In their latest episode of the VALUE: After Hours Podcast, Tobias Carlisle, Jake Taylor, and Guy Spier discuss:
- Why Warren Buffett’s $1 Trillion Success Wasn’t Just About the Money
- The Power of Honesty in Investing
- Why Investing Is an Infinite Game: Lessons from Warren Buffett
- How the Lollapalooza Effect Drives Influence
- Warren Buffett’s Secret to Staying Top of Mind
- Why Conspiracy Theories Win at the Dinner Table
- How Ice Ages Pushed Humans to Adapt
- Novelty Seeking: From Human Exploration to AI Traps
- How Learning History Transforms Your Approach to Life’s Challenges
- Uncovering Human Foibles: The Intersection of History and Psychology
- From Fear to Courage: The Power of Saying Yes in Life and Career
- Resilience in Action: How to Train Yourself to Embrace Adversity
- The Infinite Game: Why Winning Isn’t Everything in Sports and Life
You can find out more about the VALUE: After Hours Podcast here – VALUE: After Hours Podcast. You can also listen to the podcast on your favorite podcast platforms here:
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Transcript
Tobias: Now. we’re preparing to livestream.
Guy: Yeah. Yeah.
Tobias: This is Value: After Hours. I’m Tobias Carlisle. Joined, as always, by my cohost, Jake Taylor. Our very special guest today needs no introduction. Investor, author, Guy Spier of Aquamarine Fund. How are you, sir?
Guy: I’m great. Hi, everyone. I’ve been chatting to Tobias and Jake now for the last 10 minutes. And it’s been a lot of fun. I’m feeling pretty chill, I think, this is the word.
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Why Warren Buffett’s $1 Trillion Success Wasn’t Just About the Money
Tobias: I’m glad to hear that. I wanted to open this by saying that Berkshire Hathaway today has crossed $1 trillion-
Jake: Wow.
Tobias: -in market capitalization, which is quite a run from the $10 million that Adam Mead tweeted out today was when Buffett started buying $20 million when he got control. Has there ever been a run like that?
Guy: There probably has been. [laughs] Think of the guy from Teledyne, whatever his name was.
Tobias: [unintelligible [00:00:59]
Guy: Yeah, he’s been pretty freaking amazing. And not that I’ve ever– [crosstalk]
Jake: Henry.
Guy: Yeah, Henry Singleton. And not to mention Domino’s pizza and a whole bunch of things that, in retrospect, you could say have been amazing runs. But I think the point about this is that the people who invested at the $10 million market cap with Warren knew that he was going to have an incredible run at the time that they invested. They didn’t know how big it would be or how long it would go for, but they knew that they were in for the ride and it was going to be great.
That’s what’s, I guess, the difference between that, and so many of these other things where it would have been much harder to discern. We’re all on the search for what the next big, long hill to roll down will be with whom. That’s really tough. Really, really tough. We just want to find another Warren Buffett.
Tobias: What do you take? You’ve studied Buffett in pursuing your own investment philosophy, and you’ve written about the lunch being very significant. What do you take from the way that he has conducted his investment and business over his life?
Guy: I think that, actually what I’d say is to take a company from $10 million to a trillion is kind of obscene.
[laughter]It’s ridiculous when you think that he’s can’t spend any of the money. Well, he stopped being able to spend any of the money a long, long time ago. And so, why the hell is he doing it, and what’s worth saying– At the launch, because I was up close, I realized that because he wasn’t pretend– That’s what he enjoys doing. Before even you got on, Jake, I was telling Tobias, all the things I like doing.
I like going swimming in the lake of Zurich. I like going for bike rides. I like all sorts of things. I’m far more human than Warren Buffett is, but in a way, we want to invest with people like Warren who want to find them and invest with them and hold on for a very long time. It’s funny. This came up for me recently. It was a conversation that Mohnish and I had a long time ago where he said that, “He would happily swap his life for Warren’s.” I was like, “No way. Warren’s towards the end of his life, and we were at the time more at the middle of our lives, and I want to have all that enjoyment. I’m rich in seconds, and Warren’s less rich in seconds.”
The big divergence or the big lesson for me at that launch that scared me a little bit was– In order to be more like Warren Buffet, have those amazing returns and all those good things, you need to actually want to live your life like Warren Buffett, except that would have been miserable for me. What was absolutely incredible for me to realize was that, that was actually Warren Buffett’s best possible life. So, he was not doing what he was doing, because he was trying to optimize the path to a trillion. He was doing what he was doing, because that’s what he loved to do every day. I enjoy coming into the office every day, but I also enjoy going swimming, all those other things. So, yeah, I don’t know. Did I give a good perspective?
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The Power of Honesty in Investing
Tobias: You did. I think that you raised that in your most recent letter, where you said that you were interested in balance more than compounding as rapidly as you possibly could. Did you start out in that direction, or did you have a turning point? Did you have a–
Guy: No. I think that’s a series of shifts where– So, I have outside money. That’s a scary thing to say to your investors, because what they want to hear is, “I wake up every day, and all I think about is how to make you money, and on and on and on and on.” And so, it’s scary to say that.
Interestingly enough, this divergence between, in my case, what I knew to be reality. So, the first thing is, maybe that’s not reality. Maybe I’ve got it wrong. Maybe, actually, I am capable of and want to live my life exactly as Warren Buffett lives it, for example. And then, the realization that that’s not my reality, and that it’s possible that what I’m presenting to the world is a divergence between what I actually feel about the way I want to be and the way I am on the outside, and then the desire to close that gap.
I think that probably there is an art to doing that, because first of all, you have to be sure. Often, we are not sure. You get these people who make these huge confessions. I think that life’s better when you make small adjustments between– I don’t know that I’ve made any huge confessions and huge adjustments, but sort of like, “Oh, there’s a misalignment there. The person I’m being in the world is not quite the person that I am in real life. How do I adjust?”
And so, I remember two moments in that path of which the last letter is one of the most recent. But I remember being asked– I know it was a meeting with investors at the Harvard Club, and he said, “Could you tell me about your sell-discipline?” And a big part of me wanted to say, “Oh, well, let me tell you about my sell-discipline. We examine the thesis and we see if–” I had all sorts of stories. I gave a little bit of that, and I said, “Look, there’s valuation, and has the management fundamentally broken trust with me.” I just looked at him and said, “But it’s really, really hard, and an awful lot of time, I don’t know whether I should sell or not.”
I recalled with the investor in a room of about 50 people, a conversation I’d had with my father, where I tried to say to him, “Look, father, I know I bought it at $50, and then it was cheap. But now, the value is somewhere between $75 and $300.”
Jake: Yeah.
Guy: It’s somewhere between– I really don’t know where it is. So, my orientation is to leave it alone. So, that was one shift. That shift, there’s this feeling of they’re all going to say, “Oh, he’s an idiot. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Anyway, he doesn’t care about our money, so let’s take it away from him.” And then, this realization that actually they didn’t take their money away. “Oh, that feels so much better.” And that kind of feeling that you’re being yourself.
So, another moment that had slipped out of my mind, but maybe it’ll come. Yes. So, a family office. They were based in Athens. They get in touch with me. This is shortly after I’ve moved to Zurich. And they say, “We’d like you to come and give a presentation to us. We might want to invest a large amount of money with you. But could you come out to Athens to give the presentation?” I took a big goblin. I said, “No, I’m not coming out to talk to a bunch of people who want to yank my chain.”
I desperately wanted the big investment, but that’s not the way I want to live my life. I know I won’t be happy. I’ll be prostituting myself to go out to that in that way. And then, what helps me to do what I did in the latter is there is long conversations with William Green, where William really pushes me. And so, there’s been other conversations along the way. So, series of minor adjustments, constantly trying to be– A very interesting aspect of that is the first chapter of my book where I basically told the reader, “I was an avaricious man, willing to lie, or at least be parsimonious with the truth to get ahead.” I wrote that. I remember where I was when I wrote it.
And then, I don’t know when it was later that I realized that I was going to make it a chapter in my book, that I had to make it a chapter. That was perhaps the biggest lay it all out that I’ve done in my life, because I asked myself, “Do you want to–” Some people who’d worked at D.H. Blair, they erased that from the resumes and they pretended nothing happened. They worked as an investment banker. I thought, “I want to do that which is less honest, but I could certainly get away with it, or do I just want to be brutally honest and let the cards fall where they lie?”
I had to face up to the possibility. Actually, Tim Ferriss talks about fear mapping. I realize now, actually, what I did was fear map. I said, “Okay. What happens if people say we’ve read it but we don’t want to invest with you, and in fact, nobody will ever want to invest with you ever again?” I had a plan for what I was going to do. I felt like that was a better life. So, I was okay with doing it.
Jake: If it makes you feel better, Guy– I took some comfort with this, was hearing Charlie Munger at 98 years old say, “Selling is really hard. I’m still trying to figure out how I do that.” [chuckles]
Guy: Yeah. Exactly.
Jake: So, maybe we’re never going to get there, and it’s okay.
Guy: Yeah. No, I’m certainly not going to get there in terms of selling, for example. And that’s not the point. Actually, it was really reassuring to me, to the conversation– We were on a train on the way– My wife and I spent the weekend in Geneva, in Lausanne, where the daughter of a good friend was getting married. And on the way out there, I was speaking to Saurabh. I told him, and I was saying before we went live. I’m making unbelievably slow progress towards a degree in history. We’ll see if I ever get there. And I said, “But I feel, am I between two stalls I’m not sure?” And he gave the Christopher Nolan idea that–
I really actually have to read up more on Chris Nolan, because apparently, he spends a lot of time just exploring and thinking. Saurabh had this idea of exploration with no purpose, and this kind of faith that even when you do exploration with no purpose, there is a purpose. You just don’t know it. I’m just going wherever my mind wanders, because you guys aren’t redirecting me. So, feel free to [Jake laughs] redirect me. But I just recorded something. Well, I just read a book.
Actually, Jake and I, we met– I’d actually seen your book, Jake, and I’d enjoyed it very much. And then, we met in person at an event by Chris Bloomstran. And in one of Chris Bloomstran’s letters, he always gives the books that he’s been reading. One of them was a guy by John and Mary Gribbin called Ice Age. So, those of you just listening in. Jake just nodded. So, maybe Jake’s read it.
Jake: Yeah, Munger recommended it in the 1998 meeting, I think, if I remember right.
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How Ice Ages Pushed Humans to Adapt
Guy: So, I read Deep Simplicity, about complex adaptive systems. I hadn’t read that one. So, long story short, this book is going to tell us about why climate moves in cycles and why we can– Actually, we’re supposed to be in the middle of an ice age right now, if we trust all of those. There’s three different reasons, and they all come together to create these ice ages from time to time. But this idea that those cyclical ice ages coming around every 10,000 to 100,000 years was actually forced us. So, forgive me, I’m going to just lay this idea out, because I just think it’s so beautiful, actually. So, the great apes, we diverge from the great apes. I don’t know, is it two million years ago? Maybe more.
So, the great apes, the way I understood the idea from the book, they were specialized in the very, very center of their ecosystem. What happens in an ice age is that ecosystem, which is in Uganda, there cover some mountains there that I think is what we’re talking about. That rainforest jungle becomes smaller. And then, when the ice age dissipates and goes away and the world becomes warmer again, that area becomes larger.
Now, if you’re what became humans, us, we were not as well adapted to live at the very, very center of that ecosystem. In order to live at the center of that ecosystem, you needed very, very strong arms, you needed legs that held onto branches, you were bouncing around trees, and you’re eating mainly fruits and all sorts of things that required you to be able to crunch really, really hard material. Our ancestors were pushed to the edge of that, which was a nasty lifestyle. We were sometimes on the ground, we were sometimes in trees. We were scavenging. We were eating both meat and nonmeat. We were eating fruits of trees when we could, but we were also eating small animals when we could.
But we evolved. And if we would have tried, our ancestors would have tried to move to the center of the ecosystem, we would have been competing with gorillas and we would have had no chance. And probably, chimpanzees as well. So, we lived this tough life on the edges of those ecosystems, but we evolved other things to enable us to be adaptable to these changing circumstances. So, we in addition to being able to walk, not being so good in trees, being omnivorous, we adapted.
This is my point. This is what I’m getting to with Christopher Nolan, is we became curious, we became inventive, we became capable of trying new things to try and survive on the edge of this ecosystem, with wild animals on the outside, on the savannah, but great apes competing with us on the inside. And so, when we become innovative, when we follow our curiosity, we try and find stuff out, try and adapt to ChatGPT or whatever other new circumstances. We’re actually doing something that is deeply, deeply embedded in our species. So, that’s one thing that’s really lovely.
The other thing that’s a really beautiful idea is that at any given moment– I don’t know how many people are listening to this or will listen to this, but it is quite likely that at least half are going through some shitty moment or some shitty time, that life’s not great. And guess what? That’s what our ancestors did. When they were pushed out of the center of the best possible part of the rainforest, life wasn’t great for them either. But guess what? Our species survived and adapted despite that. And so, we can as well. So, that’s what I got from that book, which is just this beautiful idea. And so, why did I bring that up? Because when we are curious, we’re doing what is innate to our species. The only thing that I would say–
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Novelty Seeking: From Human Exploration to AI Traps
Guy: Can I move on to a slightly different topic, like meandering all over the place?
Tobias: Please– [crosstalk]
Jake: Let me give you one more on that, which-
Guy: Yeah.
Jake: -is you might find this interesting, Guy. So, there’s a sub-allele of that some people have that their dopamine receptor. It’s the DR4, actually allele. So, what that does is it makes you a little bit more sensitive to dopamine. That novelty feels a little bit better to you than average, okay? So, what ends up happening? We can see, that as you move down the continent of North America and down into South America, the further you go south, the more of that allele shows up. And so, basically, what happened was that people were seeking novelty just kept going further and further south, exploring. We could see that in actually today, like South America. I wonder if it doesn’t then evolve culturally. They might be more novelty seeking than people further northern latitudes.
Guy: That’s really, really fascinating. So, then, I’ll give you another spin on this. So, I saw this in the Financial Times. I’ve got another copy here, and I’ll eventually get to it again. But this is by a guy called Tim Harford. So, novelty seeking and curiosity. So, what we want to do is we want to be curious in our hunt for great businesses, in our hunt for great managers of businesses, in our hunt for real scientific knowledge. What we don’t want to do is seek novelty by doomscrolling down our TikTok feeds, for example. So, TikTok and other social media hijack that curiosity feature of our brains and gets us– And so, it turns out that in artificial intelligence, there’s a similar phenomenon that you need to control for.
If you have an artificial intelligence that’s seeking to find its way out of a maze, one of the things you can program it to look for is novelty. So, if it’s going around in circles in the same part of the maze, then one of the ways you get it to try new avenues is you program it to like novelty, except– I wish I knew the term. I need to have reread the article, and I haven’t. You can completely throw off the artificial intelligence by putting the equivalent of a TV screen with static in the maze. [Jake chuckles] Because the minute the artificial intelligence is going to find its way out of the maze pretty quick, it’s going to keep seeking new avenues. But if you put the equivalent of a TV screen with static, it then just gets stuck, because it’s just like, “Hello, there’s new static all the time.”
Jake: Yeah. Just noise becomes their signal.
Guy: Yeah. Actually, it’s a bit like us doomscrolling or similar to us doomscrolling, which is just utterly fascinating. So, that’s what I got so far from the article. I can’t wait to reread the article, because I think that it gives you strategies to switch off– Well, even just mentally to understand, there’s useful curiosity and there’s non-useful curiosity, and we need to focus on the useful curiosity. So, I don’t know why the hell that came out, but it did. Yes, so going back to Saurabh Madaan, see, I can loop this back. [Jake chuckles] We meandered all over the place.
Saurabh Madaan says to me on this call, have basically, he says, “Guy, be confident that your curiosity and things that appear to have no relation to your goals in life actually may turn out to be deeply meaningful. Because if Chris Nolan can do it, you can do it,” something like that. So, yeah.
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How Learning History Transforms Your Approach to Life’s Challenges
Tobias: What’s the attraction to history?
Guy: Oh, Tobias.
Tobias: Do you think that it perhaps allows you to process the shocks, and crises, and surprises and things that we receive in real time through a lens where, well, this is– I read yesterday, I think Morgan Housel said, “History is just a collection of all of the surprises that we’ve encountered. And so, relying on history is really projecting forward that we’ll see many more of these surprises into the future.”
Guy: So, I have something specific to say about what I’ve learned about history in the little that I’ve done, but not nothing. But before I go there, you’ll find this really funny. So, I have a bunch of friends who are in the maths departments of [unintelligible [00:21:57] and University of Zurich. A couple of them are even fields medalist, which is like Nobel Prize winners. So, I’m threatening to them and I’m loving my conversations with them. I have no idea where they entertain my presence. I’m saying to this friend, an Iranian friend who’s a professor here of mathematics. I say, “Ashkan, it’s very nice that you talk to me about all these wonderful–”
He’s one of the things that he’s searching for in his research is a proof of the Riemann hypothesis. I could barely tell you what the Riemann hypothesis is. I could regurgitate terms, but I don’t have a deep understanding. The reality is, in order to have a deep understanding, I would need about five years’ worth of mathematics, because there are concepts that just take time to learn and to really become facile with. And so, I say to him, “Look, what I really need to do is a course in linear algebra.” That’s a start.
By the way, linear algebra, it’s in this machine learning and artificial intelligence. It’s a very, very powerful tool with which to look at the world, and has all these applications. I actually think a bit like double entry bookkeeping. Ideally, nobody should graduate at least university without having some understanding of linear algebra. It starts, by the way, if that is matrices and vectors. But the thing is, I’m looking on Zurich University websites, looking at, “Okay, I can sign up for a math’s degree and then I can go do the linear algebra course.” So, do I have to show up to lectures? No, but I do have to pass exams. So, I’m trying to figure out how am I going to get the knowledge?
It takes enormous amount of discipline to study linear algebra on your own. I’m thinking that maybe I’ll find a postdoc or a predoc, post-Masters student, who will come to my office and tutor me or force me to do problem sets and hand them in. So, literally, I’m thinking that. I’m super envious of my daughter who’s just completed her first year at an Ivy League university in the US. I’m just turning on the back page of the newspaper, and it says, “Masters in applied history.” It’s like, the timing works for me, because it’s in modules. It’s done for me, like done. [laughs]
So, the answer is there was no– I didn’t care what it was. I just wanted to be more of a student than I had been, and I wanted to be in a more structured environment for students. It could have been linear algebra, but it’s history. So, that’s the first part. But so nice you to think, there was nothing strategic about it at all. [Jake chuckles] It was a lunge. This excites me actually to share this, is that what I expected to learn so far is in many ways not what I’ve actually learned. So, certainly, history is not about predicting. For me, it’s not a bad predicting anything about the future.
I think that my experience of what I’ve learned so far is that there’s a historical way of thinking that, first of all, it makes life more interesting and enjoyable on a very, very basic level, because it answers the question, why am I what I am, why are we what we are, what is it that makes us who we are? I could draw on many examples if you want to dive into that.
The next thing I would say, is that if I want to convince people of things— So, you get to write essays or you get to write answers to the questions that the professors pose. There are a thousand different ways to answer it, and there’s a very, very surface, basic way to answer it. But if you want to write something really good that they like, and that people will pay attention to and will be convinced by, which event do I select? Do I select this event in history or that event? Do I select this personality or that personality? Do I come out with a quote from what they said? Do I come out with an analysis of their personality? So, all of these are different ways of talking about, say, the past–
The selection mechanism is not what is most true necessarily. It is what is going to be most convincing for my audience. And so, I can tell you that– So, I was sharing with Tobias. I don’t know if you were there already, Jake, we had a module for this history course that was up in Brussels, looking European Union. And so, I’m actually going through, when I’m not doing investing stuff, thinking about how I’m going to answer some questions that were posed to us. One answer is to talk about the very, very dry mechanics of how the European Union was put together.
One can look at source legislation that’s sitting online at Council of Europe, what have you. Or, I can go and look for a speech that Winston Churchill actually gave it here in Zurich, is called an Arise Europe speech. He actually talked in that speech about a United States of Europe. And so, if I want to talk to the Brits about what the EU is, and I quote Churchill to them– Actually, what’s even more interesting about that is that, so I can quote Churchill to them, but Winston Churchill traveled to Zurich for a reason. It wasn’t like he was just passing by, and he decided to stop off and give a speech.
This was a guy, he knew how to think in many different ways, including historically. Why did he decide to give the speech in Zurich? Why not? He certainly wanted to give in Switzerland. There was a reason why he wanted to give that speech in Switzerland. He saw Switzerland as a model for what Europe might become. So, that’s fascinating for me. Really, really fascinating.
I realize– It’s a little late now, I’m in my late 50s, but if I’d have wanted to be a person of influence in public affairs, in a public servant of some kind, the lowest scraping the barrels, being a populist. We see a lot of populists. But if you can think historically, you can think of what is convincing to people, then you have far more to go by. You show up. Funnily enough, of course, Shakespeare understood all of this. I can’t remember which play it is. I really ought to know, but it is one of the best Shakespeare plays is the guy who goes and wins the battle of Agincourt. I think it’s Henry IV, Henry V. There’s some speeches that—
So, Shakespeare puts into his mouth, words that would have deeply motivated any British man to fight for the King of England in France and to expose them. And so, that is fascinating. Really, really fascinating. So, I’m just scratching the surface. Just scratching the surface.
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Uncovering Human Foibles: The Intersection of History and Psychology
Jake: So, would you think that the same behavioral biases, decision making research that we’re often familiar with Kahneman, Tversky type of stuff? Does that show up as well in historical accounts? I’d imagine it would have to. It’s being filtered through a human, right?
Guy: There’s a book that I have not read, but I like this meta knowledge. I know a little bit about what the book is about. The title is called Thinking In Time. Trying to understand the motivations of key decision makers at crisis moments. One of the most studied periods or events in history is this Cuban Missile Crisis. What different actors knew at the time what they thought, it’s this massive multiplayer game. Yeah, factoring into that is a whole bunch of human foibles. So, yeah, I guess if I were to spend enough time, or I would have already spent enough time, I think you get deep insights into human foibles. I just give you, jumping. It’s so much fun, because you guys seem to be willing to let me jump.
Tobias: Ways to.
Jake: Yeah.
Guy: Somebody I know keeps choosing, I think, the wrong man in her life. The book that I want her to read is a book by Thomas. So, this is fiction. A book by Thomas Hardy called Far from the Madding Crowd. In this book, I can’t remember the main female character is a woman called Bathsheba. I think she loses her husband. And now, she’s a highly desirable woman within a state. There are three different men who are deeply in love with her. They’re very, very different kinds of men. One is very wealthy guy, and maybe another’s clergy, I don’t remember and the third one is a farmhand, effectively. But a very smart and knowledgeable, practical farmhand, but no social standing.
In the book, you see her go through trying it with the first two, and eventually discovering through life circumstances that her best partner in life is this guy who’s a farmhand or a manager of the farm, but a very practically minded guy. And so, that novel puts models in your head. It puts a model in your head of the foibles of this woman who’s lunging for class and for status. She slowly realized. There’s so much wisdom in that. I just wish this person would read it, because I think that she’d stop selecting the wrong person she’d learn through Bathsheba. That’s way less expensive. It’s price of a novel. And so, I would also tell you in that regard– So, my daughter’s just come back from a summer of learning Russian in Vermont. So, I paid my children to read war and peace.
[laughter]I paid them 500 francs. I was blown away. I only read it a few years ago. And the amount of knowledge of humanity– So, the crooked timber of humanity, what are we made of? All those human foibles– So, you mentioned Kahneman and Tversky. He might not have been able to write scientifically about it, but he and Tolstoy and all of these great authors are deep students of human foibles. They make whole books out of it. It’s like the intensity on the depth and the volume of experience you get from reading such novels is just off the charts as well as history.
There’s some really smart people who’ve really thought really hard about many of these personalities. So, then, what happens is in my little knowledge, a guy who keeps showing up– I want to really be clear. I know so little. But this Cromwell figure in the British Civil War starts looming really, really big. He was a really, really, really key figure. He had a personality. He had an interest. So, you start becoming really familiar with certain personalities and histories. Of course, Winston Churchill was one. I’m meandering. I’m going to stop and see what you guys– [crosstalk]
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From Fear to Courage: The Power of Saying Yes in Life and Career
Tobias: No, no, don’t stop. One of the things that you wrote about in your most recent letter was, you said you’re introverted. As part of promoting a fund or raising money for a fund, it’s necessary to go and give presentations. I remember seeing you speak at The Value Investing Congress. John Schwartz’s Value investing Congress in 2010. The slide that stood out for me is you had the Homer Simpson with a little brain inside his head. You used it as an illustration of all the biases. I think I had heard that idea that we’re all ridden by biases. But it really stuck in my mind, and it’s one of the things that I have pursued as an investor and as a writer. So, I was just wondering how– [crosstalk]
Guy: You were there?
Tobias: In 2010. Yeah, New York in 2010.
Guy: Wow. So cool. My God. I was a baby.
Tobias: That was the first time I saw you speak.
Guy: Hilarious.
Tobias: It was the standout presentation for me, guys. I couldn’t tell you who else spoke. [Jake laughs]
Guy: You know what? Before you go to your question, I know there’s a question. But I’m blown away. I don’t know where I’d learned this, but I was super nervous. But I did something. Actually, I even would say, if looking back on it, that it was courageous. I made myself take a nap just before the presentation, rather than go over my slides, all that stuff. When you show up fresh, that’s more important. But anyway, that’s amazing. Sorry, you had a question though.
Tobias: Well, that was the question. Just in the same vein as the personality dictating what you do, I think clearly you enjoyed studying rather than speaking, and certainly speaking before an audience. I feel exactly the same way. So, I was just interested, how do you overcome it, or did you just decide it’s necessary to overcome it in order to do these other things?
Guy: I was talking to the guy who was– The first subject I studied at university was law. And he was a fellow law student. Very, very successful law student. We’re both godfathers to the same girl. So, he was at this wedding. I don’t know, some people don’t mind being mentioned. Others may do. So, I’m being careful and not mentioning his name, especially because we’re live. And I said, “I think you’re an introvert. I realized, because it’s been hard to get to know you all these years, even though we’re both godparent to the same daughter of mutual friends of ours.” So, his response was, “I don’t think I’m an introvert. I think I’m shy.”
Now, this is the point in the wedding where everybody’s partying and the music’s getting louder and louder. So, there’s a limit to what we could discuss. And so, I would have enjoyed going into with him and saying, “Well, don’t assume that what he calls shy is what I call introvert.” So, the first thing to say is that these are very, very imprecise labels or things that we discern in different people’s minds, and that come out when we do all sorts of different psychometric tests. But actually, every mind is unusually different, I believe. This idea that there are people talking about 100 or 200 dimensions, there are probably more. There’s probably infinite dimensions. These dimensions can come together in weird ways.
So, in this moment I’m seeing it, that there’s a way in which these– I haven’t defined any of them, but I have a willingness to I don’t mind making a fool of myself. I just have no problem with that. Whether it’s speaking languages and getting all the grammar and the pronunciation completely and utterly wrong, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. You want to tell me to get change in front of a crowd of people, even I’m not in the best physical shape and I don’t have the best body. I don’t give a damn.
[laughter]I’m happy to get changed. I know people who will go on a hike with me and they can’t go to the toilet in the bushes. I’m like, “What is your problem? [Jakes laughs] This is the way we were made.” So, I have that side to my personality, so as best I can tell. So, when I say introvert, what I mean by introvert is that my ability to hang out with people and have light, meaningless conversation is limited to an hour and a half or so. That’s all I mean by introverted. You put me with people who have knowledge or conversation that fascinates me. I got all the energy in the world to hang out with that crowd of people for a very, very, very long time.
So, the way it comes together for me is I don’t mind getting on a stage and making a fool of myself, or potentially making a fool of myself taking that risk, in my case, in my particular case. I also don’t know people, and they’re younger than me. It’s well known that the fear of public speaking is, in some people, as great as the fear of death. I don’t know how they measure it.
Tobias: [laughs]
Jake: Yeah. [chuckles] And ahead.
Guy: But then, you sit down with somebody like that– Maybe if you just rationally say, “Look, first of all, obviously, rationally, that’s not going to happen. Second of all, there are enormous rewards that will come to you if you’re willing to overcome that fear.” Maybe some people succeed in overcoming that fear. Long story short though, they had offered me an opportunity. I wasn’t a big name. I wasn’t Bill Ackman or David Einhorn, who were some of the big names at the time. I knew I had to make the most of it. And so, I had to take that opportunity and do the best I could with it.
As somebody I know, he spent a year, he decided after a difficult breakup, it was going to be his year of saying yes. I think there’s a movie about that, the man who just said yes. And saying yes is the right thing to do. So, that’s true of that talk, and it’s also true of the book contract that I got for the book. I said yes before I knew what book I was going to write, and I said yes before I knew what– I just said, “I have to do it. I have to say yes to this and I have to see what happens.
Scare the living daylights out of me, because I knew that come hell or high water, I was going to publish this book. I’d been given a contract, but I didn’t know what book it was going to be. Was it going to be a book that made me ashamed? Jake, you know all about this, don’t you?
Jake: Sure. Yeah. I’m lucky I didn’t end up just with a coloring book. [laughs]
Guy: Right. It’s interesting for me. So, those are periods when I’ve put myself out in that way or am set up to put to be out in that way, exposed, if you like, the man in the arena. Some of the times I felt most alive and some of the times that I’ve been the most productive and the most effective and made the best use of my faculties. But it’s also pretty freaking intense. I’m not in that phase right now, in a phase like that. It’s not saying you voluntarily, or it’s not saying I voluntarily, [sneezes] excuse me, choose to put myself into, because it’s really, really tough also to be in that place.
I do try and tell my children. I tell anybody who’s willing to listen, “It’s easy to say, but far harder to do.” Americans understand this implicitly more than non-Americans. But our success in life is more related to how many times we fail than how many times we succeed, because it’s like the ability to fail fast, accept the failure, learn from it, lick your wounds, move on, iterate, try again, modify. And if you can get a lot of that going on in your life, especially in early hours, then that’s what’s going to determine your success more. So, it’s so easy to talk about. Failing does become less painful the more often you fail. So, the hundredth time failing is something feels a lot better than the first time.
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Resilience in Action: How to Train Yourself to Embrace Adversity
Tobias: Churchill has a great quote where he says, “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Guy: Exactly. Churchill was 100 years ago have a long– almost hundred years. Yeah, 100 years ago. It’s so easy to say, but so hard to do. This is something where there’s a guy who was a classmate of mine at business school called Mike Jenner. He’s Australian. He lives in Sydney, actually. He figured out something that– I met him 10 years ago at my maybe 20th reunion. So, there are things in this leadership that you can’t write about. You have to practice it in real time. You have to wire that muscle to learn to do it in real time, all the time. Interestingly enough, everybody’s gone home here, because it’s later in the evening for me.
We have an office here where– So, One, two. Bear with me. There is about six rooms in this office, and only two are occupied full time. And four employees cram into one office. Why do they do that? Because there’s just so much learning there. You overhear conversations and you learn how to do things, how to create difficult moments that force people to face up to whatever it is you want them to face up to, which I’m actually pretty useless at. I actually joke, I say, “I’d like to go next door,” because I have this my own office where I’m supposed to be doing all the thinking and they’re doing all the work. But boy, there’s amazing stuff going on there. Yeah.
So, to learn to fail, you cannot read about it. You have to learn to feel that bitter pill, that bitter feeling, that dejection and then do something that a guy– I don’t remember his name, but I used to train with him here in Zurich. He was probably in the military. And if he wasn’t, he should have been. But he told me his minor form of failure. So, you’ve gone for a run and it starts raining. Every single person’s natural reaction is, “Oh, rain, get me home, get me into shelter, get me–” What he said was, “I need to be manipulative of myself to get before that natural reaction of, ‘Oh, rain. This sucks.’” To get in there beforehand and say to myself, for example, “Yes, rain. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for giving me adversity.” And that takes self-awareness.
You got to be smart. I’m not getting the right word. You need to manipulate yourself. You need to get ahead of yourself, or behind yourself, or manipulate your own processes or understand that and get inside of it and get a different reaction rather than, “Oh, it sucks.” It’s like, “Yes, rain,” and get that voice in fast and do the same with failure.
Jake: I remember Josh Waitzkin, I think, talking about, with his son. When it would start raining– He didn’t even like the fact that they called it bad weather, because that then implies that– It design some normative, it’s good or bad to the weather. Weather just is what it is, right?
Guy: Yeah.
Jake: You’re taking some of your agency away of like, “Oh, I have to be out in bad weather,” but it’s just rain.” That’s– [crosstalk]
Guy: Right. So, it doesn’t go down well with my wife, because she grew up in [Jakes laughs] Monterey, where the sun shines the whole time. There’s an English expression, “Well, you’re not made of sugar.” Yeah, so, it’s quite likely that you go for a run in the rain and you get more endorphins at the end of it, actually. Way more endorphins. So, the same with failure. How do you teach people? Actually, Montessori schools, I think, do it better. If you’re lucky, on the sports field, you get it on the sports field. But if you’re unlucky– It seems like there are always enough teachers and students who think that actual game is like, if you don’t win that game, then the world ends and you have to go into deep depression afterwards. That’s not the case. If you can just get that. “Oh, my God, we lost. That’s wonderful. Let’s still look at why we lost.”
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The Infinite Game: Why Winning Isn’t Everything in Sports and Life
Guy: Actually, I was talking to somebody about this. So, a way of looking at and I’m looking at– Well, I guess, so for me, American football doesn’t cut it. Maybe baseball does. But these are all ways of learning to play the infinite game. The name of the game is not to win at all costs. The name of the game is to have your teammates and the opposing team want to play you again, and want to get out tomorrow and the next day and the next day. Winning is just a minor part. This is where it came up in a conversation somewhere.
I feel like, the Olympic spirit– So, I’m going to go some very controversial territory here. The Olympic spirit is– So, this Italian woman who took one punch from this boxer who I’m told is as female as every other boxer who ever boxed and every other female who’s ever had a baby, so I guess I have to take her word for it. But she took one punch from that woman, and this Italian woman said, “This is not a fair fight. I am putting myself into serious physical danger, if I stay here. I’m going to leave.”
So, on some very narrow level, this Algerian boxer won. But on another level, this Algerian boxer lost, because the point is not to win the medal. The point is to be– There’s this wonderful– I think it’s Juan Fernandez in a running race that you can see online. It’s just so beautiful. Do you know the story? So, he’s racing. He’s Spanish and he’s racing a Kenyan runner. They’re dueling. They’re ahead of the pack, but these two runners are dueling. I think it’s a marathon. Towards the end of the marathon, the Kenyan runner just gets way ahead of him of the Spanish guy.
The Kenyan runner seems to have won the race. But at the very end of the race, he doesn’t fully understand where the finish line is, and he stops running and breaks into a walk before he’s crossed the finish line. Now, the Spanish runner comes up behind him. And if he wants to, he could just sprint past him and take gold, take first place. And instead, he grabs the Kenyan runner by the shoulders, and this is all online on video, and he tells him, “You haven’t yet finished. You got to finish the race.”
And so, he runs behind him as the Kenyan runner comes in first and he comes in second place. And of course, he’s like– This was a split-second decision. Many people would have run straight past him. He said, “Look, the guy won. We were dueling for most of the race. He clearly had won. It would have been stealing something.” But he demonstrated what the infinite game is. The infinite game is not whether you win that running race. I think that he garnered enormous respect, and love and all of those things.
Jake: Yeah. Whose name do you remember now?
Guy: Well, actually, neither.
[laughter]But in my case, I know that. And funnily enough, I think he’s Spanish and I’m not going to try and look it up right now online, but it’s a wonderful, wonderful story. It’s sad because, I feel like the whole of the Algerian team don’t get that that’s what it’s actually about and that’s what it ought to be about. Actually, the fact that this Italian seeded the fight without– Do you know that dogs, maybe it’s other animals– I know I read this somewhere. They willingly lose fights, play fights with other animals, because otherwise it’s not fun. So, it’s not what we want. It’s not sport. And so, the point is not to be the best. The point is to play the longest, to put your opponent through their paces, to handicap yourself sufficiently that it’s a fair fight. That’s not what the Olympic Games seems to have become.
But it is where, that is the ideal of these sports that are played in British Public Schools, for example. And now, around the world. That’s what baseball is. It’s about except actually baseball. These guys who then decide that they’re just going to aim the ball straight to the body of the batsman in baseball, which is like, “That’s not cricket.”
Jake: [chuckles] Well, there’s a self-policing function there in baseball that’s similar to hockey with the fighting. Like, you take a cheap shot at one of their players and then therefore, it keeps some of the initial drama that might happen down a little bit, because you’re not going to get away with it.
Guy: Where has it happened? It’s happened actually in actual historical battles where the soldiers who’d lost or maybe the soldiers who’d won gave deep respect to the soldiers who’d lost, because they know that they’d fought well and honorably. And so, they give them heroes funerals or treat them extraordinarily well, even though minutes before they were shooting at each other and trying to kill.
Tobias: Greece, Spartan, Roman to do that.
Guy: Yeah. I don’t know, we’re getting at something. I’m not sure if you want to go there. In this case, I’m not going to meander there [Jake laughs] unless you try and draw me down there, because I don’t know where I’m going.
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Why Investing Is an Infinite Game: Lessons from Warren Buffett
Jake: [crosstalk]
Tobias: Did you read that book, Infinite Games, I think it’s Carse, isn’t it?
Guy: Carse. James Carse.
Tobias: Carse.
Guy: Finite and Infinite Games. I had copies of that book here. I was sending it out to everyone. And then, Simon Sinek, who read that book, wrote a book that in many ways explains the ideas better, slightly less mathematical, slightly more useful for business leaders. It’s just a phenomenal game. Just in case anybody listening to this, you can look it up. There are finite and infinite games. Finite games are games where there’s a set of rules, there’s a winner, there’s a loser. It usually is played for a finite time in a finite space, like a soccer game, like a chess match, like all sorts of things. The distinction is made between that.
And infinite games, infinite games tend to have ill-defined or no rules, ill-defined battle space or game space, both in terms of physical dimension and in terms of time. The bottom line is, the most interesting games are infinite games. The Cold War is a classic example of an infinite game. In an infinite game, there are no winners or losers. Usually, one of the people decides to drop out first. So, effectively, in the Cold War I, as Niall Ferguson calls it now, because we’re now in Cold War II, Russia decided to drop out. But the rules were undefined. The battle space was ill defined. It could have been in outer space. It could have been nuclear weapons. It could have been domino effect in Southeast Asia.
And so, investing is an infinite game. Life is an infinite game. This is something that Warren Buffett figured out. And so, the kind of personality that I am, just to try and make this a little bit about investing, because we are all investors, is I love finding moves that I can make in the world around investing that have multiple layers of positive results in them. And so, they get me a short-term benefit, and they also get me a long-term and eternal benefit, possibly. Actions where there’s a short-term benefit but a long-term loss. And by the way, Luca Dell’Anna, if you haven’t come across him, has got a book called Long-Term Games, which is wonderful.
So, I just give you one example of one that I have found that is just super fun for me. I don’t know where it will go, so I have a position. I’m not supposed to talk my book, but I guess I am. I have a position– I won’t name the name of the company. If somebody’s interested, they can go look it up. But I have a position in Indian Credit Rating Agency. They’re not a global credit rating agency. They’re an Indian homegrown agency, locally controlled. There’s Indian credit rating agencies that are controlled by Standard & Poor’s. There’s another one controlled by Moody’s. There’s another one controlled by Fitch. This one is local homegrown.
India’s not very happy with its sovereign credit rating. India’s got a sovereign credit rating of BBB-. Many people, including myself, think that that’s preposterous. There’s this opportunity for, in this case, the credit rating agency that I own– I’ll say the name CARE Ratings to potentially– Well, they’re actually, I think, now authorized to issue sovereign ratings, so they could rate sovereign bonds, including India’s sovereign bonds. So, there’s a business plan about how that might happen. It’s not going to happen in year, but maybe over 2030, it changes the structure of the global ratings industry. Instead of having three, there’ll be four. Instead of all of the three global ratings agencies having headquarters in London/New York, Whitman, Old World. The global south will have a ratings agency based in India that will be rating people.
So, merely talking about that to you now increases the probability of that happening. And then, I discovered actually the company, if I’m not mistaken, would be willing, interested, or the management of the company would be enthusiastic to get the right kind of director in place who could help expand the awareness of their ratings capabilities and potential clients, somebody who’s both deeply rooted in India and is Indian, but is also a global international person, maybe a former diplomat, maybe a former prime minister, maybe a former head of a major bank. And so, then, I realized that it would be great to find that director. But even asking around for that director, even talking on this call about this potential director, it’s fun short-term and it’s fun long-term.
I’ve developed a list of people. Once I have the right package together, I’m going to be writing to them and saying, “Would you like to be considered as a potential director for CARE Ratings?” Even if they have no interest, it will still be positive. So, that’s really, really fun. That’s both the short term and the long term, the short-range tactical move and the strategic move is a positive.
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Why Conspiracy Theories Win at the Dinner Table
Guy: But I’ll tell you somewhere else where that happens. So, who has been at a dinner table? Have either of you been at a dinner table where somebody decides to bring up a conspiracy theory?
Tobias: It’s probably me. [laughs]
Jake: Yeah. [laughs]
Guy: You’re the one who’s brought it up.
Jake: We do that weekly-
Tobias: Possibly.
Jake: -on the show. [laughs]
Guy: So, here’s the fascinating thing about conspiracy theories, is that they have this aspect to them in a way that is not fun. So, I bring up the conspiracy theory. Martians landed on earth, 9/11 was an inside job, I shouldn’t have said that, because that’s just gotten a whole bunch of people excited. So, now, at the dinner table, one of two things will happen, either people will reinforce the conspiracy theory and bring extra evidence to show that my conspiracy theory is true. JFK was killed by the mafia. It was another one. Or, somebody says, “You have no evidence for that. You’re just speculating. And we don’t really know the answer to that.” And then, the person who’s brought up the conspiracy theory gets to say, “Ah, you see, there are people who want to deny it. [Tobias laughs] And so, it’s actually more likely to be true.”
And so, either way, you win. Either way, the conspiracy theorist wins. They get air time, because now you get the controversy benefits the conspiracy theorists. So, there’s a whole class of things that you can talk about, which are like that. Another one that happened to me on our vacation was, we were renting a ski chalet together, a few families. One of the people there was claimed to do past life therapy. It’s the same idea. So, she’d go and do past life therapy on somebody. So, he’d come and say, “I was the Queen of England in a past life. I was Mary, Queen of Scots.” It’s like, “I saw this, and I saw that and I saw the other.” I’m saying, “This is such garbage.” And they’re like, “Oh, he doesn’t believe it. Oh, you always have skeptics, and you get to talk about it more in terms of ganging up on the skeptic.”
So, either way, the person who believes in past life therapy is winning. I suspect that there are Ponzi schemes that work that way. Here, I’m going to say something controversial that will piss at least half the audience off. Crypto works in that way. The person brings up crypto. Either it’s like, “Oh, yeah, it’s great.” The deniers or the people say it’s not great. Help the crypto person to continue to talk about crypto. And the more they talk about crypto, the better things become on and on. So, why do I say that? I have no idea why I said that. Why did I say that? What was my point? Did I have a point?
Jake: It’s all one big point.
Guy: [laughs] It’s a pattern that’s worth understanding and seeing if you haven’t seen it before. But I would tell you that– [crosstalk].
Jake: It is not win-win long-term games, I guess, is the point.
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How the Lollapalooza Effect Drives Influence
Guy: It’s a little bit of this Lollapalooza effect. Two places one can go there. I’ll start off with a book that I recently read about Russian special measures, and then I’ll move onto more familiar territory, Warren Buffett. But it’s the same point. It’s the same idea, so you’ll like it. Well, I think you should like it. I was trying to understand Russian influence in Western politics. There’s great books that have been written about it. The one I think is called Special Measures. So, don’t ask me to cite the name of the book. I can’t remember the author. That’s terrible.
So, think of this. Karl Marx writes about a future revolution that will happen when the proletariat rise up, and overthrow capital and that capital is oppressing the proletariat. But he’s thinking of the bourgeoisie. He’s thinking of industrialized UK. He’s not thinking of Russia. Don’t ask me why. These guys in Russia, end of World War II, end of the Romanov Dynasty– World War I, forgive me. These guys want to create a revolution in Russia. But they don’t have an industrial society, the way with people slaving away in factories. They have serfs. They’re trying to find ways to convince the serfs and people who work the land to rise up within this Marxist theory.
I don’t think Marx really wrote. He talked about societies going through stages of development where the last stage would be communism, and just before that was capitalism. Russia was not really capitalist. It was just like a bunch of very rich people owning vast properties and serfs who owned nothing. Anyway, those guys, the first secret police, I think, was called the Cheka. They’re trying to figure out ways to sell the serfs on rising up and joining the revolution. So, this is a tradition that eventually became the KGB and eventually became the FSB or departments therein.
This book takes you through the reader, through stories that were planted in Western press, where the story was designed in such a way that in the same idea, with what we were just talking about past life therapy or conspiracy theories, the denial of the story actually reinforces the story, because it makes people even more suspicious in a way– I really have no idea. If we go out and accuse Donald Trump, say, “Donald Trump, you were in a Moscow hotel and you did things that you shouldn’t have done, and you were videoed and they have compromised on you.”
So, if Donald Trump goes and says, “That’s utter lies. That never happened.” The more he says it, the more people suspect. The lady doth protest too much has got this beautiful, beautiful feature to it. Isn’t that fun? Or, it’s fun for them, and it’s something that we have to combat. So, I think that I’ve become super aware of those things. So, I just talked about finding directors for CARE Ratings. That’s my little conspiracy theory. So, the more I talk about it, the more likely it is to happen.
So many people do that. The people who are doing crypto are doing it. The guy who is shorter company, the more he can talk about his thesis, the more likely it is to break, the more likely people are to lose confidence in the management. The more I talk about CARE Ratings, and I’ll stop doing it because I think it’s disingenuous, the more likely they are to become a global brand. So, I just want to keep saying CARE Ratings, [Jake laughs] CARE Ratings, CARE Ratings, CARE Ratings.
Guy: By the way, just very briefly, that’s a huge part or an important part of the ratings business model, is that if I want to say India’s credit has deteriorated, I don’t sound very credible. If I say Moody’s downgraded India’s credit rating, now I sound super credible. The guy at Moody’s knows no more than I do.
Jake: [chuckles] Right.
Guy: But if I say Moody’s downgraded or the credit committee, then it sounds better. I don’t even have to say Moody’s downgraded. It can say, “Analysts at Moody’s in private conversation suggested that India might be downgraded.” But now, Moody’s, their name keeps appearing. And people need to have credibility, so they don’t want to say. I think this or analyst thinks or somebody I told who thinks. So, they say, “Moody’s thinks.” That’s the same phenomenon again. So, just to move to Warren Buffett. I think that once you see that pattern, you find ways to do it in your own life, which is so much fun.
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Warren Buffett’s Secret to Staying Top of Mind
Guy: So, I every day write a few birthday cards to people. So, first of all, it’s somebody’s birthday, I have a right to wish them a happy birthday. But here are some of the people I’ve wished happy birthday to the extent that I know, or a well-known holiday like Christmas, New Year’s, or if it’s in the Islamic world, Eid Al-Fitr or happy Passover, or there are various different holidays where you have the right to send somebody something. So, you can wrap your little one to one marketing in inside a holiday card or inside a birthday card or inside a thank you note. So, you send them the note. And they’ve thought of you.
Or, Charlie Munger’s story. The woman who says to Charlie Munger– So clever. She says, “What is it that made you so smart,” something like that. And it’s like, of course. [Tobias laughs] She’s just wrapped a compliment in a question. And Charlie Munger, when he talks about this, in one of his talks, he says, “I knew exactly what she was doing, and I loved it anyway.”
Jake: I still loved her. Yeah. [laughs]
Guy: Exactly. Jake, you’re with me. You’ve studied it. So, I haven’t yet learned or applied this lesson from Warren Buffett when he sends out holiday cards. I’ve received two or three at this point. He only prints them on one side or a photograph of Warren, and he scrawls some personalization the card. On one hand, it’s just fun to send a holiday card to people he’s met in his life. Why not? It’s got this added benefit that maybe they’ll put it up, maybe they’ll frame it and put it up on their wall, and then there’s a reminder of Warren Buffett everywhere.
Jake: Yeah. And then they think, “Oh, I know this guy who’s got this business for sale. Maybe wonder if he would want to buy it.”
Guy: Exactly. And so, he’s playing those games constantly and having a great time doing it. And so, there’s a joy in playing those games. It’s a double whammy. It’s a short-term benefit, and there might be a long-term benefit, and that’s just freaking awesome. You just want to do that all day long, basically. That’s all I do all day, every day, basically. [laughs] So, I’m playing this game. So, my theory is that if you feel an emotion, then there’s deep wisdom that contributed to that made that emotion arise. What we have to do is we have to try and interpret it in the very complicated world that we live.
So, if I feel the emotion of anger, the right thing to do might not be to stand up, to yell at the person. I might get shot in a case of road rage. So, the world is complicated. How we translate primordial emotions that we feel into action requires an enormous amount of guesswork, intelligence, all sorts of things. Initial reaction is not the right thing. So, I have this yearning to be more closely connected to university environments. And so, I say to myself, there’s something positive there. There’s something important there that I have to discover why the universe wants me to do that. I don’t think the right thing to do is to drop everything that I’m doing, go become an academic.
So, I’m finding reasons to interact with all these professors and all sorts of different subjects in history and economics and mathematics. I send them personal notes, and I comment on their articles and I might do some short podcasts on some of their articles. If you subscribe to American Economic Review, every quarter, I think it is, you just get this jam packed full of ideas, jam packed full of ways to think about the world. Another publication which is just absolutely incredible is JSTOR. You can get a subscription to JSTOR. You can go through your library and like– So many ideas that didn’t become part of the mainstream, but are just like treasure trove of ideas.
So, my rule is, if I read one of those things– I’m not going to just read it. I’m going to reach out to that person some way. I either write them an email or write them a personal note. I tweet out something, but give it a possibility for us to interact. Why? Because first of all, it’s nice. It’s nice they get noticed. They like, “Oh, somebody read my article. That’s great.” And of course, it has some unspecified benefit into the future. Who knows? Yeah.
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Tobias: Guy, I feel that we’ve taken up a great deal of your time. I think you’ve been incredibly generous with us. If folks want to get in touch with you, follow along with what you’re doing, what’s the best way of doing that, do you think?
Guy: Oh, yeah. So, please send me your best investment ideas first.
[laughter]Actually, I love reading investment ideas. The social media I check most often are LinkedIn and Twitter. My ID on both is @gspier. Actually, interestingly enough– So, I at some point thought, well, I love receiving investment ideas from people. I want to receive more of them. So, I sought to reward it. So, I find all sorts of ways to reward people who send me investment ideas, especially good investment ideas. I will have a conversation with them and see what they want, and then I try and help them with what they want. Sometimes they want publicity, sometimes they want connect, whatever. So, it’s really kind of you to do that. So, I am on Twitter and I’m on LinkedIn. I also have an Instagram account. So, I’m a social media slot, what can I say. [Jake laughs] But I’m probably most on LinkedIn and Twitter, and I’m on Instagram sometimes.
I have two accounts on Instagram. I tried to do a personal account as @gspier. I had a business account, which is @gspier12. So, when I decide to put out business content, it’s on @gspier12. I have a semi-annual email newsletter that I send out where I try– I won’t send it out unless I have a significant amount of original content that is not already out on the web. I include content from other people. So, if I’ve received a good investment idea, one of the things I’ll do with that person, I’ll say, “If you give me permission, I’d like to send it out to my email list,” which is now 30,000 people, which blows me away.
A lot of the email list people, they say, “Well, you have to email your list.” And then, two days later, you look at who hasn’t emailed, opened your email and you send it again to those people. I’ve done the opposite. I’ve done not that. I just say, “I’m sending out to you once. And if you saw it, you saw it. And if you didn’t, you didn’t.” You can always go back into your archive, or into your deleted items or junk and find it and open it. But I try to make it worth people’s while.
There’s another phenomenon there which is so interesting, which is that, any individual piece of content may not be that great, but if you collect quite a few pieces of content together, then it can become very attractive for somebody to look through it. So, I try to include stuff that’s interesting. And I do it twice a year. I would say that it takes me the best part of a week to put that together. In the six months prior, I will be collecting all sorts of things adding them to various folders, and then it takes me the best part of a week to put it together.
So, you can subscribe to my email list which is on my website, which you can find through my social media profiles which will take you to a link tree. And from the link tree you, will get to my website. So, something like that. How did I do?
Tobias: Perfectly.
Guy: [laughs]
Jake: Nailed it.
Guy: I want to ask you guys a few more questions, if I may.
Tobias: Sure.
Guy: Just for fun. It’s very kind of you to have me on. Why? Because it’s fun. I think that we learn, I learn through being asked questions, through being asked good questions. And so, my question to you is, who else have you had on a YouTube Live like this? Who else do you plan to have on? Who’s an upcoming guest? Who would you like to have on? Who are your [unintelligible [01:15:29] guests? If you could have those guests, who would you have? Tell me your wish list.
Tobias: We’ve had a few good guests. I think we had Luca Dell’Anna. I know you know Luca.
Guy: Yeah.
Tobias: That was a fascinating conversation. We’ve had Chris Bloomstran. We have a variety of guests from economists to value investors, authors. Yeah, Buffett’s probably the very top of the list, but I don’t think I want to bother, I don’t think I want to annoy him. What do you think, JT?
Jake: I feel like we’ve been pretty good about having almost everyone who I think we would deserve to talk to.
Tobias: We’ll have anyone who’ll come on. [laughs]
Jake: Maybe even quite a few who we didn’t deserve. I don’t feel like I’ve got this long, unrequited love list necessarily.
Tobias: Adam Mead.
Jake: For the most part, we’ve out kicked our coverage.
Guy: I want to throw a few people out, because I think they’re just interesting to me, I guess. I just want to throw them out for fun. Yeah, so, Jonathan Haidt is a professor at NYU, and he has a book out called The Anxious generation.
Jake: Yeah.
Guy: I don’t know why– There’s another guy that I recently saw at TED called Scott Galloway.
Tobias: Scott Galloway.
Guy: Yeah. There’s these superstar professors that are emerging. I say it, because I think you should invite them on. [chuckles] I think that I’ve learned an enormous amount from Jordan Peterson. One of the great quotes from Jordan Peterson is, “If you want to have an adventure, tell the truth.” I think that Jordan Peterson, he talks to mainly students, I guess, and more public style audiences. But I think that he ought to want to come on this kind of podcast. So, he’s a guy that– And so, none of these people are investors.
So, I think that as you climb– I don’t know if it’s climbing. So, Warren Buffett sits as the guy who runs Berkshire Hathaway, but there are these people who, it’s not their money, but they run the world’s money supply, and they’re central bankers and they go to Jackson Hole. One of them is called Ben Bernanke. Ben Bernanke, I think, is retired now. Or, Janet Yellen, for example. Or, Mark Carney is retired as well. I don’t think he’s not doing interviews anymore. But George Soros, for example, used to have lots of conversations with central bankers. So, I think that why we not talking to those people? I think they’re interesting to talk to, and I think they ought to spend more time talking to people like us who are in the weeds of investing.
Jake: We can’t afford their speaking fees, I think, is what’s– [laughs]
Guy: But I don’t think that they should charge anything. They should just be willing to come and talk. They need to adapt to new media and understand that, “It’s not just showing up on CNBC or at Jackson Hole.” There’s an intimacy and a personal interaction that you can have, and there’s a lot you can learn. So, I think you should invite them, and they should just buy tweets, for example, and they should be willing to come on. Sheryl Sandberg would be another person.
Directors of some of the major corporations that we invest in. Some of them are famous people, some of them are less famous people, but the directors have a role to supervise the managers of the companies. They come and talk to the two of you. They are, in a way, talking to the shareholders. They are responsible. And yeah, its public forum, but it’s also a communication with the shareholders of whatever company it is, Meta, Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway. They maybe should be more public figures. And so, I urge you to consider all of those people. Not that I have been successful in having those people in any of the many podcasts that I do, but I want to– [crosstalk]
Tobias: You’ve inspired some good names from the audience. We’ve got some Einhorn, Greenblatt, Seth Klarman, Stanley Druckenmiller.
Guy: Howard Marks, Ray Dalio.
Tobias: Howard Marks. Li Lu.
Guy: Many of them have been on before. Then something you didn’t ask me, but I’m going to say, anyway, if you buy into this idea that our curiosity is just to go back to something we said really, really early on, we are a curious species. When we are being curious– If lions and tigers are good at hunting and eating meat, that’s what that species is good at. We’re not so good at hunting and eating meat, but we’re very, very good at being curious. So, when we follow our curiosity, we’re doing something that goes deep, deep into our ancestral roots, back to those changing seasons, changing climatic periods.
So, what I urge you to do, and I’m curious if it comes up with a different wish list or guest list, is don’t put on the people that you think will get you lots of viewers or the people that you think your audience wants to hear. Just follow your own curiosity, because that’s where the adventure lies. I’m actually, really interested to see who you come up with as guests, if you just follow your own curiosity. And don’t worry about whether it looks ridiculous. I gave examples. We should ask William Green. William, if you hear this, tell us the answer.
Jake: [laughs]
Guy: William Green has done a whole bunch of podcasts with people who into Buddhism. Tsoknyi Rinpoche, for example. Daniel Goleman. I think it’s really, really powerful, because then you really are on your own adventure. But looking back, you’ll realize that that made all the difference to quote that famous poet, Robert Frost. Yeah.
Tobias: Yeah, I think that’s a perfect way to end it.
Jake: Yeah. Beautiful.
Tobias: Thanks so much, Guy.
Guy: Thank you.
Tobias: With pleasure.
Guy: Thank you for putting with me.
Tobias: Oh, my pleasure. [Jake chuckles] Our pleasure. Thanks, JT, as always. Thanks, everybody. We’ll be back next Tuesday. Same bat-time, same bat-channel.
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