buffett.

Starting point is 01:35:22 He was close to Munger. He's close to Bill Miller, Mason Hawkins, Tom Garner. and he actually a couple of years ago got made a director of Birch Hathaway. And so one reason I was fascinated to talk to him in my podcast. I've interviewed him multiple times over the years, but we focused a lot in the podcast episode that I did with him on what he learned from actually being in the room behind closed doors during board meetings with Buffett and Munger,

Starting point is 01:35:48 what they actually say in private. But you'll be glad to hear as someone who's very organized. I started my interview with Chris, and we hadn't seen each other for a few months, and we started to chat. And before the conversation began, he started to talk about this concept of the number of days in your life. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, dude, stop right there. We have to talk about this during the conversation. And so I then had to jettison all of my plans and immediately start with this question

Starting point is 01:36:20 because I knew that if I waited two hours until the end of the interview, I'd probably forget to ask him this question. So this is a moment where my, because I always have about 12 or 15 pages of questions before an interview, then I try to whittle down to about eight or nine pages that's a little bit more manageable. So I'm maniacally prepared. But in this case, I had to actually jettison everything. So what people are about to hear is this moment where I'm like, oh God, I got to go in this different direction and ask Chris about this concept that he just mentioned before the interview began. Thank you so much, William, for that introduction.

Starting point is 01:36:54 Let's go to the clip. And before I forget, since we were talking about it right before we got on, talk to me about this idea of our 30,000 days, because it's such a beautiful idea. And two hours from now, I'm likely to have forgotten that we talked about it. So discuss the significance of this before we get started on. Anything else? Well, I'm going to start, I'm going to go back to my days as an accountant because this is actually when I first sort of started thinking about it. I'm not much of a birthday celebrator. But one of the things I'm particularly struck by is the ones that are hallmarks tend to be tied to, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, so on. Not a lot of life changes

Starting point is 01:37:36 around those sort of random decades. And when I was working back at State Street as an accountant, I had the worst job, which is I had to, at one part of my job was to calculate the NAV of money market and bond funds. And that meant accruing the interest by the day. And so, you know, Lotus 1, 2, 3 had just come out. And so I was using that to write a little program to make it easier to calculate bond interest and count all the days and so on. And when I was testing it, I put in my own birthday and ended up I was at the time something like 9,500 days old. And that was sort of the genesis of this idea where I started thinking, you know, we live about 30,000 days or generally have 30,000 really productive days. And our life divides much more naturally on the 10,000 day increments. So after 10,000 days, you're about 27 or so, 28, somewhere in there. And you often think that first 10,000 days is about going wide, experimenting, trying new things. new places, new professions, new people, new towns. It's a time of exploration. And 21 years old

Starting point is 01:38:54 doesn't capture it or 20. And by the time 30 comes around, usually you're already into what I would call that second phase of life. So right around 10,000 days. By then usually, on average, people have decided what they want to do, where they want to do it, who they want to do it with. and instead of going wide as they have for the first 10,000 days, it's about going deep. You know, just the depth of relationships that comes through marriage, through family, through your vocation, your profession, your colleagues, you sort of had 10,000 days to execute, 10,000 days to accomplish and build what in many ways will be the sort of monuments of your life, your family, your kids, your profession, and then right around 55, 56, 50s, somewhere in this 50s range,

Starting point is 01:39:46 but what happens? You know, your kids are grown and beginning to leave. What you've achieved professionally is fairly settled. And in a funny way, it lifts an enormous weight off many people. I think it's one of the reasons people actually end up growing happier as they get to their 50s, 60s, 70s because you're in a time when you can in a sense go wide again. You have more perspective, you have less of that urgent depth of the day to day. So anyway, I know when we started talking, we were talking about this idea of both sort of completing maybe our second 10,000 days and now looking at how we think about this next 10,000, this chapter that sort of gets us from here till, you know, around in our 80s. And how does this affect?

Starting point is 01:40:33 the way that you're actually living, like, what is, what is this awareness of these three phases due to your view of how to behave and what to focus on and what you're actually optimizing for at this point? Well, this sort of ties in with how I think about investing. It's so much about it. It's about anticipation and preparation. So I think a lot of people go through on happiness in their 30s, in part because they're sort of thinking, where did my youth go? I used to be able to do all these different things and now I'm tied down. And if instead you have this mindset, you really look forward to that, the privilege of being able to go so deep to concentrate.

Starting point is 01:41:17 And I think how it's affected me thinking about this next 10,000 days is a little bit about this idea of inverting it and thinking about what would stand in the way of this 10,000. thousand days being a very enriching time of life. And of course, health is one of them. So it becomes, as you think about going into this next third, it becomes a time where you think a lot about taking care of yourself. You think about investing in relationships. You know, when you're raising a family, when you're in the office every day, when, you know, a lot of your life and your social life are structured for you. As you get to the next 10,000 days, people can lose touch. So I think it's also been a time when I've really invested in maintaining, invigorating, revisiting,

Starting point is 01:42:07 relationships, you know, deeply getting to know my children's partners and spouses, making sure that their aspects of friendships as people, you know, we may get to this, but I, the idea of retiring has no appeal to me. I mean, I love what I do. It always seems startling to me that we get paid so well for studying something so interesting. And it should be a profession where we get better over time, provided we're not creating behavioral and psychological roadblocks. And if that is the case, I would like to continue as long as I could. But of course, I also recognize that that's not the same for many of my closest and oldest friends. And so as they contemplate retirement and moving and going to different places, you know,

Starting point is 01:42:57 old patterns can dissipate. So I think it's a time to really invest in being prepared for this sort of exciting chapter that's in front of us. And it may not end very well, but 10,000 days is, you know, it's a long time. And so I think it certainly has, you know, impacted how I think about preparing for that transition. So, William, I absolutely loved this snippet of the interview. and I should say I love the entire interview. But I wanted to start with this because I recently thought a lot about the three faces in life. And like I was mentioning before here in the interview, I'm turning 40 next year. So I don't know if it's that because if that's why I've started to think more on the three phases of life or it's the whole thing about aging parents or whatever the reason might be.

Starting point is 01:43:47 But I would say that the 30s has been the best decade so far. But I'd also be the first to say that it's not the same as saying that Eric's. thing has been easy, obviously. And I think that Chris did such a wonderful job explaining perhaps why that's the case in more generic terms. And I wanted to start by telling a quick story. And growing up, I loved the Godfather movies. Have you ever watched The Godfather? Yeah. Yeah. And I've watched Godfather One a lot. And then recently I rewatched Godfather 2 when I was flying back from Australia to New York. and I bought it before. And it's, yeah, they're wonderful movies.

Starting point is 01:44:25 And kind of, I mean, Godfather, too, is very interesting because you start to see their lives unravel. You start to see the price of being utterly ruthless. So you start to see the marriages breaking down and the family splitting apart and the kids being taken away from, I guess, Michael, the powerful patriarch who's taken over the family. And so in a way, it fits into what we've been, what we've been talking about, that there's, if you want to talk about a moral life and doing business with integrity, a pretty good thing

Starting point is 01:45:01 to do is to invert, as Charlie would do and say, so what happens when you don't behave that way? And in a way, Godfather, too, is a pretty good reflection on what happens. It's like, yeah, you can, you can have a lot of power and a lot of money, but you also end up in court, you end up with people trying to kill you. You end up with your wife bailing with your kids and saying, she hates you and hates what you've become. So they're very rich morality tales, the Godfather movies.

Starting point is 01:45:27 If you haven't watched The Godfather, so Don Collione, he's the godfather in the first movie, and his word is the law. And so, and this is like, this is a terrible organization. So they're gambling, bootlicking, union corruption, like you name it. If it's illegal, these guys are probably doing it. At the same time, the Godfather is also known as a kind and generous man who lives by this strict, self-defined moral code, I should say. And he is very loyal in his own ways to friends and family. And the first movie starts with his daughter getting married. And per the

Starting point is 01:46:01 tradition, he cannot refuse a request that's made that day. And however criminals, they're often, you know, idolized. And that's, as you can tell from our discussion here, that's not the intention of doing this. But I think the example might resonate with some of our listeners. At least I remember as a kid, seeing, especially in the beginning of the first movie, and thinking about how wonderful it must be to be, you know, the godfather. You know, he's this powerful person who can make anything happen and so many people are depending on him.

Starting point is 01:46:34 And fast forward, I've never found anything to give me as much purpose, not just, you know, the selfish fulfillment we talked about before, but really as much purpose as helping other people and see what happens whenever you do that without. expecting anything in return, which is the best kind if you're able to do that. And I think that's what I love most about this second phase of my life. You know, being, not being done call you only with all the criminal stuff, but like being the guy, you know, like, but you also experience that it comes at high emotional costs. And as a kid, you just don't see any of that. And I imagine that many of our listeners

Starting point is 01:47:11 they might be in what Chris Davis talks about is the second phase of your life. You have a lot of people who depend on you and you experienced yourself how wonderful that is, but also how tough it can be. Perhaps like me, they realize that headwinds are great, but mainly if you're going the other direction. And this fall, I bought one of my family members a condo. Before that, I helped finance another three homes for friends and family. And now, this is an investing show. or at least it's meant to be an investing show. And I'll just say that giving homes away for free is not a good investment.

Starting point is 01:47:49 But like having kids, you don't do it from the financial upside. You're doing it to help people you're careful in love. And I think even so, I've been surprised to learn how meaningful it can be to help others financially, of course, not just that, but also emotionally. But I also experienced how complex it can make some of your relationships all of a sudden whenever there was money involved. And even so, there's something to be said about your relationships changed throughout life. It could be the relationship with your parents that before it was, of course your parents are still your parents,

Starting point is 01:48:24 but your relationship changes and perhaps you're no more equals now than you were before. Perhaps now you're starting to carry your parents and you didn't do that before. How has your relationships changed in your second phase of life? I'm 55 and I plugged in the other day in chat GPT thinking about Chris Davis's calculation. I said, okay, so by December 28th, I think, which is when we're doing this conversation, how long will I have lived in days? And I think the answer came back 20,198 days. So actually, I just entered the third phase.

Starting point is 01:49:00 I just finished the second 10,000 days. And so the first, in terms of relationships, that first phase, the first 10,000 days, you're thrown together in schools, in your neighborhood. There are people who you see because your family knows their family or whatever. And so in a way, it's easier, right? You're living with people at college or whatever who you build relationships with. And then the second phase, I made this big mistake where I would say from my early 20s when I moved to New York from London, I was so focused on getting a head.

Starting point is 01:49:37 head in a very difficult business of writing, becoming a successful writer, becoming an editor, all these things. We're trying to build a career in an industry that was always sort of diminishing. I mean, when I left Columbia journalism school, when I was about 23 or something like that, you know, there was so many journalists struggling to make a living. And then the internet came along later and kind of hit a lot of these old time magazines and newspapers. So it was just a very difficult business. And I was ambitious and I was driven and I'm not fast at what I do. It takes me a long time to write as well as I can. And so, and I can never really

Starting point is 01:50:20 relax my standards with the writing. This goes back to the question of authenticity of being true to who you are. So you have to decide what you're prepared to sacrifice for your values. And for me, I was never really prepared to sacrifice quality. And so what that meant with my writing is I had to sacrifice time. I was so maniacally focused on making everything that I wrote as good as I could make it, even though I was slow that I, for example, when I worked on my book, Richard Wise-Happear, I didn't take a vacation for five years.

Starting point is 01:50:52 And so I try not to work on Saturdays, but I frequently work on Sundays. And so I was sacrificing time. I was sacrificing vacations. I sacrificed my health often because I don't particularly like exercising. So it's pretty easy for me to say. I mean, I played a lot of squash and the like and a lot of real tennis, the old version of tennis in my youth.

Starting point is 01:51:16 It's called court tennis in America. Je de Pomme in France. And so I played a lot of that. But once I left university, I didn't do that much exercise. I neglected my health. I neglected my friendships because I was so. maniacally focused on getting ahead and work. And also I got very lucky that I met my wife Lauren when I was 22. And so that sort of, that took care of a lot of stuff because I wasn't

Starting point is 01:51:43 alone. I had someone really kind and lovely who I was happy to hang out with. And, you know, here we are. Thank God, 33 years later, she's still putting up with me. Although I have to complain that I'm drinking this cup of coffee that she incredibly kindly made for me as I was rushing out of my house that's in a very fruity flavored tea cup. And I'm like, wait, she gave me the, so, so this is about the biggest complaint that I have about my wife, which gives you a sense of just what a lovely human she is and how tolerant. So I neglected a lot of stuff. I don't think I, I don't think I neglected my work, but I neglected my relationships. And I think there's a, and then I moved home quite a lot. I mean, I moved, I moved from New York to Boston, then I moved

Starting point is 01:52:25 back to New York and then we moved to Hong Kong for five years and then we moved to London for seven years and then we moved back to New York. And so if you're working really hard and you're maniacally focused, you tend to let a lot of good relationships wilt on the vine. And so there are people that I really love that were very close friends that I just don't see anymore. That's really sad. And I don't know there's a conflict here because I think to get ahead, I did have to be a little bit maniacal. But I also think it was naive and it was misguided and it was a failure to understand actually what constitutes a rich and happy and abundant life and just how central to it relationships are. And so in this phase of life, I think it's become much more central to my life to build really

Starting point is 01:53:15 beautiful relationships with really fantastic people. And I've put much more effort into it recently. And I think one of the things I've learned about this that may not resonate with people is a friend of mine, Matt Ludma, who I share an office with in this beautiful space in Westchester, in New York, north of New York City. He talks about creating containers. And so he created this beautiful container, the Alliance Center, where I have this office and where he and I get to hang out and talk with a few other really special people who come through. So that's where I met people like Dan Goldman, who's friends with Matt. And that's where I saw someone like Sharon Salsberg, who came through to listen to this amazing Tibetan meditation teacher. And, you know, so Matt has kind of created this container in which remarkable people end up meeting. And I did a similar thing when I set up a book group a few years ago, maybe four, four, probably four years ago where I set up a book group with more or less only writers to discuss great fiction.

Starting point is 01:54:16 And so it's sometimes been kind of tumultuous. it's not been easy because, you know, they'll go off on book deadlines and stuff like that. And it's really hard to schedule and people have dropped out and have moved and stuff. But, you know, people like Jason's Y because, you know, been a guest on a podcast and his old friend and is one of the great financial writers of our generation. He would be in the book group and he's incredibly literate. And the phrase that I got from Matt Ludmer that, who I mentioned before, who I shared this office with, that's really helpful to me is he would use this phrase, along the path. And that to me has become really helpful, this idea of finding friends along the path, friends who are working on themselves, studying stuff, trying to evolve, trying to learn,

Starting point is 01:55:00 try to study, and hanging out with them, surrounding yourself with people who you can learn from, who are trying to improve, who are deeply engaged with the sort of things that you're engaged with. And so I would say in the past, that would have seemed kind of a distraction to me, a digression, a luxury I couldn't afford. And now it's become much more central to my life. You know, this week in particular, I mean, I think I'm meeting Francois Rochon, who I've had on the podcast for coffee on Saturday.

Starting point is 01:55:29 I'm meeting John Gertner, this friend who's this wonderful writer, for lunch on Saturday. So I'm really trying, I'm devoting much more time to friendships. And I think some of it, it gets back to that sentence that an empty sack can't stand straight.

Starting point is 01:55:45 I think when, when I felt this sense of empty, where I was just like trying to survive and get ahead in a brutally difficult profession. It was very hard for me actually to invest in my relationships. So there is a practical issue here, a practical limitation. But partly the fact that I've put all these relationships front and center of my life is actually a result of working on the book and spending so much time interviewing these famous investors and studying what constitutes a rich and abundant life and realizing,

Starting point is 01:56:15 oh, God, I've been pursuing the wrong thing. And if all I'm chasing is building, building my reputation and impressing people and trying to write great stuff and trying to have a great podcast and I end up with no friendships or no really rich friendships. What kind of life is that? So in a way, I think, I think what you want to do is follow Chris Davis's advice and invert and as Charlie Wood and say, okay, so what's going to stand in the way of this 10,000? and day period being great. And so, as he pointed out, ill health is a big one. So for me to neglect exercise or neglect good nutrition, it's just stupid. Likewise, loneliness would be a big problem.

Starting point is 01:57:05 And so I have to, you know, invest in friendships. And likewise, having a lack of mental resilience would be a real problem. So I have to invest in things that are going to build my mental resilience. whether it's having a community or meditation or spiritual practices or exercise or whatever. Financial insecurity would be a disaster in terms of the next 10,000 days being successful. So I think in a way it's a form of destination analysis, which also comes from Nick and Zach, where you ask yourself, what's a desirable destination for this 10,000 days or for a lifetime? And then let me work backwards.

Starting point is 01:57:43 And I'll finish just by mentioning this one thing. Sorry, I know this has been a long and rambling answer. I went to a funeral the other day for my father-in-law's brother, my wife's uncle, and he'd lived into his late eight, his guy called Herb Cooper. And I didn't know him tremendously well, but I would see him at family events over the last 30-something years. And about three or four speeches. And the one that had the most impact on me was from his granddaughter, who said that

Starting point is 01:58:08 when she was in eighth grade, she was really struggling with math. She was having terrible time with math. And her mother said, call your grandpa Herb, ask him for help. and he was like a guy who came from nothing and he ended up with a PhD and I think in electrical engineering. So he's a very bright guy and taught at college and stuff

Starting point is 01:58:25 and ran his own business for like 50 years, chemical engineering kind of business. And so this girl calls her grandfather and he spends the next hour kind of going through her math homework. And then he bought the textbook and for the next year for about an hour a day, he would go through her math homework with her, teaching her and helping her.

Starting point is 01:58:45 And she would cry a lot. during those sessions. And he just, he had the patience to help this girl with her math homework from her textbook every day for a year. And here he was after this life of 80 something years, nearly nine decades. And that was kind of the sum of the life, right? It wasn't, nobody talked about how much money

Starting point is 01:59:06 he'd made off the business, how profitable it was, or anything like that. That just wasn't an issue. I have no idea how successful it was. I mean, obviously it sustained him and his family nicely, but the sum of the life was the most valuable memory that I take from that funeral is this act of kindness to his granddaughter. That's kind of bracing, right?

Starting point is 01:59:29 It reorients you and it starts, it makes you realize, oh, it's the relationships. It's not the money. It's not the power. It's not the fame that when you look back at the end of your life, you're going to be like, thank God, I made so much money. Now, the money is not unimportant. I mean, Dahlio makes this very important point where he talks about, like, don't forget the money. Like, the money enables you to live the way that you want to, that you want to live. And I think that's important. This isn't about being naive, but it's about understanding what's really going to, what's really going to make for a truly rich and abundant life. And relationships have to be at the center of that. That was beautiful, William. And yes, the quality and quantity of your relationships are just so important.

Starting point is 02:00:21 I think that there is Manja, who we often referenced here on our conversations. He said to me that his dad always said to him, you need one wife and one good friend. That's enough. With that being said, I do think that there was something beautiful about. I think it was Buffett who said the quality and quantity of your relationships. that's true to what counts. And to your point, William, about traveling to meet up with friends and money is still being important as much as we talk about, it's not about how much money you make, but money

Starting point is 02:00:53 is still enabled for you. So I think this episode is going out late January and you and I are going to meet up with good friends in Switzerland and requires money to go to Switzerland. It requires time. And not everyone can just stop doing their job and just go to Switzerland. and have the finances to do that. And so I think there was something to be said about whenever you are in that phase, perhaps in the beginning of the second phase of your life,

Starting point is 02:01:19 and you're out there making an aim for yourself. Perhaps you are neglecting a few things. Perhaps you are not as, you don't pay as much attention to your friendships as you should be. And that's probably not the way you want to live, but it's also very understandable if that is the way you live. You're probably very busy with your career. You might have a few kids. And it's very important to you to be a good parent.

Starting point is 02:01:47 And there are choices and consequences and you only have 24 hours in a day. And so, you know, I had a conversation with my mother a few years ago. And I asked her what the best years of her life, whenever that was. You often hear people talking about how much fun they had in their youth. And I don't know if that was what I expect her to say. but she said that it was right after I left home, which I decided not to take too personal. I'm the youngest of three siblings, but my mom luckily did reiterate that it was my fault. But she said, so that would be in her early, early mid-50s, so just between the second and

Starting point is 02:02:28 third states of her life. You know, she and my father had time, money, health, to travel, spend more time with their friends, do all the good things in life, whereas she felt when, she was younger, she was like there was just so many things to do all the time. And, and now she's gotten a bit older and she didn't, you know, her and my, my dad can't do the exact same thing like they could whenever they were younger. And so I think I want to use that as a second way to into asking, I'm sure you learned a lot in your, in your second phase about relationships. How do you expect your relationships to change in the third phase? And how do you

Starting point is 02:03:04 want them to develop? I think to go big on this idea of finding. friends along the path to really high quality people who are decent, trustworthy, kind people who wish you well and who are a force for good in the world. And spending time with those people, learning with them and being with them. There was something interesting that Chris Davis said, I'll misquote where he was basically saying before the age of, say, 30 or 40, you don't want to partner with your friends. but after the age of 40, you only want to partner with your friends.

Starting point is 02:03:40 Like at a certain point, you've seen whether they're successful, whether they're smart, whether they're honorable, whether they're decent, and there's enough evidence that you should only partner with those people. And so I think it becomes clearer

Starting point is 02:03:52 who you want to hang out with. And so there has to be some kind of filtering mechanism. I'm not as ruthless about filtering as someone like Monish, where Monish is like, no, I get that yo-yo out of your life. And Monish will just like get them out of his life. But I have sort of limited time and I'm not very organizationally oriented.

Starting point is 02:04:14 And so I think having these structures where it's just in place where you've got the container where you know that on a Friday morning you're going to meet, you know, your friends who are studying this particular thing. So having some structure where you're with great people who are friends along the path who you're learning from and you're evolving with and you're doing business with or you're helping in different ways or you're just learning together. That's a beautiful thing. So I think that will become, I hope that will become more central. So there's a kind, I remember Tony Robbins once saying that you need that to be, he said it's wrong to think of a work life balance. He said,

Starting point is 02:04:54 what you want is a work play integration. So you're sort of integrating work and play. And so it's funny to me that in some ways, like, I'm finding that people that I've invited you on the podcast, in many cases, they end up becoming friends or they were friends before and they become better friends. And so there is this kind of integration where you're building relationships with people who are studying the sort of things you're studying and are interested in the same sort of thing. And the division between work and play becomes much less obvious. It's all part of the same thing. That's kind of fun. I like that integration. And I see that these all people who are trying to help each other in different ways. And so there's less ego involved.

Starting point is 02:05:36 I don't know if it's just a matter of the stages of life. The earlier in your life, maybe you have to be a little hungrier and a little more driven by a desire to prove yourself and get ahead. And it's not like that's gone, but I naturally feel more of a desire to be a force for good in the world to kind of help others. And I think earlier on, I was so busy trying to find my, footing in the world, that it would have been scary to turn my attention to helping others. I would have been, it was kind of cowardly, but it was kind of selfish. But it was also a time constraint, I think. I was hustling so hard to try to get ahead that I didn't really focus on other people.

Starting point is 02:06:19 And the great paradox is that you only actually become happier once you start focusing on other people. So the irony is that I spent all of those years on that treadmill of desperately trying to get ahead and trying to prove myself and trying to impress people and wasn't really very happy. I mean, you know, I was happy at times. It was fulfilling and it was exciting. I had lots of amazing experiences reporting all over the world and stuff like that. But it was a very, it was a very insecure life in a way and you were always waiting to get laid off or waiting for someone to screw you in some way or to lose some political. battle or waiting for a story that you'd written for a magazine to get killed or to get edited badly or there was always this sense of combat it felt like combat and maybe one of the

Starting point is 02:07:10 great gifts of this stage of life is that I've done enough thank God and been successful enough that I can relax that kind of ferocious sort of self-preservation and self-seeking just a little bit and can focus a little bit more on other people. And then you discover this glorious paradox that people have told us all long, but that we never believed, which is that helping other people is going to make us happier.

Starting point is 02:07:38 And maybe I'm just a slow learner, and it just took me a long time to get to this stage. But I think part of it was discovering that the other way of living, of living mostly for myself, and, you know, my wife and kids didn't really work. Like, it works at a superficial level that you achieve a level,

Starting point is 02:07:56 of success and that's important in many ways. But it doesn't, it's a weak, fragile foundation on which to build a life. And so I think it's not about being, being naive. I mean, I'm reminded that, you know, Dahlia said, earn more than you spend and that will give you freedom, safety, and the power to do what you want. And so it's not like that you can ignore the money and the financial security and stuff. You don't want to be just taking orders from people you dislike and have that sense of fragility and never to be able to afford to go on vacation, never to be able to afford to take time off and the like. So the money and the success are not unimportant, but the realization of how little that would contribute to my real sense of abundance in life. I was a slow learner

Starting point is 02:08:45 in figuring that out. And so I'm trying to convey some of these discoveries, both in the book and in the podcast by studying other people's lives and showing, look, this is what worked for them. this is what they figured out. They're wiser than me and they're older than me and they figured this out and we should learn. And I think it does help to understand these principles and to reverse engineer them because then you can clone them.

Starting point is 02:09:08 It gives you clarity. But it may be that we do have to make these mistakes ourselves to some extent that you have to discover what doesn't work through some painful searing visceral experience. And if you can, as Buffett says, learn from other people's mistakes, it's cheaper and easier and better and faster. But maybe, maybe we do have to make these mistakes ourselves to get to the point where we're like, well, that didn't work. Let me, let me try to focus on something a little wiser. Yeah, I don't think

Starting point is 02:09:40 you can skip that part. I think that's just the way it is. And I'm reading right now a book about tribes in Papua New Guinea, which is a probably weird way to, to segue into my point here. And there are tribes in Papua New Guinea that sees even infants as individuals. And so whenever they're toddlers, for example, the adults do not take them away from the fireplace. And so you see a lot of the adults in that tribe, they all have terrible scars from not navigating fire well because their parents didn't take them away. It's the same with knives. A lot of them have scars from knives. Because even as a toddler, you have their permission. Actually, you don't even need permission to do whatever you want with knives. And their philosophy is, you know, you learn from your mistakes. And so my point

Starting point is 02:10:34 of saying that is that, like, I don't think, I don't think you have to do it as extreme as that. So please don't get me wrong. But I think that there is a period of time in your life where you just can't skip that. You have to, you have to experience it yourself and you can read about it and other people can tell you about it. And your parents can tell you about it, even though that's probably the last thing you want to hear in a certain age. in your life, but you have to make some of those mistakes yourself. And I like to think that the journey is the best part. And I'm not looking to be like 90, look back in my life and said, I finally figured out how to live a good life. I do think that there's something to be said about all the different

Starting point is 02:11:11 ages and not necessarily having to regret what you did at certain stages of your life. You know, my wife and I just renewed our passports. And so here in Denmark, we do that every 10 years. And I got so many stamps in my old passport. And, you know, there was a period of time in my life where I probably travel every six weeks, eight weeks. And I discussed that when my wife and I said to, I don't think we're going to, like the next passport here for the next 10 years, I don't think we're going to have as many stamps. Some time ago, you could put it in any plane. I almost didn't care where the plane was going because I just wanted to experience things.

Starting point is 02:11:46 And now I'm like, I hope the hotel is nice. It doesn't have to be like super like service or anything. But you know, I tried staying in dorm rooms with eight other strangers and even cup noodles and like I don't want to do that anymore. I don't regret doing it. Like the journey is the best part. I met wonderful people and, you know, my point of telling that story is also, I guess, point one, never stay in a dorm. That's a kitchen slash a bathroom. I learned that in Australia a long time ago.

Starting point is 02:12:16 But also don't think that whenever you're looking back, that you should be, that you're looking back at all your mistakes and look at them as bad things. I just, the journey is the best part and you can't skip those steps. Yeah, I agree. I mean, if you take the point that I was trying to beat into my own mind before, which is that, which sounds like really mystical, but I sort of believe which everything is light, is all light. The mistakes were light.

Starting point is 02:12:43 That's, you know, I mean, it's a, it's a tough word to use because people, will have resistance, some people will have resistance to the world. If you're just like, it's all good. Everything was for my benefit. You know, Tony Robbins would say life, life happens for you, not to you. It becomes a kind of self-fulfilling belief that if you go into life thinking, God, that was so brutal and this guy screwed me and that guy did that to me and poor me and nobody understands me, that becomes your reality. Whereas if you go through your life saying, looking back and saying, God, it's absolutely extraordinary what I went through. Even the most brutal, things that I went through, difficult relationships, heartbreak, illness, fear, economic uncertainty,

Starting point is 02:13:23 all the things we went through. In a way, there were these beautiful things that came of them. And even the things that you wouldn't wish on anyone, you're like, wow, I wouldn't have become that person if not for that thing. I wouldn't. And so that ability just to just have this working assumption that it's all kind of a beautiful part of the journey and is leading to something beautiful is very helpful. I think 20 years ago, I would have thought, ah, that's kind of delusional and polyana-ish and you fool. And I would have been slightly embarrassed to say it. And I'm still slightly embarrassed to say it.

Starting point is 02:13:55 But I happen to believe it. And I think it's kind of self-fulfilling. So that's my bet, whether it's right or wrong. William, it's always wonderful to have these quarterly episodes about the things that made us rich, and wiser and happier. Before I let you go here, any concluding remarks about anything we talked about here today? No, I would just like people to go back and listen to some of the episodes of the podcast that maybe they missed that were not as obvious because there's some beautiful stuff and not from me, but from the guests. And so I would encourage people to go back and listen to something like the Pico Aya interview, which remains one of my absolute favorites.

Starting point is 02:14:35 Daniel Goldman with Sokney Rinpoche, Michael Berg, these people who are like, why am I listening to this person? I thought this is an investing podcast and you've got like this enlightened guy in saffron robes talking, but they're very profound thinkers. And I, you know, maybe this gets back to the issue of authenticity, which is part of what I decided at a certain point in doing the podcast is, I'm going to share with people things that I've found incredibly helpful and rich in life.

Starting point is 02:15:07 And so when you see an episode of the podcast that has someone who's totally not obvious, someone like a Michael Berg who's a great cabalist or Sogne Rameshaye who's a great Tibetan Buddhist meditation master or Daniel Goldman, the author of emotional intelligence, who's an extraordinary human being and thinker. There's a reason, or Picoire who's remarkable, there's a reason why these slightly odd choices of guests are in there. And it's because usually it's because there's something actually more important there that I'm trying to convey that I think will help people have a richer, wise, a happier life. So, When you go back and you listen to those episodes, really try to think about, like,

Starting point is 02:15:46 what can I learn from a Pico I are about how to handle uncertainty, about how to handle change and impermanence, things like that? Because these things that seem a little bit off-center, you know, they're not telling you how to value a stock and how to, you know, how to learn from your mistakes with investing or whatever, but they're telling you things that actually are oddly related to investing and money and what it takes to build a really rich. an abundant life and a resilient life. So I would just encourage people to go back and listen to some of

Starting point is 02:16:19 those really key episodes with a PICOR, Michael Berg, Daniel Goldman, a Soapney Romperempaget. Wonderful. We'll make sure to link to that in the show notes. With that said, thank you, William, for your time, as always. And thank you for everyone who stayed with us until the very end. It's always a pleasure chatting with you. And you as well, Steve, you're a friend along the path. So in that spirit, thank you for your friendship and for being such a great partner. Thank you. Thank you so much for saying so, William. Thank you for listening to TIP.

Starting point is 02:16:51 Make sure to subscribe to Millennial Investing by the Investors Podcast Network and learn how to achieve financial independence. 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. is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP603: Richer, Wiser, Happier, Q1 2024 w/ Stig Brodersen & William Green

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