We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP653: Track Record and Risk w/ Guy Spier

Episode Date: August 18, 2024

In this episode, Stig Brodersen talks with Guy Spier about how he has achieved his impressive track record and whether you can adjust a track record for luck. Since 1997, Guy Spier’s fund has performed 9.3% vs. 8.7% annually for the S&P500.  IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: 00:00 - Intro 02:05 - What we can learn from royal families about moats in business.  26:43 - How Guy Spier’s track record would look if we adjusted to luck. 40:20 - If Guy would ever stop managing money. 49:49 - How to think about risk in your portfolio. 52:31 - Why it’s risky not to take risks. 56:40 - Why Guy wants to be truthful and honest and not present himself in the best possible light. 1:14:31 - How to think about position sizing. 1:21:53 - What is VALUEx? 1:37:23 - How Guy feels about being famous in the value investing community. 1:55:46 - How to live a life with givers, matchers, and takers. Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, Kyle, and the other community members. Stig’s interview with Guy Spier about investing and life | YouTube Video. Stig and Preston’s interview with Guy Spier on his book, The Education of a Value Investor | YouTube Video. Stig and Preston’s interview with Guy Spier about his lunch with Warren Buffett | YouTube Video. Guy Spier’s book, The Education of a Value Investor – read reviews of the book. Subscribe to Guy Spier’s Free Newsletter. Guy Spier’s podcast and website. Adam Grant’s book, Giver and Take – read reviews of this book. Learn more about ValueX in Dubai November 7-9.  Check out all the books mentioned and discussed in our podcast episodes here. Enjoy ad-free episodes when you subscribe to our Premium Feed. NEW TO THE SHOW? Follow our official social media accounts: X (Twitter) | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok. Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool. Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services. Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: Hardblock AnchorWatch Cape Intuit Shopify Vanta reMarkable Abundant Mines HELP US OUT! Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it! Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

You're listening to TIP. It's always a great pleasure speaking with Guy Spear. Guy's Fund, AcroMarine, has been in the S&P 500 since 1997. In this conversation, we talk about how he's achieved his impressive track record, the role of luck,

and how to think about risk in your portfolio. I can't think of anyone who is as well liked as Guy in the value investing community. My favorite part of the conversation was not even about investing, but about how Guy is living authentic life and how he's dealing with the ups and downs,

I hope you'll join Guy and me in a wide-range discussion about investing in life, from what royal families can teach us about modes and businesses to how he chooses the people he surrounds himself with. And of course, everything in between.

So without further ado, I give to you Guy Spear. Celebrating 10 years and more than 150 million downloads. You are listening to the Investors Podcast Network. Since 2014, we studied the financial markets and read the books that influence self-made billionaires the most.

We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. Now, for your host, Stig Broderson. Welcome to The Investors' podcast. I'm your host, Dick Broderson, and today I'm joined by no other than Guy Spear. Guy, thank you so much for making time. Stig, it's a pleasure to be with you, and you've prepared an amazing set of questions,

which made me think quite a lot, so that's impressive. and I approach this conversation slightly nervously because your questions come from a place of curiosity and interest and desire to learn. So there's nowhere for me to hide. Wow. So we're coming off strong here, Guy, and you're putting a lot of pressure on me. But thank you for saying so. It means a lot. It goes both ways. When the listener finds out about the questions, you'll see that it's also like, holy moly, I've got to try and do justice to these questions.

All right. So let's jump into the first question. here, Guy. As many of the listeners know, Buffett's family has said that you should invest in a company that could be run by an idiot because someday someone well. And I don't know how many in our audience I'm going to offend with this question, but I couldn't help but think of royal families whenever I heard that quote because the main qualification you can say to some extent is coming out of the right womb. It's not like they're taking education, submitting the resume and go through job interviews and like, it's a different process. And then you think about royal families and they maintain their prominent position for centuries. So it makes me think,

Guy, what can we learn from royal families about moats? So as I was trying to think about it, let's be clear. I mean, first of all, royal families and well, any kind of nobility, the history of that nobility will have been that at some point they will have either fought a battle in one and they would have taken a castle or maybe in later European history, they would have been of given property in reward for a service to the monarch. But at the end of the day, underlying all of that, what is it, Karl Marx or all property is theft. So I'm not sure that we can, because now in the world of business, we're playing according to rules. We're not engaging in violence. There are tools that we use. Maybe it's

innovation. Maybe it's all sorts of ways that we try and get advantage in the business world, So, which I don't think are particularly relevant for how royal families achieved their position. So let's just get that out of the way. Nobody's suggesting that one should learn from the ancestors of these royals through violence or other things to get where they are. But if we think of these kind of like juggernaut blockbuster businesses like Coca-Cola or American Express or Nestle, and in a sense, those are kingdoms. And inside of those kingdoms, there are people who kind of like royal families.

you like. So what have I learned from trying to understand? So the first thing that happened to me, if I think of the royal family that I know the best, which is the British royal family, not personally, just through observing them, is that I went through a period of being a sort of a strong Republican where I kind of enjoyed being on the subway, on the tube in the UK, and saying things like off with their heads. And to every single member of the royal family, I deeply apologize for having said that. Because I don't think it's, well, I can totally see why the British royal family is absolutely key to the functioning of British democracy and the British constitution. So I went through an evolution where I felt like I was a Republican and then I came to this

grudging acceptance and understanding that the royal family was absolutely central and key to British public life. And it was only in the last maybe three, four or five years that I discovered that I could actually learn from their behaviors. So I guess I hope that this comes to moats, but I would start with, I used to think that all the titles that the royal family can give out or the king can give out in the case of the UK were just very, very stupid. And then I realized that there's quite a lot of discernment and care that goes into giving out knighthoods, and there are various different kinds of knighthoods, various different degrees of exclusivity that I don't know much about like Knight of the Garter and I don't even know all the names,

and then there's a basic sir somebody, and then there's titles like OB and CBE. But I started to realize that those titles are given out in subtle ways to adjust and to kind of like make quiet behind the scenes statements about what kind of society the royal family wants to see. And I kind of looked at that and said, what can I do that's similar? Stop being angry at them and start thinking, what can I do that's similar? And I realized that recognition. So these titles are, they're not anything physical. You're not giving out a castle.

You're not giving compensation. You're not giving stock options. You're not giving any of those things. purely giving recognition to people is something that we can all do and that I realize that I did far too little of it. So just before this thing started, we had a very short time for the listener. Stiggy, you had a birthday card from me. And in a way, that's me saying, I recognize you. It's a very, very simple recognition. So Warren Buffett understands this, and it pisses me off, that everything I've learned, Warren Buffett, I realize, but he sent me a

letter and he kind of like, and what was the letter? It was, he'd read my annual report and he liked it. And so he wrote me a letter. I was blown away. And of course, what I did was put it on the wall. But how different is that from a royal seal of approval? How different is that from granting an OBE or a sir or something to somebody? It seems to me that it's the same thing. So I wanted to try and like answer your question and make one very, very small point around the royal family in the UK is that recognition is a way of exerting soft power and extending your moat. So the more people I can recognize in my life in a genuine way, and it can be as simple as writing them a note or a letter, is going to actually enhance their loyalty to me,

because you can imagine my loyalty to Warren Buffett is enormously increased through that letter. It was high anyway. And you can imagine that the loyalty towards the royal family is severely enhanced and increased through those recognitions. And I think that many people go through life desperately hoping and wanting and desiring to be recognized themselves, you know. And here you have the monarch who actually has a whole administration that is dedicated towards the monarch recognizing other people. And one can say, yeah, well, they're the monarch. But the fact of the matter is, we can all do it. And would somebody in the business world prefer to get recognition from Warren Buffett? Absolutely. But they also don't

mind getting recognition from me. So that is one sort of like minor, minor way in which we can extend our moats through the royal family. I'll just give you a couple of other thoughts before I let you come back and maybe redirect me a little bit more precisely. So if we think of royals and we think of the history of royal families or kings and queens in Europe. It goes all the way back to emperors. It goes back to the Roman emperor. The key about the Roman emperor, and if you go before that to, for example, the Egyptian emperors, or pharaohs, is that they were also considered to be gods. And there was a kind of an interesting split in European history where the emperor was no longer a god, was a human. And there was a period of confusion, but ultimately the role of king,

the person who has access to physical and worldly power and the Pope or religious representatives who kind of had access to an other world, that eventually split. But the association that humans have in their minds with a royal family to association to kind of like the ethereal godliness, stuff that we could never reach is still extraordinarily powerful. And so obviously the royal seal of approval is an incredible thing. It kind of because it gives us a you an association with that. Royal families, it seems to me, use all sorts of tools to enhance that association, that sort of like otherworldliness, that sense that you've gone through the looking glass and you're in the world of the gods, so to speak. So if you take Buckingham Palace,

it's a symbol and it's also a sort of an accessory for the royal family. It's a statement about their power and their centrality in British life. If one actually looks closely at Buckingham Palace, what you see is that it's a massive facade and actually it's quite kind of, I wouldn't say small and cute, but it's all about the facade. And when you drive through the facade on the other side, it's actually quite ordinary. And so it's about presenting a face to the world. And I think that we talk a lot in the value investing world about having an inner scorecard and about having the same being the same person in private as we are in public. But there's, I think that I've learned about that actually, and it's not so much the facade, it's the way you create authenticity. So is the king of England, also the king of England, if he's standing in the middle of the street somewhere?

Yes, he is. But if he's going to make a statement or if he's going to make an award or if he's going to appear on his birthday, that symbolism of appearing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace is really, really important. and it helps the British public to connect and feel a certain way. In a way, you could say it's a ritual. So what I realize is that doesn't mean that I have to inhabit Buckingham Palace or that I have to have some grand office building. But I need to be aware of the symbolism of what I'm doing. And you could even say of what your business is doing.

So to give one example a very long time ago, I remember seeing it was an interview with Warren Buffett and Fortune or Forbes or something like that. And apparently what I remember reading was that he insisted in being photographed at McDonald's. He said, or at a sort of a family burger place. And that symbolism for Warren Buffett was important. He knew what he was trying to present to the world. And so it's not that you have to be in Buckingham Palace, but I think that we are more effective in business when we kind of pay attention to that association.

So I'll give you an example that is just recent. I mean, it was a conversation yesterday. So I do this charity lunch now every year. And the latest one that I'm going to meet is going to be in New York. So the person said, look, I'll meet you anywhere. I really don't care. As long as we spend the time, I'm really happy. And the person I was five years ago, the person who'd not studied the royal family in the

same way as I have now, I would have just said, yeah, sure, well, then let's just meet anyway, somewhere that's convenient to you or to me. And actually, I insisted, I said, no, we're going to meet at somewhere that's meaningful and symbolic. So in this case, we're going to meet at Smith and Wolenski's, which is where I had my original lunch with Warren Buffett, because even if we go back to the King of England and we take, let's say, Chris Hahn, who is a famous investor who was given a knighthood in recognition of his services, a huge amounts of money that he's donated to charities.

So let's say Chris Hahn says, oh, that's a great honor. I don't need to come to the ceremony. And actually, if you want to knight me, you can knight me anywhere. It's okay. And let's say the king's not got much time and he says, yeah, that would really suit me as well. Well, no, the formality of doing it in that way in front of people at Buckingham Palace with a sword, with probably some kind of letter or seal or something, it creates a symbolism that is important for everybody around it.

So the royal family is extremely aware or the people around them. They don't want to desecrate that imagery. And on the one hand, the person I was more than five years ago would have said, who cares? But actually, we all do better when we understand that pretty much not everything, but an enormous number of things we can do have a symbolic side to it. And the symbolism is important. And that doesn't mean we have to ape the royal family. So I wanted a really good design for my annual report.

And there's this awesome woman called Cecilia Wong, who's been helping me. She designed the cover of my book, and I met her through William Green. And so I'm with her, and I'm saying, look, I'll show you examples of annual reports that I think are really, really good. And you're going to help me to do something. I said, look, Cece, like the best example I have is the Berkshire Hathaway Any report, but it's not designed. And I showed her the webpage, and she's a genius, I can tell you. She used to design the covers of Time magazine for Asia. So she comes back to me and she says, guy, you don't realize.

both the Berkshire Hathaway and your report and the website are extremely well designed. And there's a design as either. I'm like, the website has got nothing there. And she says, no, this is what it's saying. It's saying we're not about extraneous fluff. We're about the words of Warren Buffett. We're about letting you get to the key information easily and presenting it to you upfront in a way that we're in no nonsense, no bells and whistles and no fluff kind of

organization, and that is a communication, and that is a symbolism. Or if you think of the Bucksha Hathaway meeting, where Warren and Charlie appear, well, now it's just Warren, but they would appear on that table with nothing else, just an ordinary backdrop. That in a way is the symbolism that they want to create. But that doesn't mean that I have to ape Warren and Charlie. I don't, and I don't have to ape the royal family. So just give one example in our company holiday card. we actually did a line drawing of my office building or the office building where I work. So what's the point there? Well, it is where I work.

And on one hand, it's kind of like completely irrelevant. What's important is what's going on in my mind. On the other hand, people deserve to know where I work. And there is a kind of an association there. It's where I come into work every day. So on the back of the card, there's a drawing of that. And so that's me directly learning. I don't want to live in Buckingham Palace or working in a Buckingham Palace.

and I've chosen the environment that I work in, and I want to give people a sense of where that is, so I did a drawing. And so understanding that symbolism and that everything we do has a symbolic nature, and we ought not to ignore it. So there are a few things that I've learned from the royal family. Thank you, Guy. There's so much to talk about here. And in my preparation here for this interview with you, I listened to a bunch of the interviews you've done just in general. And you You mentioned Joseph Campbell quite a few times, and I thought to myself, okay, I better orders and books and get started. Then you sent me this wonderful card with a quote by Joseph Campbell.

So one example he comes up with is he's talking about the United States, and he's talking about how it's very much a country that's ruled by a lot of different laws, a lot of different systems, because you have to do that because people come from so many backgrounds. And then he compares it to American football and said, like, the rules there are very, very very intricate. He compares it with rugby and says that the British board, I'm no expert in rugby. And these Americans go there and they come up with the forward pass and the Briders are like, that's not how we do things here. And it was sort of like interesting. It's not in the rulebook. So some might be saying, if it's not in the rule, I can't do it, I'll just do it. And then

the British are like, that's just not how we do things. So could you please not do that? How did that, if at all, play along with this idea of the royal family, the idea of the myth and the shared history that we all have to various extent? I'm so glad that you found your way to Joseph Campbell. I mean, I don't know how I found my way to Joseph Campbell, but he just like blew me away. He was the key that unlocked so many things for me. I think that there are writers that I've read that in a way have helped me to come home to myself. For example, there was a civil war going on inside me between my rational side and the

side that had studied science and wanted to believe to exist just in the material world. And then what do you do with this whole mythological side or with this like religious and spiritual side? And he gave me the key to understand that there's like two sides of the same coin. And what you're talking about there, if I understood it correctly, is the term that the British would understand so well. If you don't think you don't understand rugby, I'll take you into even a more esoteric sport. And the famous phrase is, well, that's just not cricket. And this idea that there are rules that are behind the rules. And so the rulebook doesn't cover it all. There's plenty more. And there's a kind of a shared understanding of what this game is supposed to

be about. And that should modulate your behavior. And in a way, I mean, that's just not cricket. And And it sort of comes the things that you don't do even though they're not in the rulebook. It comes down to understanding, perhaps, that people in that game are not playing to win. They're playing to, or no, they're not playing to win that game. They're playing to win the infinite game, which is the game of continuing the relationship with these people and making them like you and want to play another game with you and displaying your personality as being willing to take the win when it's acceptable to take the win, but also being willing to stand back. and not push your advantage to the very limit because it would be kind of not right to do so. And actually, I just feel compelled to say it. I think that I don't know if you're following this women's boxing at the Olympics.

And if you take a very, very narrow reading of the rules as the Olympian International, so there's this man-Khalif woman, and I think that she is now in the finals with another person with X, Y chromosomes, which are kind of male chromosomes, if you read, Clearly, according to the rulebook that the International Olympic Committee has written on how you define female and male and what allows somebody to compete as a female, they meet the criteria, period, end of story. But there's, when you see these boxing matches between somebody who's an XY chromosome, which is effectively a functional male versus an XX chromosome, which is a female,

what you see is even if they're labeled female, you see a man punching a woman and it offends that basic sense of decency. And that would be an example of that's just not cricket. It's what the British would say. I think that just trying to tie that in with Joseph Campbell, actually another person who comes up for me, as you say that, is Yuval Hariri, who he does it in a slightly different way. But I think that Joseph Campbell, anything by Joseph Campbell, what he woke me up to is, so the title of one of the books is called Myths to Live By. And so like mythological thinking, why would a rational person engage in mythological thinking? Well, the reason why we engage in it is because it's part of us, whether we like it or not, that there are motivations that we have

and stories that we're telling inner voices about the meaning of what we're doing and why we're doing it, that we are far better to be conscious of those stories that we're telling about ourselves, as individuals, as families, as societies, than not be conscious. And I think a bit like what I was talking about, symbolism with the royal family, nobody's telling somebody to live by one myth or another myth. I think that the exhortation is just be aware of the myth that you are living by, of that common understanding of what it is that you're doing. And in a sense, what you have in that boxing fraca is that the myth or the kind of like the underlying ethos with which this Algerian boxer is approaching the women's boxing tournament is the game that she is playing and her coaches and the Algerian Olympic team are, study the rules and figure out if you can win according to the rules. And the goal is to win according to the rules. And life is a battle.

and there are winners and losers, and we plan to be winners, we plan to take home the most medals. And that is a kind of like a myth, sort of like war, if you like. The world that would be you have been used in the past is manicheism, which is kind of like life is just a struggle between good and evil. And it's just a constant battle. And we're going to be the good ones and we're going to fight according to the rules. Whereas the other side, the people are crying out, J.K. Rowling, for example, has been a big advocate. for this, are crying out and says, first of all, this breaches a basic sense of unfairness. And in an article that somebody wrote for the Daily Telegraph where I'd have to look her up,

where she wrote, even if according to the rules, she had the right to compete, the fair thing to have done would have been to withhold, even if she was a functional, or she was declared female at birth and met all these criteria to be female, knowing that she had X, Y, genes, the right thing to do would have been not to compete. And that's this kind of like the rules behind the rules. That's just not cricket. Hey, the game we're actually playing Algerian team is not a game of win at all costs, according to the rules. It's a game of creating friendship amongst men and creating respect across athletes and across countries and across time zones by allowing a fair fight. and I was on the tennis court yesterday with my daughter and her boyfriend and my wife.

I've played more tennis than them. I could have smashed the ball. I could have won six love, six love if I'd have wanted to. Instead, I played at their level, and we actually played the game and we modified the rules to try and get the rallies as long as possible. What are we trying to do? We're actually trying to have fun. And forgive me, I hope this is not too rambly, but what I would love to do with the Algerian team in Man Khalifah sit down and say, look, there is actually a different ethos by which you could play this. There's an Olympic spirit here. And I'll give you one example of that, which is a, I think he's a Spanish runner that just came up on my Twitter feed recently at a competition about three years ago. So he was running in a cross-country race and

the Kenyan runner was ahead of him and they ran, it kind of was a duel between the two of them. They're far ahead from the pack. And at the very end of the race, with about 20 meters to go, this man, Ivan Fernandez, I think is his name. This man, the Kenyan runner who's won the race at that point, thinks he's crossed the finish line and he's starting to look at his watch and he's starting to look around and he's broken into a walk and he's just delighted that he's finished. He's actually not crossed the finish line. and this runner comes up behind him,

and what he could have done is just sprinted across the finish line and taking the first place. And instead, he grabs the Kenyan and he says, we're not past the finish line. You need to keep running. There's another 20 meters to go and runs behind him with his hands on the Kenyan runners' shoulders. And in a split second, he made that decision.

So many people would have just run across the finish line. And he was playing the infinite game. He was saying, there's more to this than just winning this race. And when he was asked afterwards, why did you do that? He said, look, the guy won the race. He beat me. We were dueling each other all the way through, but I just couldn't keep up with him.

He was a better runner. And so he won. And it would have been a violation of some of that myth for me to run ahead of him. And so what's incredible about that. I don't know what he's doing right now is that he won in a much bigger sense. So we talked about my office, Buckingham, Alice, the symbolism of that, just to bring it back to you and allow you to refocus where you're going to go next with your next question is, it's like there is a mythological dimension to

so many things that we do. And nobody's telling us what myth we should live by. But become aware of that myth. Become aware of that story. Be in a relationship with it because it will make your decisions so much wiser and so much better. And Joseph Campbell did that. that for me. And just I brought up Yuval Harari. The reason why he did is because Yuval Harari talks about how so much of what creates modern civilizations are the stories that we tell as a common myth, as a common story. So he talks about the story of money. We all agree that money has value. And it's only because we all agree that's a kind of a myth that in a way is being challenged now by dare to say it, Bitcoin is being, it's challenging that. It's changing that

myth. And they'd be like, no, no, no, no. That's not the way it works. And now, And actually Bitcoin is changing that potentially forever. And so again, like, become aware of that. Don't have to agree, but be aware. Thank you, Guy. Sorry to make the transition so abrupt and talking about boring stuff like track records. But one thing that I've thought about a lot here recently, and I would be very curious to hear your thoughts on this, is this idea of let's run out track records a thousand times.

And I'm looking here at your track record. So since exception in September 97, you compounded better than the S&P 500. So 9.3% Kager compared to 8.7. And that is of June 30th, 2024. And so one thing that sticks out is you've been beating the S&P 500 for more than 26 years. That's no easy task. And it also makes me think about, obviously, it's very, very tricky to do this. What would happen if we took out the role of luck?

and what would your track record look like? I have a background as a poker player, so I can look at a poker database and then say, I play King Queen from the cutoff seat, sorry for the lingo, this way, how often do I win or lose and buy how much? Like, I can go into analyze a lot, and I get a very quick feedback loop

if I got enough data points. But that's not how investing works. And so if I were to ask you, what if we ran your portfolio a thousand times stripped out the element of luck as impossible as that would be, knowing that you're probably a much better investor today than whenever you started, but we can't pull that lever. We have to run in a thousand times. What would it look like? Yeah. So just for listening, these are the kinds of incredibly thoughtful questions that Stig wrote to me and shows that you've got a few brain cells

in there that are ticking over. So when I look at my track record, first of all, I'm proud that it's beaten the S&P, although not in the last recent history. And I'm proud that it's done that net of every single expense. So it's a real outperformance over those 26 years. And Chris Hahn, I've mentioned him once before, 6%, 7% outperformance versus the S&PI, I believe. So that's kind of like an astounding number. that's an Omaha number, if you like.

And do I wish that I had some very, very more significant outperformance? Absolutely. And I can look back and see some really humongous mistakes that I made, that would have made a huge difference in the one case, the investment in Horsehead and then doubling down on it at a point where they were ramping up their debt and were getting into a different technology that they didn't understand is a pretty huge mistake. So in my ideal world, I could have like,

cut that out. That would count for a huge difference in outperformance. And I'd like to believe that in those thousand different reruns of my life, there's a smaller proportion of those reruns where I made that mistake and that there is a larger proportion of those reruns where I chose not to double down on the investment at the wrong time and where actually I didn't make the investment or where I noticed that the debt levels were rising. So at the same time, I can't really evaluate the probability that I would have not made that mistake, and I would come out at a 50-50, for example, on that mistake. And to give one other example, that mistake arose during the time, and there's an interesting sort of feedback loops here that my book had been published. And I was determined to make the book a success. And so I had quite a bit of attention on doing things that helped make the book a success, but did not necessarily make me a better investor. And I'd like to believe that in a rerun, I would avoid that mistake. And I think that you have to be clear with yourself. Am I going to be a journalist and try and get as many eyeballs as possible?

I'm going to be an investor. Those are two different things, and I don't think you can do them as the same person. And that is clear to me now. It wasn't clear then. So long story short, I'd love to cut out the mistakes and the majority of those thousand times. But I think that actually those mistakes to 50-50 that I would have done them. And so I would place my performance in the very middle of the distribution of those thousand times. That's wonderful that you would say that guy because if we continue with the Poga metaphor,

I've been around so many Pogo players in my life and every time they lose it's because they're unlucky and every time they're unlucky and every time they win is because they're fantastic. And I do see some pattern recognition in the world of investing, I have to say. I've paid very little poker in my life, but it makes me think of the very little golf that I've played and I don't know if you've played any golf, but when I think I've actually succeeded in hitting one or two holes in one on a three-part. art whole, and boy, does your spirit saw. I mean, that is just one of the most incredible things. Of course, that's like one in a thousand, one in 10,000 for me, and I get a lot more.

But yeah, it's fascinating. It's kind of an interesting exploration of that feeling of, I'm a freaking genius or I suck. I don't think that I'm unlucky when I hit it into the weeds or into the long grass or whatever, but it's such a powerful human reaction to go, that was all me. And actually, with my children, my son was saying, well, I'm a smart guy. I deserve this. And I'm like, wait, you didn't do anything to get the genes that made you smart. So why do you deserve it? Actually, you own none of it. Because what you can own is through your hard work and application. But your genes created the mind that you have. So it's actually in a way not yours. And so, yeah, I mean, look, I think that that replaying, you know, imagine a thousand different replays

of Guy Speer, Accom Marine Fund 26 years or whatever else, and trying to understand what that distribution looks like and how you might change it is a powerful way of looking at the world that really was switched on to me by Oleg Peters, this guy from ergodicity economics and Luca Delana. It's a really, really smart way to think of the world. And I think that as we get more successful, then we want to run our lives,

and I guess I said this manual letter, which is where you're picking it up from, where all of those thousand different, the distribution of those thousand different reruns are all satisfactory. And I'm willing to give up the long tail on the upside, the possibility of becoming a billionaire or whatever, in order to avoid the worst outcomes on the downside. That's for sure. And I think we all ought to be able to do that. And thinking in the same way, if I just go back to your previous question, nobody's telling you

what myth to have, but be aware of the mythological dimension. mention of what you're doing. So in this case, nobody's telling me what risk to take or not to take or anybody else for that matter, but be aware not just of your evaluation of the risk for the particular life path that you're on, but imagine a thousand different life paths and think about how it plays out in each of those because you don't actually know which one you're on and you need to be okay and all of them is a kind of seems to me to be a very, very powerful model. I think you're very right and there certainly is a very diminishing return. to utility whenever it comes to money, you probably want to optimize a lot more for the first

dollar than the last dollar. Yeah. The first million, somebody wrote, the first million is always the most difficult. And once you've got it, you don't want to do it a second time. Well said. China Munger has emphasized the importance of a dollar weighted track record. And I almost feel a bit guilty asking this question, especially now also whenever you just brought up that perhaps over the past few years, the performance hasn't been as, as you wanted it to be. whenever you look at asset on the management, there's something to be said about that as well, which is for good reasons going up on your end. But do you think dollar-weighted track records are the right way to look at it? And how would that change your returns?

So just to be clear, in Acrimarine Fund's portfolio, it's clearly dollar-weighted. It's the my returns are in proportion to the actual dollar is invested in various different investments. I guess what you're suggesting is that one should say, no, what I want to do is just take my top 20 stock picks and just do the average of those and the returns of the averages of those. And I think that I agree with Charlie Munger. I find that complete anathema because it's not, doesn't measure anything real unless I actually was equally weighted in each one of those, of the different picks. And if I, I guess that would have required a constant rebalancing, which is possible. If I actually chose to do that, then yeah, I measure my dollar weighted.

but then the dollar weighted and the average actually would equal each other. I mean, I think that the decision to be in cash, not to be in cash, the decision of how much one allocates something, the famous statement by George Soros, it's not if you're right or if you're wrong, it's how much you bet when you're right and how much you bet when you're wrong. I mean, it has to be dollar average because otherwise you're not actually measuring what the person actually did. And a key part of being a successful investor is committing big bucks to juicy opportunities. There's no, it doesn't seem to me that one should get any reward for saying, look, me and Duff and Phelps is the example you wrote. And for the reader's

interest, it was something that went up seven times in the two or three years that I owned it before it was sold. It was a very successful investment, but I invested far too little in it relative to what I ought to have invested in it. And I don't get any credit. I shouldn't get any more credit. I get credit for finding and investing in it, but I shouldn't get any more credit for the fact that I didn't put a huge proportion of my portfolio into. That seems to me to be just a very important part in it. And it's really, really hard. And of course, we have all this hindsight.

So at the time, I didn't feel like that was the right thing to do. And I appreciate you bringing it up. It's really, really important for anybody listening to this, whether you're an individual investor, whether you have friends and family money, or whether you have large pools of money, I was investing at that time for my father and one or two business partners of his. They came from the agricultural chemicals industry. They understood very little about finance. They barely knew what a stock or a bond was.

And it was just so, so well, Guy Spears investing for us. And I had to take into account that they were my investors. And I had to take into account that a large drawdown in the first three or four years would potentially jeopardize my career and my little business that I was starting. I couldn't assume that they were sophisticated investors. And so that was part of my story. That drove my decision to be extraordinarily conservative in my commitments to equities. So the vast majority of the portfolio was in ladded bonds.

And I think that that's just part of my story. And we're kind of dumb if we don't pay attention to that. One of the things that comes up all the time when we see people making investment moves is that the investment move is taken out of context from that person's financial background. And you just can't do it. you have to take into account all these things that are hidden from you when you look at whatever move it was. And yeah, in my case, for some reason, early enough, even before I'd met Monash Pabrai and even before I'd read these books like Power v. Force and the Mahatma Gandhi autobiography,

I wanted to be truthful and honest. And that was more important to me than trying to present myself in the best possible light, if you like. And a thought comes up for me, which I hope is not a kind of a rabbit hole, but I'm going to say it now, I would have maybe found an opportunity to say later, if you're living a boring life, or then you're probably not telling the truth. And this beautiful phrase by Jordan Peterson, if you want an adventure, tell the truth. And when we tell the truth, that's where everything starts. Everything starts. Everything's starts when we start telling the truth. The truth is often extremely painful and we don't want to own up to it and we don't want to see it because we'd rather stick our heads in the sand. I'd tell you

a few people that I think in the political world that we are in today a kind of truth tellers. John Alcan has talked about this. He's talking about finding truth tellers and organizations, people who are willing to speak the truth as they see it without regard to the consequences. I think Jordan Peterson is one of those people. He could have kept his head. down as a Canadian academic and not told the truth of what he saw around him, or he could have had the courage, which he did have, to point out what he saw and eventually got him fired from the university he was teaching at. But he's on an adventure, an incredible adventure. Another guy that I've been tuned into recently is somebody called Gad Sad, who's written a book

called The Parasitic Mind. And he's actually an evolutionary psychologist. He's got some other books that I really want to read about the evolutionary basis of marketing. Marketing. within an understanding of our evolutionary psychology. But he's got a book out called The Parasitic Mind, and he's talking some very, very unpleasant truths in a Canadian environment, and he's got the courage to say it. But it actually starts with me having the courage to say, wow, you have an issue.

It's called ADHD. So start understanding yourself and then even better to start talking about it to the world or somebody who says, wow, I have a problem with alcohol. I need to pay attention to that. Or, wow, I'm arguing with my wife a lot. I need to pay attention to that all. And to, wow, I've outperformed the S&P by this minuscule sliver. And I really wish I had better performance.

You know, that's also being honest and truthful. And then the adventure begins. 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. in every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo Freedom Forum is.

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com slash WSB. All right. Back to the show. And it's no easy task. I can easily understand if someone is listening and saying, well, 9.3, 8.7 performance compared to the SP 500, it's not that much.

26 years is a long time. I sort of like wanting to use that as a segue into my next question about, and again, my disclaimer will be, I'm not really out here to offend anyone. And it's really one of those, to your point, about stop by telling the truth to go on a beautiful journey. If you stop beating the S&P 500 bits, I have no reason that you won't continue. I have no reason to believe that you won't continue doing so.

But have you considered then say, hey, it's just like being an athlete you used to score. I don't know how any points per game. Now you don't do it anymore. So it's better for everyone that you stop. Have you thought about that in the context of being an asset manager? The first time when that question came up for me was when I'd written my book and I'd gone, I'd been invited by Sarah Madan to give a talk at Google, authors at Google. I was super nervous and excited.

I went and gave my talk. Google full of very smart engineers. An engineer says, look, you seem, you know, your results that you've put up show that you've outperformed the S&P. How do you know that it's not luck? And how do you know that it'll continue? And the honest answer which I gave was, I don't know that it's not luck. It could be luck.

How on earth should I know? I have one individual. We don't have enough data. points in a way we'll never have enough data points. And of course, the stress and the pressure that somebody in those shoes may well find themselves in is that what if it's actually luck and what if actually my destiny is going to turn around next year and I'm going to, if I outperform for the last five years, I'm now going to underperform for the next five years or 10 years or however long it is. So if you take the particular provenance of aquamarine fund with this kind of like investment

from friends and family, I take the hit on the, at the beginning, that I had a huge amount of cash and I was making very, very tiny investments. But then I also get to take the benefit of the fact that I have performed, I think, a very, very powerful role or a transformation role, I would argue in my own family, in that the single decision effectively to move from a fixed income portfolio to an equities portfolio and to get into some of the right equities, but it might have just been the S&P has been transformational because the difference in return between bonds and stocks is way more than my 50 or 60 basis points. It's a way, way high number. And so I kind of come back to saying, I've been a steward of the capital of the people

who've entrusted it to me. And especially the first group, none of them had exposure to equities. Suddenly all of them had exposure to equities. And that's turned into a very, very significant at Nest egg, certainly for my own family, but for a number of other families as well. So I actually, I don't know if you saw my most recent letter, and it was really scary for me to say it, but I felt like I had to say it. So what if right now, if somebody came to me, if God would say to me and say, guy, in order to outperform significantly, you're going to have to massively change your strategy and you're going to have to do all these different things. Would I do it? and I kind of said, actually, I wouldn't because I don't want to do things I don't understand.

I don't want to do things that are not in within the grain of my personality. That would be a, well, first of all, I don't think it's likely to work out. It would be likely to work out if I were to take such a hypothetical decision. I also wouldn't sleep very well. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't be a congruent person in the world. I wouldn't be aligned. kind of came to the conclusion that I need. I need to do what I believe is right for my investors as a steward of their capital. That's the most important thing for me. Even if somebody's

yelling at me who's knowledgeable is saying, well, if you do that, you'll underperform. I cannot give that up in order to lunge for some kind of outperformance. And so I think that what comes down to me is if I was, well, sorry, I'm going to repeat myself because I'm kind of thinking aloud, being a trusted steward of my investor's capital and acting in a way that is consistent with my personality and my best understanding of what I should be doing with my investor's capital is more important than outperforming. And yes, I would like to outperform. But if I have to choose between the two, I'll choose that because in a way, if I behave that way of those thousand replays, I'm going to have satisfactory outcomes in both. And even if some but some genius who sees the

future is yelling at me, no, no, guy, but if you follow the strategy, in all thousand versions of the way the world unfolds, you'll outperform in all of them. It's no good because I need to know that and I need to be comfortable with that, not them. So that's a long way of saying that I'm willing to be truthful and honest about the possibility that I may underperform, and that may be the story of the rest of my investing career. And my job is to be honest about that. And I'm in the extraordinarily fortunate and lucky position that if that is the outcome, I'm still okay in my life. I'm still okay doing what I'm doing, if you like. I will still have been a good steward of that family nest egg because I'll still be way outperforming what we would have had if we would have

been in some kind of fixed income securities. I would also add to you that this came up to me. So when you understand this, anybody who's beat, the Berkshire Hathaway meeting understands this very well. We all know those of us are kind of like the diehard faithful that the Berkshire Hathaway meeting is about so much more than just figuring out how to become better investors. We've become better humans and we live better lives as a result. So people say, well, you could have just avoided all this effort pretty much and invested in the S&P. And my answer to them is the S&P is a pretty impersonal thing. And I'm not sure that if I'd been invested in the S&P, if I would have stayed in equities. So we have to be aware that what we invest in and the decisions we make then

have have an influence back on ourselves. So I understand that there are many people who won't want to invest with me. And I get emails and letters all the time. And people say, hey, guy, I've reviewed your fund. And it all looks good, but I'm not going to send you my money for like that meager outperformance, I think I can do better or I know people somebody I know who's got a significant investment from the Graham family that used to run the Washington Post. Would I love to have those people look me up and say, oh, we need to be invested with Guy Speer? Of course I would. But the honesty and the good steward of capital in a congruent and consistent and way is far more important than lunging for that stuff. I mean, obviously I

I spend a lot of time talking to Monash Pabri. He's a very, very different mental makeup to me. I think that what's key there is that I know that on some level I'm tapping into the core of who I am by saying that. Monash Pabri could not say those words. He's a very, very different person with a very, very different experience of the world and of his reality. And so I think that actually his behavior or his makeup is far more consistent with the

possibility of having very, very significant outperformance. But it comes at this cost of the tail on the downside is that, I mean, the evaluation of the downside risk in a portfolio that Monash runs would be different in my case. I would see it differently to the way he sees it. But that's why he and I are different. So, yeah, am I answering the question? I think you are. Yes, Guy, you definitely are. Or am I just waffling? Can I say both? Is that rude? No. I hope I'm not I should just say for full disclaimers, to be aligned, sort of like go back to what you're saying that I have an investment with monies. We didn't plan to speak about monies, but now that we are talking about on the show, I think

it's only fair to mention that. Now, I've discussed track records with many asset managers, and some of them underperform the benchmark. And whenever they do, they would typically tell me that's because they take less risk. I have no reason to believe that any of those asset managers are lying or insincere by any means whenever they say they take less risk. That's not my point at all. And if I can just come up with a generic example, so I'll be meeting up with investors who say, look, I have gold in my portfolio and because I have gold in my portfolio, I take less risk. And then I would meet up

with another assymedia who would say, I do not have gold in my portfolio. So that's why I have lower risk. And so such is the irony of business and life. And it's sort of like when I speak with asset managers, it's a bit like asking your friends if they're above average drivers. We all better than average, right? And everyone we know are better than average. I thought that was a great analogy that you put there. Nobody's made that before. And I just want to pause on that before you actually ask the question, because I think it's worth it, if you haven't said it before. So we all know everybody thinks they're above average driver, and there are many tests that show that. And if you think that Stig and I are immune to that,

we're not, we're also feel like we're above average drivers. And so why, why would that not apply in the world of investing? Every investor, especially those of professional investors, think they're above average investors. Yeah, I just want to make one slight correction. I am definitely below average driver. I never own a car. So I just, but I think you're generally right. And I think the investing industry is very much prone to that. It's mainly men, men have done well and probably have gotten good grades, nice degrees, and have been used to success to some extent. A lot of them have been doing competitive sports and whatnot. And I think that there is a, I see that in all walks of life that we all think we're better

than average. But I would say most definitely in the world of investing, there are a lot of people who feel that they're better than average, which is probably also why we come up with this. I'm going to say a myth here to go back to Joseph Campbell, but this myth then, well, if we have a track record where we're not beating the SEP 500 and we still live by this myth that we're better than average, it must be because we have lower than average risk. I'm not sure. Oh, I see.

Right. So then we sort of like, then you have the confirmation bias and we fit different, different information into that. But my question that I wanted to post is really that you're like, you're, obviously you have a very good track record. You survive for more than 26 years, which is not an easy task. But how do you think about whether you take, yes, I'm just going to say above average and then we can talk about whatever it is.

How do you think about taking above or below average risk in your portfolio? Yeah. And so what is risk? And we can all say, I think that most of the world, the people in the world that we live in, understand that Myron Scholl's capital asset pricing model, risk is approximated by variance, is we can throw that out the window. But, you know, for what it's worth, the reason why Myron and Scholls picked that, I wasn't in the room when they picked it, picked it.

But they needed something that was scientifically objective or objective period. and what they were able to do was, so I think that they wouldn't say that that is a good approximation of risk. They'd say we need an approximation of risk, we need an approximation of risk that we can all agree upon and that nobody's going to argue with us on. And now everybody can measure the variance of an asset or the price variance of an asset. So that was why they did it. They were not saying that it was great. They've since been dumped upon by all these fundamental investors who say that's just not a measure of risk. But once you get beyond that, finding something that you and I agree is the same in terms of risk is extraordinarily difficult.

And I don't have any good answers. I think that Myron Scholls and I can't remember as the other guy, they struggle with a really difficult question. How do we get an objective measure, an objective understanding? I don't think that there is one. We're all trying to take less risk in our portfolio relative to the returns that we expect to get. And once we move away from a very, very imperfect measure, who's to decide what is more risk and what is less risk? I really genuinely believe that I didn't have much risk in my horsehead position until it blew up on me and then I realized how much risk I had. And there's an argument. People will look at me and I will say, I mean, a fascinating one is Berkshire Hathaway, which many listeners here will understand extremely well.

people say, well, how can you have such a concentrated position in that very, very big company? And that is a huge risk. And I will say to them, well, if you study the businesses and you understand what's going on inside the organization, then you'll realize that it's perhaps the least risky position in my portfolio. And they just cannot see it. They cannot see it. And so how do you have a conversation about that?

Myron Charles would say, let's just look at the variance. And that's not a very good measure. And then we just, or you can just agree to disagree and say, and I'll talk about things like, I want to believe that the business that I'm invested in would survive the apocalypse or an asteroid hitting the earth or some major, major event. But how do I actually know? I kind of say, well, I think Coca-Cola will survive on the other side of such a major event. Do I really know? I don't really know. And it's like these things are such one-off things. Actually, a name that comes to mind is just an incredible guy. His name is Richard Zekhauer.

and he's a very famous, I don't know if he's famous, but he's a very, very good bridge player, a world-class bridge player, but he gives a course, we used to give a course at Harvard on investing, and he's got this article called Investing in the unknown, unknowable, and what do you do when there are no data and there's no way to evaluate? First of all, makes the distinction between risk and uncertainty, so you can have a variance, you can have an asset where you can measure what its variance is, and the way in which it moves around. And so you can say, well, this asset's moving around in this way,

and it's within relatively well-defined government bonds would be an example of that, of AAA-rated countries. And then you have what's going to turn out in the world after 9-11, and two planes have hit the world trade towers, and it's the day after, and you've got no data. And that is complete unknown and unknowable, if you like. You have no prior data, you have no prior data, you have no prior experience. This is a new event and what do you do? And now I'm being rambly.

I'm not sure. Why was that important to me? Because risk is subjective and we only discover afterwards what it actually was. And then what I would also add is two thoughts that come to my mind on taking risk. I actually think that I've been extremely suboptimal in terms of taking risk. So first of all, when you're in your 20s, you should take a lot of risks, not with your life, but career risks, financial risks, because you have lots of time to recover. from them. So it is suboptimal when you are young, not to go to work for that startup, not to invest in that speculative stock. Because when you take a risk and it works out, you win and when it doesn't work out, there's an enormous learning opportunity. And I think that Monash does in many ways

run his portfolio in this way. If you are diversified in as little as few as 10, sort of like very asymmetric outcome type things, unknown and unknowable, but huge payoffs if you works out, I guess I'm describing heads I win, tails I don't lose much. You have a very asymmetric. You have 10 of those, you should do all right, even though you'll have a pretty high error rate. And so maybe when you're young, not taking a risk is in a way the biggest risk of all. And so I've actually have exhorted younger people, people in their 20s, like, you must take risks. You'll regret it. Don't be the guy who doesn't take risks until his 40 and then starts taking risks when you can't recover from them. So that's a long way of saying, I really don't know if, just to go back to your

question, the investor says, yeah, but I've taken less risk in my portfolio. And then they'll show, they'll maybe come with calculations like variants or sortina ratio or drawdowns or and there's no real way of deciding whether that's the case or not. Can you believe that was such a long non-answer answer? But that's because it's so, it's so complex. I don't, if you ask Warren Buffett, he's going to say risk is obtunity cost and permanent loss of capital. But then you also have to ask, and then what? And then there are so many other things to unpack whenever you think of that. And I think it's so important also to understand where the other person is coming from. So we talk about Monis Pariah, for example, and having 10 bets, which I think to some

probably seems very risky and perhaps not so much to others. I actually tried talking into having a fun just with three bets, just with three stocks, because I felt like 10 stocks were way to diversify it, but then you're sort of like, it acts a lot of complexities because you want to make sure that the asset manager that you potentially invest with eat his own cooking, right? And so one way to do that is you want to make sure that they put all of their own money into it. But then we as investors, like, so for example, for investors investing in your fund, like, I think it's very noble and it's the right thing that you have the vast majority of your wealth in that fund. Now, me as an outside investor,

if I were to invest. Like, I have the privilege of saying, I want this investor's best idea and the other west is best idea and guy's best idea. And then I construct my own 10, 15, 20 stocks, which is why I chiefly ask money, could you just set up a fund with like three stocks? Because I can, if I feel like 10 positions or three positions are too few, I can just put in 3% of my portfolio or aid or whatever I feel comfortable with. But at the same time, I want them to make to put all their own money in their own fund.

and I can easily understand, why would they put all their money into three different socks? And so there was just one thought. You know, I propos of that. Around 2006, I was approached by an American institution, and they were sort of following that strategy, and they said, look, we don't want to invest in your fund. We're going to take your two best ideas, and we'll reward you for the way they perform. And the relationship ended during the financial crisis, and they didn't lose much money. I don't think they lost any money.

They lost, there were two positions. One was a gain, one was a loss. And I sent the money back to them. It was kind of like separately managed account. And their compensation, they kind of said, look, we want to compensate you on each position. So in theory, I could have gotten compensation on the position that was up. And I kind of just said, what did I learn? Exactly to your point, I just couldn't manage those positions in the same way as I did

when it was all inside one portfolio. And I realized it became really important to me to just manage one portfolio. And actually at that time, I had been managing an onshore and an offshore partnership in two separate vehicles. And it became imperative to me to create this kind of master feeder structure where they were all, it was just one account that we were managing and all of the investment was in that account. And around that time, one of my investors, a lovely, lovely guy who was in the same building as me in Carnegie Hill Tower, he just said the same thing. He said, look, guy, I love the way you find these things. I love all of those. And I totally get why for family, a thousand different lifelines being okay in all of them, you also have these positions in places like Berkshire Hathaway, American Express.

He said, I just want your best ideas. I don't want those kind of like whatever you want to call them core positions. And if I can't get that, then I will redeem my investment. And he kind of was encouraging me to either take my family money, if you like, out of the fund and investment. investors separately or to create a separate fund. And again, I just didn't want the brain damage and the headache and realized at the time that that would give me a different life path because there would be many investors who choose not to do it. I think that what comes up for me, as you say that, is it's more important to be authentic and true, forgive me for citing Shakespeare, Laertes and Hamlet, to thine own self be true, is more important than saying, yeah, but actually, let's just opt

for XYZ marketability and returns. Because if you give up being true to yourself, in a way, it's the loss of happiness. It's the loss of one's place in the world because you're no longer you. So I think just so, you know, and that goes to so many, that goes to so many life decisions. So just going back to if somebody were to lay out for me what I had to do to beat the market by 20 percentage points, let's say. But in order to do that, I would stop being guy spear. I'd be some distorted version of myself. I'm reasonably sure, or I think I'm 100% sure that that's not worth it. And what's really, really important, I've said this. A really, really important takeaway for me from the lunch with Warren Buffett is that he actually is that person.

The person who's this incredible investor, he's not trying to be anything different to he is. He's not waking up saying, I need to take more risk or I need to take less risk or the way the relationship with my father resulted that I ended up holding too much cash. The person he is is actually optimized for investing. He didn't have to try to make himself that way. And it was a huge revelation to me because I was like, wow, stop trying to optimize yourself for something that for who you think you want to be and become who you're destined to become and let that be your adventure, if you like. So if we're living in a facade, if we're living in a projection of who we want to be, then we've actually given up our own autonomy. We've given up the most precious thing,

which is actually what was written on your birthday card. The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. Right. Exactly. So that's something we can never, we ought to never give up. And no matter what returns you could get. And I, it actually is a decision, a realization that I came to a long, time ago, and I guess I'm just saying the same thing. I just remember a good friend of mine, so saying, but guy, aren't you trying to be the best investor in the universe? I was like, no, I'm trying to be the best version of myself. And if that turns out, the best version of myself turns out to be an incredible investor, one of the best investors on the planet, then I'll celebrate and I'll be grateful for it. And if I'm not, then that's also okay.

There'll be other things that will be good for me. So it's scary. It requires courage. And I actually, I don't think, in comparison to many people I know, I don't think I have that much courage. We actually don't need that much of it to say, I have to give up on what I'd like my destiny to be in order to find out what my destiny actually is. And just to go back to kind of like what you're kind of sort of talking around with this investing and saying, oh, yeah, but my risk-adjusted returns are actually really, really good. The myth that those people are living by is somehow if I turn out to be the world's

greatest investor or a very, very good investor with a very good track record, therefore I'm a good person, therefore my life on this planet is justified, therefore I deserve the respect and adulation of people in society around me. So they desperately want to be that person. And the minute you say, well, actually, the only person who needs and deserves and my respect is me, and that requires me to be true to myself. And yes, it would be nice to be a billionaire. It would be nice to have the best track record. It would be nice to go into the pantheon of the gods of investing there with Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and others of being the world's greatest investor.

But I can't force that. And I have to become who I'm going to become. That's not the most important thing. So what those investors really ought to do is realize that they have this myth that they're trying to live by, this myth, that all those things I just said. And that's actually not the real scorecard. That's not the real measure of a life. It comes up to me, Clayton Christensen, how will you measure your life? Am I going to really measure my life by a number of the return that I had in my portfolio?

I don't think that's a good. I mean, Warren Buffett, he could have been the richest. out on the planet, but he's giving money away. He realizes that's not the right measure of his life. Guy, I had the privilege of speaking with a mutual friend of ours, Thomas Mila Borgia here a few days ago. And I hope he'll forgive me for saying this here in public. But he asked me a question about investing. And he asked me about how I thought about investing yourself first and then find an asset manager or do it do it the other way, like how I was thinking about that dynamic. And I said to him that I felt it was really important to start investing yourself first because

you don't know what kind of investor you are before you invested yourself and before you felt the pain. But also before you invest and figure out which kind of investor is really difficult to find an asset manager you want to team up with. And you really have to understand where that asset manager is coming from, just like you need to understand where you're coming from. So in this case, where I'm, for example, invested with money. It's not that big part of my portfolio, but I'm doing it because it's an insurance against my own ignorance.

Like, I can look at my track record and say, oh, my God, how smart I am or whatnot. But I also have to factor in, let's do this a thousand times. How would this go a thousand times? Can I find someone who I feel would do better than me, over say, a thousand times? And then just take a part of that portfolio. And I think that the intention is not to talk too much about money here on this call, but like understanding where is that other person coming from and where you're coming from, and where you're coming from.

And so I don't necessarily think I'm the typical investor whenever I'm looking at, interview 500 asset managers, whatever I have, and go in and if you go out, okay, so this, and how does that work with that, and that's ready. That's not how most people invest, and probably luckily so. Why is it that my parents ask me what they should invest in? That's not because I'm the greatest investor. It's because they trust me and they don't really know too many other people who know how to invest.

And so it's also important to understand what kind of investor would like to invest in your fund. And if the typical investor in your fund is, we're a family office, we only trust Guy, we want guy to invest 90% of our net worth, then that strategy is quite different than, sorry to bring myself up here, like, oh, I'm going to take this and put into, I don't know, money is this fund and this into Bitcoin or gold or like, it's a very, very different attitude. So whenever you're talking about, like, who is a great manager and who's not a great manager, it's very much depends on what is your goal, what is it that you want to achieve. And it's complicated to have that discussion because you really need to understand

what this person is coming from. So I can't speak for you. And I'm sort of trying to do it anyway. So please forgive me. Like, if you were to invest with guy, you should probably start by reading the education of Val Invest and then all his letters to understand where he's coming from, perhaps even have a conversation with you. I mean, I think that what comes up for me as you say that is that.

And I think that we don't talk about it. Actually, I don't feel like it's talked about as much, but I think it's a really important part of the decision of any investment decision is that you're creating your environment, and it's strange because these are just bits of paper, it's just an entry in your bank statement, but somehow it creates the environment in which you live. And what I get from the way you're talking is that there's a spice or something that having Monash Pabri in your portfolio brings you that actually helps you in some way to live better, think more clearly, make better decisions. And I think that that's probably idiosyncratic for many people. So I think that

I have a number of investors who are, they're actually, they have high variance in their lives for various different reasons and they want to have a bit of low variance. Now, they could also do it through owning government bonds or they could do it through maybe owning the S&P or Boucher Hathaway, but for one reason or another, it suits them, say, to have me with my personality there. So they have an investment with me because they want that. kind of whatever that brings, and that is extraordinarily idiosyncratic to that particular individual. And I think that what I think is important to understand is we talked about the symbolic

dimension, we talked about the mythological dimension. So there's the analysis of, you know, is this a cheaper, expensive company? What is the moat? Is it growing? Is it not growing? All of those things. And then there's, then there's, do I want to be in a relationship with this, with the group of people who control and run that company. Are these people I want more of in my life or not?

They could be extremely good investments that work out extraordinarily well, but you don't actually want a relationship with the people that are the group of people who are running it, the CEO and the people who control that situation. And by contrast, they can be less good investments in terms of pure numbers because they're not cheap, because they don't have an expected IRA that is great. But there's something really special about that group of people. that brings you something in your life. And it doesn't necessarily just have to be that you attend Monash's annual partnership meeting. It could be just reading those letters, having, thinking, well, 10% of my portfolio, whatever it is with Monash, therefore, what would Monash do in

this situation? So understanding that that is also an element of why we're making the decisions that we're making is really, really important. Give one example I was shaving today. I was actually shaving in preparation for this. I decided I wanted a clean face. I often show up. So I'm using a Gillette razor, of course. And I'm thinking of Warren Buffett and his investment in Gillette. And I just remember him saying, well, it's a good, good feeling to know that X million people are going to wake up today and there's going to be an extra little bit of hair on their faces that they're going to get off. And some of them are going to use Gillette razors. And if you would have come to Warren and said, Warren, I can show you an investment that's going to earn you 2% better,

but it's in not even like some technology thing that Warren doesn't understand, but a product that Warren doesn't like and use himself, let's say. Should Warren have taken that investment? I don't know what he would have done, but I think there is an element in Warren's investing, which is the way that furnishes your life. And it came up with Bank of America, although he's been selling it down a lot, where he said, I just like the people. He likes Brian Monaghan. He's just said it straight. I like Brian. So furnishing that and having those idiosyncratic reasons. And in your case, what I would want to say is, I think there's a lot more to your investment with Monash Pabri than just buying insurance. And I think it's interesting to explore that.

So that's one really interesting area to discuss. And will make us better investors. If you own the S&P, you'll get that return, but only if you continue to own it. Maybe the S&P is so impersonal that market wiggles and various other things will convince you to leave the S&P, whereas another investment has a slightly lower return, you will stay with it. And that actually will outweigh the outperformance of the S&P. That's an interesting thing. Another place where I'd go, which is really fascinating for me, because it was really brought home to me. I'm not going to mention the name because I'm not sure that they'd be happy with it. Conversation with the investment team of an extraordinarily famous investor. And we had a summer intern here. I think it's okay to mention his name. A guy called

Aaron Zoss, former McKinsey guy in between his first and second year at business school, did incredible all work for us. And we did this presentation. And one of the analysts, he was like, you just said, that's such top-down garbage. I can say the company, we did a presentation on BYD. And he's like, and he said, you people don't get that it's the DNA of the CEO and the management team that is key to this investment. And so I think that this kind of analysis of what does he have in his portfolio, if we're talking about funds, what is retarned, what's his sortina ratio, what's the variance, what's the risk he's taking, what's an objective measure, that's kind of all top down. But then you could go from a different place, which is to say, what is driving this person?

What is, in this case, what is Guy Spears DNA? What does he get up for every day? Why does he get up? Why does he make the decisions that he do? What is he really driving for in life? And is that something I want to have. Am I aligned with that in any way or not? I would tell you that, so if I observe what I know about Chris Hahn, who was a classmate of mine at business school, the drive that Chris Hahn has to generate returns for his investors is something that is just extraordinary to watch from a distance or to be in the same room with. He's extraordinary drive, extraordinary focus and attention. And do you want to have that? It comes with certain costs. as well. Enormous costs in all sorts of ways. We know of investors whose marriages have broken up,

all sorts of maybe they don't have many friends, maybe they have children that are estranged to them. But, you know, what is the DNA of this person and do I, can I, do I want to align with them? I think that to go back to Monish, I think that you've, maybe not consciously, and I hope you don't mind that I'm coming back to him. You've done some quite a bit of thinking about Monash, who he is in the world, what his life story is. And you like that DNA. You want to You want that DNA in your life. You want that decision making. Out of that, the way Monash is in the world,

sort of like very interesting things when I unfold for you and the people around him. And so picking one's investments, whether it's in corporations, i.e. equity investments or funds, by analyzing the DNA of the people and saying, is this a DNA that I want in my life? I think is also a valuable root of analysis, if you like, a dimension that we should keep in mind. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination, risk and regulation are ramping up, and customers now expect proof of security just to do business. That's why Vantz is a game changer.

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And it's difficult in investing. We've been doing this for more than 10 years. And every investor that we get on, the podcast says that they have a margin of safety or they want to have a good mode. Like, everyone sort of like says the same thing. So if you didn't know anything about the track record or really had a chance to speak with them, it's hard to separate. I guess that's what I'm trying to get at.

So you're absolutely right, Guy. Like, I take immensely joy in reading Monies's letters. Ironically, I feel it gives me lower volatility to invest with Monish. And I think most people would be like, wait, didn't Guy just say he had like 10 stocks? And they're very tilted where one position could be significantly more than 10%. But again, like, I come from this of a place that I'm already sizing going into. into an investment in the first place. Then there is an element of being uncorrelated.

And then it might sound a bit silly because I think a lot of investors probably like the idea of being able to redeem all the time. I really like, for example, with Pabright funds, I can only do that once a year. And I never redeemed. It gives me, I think naturally I have a tendency, coming from the world of poker, I think I have a tendency to almost seek volatility at times. I remember there was a specific time during the COVID crash. And the market dropped like 12% like SP500.

12%, and it was a bit like, I want more action, which is probably not how you should be thinking about it. And then next I was like, no, no, no, that's not the right way to think about family wealth. And so for me, sort of like to store away X percent of my portfolio into a different fund in as many as 10 picks. Like, it gives me some peace of mind. It gives me what I feel is lower volatility. I have five stocks in my portfolio and only really meaningful positions in three them. So it's a way for me not to put family wealth into three stocks. And so, so there are many different aspects of it for sure. Yeah, it's complicated. And Monash is a very driven guy and a very, very unusual wiring, wiring that's extremely suited to investing. He's going to do, I can't guarantee

in every single one of the thousand different unfoldings of the world that we could have, but in the, in the vast majority of them, he's going to do extraordinarily well, probably in all of them. Obviously, I don't really know. I don't have full foresight and full hindsight. And I'm impressed that you're at five and you want to go to three. What I'd also say is just the pure mathematics of if you own something that compounds a lot in the portfolio, you'll end up having a concentrated portfolio. So what I try to explain to many of my investors is that it's not that I woke up one day

and said I want this huge position in Berkshire, American Express or BYD, it's that they went up 10x and I didn't sell any and I didn't I didn't portfolio rebalance. It creates another difficulty, which is the investor coming in says, well, but I'm buying this unbalanced portfolio. I kind of want to start with the balance of each of the 10 positions being the same. I don't want three of them to have grown to be outsized positions. And that's just the case. That's the difficulty.

I don't know how to answer that without kind of creating other problems that we've already talked about like creating multiple funds or something like that. So it's an unbalanced portfolio in a way, the same way that when you were buying into Berkshire Hathaway, there was a certain period where at one point American Express was 40% of the NAV. And at another point, Apple was a huge proportion of the NAV. So you're also buying into, well, what's fascinating about Berkshire Hathaway is that so many of the Berkshire investments, especially in the private businesses, don't work out at all. But we don't notice them because they're just, because they're rounding are in comparison to the ones that have worked out, like Mid-American Energy or

Burlington Northern, I mean, but who's talked about quick-cut knives recently or about the pampered chef or various, but you have many, many, many businesses. They're just like, world book. I'm not sure that world books doing all that well, but it's okay, brown shoes, whichever it was. Not to mention the original Berkshire halfway textile mills. So what's my point. My point is that you can end up with what appears to be a highly concentrated portfolio just because you left it alone and did nothing, basically. Well, Seth, and just one more comment before transition to the next segment of the show here about service is also that really understanding where that investor is coming from. So, for example, whenever you're listening

to Guy, is his family wealth tied into acromarine and is it primarily equities? Whereas for others, they might say they only have a handful of stocks, perhaps a bit more. And then they also have a huge real estate portfolio or whatever. I was about to say, have a position in gold because they take less risk than the average. But I don't think I want to pay myself into that corner. I mean, the amazing thing about gold, I don't understand it particularly well, but there are a certain proportion of investors. If you just start mentioning, well, different investors, it's something different for some, it's Bitcoin or crypto, specifically Bitcoin. And they don't want to do it themselves, but they want you to do it for them. So in a way, if you want gold bugs to invest

with you and you say, oh yeah, we always keep between 10 and 40 percent of our portfolio in gold, you've got a whole bunch of people who don't want to buy the gold themselves and they love the fact that you've got the gold. So I think a very interesting question to ask, and it's not often obvious is this is for the professional investors. Is what I'm doing, am I doing it in order to generate returns? Or am I doing it in order to gather assets? And the question, and I'm really not sure that I have the answer, and I know that there are some people with gold in their portfolios who would be quite offended probably by me saying this. So I'm apologise in advance, but can you really say that you're owning the gold in order to, in order to get the best possible,

quote, risk-adjusted returns? Are you doing it? Because you'll attract. a bunch of gold bugs who love the fact that you own gold at all times. And it gives you something to talk about. It's like gold run up, gold went down, gold this, gold that, gold mine. And that also helps you. The gold bugs love talking about it. So it's not just a shiny object that they like looking at. They like to talk about it.

They like to talk about the end of currencies and the end of the world and that everything's going to go to hell on the Han basket. But look, we've got our gold. And it's fascinating because I know Stig, and I don't know the full story, but I know that you guys have had to straddle these divides between people who either hate an asset or love an asset. And it seems that especially with gold, there are people that the world divides into people who love the asset. I've got a very, very good friend here who showed me photographs of the gold bars in his gold bars in his segregated safe somewhere underground in Zurich. And so it's not like people who love it and people who just can't stand it.

And that's true for gold. It's true for crypto. And it's almost like it's impossible to try and have a common language because they see the world so differently. That's what makes the market. That's what makes the market. And Guy, let's talk about a common language here. I wanted to transition into the next segment here of the show about service.

And specifically, I want to talk about value X. It's a nonprofit value investing conference. And I obviously am not explaining it to you because you were the one who founded it in 2011. So my first question would be perhaps in the spirit of common language without sort of like giving you too much of a primer. But why did you start value X back in 2011? It's a great question. What I think is fun to try and do, and I hope this is the best way to answer it is to, I can easily give the surface level reason, but there may be deeper reasons which are kind of like worth exploring at least.

If I don't do it with you Stig, I'd have to do it with the psychotherapist. I don't have a psychotherapist currently. So the surface reason is I wanted to move to Zurich, decided that was the right place for me. We moved with my family to Zurich, but all of my network was centered around New York and perhaps a little bit London, which are the two places that UK places where I'd studied. And I remember talking to John Miljevick, who's the author of the manual, ideas and saying he'd move to Zurich a year after me. And I kind of like said, what if we could bring some of these investors? We used to meet at this dinner in a restaurant called Kolbej,

organized by Shai Dar Dasty. There'd be 20 or 30 of us, all budding value investors. And I said, what if we could recreate that here in Zurich? And I remember I said to John, look, let's try it. And hey, if all that happens is that you and I are hanging out talking stocks in Closters, the ski resort, not far from Zurich, then that's totally fine. So that was the surface level reason, bring people to Zurich. But around that time, I was also, I guess, fascinated by the creation of communities, communities that help you to succeed in life. And Napoleon Hill talks about, he has a name for it, basically a forum, a group of people that helps you to succeed. And Benjamin Franklin talks about having a group of people that you meet with regularly.

that kind of like help you to think through your problems in life and help you to kind of connect up to what you need in order to succeed in life. So I was fascinated by that. I was fascinated by organizations like not long before become a member of this organization called YPO, young president's organization that has forums. I'd attended the TED conference for the first time and I'd seen what TED had done and I'd attended a TEDx, which is a mini-TED conference, so TED Technology, Entertainment Design, TEDx, Mini-TED. I'd been a member of Toastmasters for a while in New York City. I was a member of a chapter called Paces, Toastmasters.

And here in Zurich, or here in Switzerland, there was the World Economic Forum. And I found all those organizations fascinating. They were all not-for-profit, all kind of community peer group, but very special communities. And so there was some part of me that wanted to explore that for myself, I guess. So that's kind of like the deeper reason of creating Value X. But I think that looking back and thinking about it now, it was about creating something that would help me and the other people who participated in it to succeed to live better lives as a vehicle to help me to do that. And yeah, so those are the reasons why. And it's been a fun and incredible journey, actually.

really, really fun and incredible journey. I mean, ValueX Middle East is ValueX that happens in Dubai. And actually, the person who runs that, who's P.V. Ramanathan, he is the guy who sat down with me in New York and he said, you should join Toastmasters. I think you'd get a lot of benefit out of it. That was like 15 years ago, or more maybe. And I was like, you know what? If that guy tells me I should join Toastmasters, who am I to second guess him? I'm going to just go see what it's all about. And it was a fantastic journey for me. I learned so much at Toastmasters. But ValueX now, there's ValueX clusters, which I'd say is the original one.

And people came to me and said, hey, I really like this format. Do you mind if I use the name? And I was like, sure, go ahead. So the first one I think was Vitali Katzl Nelson set up ValueX Vale. And then Ram did ValueX Middle East. and then there's a character called Sophocles, Sophocleus, and he calls it Value Cyprus, and I've kind of like, have fun with him, because I'm like, why do you just call it Value X Cyprus? He's like, no, it's Value Cyprus.

Then you're not part of the family, Sophocles. I haven't actually been to ValueX Cyprus yet. And there was a guy, there is a guy, who did ValueX Kazakhstan a couple of times. And so it seems like the format is a good one. It's one that works. And so we've grown. I didn't want it to grow. We were originally 30 people. It's now as large as 120, which is in a way too many, but it's kind of hard because you don't want to exclude people. Once you're a member of the community, unless you do something like commit mass murder or something, you remember, there's security. You want to be in a community where when people who are way better than you join, you don't get kicked out, you get to enjoy their company. And so we're now 120 people and happens once you are in Costa's in a ski resort. And you've been. You know what it's all about.

Thank you for inviting me, Guy. It was, like you mentioned, like, 120-ish people, and it was in the arena, so the biggest venue in clusters. So it's right next to Davos. Would you consider, like, assuming that it continues to grow, would you move the event? Would it always be in that area? How do you think about that? Yeah, with difficulty, meaning that tough choices, and I can just share with you some of the

thinking around that. if you go to the website, you'll see it. But I kind of drew on what I thought, the ideas that most resonated for me from those different organizations I've described. So from TED, I sort of drew this idea of short talks. And rather than the TED motto at the time was ideas worth sharing, I was like investment ideas worth sharing. Drawing from Davos, the World Economic Forum in Davos, this idea of pulling the group in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, effectively, not too far away from an international airport, but far away enough that people aren't kind of distracted by other things. And from YPO, I took confidentiality and speaking from experience and non-solicitation,

so you can't go there and sort of like market your wares. So it's got a kind of a format to it. But then last year for the first time, I went to something called Tulipomania, organized by Chris Blumstrann. John Wiljavik introduced me to him at the Zurich project. I was so grateful John sat me next to him. And the guy is a genius or more of a genius than I am, for sure. I can't measure whether he's a genius or not. I just know he's got way more brain power than I do. But he had something in his tulipomania that I think is really, really powerful that you can't really do with more than 30 or 40 people in a room, which is the way Chris described it, bring us your worst idea. Don't bring us your best idea. And what Chris described to me is, he meant bring to the

group, the idea that you most struggle with, that is giving you the most difficulty that you're just trying to work it out. And then rather than our talks at Value X are very short. And the idea is you do the talk, two or three questions and then take it to the bar afterwards. Instead, this is one-hour seminar style where the presenter starts presenting the idea. And within 10 minutes, you've got a discussion going on. Well, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? What about this? I know somebody who can help you figure out that. And you get the hive mind of effectively 30 seminar participants in a seminar style environment, really trying to help you think through it. And it was extremely powerful. And it's kind of hard for me to do.

Value X is not an aircraft carrier, but it's a big enough ship that you can't, you can't just go to everybody and say, okay, we're changing the format. It's going to be completely different. and 60 of you won't be able to come back. It wouldn't be very nice. So I'm just pointing that out because it's interesting, you start something and then it develops its own momentum. It develops its own community and the community develops its expectations. And even if there are some really good ideas that it would be impossible to implement

without destroying it. So we've decided, because it's run by the team that I'm a part of, that we don't want it to grow. And so we're at capacity in this convention sports center in Plosters. And we kind of agree that there are a lot more space in Davos, which is not that far away, but it would change the nature of the events significantly that in a way it would destroy it. So no, we're not moving to Davos. And I would tell you that when you get a group of 120 people, what's really fascinating is at 120 people, you start replicating the problems of society. So, in a group of 120 people, no matter how you try and do it, you'll have your share of people

who are there, because over a period of 15 years of running value X, not every single person is somebody that I necessarily want to invite back or spend an enormous amount more time with for all sorts of good reasons. But I can't, I don't believe that I can exclude them from the event, Because if you became a part of the community, even if they're not contributing value to me by their presence, they might be contributing value to somebody else. And even if they're not contributing value to somebody else, they're kind of like a former part of the social network. Now, if you go and exclude somebody, which I think that the World Economic Forum does do, you get invited for a number of years. And then they just say, no, we're done with you. And there's good reasons for doing it because in a way you kind of get rid of dry wood.

but there's this nervousness and this salesy aspect to the World Economic Forum where you're kind of afraid you won't be invited back and so you take away safety and that has an impact. So if I want to kind of like have more turnover in the group that's there, I'll destroy other things. And so there are difficult choices to be made if one thinks about where it goes. But my expectation is that we'll stay in clusters. It'll be around 120 people.

I try to be inclusive and bring new people in, but there's a constraining factor that I don't want to exclude people who are already there. And the real measure, and I've said this a couple of times at the conference, is, and I'll end with my rambly thoughts, the mic's about to come back to you, Stig, is that, and this is really, I'm genuinely, and this really does, is part of my, I think my DNA, and it really does drive me. I don't need to own a big yacht.

I don't need to be a billionaire. But boy, would it be fun if a few of my friends own big yachts and a billionaires. And they're not kind of inviting me onto their yacht or whatever the hell else they're doing because they're trying to get something for me or because they owe me something, but because we're genuine friends and they just want to have my company and it would be fun to do. And so the real measure for me is in 20 years, how many billionaires or how many extraordinarily successful people where I once read an article in New York Times about some group of guys who would meet once every week or maybe once every month in New York City.

And they'd all lived these extraordinary lives. And the premise of the article was it had something to do with them getting together with each other once a week for these meetings. And so I'd be a judge it an extraordinary success. And I would judge my life as success if I could look back in 30 years, 20 years and say, wow, look at these amazing people and what they did in their lives. And against that measure, there's, we're only just getting. started, there's a long way to go.

Well, Guy, thank you for doing such a wonderful service to the value investing community. And I would also just mention that I'll make sure to link to Rams event Value X in the Middle East. Which is superb. It's absolutely superb. Better than Value X clusters. Did I just say that? No, it isn't.

We're better. We're better. But Ram's an incredible guy. He's just, he's got all the right models. He's living by all the right myths, if you like. That's wonderful. So fantastic. And I can only say very, very nice things about RAM. So I hope someone in the audience would make it to that event in November. And again, I'll make sure to link to the website and how

to sign up and all that good stuff. So just for you, I don't know how RAM runs it, but one of the ways I run ValueX is that you can't just buy a ticket. You can't just sign up because you need to be known to the community. So if Ram's running it the same way, which I suspect he is, you'll have to find somebody who is already a part of that community and get them to recommend you, because then, and I have this rule that even when somebody is recommended to me and they're very, very good person to add to the Value X, I always make sure that I've met them, at least by Zoom, well before the conference, that they're a known entity into the group. So if you want to join Value X Middle East or Value X, you'll have to find a way to get to

know the people who already there and make yourself valuable to them. I hope you don't mind me sort of like. No, no, no, please. Thank you for saying so, because I definitely don't want to over promise at all. I wanted to share their love and make sure that more people in the Belgian investing community knew about it. I hadn't heard about that event before I went to clusters. And sorry, I think it was very clumsy for me to send in like way to just go ahead and sign up. But I think I got too excited about that wonderful event. I think that what's really powerful, I mean, one of the things that seems to me, and this comes from a Toastmasters,

format, meeting format, called table topics in which every person is required to give an impromptu speech of, say, two minutes long on a topic that they didn't hear about three minutes beforehand. So it's really about thinking on your feet. And so on the one hand, that's training and giving impromptu speeches. But there's another aspect to it, which is that when you have a group of 10, 20 people in the room and they each give a two minute speech, is that they're these really sort of like there are these tells. They talk about things that they didn't expect to talk about and say things about themselves in the world that they didn't expect to say.

And suddenly you get this community arising. And so at ValueX, we're kind of like trying to push that everybody gets a chance to talk to the group. And what you get as a result of that is that the two minutes that you spend or the five or the 10 minutes, the person who you need to connect with who's in the room will read something about what you said. and it may be completely unrelated to the topic that you're discussing, maybe your accent or a reference to something, and that creates the connection that creates something. And so you show up at Value X clusters and you hear about Value X, Middle East,

and you didn't know it existed. Somebody else shows up to Value X clusters and discovered something else or meet somebody they never expected to meet. It's kind of fun when I see and track those things. Really, really interesting. So I don't know if that was in answer to you, if it's just something that I wanted to say, but there we go. Guy, before going to clusters, and this is probably going to come across this bit of a

of a vain comment, but I sort of like wanted to, what, want to turn the spot on you. But first, the vein component here. So my, my father asked me if I was going as stick, I mean, the private individual or stick from TIP. And I wasn't really sure how to answer. And it's, it's kind of surprised me. And it also kind of like made me sad, but it's also surprised me. And I think that there is this dilemma where I would go to different conferences, not only in, not only just in clusters, but in saying Dubai or Omaha or whatnot, and perhaps, perhaps get a bit of attention, perhaps also more intention that I, that I like and perhaps not feeling completely comfortable with that. But at the same time, also be worried that I would miss it if I didn't have

the option, as ridiculous as it probably sounds. And Guy, you obviously, a lot more known in the value investing community than me. And I was kind of curious to hear how you think about whenever you would go to different value investing events or settings or just like the whole ecosystem we have around value investing. Do you feel that you were guy spear or guy or do you feel that your guy spear the value investor? Yeah, I totally get the question and it's a spectacular question. And another way of putting it for me is that it happened for a while, somehow it's dropped off now, is that did they want to meet me or did they want to write, meet the guy who wrote the book? And there was this, there was a certain point where people were disappointed because they realized that the person

they were meeting was not the person who wrote the book. He'd moved, he'd grown since then. He changed his mind. And there are some things that I wrote in my book that I don't agree with anymore that I think are actually quite stupid. And there's this kind of like disappointment, if you like. And so how do you navigate between a public persona and the private individual? And it seems to me, and it's a theme that just it's coming up for me. I don't know if it's coming for you. It's just this dimension that like it or not, if you become known to more people than you could ever meet in your lifetime, you're just going to have to manage that. And it seems to me that the key is to understand those two things and to manage it in a way that is consistent

with your personality. And it can be very different depending on what your personality is. And so, and I want to sort of like just bring up a few examples, going back to the royal family and it's the lessons we can learn from the royals who do that well, the reality is that we know absolutely nothing about the private personality of any of the royals that are so carefully watched in the UK that the ones I am so familiar with. And the ones who do it really well, it seems to me, don't even attempt to project their actual personality when they're in their public roles. That's not their job. That's not why they're there. Prince William is not there because he has a good or a bad sense of humor because he's particularly intelligent,

knows a lot about history, or he's a good father or a bad father. He's there because, as you so rightly put, he came out of a certain womb, and he's there to play a role, and you play that role in the best possible way when you don't interfere with it, when you don't create noise, in a way it seems to me that, and I'm a, I think that I'm a fan of the younger brother and Megan Markle, but it's, in order to do best as an employee of that firm, you need to separate your own personality from the way people see you. And that comes down to selecting what you wear, because what you wear is, again, the sense of decorum or the sense of symbolism that you're using and exactly

what you wear and the color that you wear and the color that you wear related to the other people around you and where the badge goes or if you don't wear a badge or all of that count. So that is an example of an extremely dichotomized, separated. But that's not you and me. And we're trying to be authentic in the real world. We're trying to be, or at least speaking for myself, but I think you're the same kind of person. You want to be, I want to be the same person everywhere I am. I don't want to have a public persona.

And so my goal, and I, again, be aware of the dimension that it adds, but don't apply it necessarily in the same way that other people you've seen apply it. So certainly I don't have to live my life like a royal. I can try and merge the public and the private persona. And that is my goal. And I think that that's part of why people enjoy talking to me because they see that the private and the public persona are the same thing. So if I'd have been your father, I'd have said, you're going a stig.

And by the way, the stig that you are with your family and at home and personally is should be and is the same stig that is appearing at Value X and elsewhere in public. But then what's happened to me? So that's my goal and I think that I've done a reasonably good job of it, better than I would have before I read the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi. And I don't know if you might have actually certainly would have experienced it at Value X because half the people at Value X would like to go on your show. So you'd have had a whole stream of people coming up to you.

and at Berkshire Hathaway, I end up having a whole stream of people coming up to me. And there it's only become sort of like top of mind for me recently, where I see that Monash and I have very, very different personalities. So for Monish, as the best as I can see it, he's energized by people coming up to him. He kind of, he thinks it's fun, he's happy to take the photographs, he's happy to banter a little bit. And it's only one day in the year, so he's not doing it every day of the week. And the difficulty that I think that I have with that, and that perhaps you have with that, is that it denudes. So when I go to Berkshire and I am in that way at Berkshire, there's no meaningful interaction.

So to be a celebrity is a very shallow experience because people that they're just looking, they're not actually interacting with me as an individual. they're interacting with their idea of who I am. And there's not even the time to kind of like create any real connection because there's another person and another person, another person. And I personally find that exhausting. And I also find it kind of meaningless. And so I've had conversations with William Green about this

because he's in a similar kind of boat. So I don't want to create too many situations where I have many, many people coming up to me. and because unlike Monash, it drains me of energy, it doesn't fill me with energy, and I kind of find it a little bit meaningless. But at the same time, there's a benefit to me at being at the Berkshire meeting. I don't want to not go to the Berkshire meeting. And I want to be kind to those people, and I want to be a decent human being. So that's just those are waters that I have to navigate, trying to be myself as much as I can. But I would say that I think that writing a book as personal as I did,

is a kind of loss of your virginity. You can't ever go back. People now know things about me and they feel like they know me personally in many, many ways they do. And in a way, that's a loss of privacy. And the people who've a lot less privacy than I, what I understand, I mean, people like Barack Obama and many other people, they just yearn for the ability to walk around and not be noticed and not be known and just be themselves and not have anybody react any differently to them. And that is, a gift if you're not a public figure. So I've lost a little bit of that, nowhere near. I've lost a little bit and learned enough to know that I don't really want to lose any more of it if I can avoid it.

The privacy and anonymity is a good thing. There's also, I mean, okay, let's be clear. So why have I become, I don't know if I'm a celebrity, the Berkshire Hathaway, I'm a minor celebrity. And it's in part because I wrote a book. The way that I wrote the book, it's having these very, very open, honest conversations. And there's a part of me that wanted it. And why did I want it? Because I perceived that it was an important way to get the success that I craved.

And I felt like if I'm well known, then I'll have easier time researching investment opportunities. And I'll have an easier time getting investors and all of those things. And I think that's probably true. And so there's a certain price to be paid for that. Yes, I do have better conversations. And yes, people are more willing to pick up the phone to me and talk to me. But I think that I hope to manage it now. I don't want any more celebrity.

I think I've got more than the optimal amount, actually. And in your case and in my case, and it doesn't help that I think you're more of an introvert than me. But I'm also, I believe, the end of the day, an introvert, when I'm in spaces like the Berkshire Hathaway meeting or when we're at Value X, then that's just something I have to manage. But again, a long answer, a long and rambly answer to your question, my way. word to you is be, always be Stig Brodison, always, always be Stig Brodison. That's very kind of you to say. And sort of like to one of your previous points, whenever you're a guy, no one's a profit in his own country. People say different things

whenever it's a guy compared to guy, the value investor. So whenever you would go to a place like value X, and you're very kind whenever I went there, sort of like to ask how I was doing and everything. And so thank you for bringing it up. So it doesn't sound like I'm complaining about going to value X because it was a one. wonderful, wonderful experience. But it was a bit like, yes, I'm going here as a private person, wanted you network, and you went up on States and you said, like, no solicitation. We all here to learn together. And it's like, yes, this is awesome. And then you get flocked with people. And we, I roughly get like 2,000 requests to be on the, on the podcast annually. And then I went to

a value X for my, for my time off. And I just got flocked with people saying, let me go on your podcast. And I don't think there's anything wrong with. I also think it's important. not to judge anyone. I kind of feel like I'm complaining and coming from a bad place here. Actually, what I would say is that I wasn't aware that you were that sort of like crowded because it's a kind of a violation of Value X's ethos to do that. You can't walk up to stick brodice and say, please might be on your podcast. That is soliciting business. That is soliciting for yourself. You can't do it. And to the extent that it was done is not appropriate. What they can do is say, I love your podcast.

And if you're ever looking, it's hard. If you're ever looking for guests, I'll be happy to help you find some. There's a fine line. But in a way, it's hard because I would have preferred for that not to happen to you. And I can tell you, I was in a restaurant this summer, believe it or not, my wife and I discovered this incredible restaurant in the south of France. So you get to by boat. And so we went and guess who comes and sits down?

Elton John Elton John is in this restaurant and we're in this restaurant and what's really fascinating about this restaurant is very, very hard to get a table, very, very hard to get a reservation and I have actually no doubt that if anyone in the restaurant would have walked up to Elton John said, oh, can I get an autograph or something? They would never have been able to get a table in that restaurant ever again. And so Elton John, we face a very, very minuscule fraction

of what Elton John faces. And in a way, it's the price of success. And you have a kind of a media business. You have a very successful podcast, and it's natural. I mean, I always find it interesting that when I speak to journalists at a major publication, or I think I was on CNBC once and I was on CNN once, like those people, I'd be like, oh, we should go for a coffee sometime or, oh, can I send you a copy in my book? Or can I put you on my holiday card list?

And they have no interest. They have a thousand people a day trying to do that with them. And you can try, but you're not going to get very far. And so you in a way have transitioned in your, when you're around investors, it's just inevitable that they're going to want to be on your podcast. And they're going to be desperate to try and get on. And they're going to try all sorts of ruses to try and get on. And it's a reflection of your success.

And it's just a part of the price you have to pay. You can't really go back, can you? No. And I think just as an editing, no, guy, I'm probably going to take out this point. about me complaining about there were so many people want to on the podcast because I kind of feel like it comes across as very entitled. That was not my intention. No, no, I don't think my personal views is not entitled. It's just a reflection of reality. It's reality that, look, I've discovered on YouTube that I can watch this British journalist whose name always escapes me. And he's got

a very, very successful YouTube show with millions of viewers. And he's got endless number of people who want to get onto his show. They're desperate to get on. That's just the way it is. And there's a kind of a, it's not an 80-20 rule. It's 991 rule. And you've, in terms of your podcast, have entered into that 1%. And that's a natural consequence. What I'd say is that in a way, and I'm kind of doing this in real time, because I'm realizing the problem. And in a way, you cannot go back to being private stig around investors. It's just the world has changed. And there's all sorts of benefits that you get. You run a very successful podcast. There's also price that you have to pay, and it's that you can't be private stig when you're anywhere around

a group of investors. And that's a shame because you want to be private stig. And I'd say that to empathize to you, the problem with being public stig is that when all these people are coming at you, you can't be natural, you can't learn, you can't discover, you can't ask questions, you can't evaluate, you can't have that random sort of thought or insight that helps you. And so But that's a real, a freaking shame, if you like. And I just think that, and it may segue into a question that I know you'd put on the preparation for this, we cannot be the same person that we were. We have to modify and adjust and become different to the person that we were.

And that's in a way, I think, what you're being challenged to do, certainly for places like the Berkshire meeting and maybe Valiwax and other gatherings where, just for people listening, I tell you, it comes up for me. So I'm at the Sequoia Fund, Rewain Conif's Mutual Fund's annual meeting in New York City. This is like two decades ago. So I'm sitting there. Who sits down next to me, but Lou Simpson? There's Lou Simpson. I mean, this guy is a hero. This guy is a god to me. I study his investment decisions. And it's like a bit like that Elton John phenomenon. But of course, Elton John, he's just a singer, Lou Simpson. And there's Q&A.

There's Jonathan Brandt on the stage. There's Bill Rewain there at the time. There's Carly Cuniff there. And what I want to do is turn to Lou Simpson, given my business card. And sometimes I'm impressed. I actually do the right thing. And I said, we're at a meeting. There's Q&A.

Just you've noticed him. And then I saw that he was looking at me to find out to see who the head I was. maybe he recognized me from something. There's a way before I written my book. And I knew, again, don't turn and talk to him. Let's let him observe you quietly and let him see who you are. And I resisted the temptation. I'm reasonably sure if I would have tried to turn and talk to him,

he would have shut me down in no time. And then at the very end, as everybody was getting up, I said to him, Lou Simpson, obviously I know who you are. I'm Guy Speer. Obviously, I'm a huge fan. I'd love to connect with you sometime. And I'd won the credit with him because I hadn't bugged him through the Q&A because we were both there to do the Q&A. And so what's my point?

There are better ways to behave around the Stig Broderson's of the world. And then Stig Broderson may well notice you. And it's always good. Like if you're at a meeting like Value X and forgive me, I'm kind of, I hope you don't edit this out. Is like be there for the purpose of the meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to listen to people on the stage. So join Stig and listening to the people on the stage. Don't try and interfere with his concentration as he's trying to learn just like you are.

Am I making any sense? You're making a lot of sense, Guy. And I remember we met up in Omaha, I want to say it was probably last year. So it wasn't this year. It was in 2023. And we met in the lobby at the hotel that we were staying at and had a chance to sit down and chat. And you're just, you're such a nice person. Like the one of the first thing you talked about was, how can I help?

It's just like, it's just so wonderful. Speaking with you, Guy. Stig, I think that something else that I realized about that conversation was it was, it was in a way painful for me at Omaha because I realized that I just want to sit with you for two hours because one of the qualities that you have is you're extraordinarily curious and you're curious in a very incisive way. And that for you is a joy, actually, trying to get to the bottom of something, trying to really understand it in a thorough way.

And that's not something that happens when you're having these shallow conversations. And so the way I want to, it's a bit like what we're doing right now, which is kind of a joy, is to really try and understand and really try and, and that requires at least 20 minutes, if not two or three hours of really, I mean, even a retreat where you kind of have multiple opportunities to think through the thing. And so, and actually what I realize is that you set next to zero value, at making people feel good at a cocktail party. That is like, well, why?

Why, when I could be diving into some really important topic with somebody or on my own? And so that creates a particular challenge for you when you're in kind of these kind of more shallow type environments. And what was painful for me is that I realized that if we would have met somewhere in a mountain lodge where people go for hikes in the morning and hang out in the afternoon, we would have had a three-hour conversation about something. So we meet up in the lobby and I'm just excited to have a chance to hang out with you. And then this lovely, lovely couple comes up to us and wants to have our photo together

with that. I'm pretty sure they came for you and not for me. And so a lot of things happening here. They were super, super nice. I remember there were a lot of things happening at the time because you sort of like, sort of like wanted to pull me away until like this side of web. Yeah. Where nobody caught my eye, exactly.

I'm glad you remember that. And so, and you were like, you were like, you were like, you're super, super nice. And I remember that I promised my wife I would give her a call at a specific time. And I'm, this is something about being very much aligned. Like, I do what I say and say what I do. And here I have the opportunity to speak with Guy. And that's super, super, super exciting. And also, I made a commitment to my wife that would give her a call a specific time because you want to make sure everything was okay and I was across the pond and all of that. And that was like really, really tricky for me. I remember because it's about being truthful. But at the same time,

you're also thinking whenever this lovely couple come up to you, you better damn sure, make sure to smile and give them a good experience. Yeah. You also really want to have a chance to hang out with Guy because how wonderful is that? Well, Guy wants to hang out with Stig because how wonderful is that? It goes both ways, dude. So I think it sort of like takes me sort of like to something I wanted to ask you for a very long time. And I'm always wanted to apologize for a ramble because I kind of feel it's a very, very long question

where I'm going to go in many different directions. So I think it's important not to judge other people. Let me start that as the premise. We had someone come on the show the other day. He was very, very kind, and he sent a note, and he was like, he raised $10 million, and he was just super excited about getting a chance to do that. And that's amazing.

I only know him as a very, very good person. Then I was thinking to myself, 10 million is not a lot of money for the guy spears of the world. If you're a young upcoming asset manager, and you might manage, I don't know, 15 million, It's huge. If you can like, man, it's 10 million. And that person probably read all the books about don't take no for an answer and go for

it and all of those things. Like, I think it's hard to judge other people for not taking no for an answer. And I'm thinking like 10 years back, 15 years back, whenever I first got started thinking, wouldn't I have done the same thing? I unsolicited message you guy and said, famous person, please come on my podcast. and you were so kind enough to respond. So I think that there's an element of not be too harsh in other people whenever they do things that you might not do.

Perhaps you've done the exact same thing if you're in their situation. And then I also want to say that, they say that heaven and hell are very similar. They have long forks and plenty of food, but in heaven, they figured out that you can feed your neighbor. And it's hard for me to think of anyone in the value investing community who is as well like this you guy. And I could say, I could take on my investor hat and say, well, that's a lot. That's because Guy has 26 years of being the SCP-500. But that's not why.

There are a lot of people who have been having track records who are not nice people. People like you because you're so so authentic and because you're vulnerable and because you're just a wonderful human being. And Grant has this framework of giver, matches and takers, which is just so inspiring. And it's very, very clear that you're a giver. Now, I think I'm hopefully I'm going to come to my question here. Yeah, but it's fascinating just to listen. So you're on a good thought role.

You know, I think I mentioned before that I might be getting roughly 2,000 requests a year just to be on the podcast. And then there are other favors to ask. So let's say that there's just say 50 messages on various platforms every day about different favors, 20, whatever it might be. And you want to be helpful. You want to respond to everyone. You want to be decent.

You want to be kind. And then whenever you tried that for some time, you realize, let's say that you have trend request, a big proportion. of those 20 comes back and asks for another favor. Plus, you get another 20 in the next day. And so it doesn't require a lot of math to figure out at some point in time. It's just going to be too much. How do you handle that being a giver, but at the same time, you don't want to surround yourself

with matchers and takers, and you just really want to be guy, a very, very nice person. How do you handle all of that? It's a spectacular question. And before I get to, I think I have some helpful. answers is this idea of, you kind of like earlier on, before you got to the question, you talked about the person who is engaging in behaviors that are not ideal, but I or you would have done maybe the same thing earlier on in our careers. And it's so hard to get on one's path in life and to get started and to make progress. And maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt

the same way that we would have liked to have been given the benefit of the doubt, all of those things, which raise, they just raise really, really important issues that I'd like to come back to. But to go to the question, I think that if I was, if Adam Grant, I've met him once, he hasn't asked me, but I'd love to get into a sort of rewrite or an additional chapter of his book where the give and take matches, givers and take as a dynamic process. So when you, start discerning in your behaviors between matching, giving, and taking, your environment changes. And so it requires modifications of our behavior. And so you're absolutely right. It's a hydra, to use the Greek mythological idea, that you cut off one head and two heads

appear, and you give to somebody, and they come back with another request and yet another request. And so I like to think now of that Adam Grant framework as a sorting mechanism. So some people will come back after you've met their request in a helpful way with a second request. And now I've just learned something really important about them. Because other people, if I meet their request or I am helpful to them in some way, will find a way to help me back. and so if I help somebody in some way and they come back with a second request and they live in the world in such a way where they kind of go well I'll try guy because he helped me once so maybe he'll help me again then yes so I'll help them once but I can't

help them a second time maybe I can help them two times but not a third time I have to shut them out or I have to I have to move them away or move them to a more distant setting where they can't make those requests that often. So what I'm actually doing is I'm sorting through people. I'm discovering by how they react to my behavior and reassigning them. And people can move categories and they can learn and come into a different category. There may be some people who are takers, but for some reason, we need them or want them in our lives and we're willing to take the cost of having them as takers. So I think there's no, it's not a sort of like the boundaries are, malleable, people can move back across the boundaries, and one can choose to have somebody

at a closer distance for one reason or another. And so the other thing that I would say, or part of that dynamic process is, so the set of people that I'm helping is not the same set all the time. There are people who are coming into that set, and then they'd be moving, they move themselves out potentially. And I'll give you an example. People have asked me so many times, what's your relationship to Warren Buffett? And I have moved myself out very intelligently, and the only option available to me is out of the set of people who would call up Warren Buffett to see if he's got time for a coffee when I'm in Omaha, because that is a request for his time that would very quickly get me out of his good books and into the far periphery of his universe.

The only way I can be in any way a part of his universe is to not make any request. So I move myself out of that set. But there are some people, and unfortunately there are a lot of them, where one has to actually move them out, and they don't even realize that they're not being helpful to you, where one just, so I guess it's a dynamic process. Somebody comes back with two or three requests and doesn't try to help you. You just have to see them as matches or takers. And one has to develop systems. So I would tell you that an engine is the way Monash would describe it. So rather than being as a reciprocating person or being a giving person, which you certainly want to be. To the extent that you're successful, you need to teach those systems to

the people around you and create gatekeepers and create sort of like rules as to how to approach all the different kinds of requests that come in, for example. So you might find that I might find as talk about me because I know me and I don't know. We used to give internships to a lot of people and we discovered that it was just a huge drain and very, very hard for us. So we had to to develop rules around. I used to be the guy who offered internships. Now, I've had to discipline myself when I'm anywhere in the world outside of the office. I have to say, wow, I can't offer the internship. The only thing I can do is propose you to the team. And the only time that we offer an internship if the team is unanimous, but I can certainly propose you to the team,

and that even goes for family members. And so I created a process. And now, and what I find really interesting to do is if I've had an intern, for example, I get an enormous number of internship requests. Often the intern might be a good gatekeeper or a good facilitator. So I literally, I'll say the only way you can become an intern is, first of all, by getting the approval of these prior interns who were there because they know what the environment is like. And then you need to go to my staff. And if there's unanimous approval there, then yeah, then you can come be my intern. So best of luck. I'd love to help you with that process and the way you need to.

So that's about as much as you can do. So the point to Adam Grant is the point that the chapter that I would have Adam Grant write is, how do you manage it as a dynamic process so that the bad doesn't drive out the good in a certain way, that you don't end up investing all your time in giving to people who are not. There's something else that can happen is these people are not. not asking for more and they're not coming back with multiple requests. But they're just not the right people to be helping in your case. I'll tell you something that I've done in a way far, well, maybe I haven't done too much of it, but I need to shift the focus of my attention,

of my team's attention. I love seeing people who are just out of college, just out of business schools, people who are budding analysts, people who want to start their funds. I want to help them to succeed. I think that's lovely. And I want them all to become billionaires. I'll send them all bottles of champagne when they have more AUM than I do, when they have higher returns. And I want to be able to be invited onto their yachts. But I also have to focus on what's going to move the needle for me. And I've helped a certain number of people. I would have liked to have helped more. And I hope I do help more. But that's not going to move the needle for me to have helped. I don't know, if we take the Value X community in total, current and past Value X.

has called it 200, 250, helping another 50 people get set up in business or to progress their careers as analysts. That's not going to help me progress in my life. So I can spend all of my time helping those people or my staff, my organization can spend all of its time helping those people, but it's not going to get me, it's not going to help me to progress in my life. So I have to decide what I want to do with my life. If I just want to help people, that's fine. But if I want the business to progress, interestingly enough, and I know this because I run a, minuscule podcast, but you can take many, what do you call it, startup emerging managers, new blood managers, and it's helping them, but it's not helping your podcast. And I suspect that

for the investors podcast, I just put it out to you, have you thought about interviewing Larry Summers, interviewing Jerome Powell, interviewing Janet Yellen? So that's probably where you have to go. And none of those guys, none of the guys at Value X can help you with that. So it's not just about sorting through people. It's about directing your helping energies in a direction that can be actually help you to progress your life. So that's kind of a long rambly answer. But the short answer is apply it in a dynamic way and apply it intelligently. And with, in a way, actually, the word that comes from my mind is malice. So we have to need. to say no, have to set up barriers, have to set up gatekeepers, have to set up processes

that protect you. You cannot, you will not be effective. And here's what I would, it's easy for me me enough to say it to you stick, but I'm extremely guilty of it. So, and so I will not say it about you, I'll say it about me. It is an enormous betrayal of ourselves, and we have to be true to ourselves to lose ourselves in helping other people. That is actually a kind of a sin. It's a, it's a grievous sin. Put on your own life jacket before helping somebody else. Your most important job is to live the most meaningful life. And yes, you want to be helpful to people along the way. But unless your goal is to be Mother Teresa, you cannot allow all the people who want help to drag you into what is not the most important thing for you. If I'm Roger Federer,

there's a point at which I have to say to all the school kids, it's been great talking to you, Now I'm going to go and train some real tennis with my one coach who can help me. And yes, I know you want me to spend another three days playing tennis with you and inspiring you and talking to you about tennis. My life mission is to go in Wimbledon as not to be a tennis coach. And to go win Wimbledon, I have to go and play with my coach. I have to do a structured regime. And you guys aren't part of it.

That's just it. And it's so funny because I'm saying with such clarity and confidence, but in a way, the person who really needs to take that advice is, me. Well, actually, two people that I want in the room debating on it is William Green and Monish Pabri. So, because William is like, because I can remember at that Berkshire meeting, I do remember that like, I'm in the middle of conversation, now we have to stand up for a photograph and those people were so happy for the photograph. And I was like, because William's really, I was like, that sucked William because it happened with William as well. Or maybe William was

somewhere in the area. We were like, no, no, you've got to be kind. You've got to be kind. But then there's another, so where it also happens is, I say to Monish, Monish, I know that this person might not work out as a good intern, but I really want to give them a chance. And yes, they haven't come at me in the right way. But you know what? I may not have come at a geist to be in the right way. And there's another model that Monish has, which is the cost of a false positive.

So the person that we hire that doesn't work out is very expensive to get rid of. Whereas the person that we never hired, even if they would have worked out, it doesn't cost us much. So we ought to grade very, very harshly and if in doubt, say no rather than saying yes. But how do you balance that with being fair and being kind? So I'd want to see William Green and Monish Pabri talk about those two things. I'd like to put the case to William Green and to Monash Pabrai and say, okay, so here's the situation. I'm talking to Stig.

Stig's talking to me. We want to dive into a deep conversation. We're having so much fun. And then two very kind, nice people want to get a photograph, but it interrupts our conversation. And part of he wants to say goodbye, thank you, not right now. And the other part says interrupt the conversation. See what Monish and William do. And sorry for the rambly answer.

I'm actually landing this plane right now and giving the mic back to you. And the short answer is, be intelligent about it. Don't be blind in applying the Adam Grant framework. Don't be blind in applying the false negatives, false positives framework. And do the intelligent thing, evolve your thinking to the circumstances as they unfold. And look to see people who've already solved that problem. You and I are not the first person people who needed to solve that problem. And so we can look and see how Warren Buffett solves it.

And very briefly, how does Warren Buffett solve it? Well, first of all, Warren Buffett is in private except for one day of the year. One day of the year, he's public Warren Buffett. And certainly Warren Buffett doesn't have any meaningful conversations on the Berkshire Hathaway meeting day. And he's totally into and accepts it because it's one day of his life. So there's one lesson right there is limit and frame the times when you're a public guy. And actually, if I want to be private guy with private Stig, all I need to do is say, stick, I'm on my way to Arras, and if you have time for coffee, I'd be delighted to entertain you.

And just don't do it at a time when you're being public guy. So I know what Munches would say, because he told me. And I'm kind of like sad that it wasn't recorded. It's also fair that it's not being recorded, but I think he would forgive me for bringing that up. Because he was asking me, I think it was probably before the last Berksia meeting. And I was like, I was a bit, I went there in 2023 where I met you. it was a lot of fun and it wasn't the best experience. Meeting you was, sorry, I want to clarify it,

meeting was a great experience, but the Berksia meeting wasn't the best experience. And there was a few things that was probably flattering, but to me was just a bit too much. And I like to stand there in the corner with my phone and not speak with anyone. And so Monius asked me, like, whether I was going. And I said, like, no, I kind of felt like after 20, 23. And we have members on our team now who absolutely love going there. And I kind of felt, why would I go there when others, from the team can go and have fun and meet up with you, which they also did. And so I was just saying no to Minas. And then he looked at me and he was like, but you owe it to the community. And it's, it's one day or a few days. Like, this is what you're supposed to do. And then he

mentioned Warren Buffett and he talked about like, so I guess we can conclude a few things. Point one, minus is a better person than me. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, to, to preface that. But the other thing I wanted to, to mention to this is, and I should probably say, I'm really sorry that I hope the guy doesn't invoice me for, he probably should invoice me for a bill for whining about all my problems here by the end of the call. Sorry, Stig, you're not whining about your problems. You're exploring really important issues that come up for you and they come up for many people. And so what you're struggling with, other people are struggling with.

So you're not whining at all. You're trying to understand. You're trying to tear stuff apart. So I just want to make that point as you now back to you. And I sort of wanted to make it about the listener and not about me in the sense of, of course, we all have unique circumstances, but I think a lot of people listening to this can resonate with not having enough time to please as many people as you want to please. And I hope that this conversation is sort of like in that light and it's not stick complaining

about things you probably shouldn't be complaining about. So I just wanted to preface. Yeah, I hope that the following helps is everyone. some of the best personalities are introverts. What does that mean? That doesn't mean they don't like people. Doesn't mean they mind being in crowds. But it means that the way I see it, because I think that I'm similar, is my social battery gets drained down faster. So I can maybe do it for an hour or two, but then I'm kind of done and I need to go and rest. And some people can continue like my wife for five, six, seven hours and they just love it. So don't apologize

for that attribute of yours. It's an attribute that you. It's an attribute that you. you have. You're naturally an introvert, but that gives you other qualities. And Monash is also, I would argue, an introvert, but he can make a social battery last longer on days like the Berkshire meeting. And it's exactly what he said to me. You owe it to the community, take care of the community. And the answer, I think, for you and me, and I'm not saying that we're the same, we each have to work it out for our own personal attributes, says, yeah, I'll be there for the community in a way that takes care of me. And maybe Monish, you can be there all day, but I'll be there for a couple of hours, and then I'll go to my room.

I actually at the Berkshire meeting this year in the afternoon, I went and listened to it in my room, in part because I could just be there and not interact with people. And so we do as much as we can, and that's okay. And far better to be in one's room or not at the meeting, I would argue, than to be in a place where one's not generous and giving to those people coming up to you. And I think that there are so many ways to manage it intelligently. One way is to only go to the overflow room, a place where you're less likely to be recognized. Another way is to say I'm going to be there in the morning and then in the afternoon I'll go to my room.

Or you're not obligated to go to the Berkshire meeting. So all good. But I actually think that in your case, you ought to go, even though we wouldn't get much time together. And you manage yourself in a different way. Guy, thank you for all the advice. And thank you for the inspiration. Can I just say just in general? I sort of like wanted to say something nicer and more eloquent, but just thank you.

Yeah. But I think that it's very kind of you to call it advice. I think that what we've been doing is exploring and sort of kicking a football around and trying to understand. And it's not like I know what I can do is I can say, well, I think that I've had this problem as well and I try to solve it in this way. And so I'm actually not giving advice. I'm trying to just share with you in this case how I'm trying to solve problems that many

of us face. And you're also trying to solve those problems. And by the way, I don't know that I have the right answer. Just to go back to, well, to go back to Jordan Peterson, but it goes all the way back to the height of Greek civilization and of the Renaissance is that the answers don't lie in sitting in a room and thinking about it, although that's probably important. They lie in coming with your perspective and having it bounce off somebody else's perspective and having them react to what you're saying and learning from what they're saying and disagreeing with them. and so that's what we're doing. We're wrestling with issues that come up and we're trying to figure it out,

and it's so much fun to do. So don't call it advice. It's just a conversation. The journey is the best part, guy. How can you best end this interview? Any conclude remarks? I think I probably need to make plans to come visit you in Aros. I think that would be good.

We could do an offline conversation even. It's really been fun talking to you, Stig. And I think that for me is a kind of like a mini podcast, or anybody else, I think that the most fun is when, and this has been an enormous amount of fun, is when you're coming out of a genuine sense of curiosity, trying to figure stuff out, you're asking real questions, challenging questions, and I've been learning all the way through this. I'm a better person at the end of this than I was at the beginning of this. So you don't have to thank me for my time. I thank you for giving us the opportunity

to have this conversation. Thank you. I have no better way to end this interview. So I'll just say thank you. You just said I should thank you, but I'm going to do it. Anyway, thank you so much, guys. Thank you. Thank you, Stig. You're never on to say thank you. So thank you.

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