TIP735: Compounding with Character w/ Guy Spier

28:46And he is a really, really phenomenal dad. And that actually, so, you know, the rich man died, how much money did he leave? All of it. And interestingly enough, the change in perspective of me going through a major operation, being on the other side of it? What regrets do I have about my life lived to date? Not that many, but one of them is that I always used to come home at like sort of seven o 'clock, which is when dinner time was, because I spent that extra hour and a half in the office doing everything I could to... And I wish in that last 20 years, I'd just have come home at 5.30. I'd skipped that extra hour and a half in the office.

29:27And that wouldn't have necessarily made me a better dad, but it would have given me more space to become a better dad than I could have been because I would have been just that little bit more present with our children. So I think that just going back, winning the game, but you need to update your understanding of what the game is. and the game is, if you have a well-defined set of rules for what the game is, like making a lot of money or winning at chess, then you probably need to broaden your perspective. And then there are people who play the game of life in ways, and sorry, I'm just broadening it out to sort of think of, you know, great people.

30:10You know, so three people who were murdered or his lives were taken in a way, but I don't think they would have lived their lives any differently. One is Alexei Navalny. Another one is Mahatma Gandhi. A third one is Cicero. And I think that for those people, I mean, Alexei Navalny, there's a great Netflix program on him. And I haven't read the book yet. There's a biography of his. He lived in a world where he cared more about the opportunity to change the course of Russian history than he did about his own life. And I think that even though he died a natural death, that's true of Nelson Mandela, those people would look at me.

30:56So I look at the guy who says, I'm about making the most money possible. And I say, that's not a good game to play. I don't think that that's the most meaningful way to live one's life. I don't want to be Sumner Redstone the moment before I pass on. But I think that people like Alexei Navalny would look at me and say, he cares about the highest values of human civilization and making sure they continue. I guess what I'm trying to say to you, Stig, is that there's a part of me that says, so rather than look down on that guy that you talk to who maybe has the wrong values and is trying to win a relatively finite game of who dies with the most money.

31:38But my values actually extremely bourgeois, I think is what the word would be. I care to have my children educated at good schools and I want to be in nice places and I want to travel business class and stay in nice hotels and have nice things around. And I think that there's a very valid criticism that people like Alexei Navalny and many others, human rights activists, could level at me and say, you're abusing your wealth and your position in society just to live a comfortable life. And you need to do more than that. That's an interesting thing. And I apologize to all of them because I think they're probably right.

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35:42I also think that you're on a journey both figuring out what your values are and also aligning yourself for those values and also knowing that sometimes life changes and you change. And I don't necessarily, like I was talking about this as a manager before and I just want to clarify not that you necessarily insinuated that, guys. Please don't get me wrong. I don't look down on him for feeling that way in case he did. I think it's a question of some people, perhaps he lived very much aligned with his values. Perhaps that was his finest mission in life. I don't know him that well. Perhaps it was not to be the richest man in the world.

36:24Perhaps it was to provide the best returns for investors. And that is his legacy. That is how he wants to be remembered. And who am I to say that's not noble for him? I think it's easy for us, and I kind of feel I'm as guilty as charged, so if you want to call me a hypocrite, that's perfectly fine. But it's very easy for us to say, oh, this person isn't enlightened or isn't spiritual or whatever that might be, and that's only because that person hasn't achieved XYZ like I have. But then we're back to this idea of who are defining which game we're playing. And to your point before about Buffett, a lot of people would probably say he's not very enlightened, but I think he's very aligned with his values.

37:11He's probably living by his inner scorecard. It's not about the money for him. It's about the game and the game he wants to play. And I think that's all right. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. Two points that come up for me that I think are valid and relevant. So, you know, one of my worst performing investments is a company called Saritage. And at some point, Warren had a 5 % stake in the company. And then he arranged, he actually had Berkshire Hathaway take over a slug of debt that Saritage had. Berkshire Hathaway could have easily, if they'd have wanted to, bankrupted the company. It would have been better for the Berkshire shareholders, that's for sure.

37:53They would have made more money. But that's not the game that Warren Buffett wanted to play. And I think that he's got a sufficiently high reputation that it wouldn't have damaged his reputation too badly or the reputation of Berkshire. And in a way, it was kind of a legitimate thing for the lender to the company to do. This was in the vulture world, it wouldn't have been the worst vulture move that anybody had ever made. So it's worth saying that Warren Buffett, I think, is plays the game far less aggressively than he could play and probably did play when he was younger, when he was doing, for example, merger arbitrage and various other moves that enhanced Berkshire's returns, but maybe didn't make him most popular with some people.

38:41So that's one perspective. And then there was another perspective that, yes, if you've not seen it, and you probably have, but if a listener hasn't seen it, you ought to go and listen to the podcast with Nikolai Tangen and Chris Hahn, who is a phenomenal investor, one of the smartest guys that I've ever met. He was a classmate of mine at business school. And I think that if Chris was on this call talking to you and me, he would just say without any apologies, say, listen, I was an immigrant to the UK and my father was a car mechanic and I went into huge amounts of debt to go to business school and the most important thing that I needed to do was get myself economically self-sufficient and get myself on a path to the solid middle classes which is not where I came from.

39:40And so, while you guys who had an easier ride have these moral arguments about whether somebody is playing the right kind of game that is suited to his personality, I was just trying to make ends meet. By the time I'd paid off my student debt, and by the time I'd kind of lifted my eyes and realized that I could think about other things, I realized I was really good at this, and I really, really liked to do it. And yeah, I continue to do it. And it's no more complicated than that. And actually, perhaps, I wouldn't say you're overcomplicating it, but perhaps I'm overcomplicating it a lot. Preston Pysh, Well, Guy, many investors present this image of having everything figured out.

40:27And you clearly openly shared your struggles in investing and also personal, and showing a great deal of vulnerability. Where are you mentally, if I can put it like that? And I don't know if now I'm complicating things, but where are you mentally whenever you speak about these challenges publicly? Is it something that you already processed? Is it something that you are going through while you're talking about and that's a part of your process to deal with different problems? Yeah, let me throw a bag over to you, Guy. It's a really interesting question. It's funny because I'm at the house where I come back to it.

41:08Jordan Peterson said, if you want an adventure in life, tell the truth. So I was in a single bedroom in my parents' house, not far away from where I am right now, and I'm writing the Betty of the Beast chapter. But that's at the point in my book where I'm just writing down whatever comes to my mind, doing brain dumps of various different things to create the material that I can then raid for my book. Much of the material didn't make it in the book. But I'm writing this kind of chapter in D.H. Blair, and I realize at the end of it, I'm doing a brain dump, not a chapter. I'm just doing a brain dump at that point.

41:46But the subject matter is my big career mistake and my year and a half at this bucket shop in New York City. And at the end of it, I realized that I want to put that into my book and that it will probably be the best, the strongest and beginning chapter. And that's the point at which I made a commitment to myself to tell the truth publicly. And that was a beginning of a big adventure for me. And I think that you take a huge risk for doing it, but the rewards are just enormous and you get huge rewards from doing it. And yes, I've continued to do that. And I remember myself asking a question of Warren Buffett, not about telling the truth about doing the right thing, but it comes to the same thing.

42:34And I said, does it become any easier? And he said a little. I think that by telling the truth about that career mistake, I strengthened a muscle inside of me that made it easy to tell the truth about other things as I went along. And so that muscle sort of like is slowly and gradually strengthened such that I can, I remember the first time and it was subsequent to writing the book. and somebody said, how do you know when to sell? And it came up for me that I wanted to, the first answer I wanted to give is some uber rational sort of, we do a fine analysis of fair value and when the company comes within fair value, and I looked at the person and I cast that answer aside and I said a more honest truth, which was, it's really hard.

43:23I really don't know. Yes, I would like to say to you that I come up with this careful analysis of intrinsic value. And the fact of the matter is, a lot of the time, I don't fully understand how to go about it, and I'm doing the best I can. And is there something that happens to you, that has happened to me a number of times when I've done things like that, which is the only way I can describe it, is God smiles at me. meaning that it's not like I get showered with love or something like that or get showered with riches but somehow and in the in the in the terms of the book power versus force by David Hawkins the things go strong around me and I realize I've stepped into a different reality but I think that something that comes up for me is that each time I've done that it's been difficult for me and I've had to break through a whole bunch of resistance inside myself.

44:23I've had to break through fears. It's kind of like it's stepping into the unknown every time that I've done it. And when I've done it, I feel like, well, now I'm done. That's the last test. I don't have to do that anymore. Now I can sit back and relax and enjoy my life. And a pattern that I'm learning now, and I wish it wasn't the case is that life keeps on throwing these challenges at you, unfortunately. Because I can't say that every time I've done that, I mean, just like Warren Buffett said, it becomes a little easier, maybe. The muscle's a little stronger, but not a lot. And it's never fun to do.

45:00So when I've broken through that, the incentive is, you know, don't come out with the full truth, hide a little bit of yourself. You don't know how they will react. They don't deserve to know that this is your private life, all of those things. And those things, those forces and voices around me of both inside and outside tell me, you know, for example, talking about my health, you know, very powerful voices that said, you don't have to talk about this. This is your own private stuff. And I said, no, I do have to talk about it because they deserve to know and I'm applying the simple rule. So taking that jump, every time has been difficult.

45:39And every time on the other side there's been a reward that is not kind of instant and obvious but there has been a reward for doing it i don't know it's so for what it's worth it also i'm also helped greatly that i have i i really believe and i can give you specific examples if you want me to that i've i've been greatly strengthened in this by my wife laurie and her relationship to the truth and underneath her beautiful soul and outward beauty and amazing mother and all sorts of other things, I find her to be an extraordinarily brave and courageous woman who is not afraid of the truth and not afraid to say the truth in all sorts of circumstances that I can share with you.

46:29So the fact that she is that way makes it far easier for me to be that way, if you like. I've also seen that in my children. I've multiple times in my life thought, well, now I've been honest with this and I've seen the rewards. I won't be tested again. And it seems to me, I mean, some of the ways that I've been tested, my career decision to go to DH Blair, investment mistakes, or I've had to come clean with my investors. And the reason why I was bringing up Laurie so much, my wife, is that we got married and we went through all sorts of difficulties in our marriage. We don't know if those are the same or greater or not as great as the marriages that other people go through.

47:19But Laurie was fine, and I'm fine for us to talk about them in the open. In fact, we think that it's important And for people to know, I think that I have more than a successful marriage. I could ask for better, but if people think that that happens easily, it doesn't. It happens through an enormous amount of work. And both Laurie and I, I think, are very proud of our marriage, but we're proud of the work that we've done to make it that marriage. It didn't happen just because we wanted it to. And now there's kind of new challenges related to the state of my health, for example, that requires me to again come clean with investors in the world in a way that I didn't expect.

48:04And it has its rewards. It has its huge rewards. So my consciousness has expanded. I think I can say that. but it's expanded not because I wanted it to expand but because I had no choice. I tried every other option and every other option didn't work as well basically. I think it's an interesting idea. The things I'm really proud of that I've done in life like you know succeeded in my marriage despite I think great difficulties or succeeded in writing a book despite being, you know, for all sorts of reasons why I don't think I was ideally the ideal person to write a book. None of those things felt easy and none of those things felt like they were voluntary.

48:54In a way, I felt like I was pushed into it and pushed in not by an individual, but by life circumstances got me into a place where suddenly I was cornered. And yes, maybe I took a more courageous way out, but I didn't take that more courageous way out because I woke up and was brave or courageous. I tried every other option first because I really didn't want to be courageous. I didn't want to tell the truth. I didn't want to stand there face up to what I was facing up to. But I realized that that was the only option. And I did that option reluctantly. I think that my point to you and anybody who's still listening at this point is that at least in my case, and all I'm doing is acting as a witness to my own experience.

49:39It doesn't come easily for me. And I don't do it gladly. I do it very reluctantly, if you like. And I think that that is probably true of many people who are courageous, who take difficult decisions. Or maybe it's just me, and I'm the least best at it. But I think that that should encourage people. If you think, if you're faced with a difficult situation, an investment that's gone bad, an investor who's not happy with you, a situation where you feel ashamed, then I hope that I can be helpful by being a witness to my experience in those circumstances. If you feel like you want to be six feet out of the underground and you don't want to be anywhere near what's just happened, I felt that as well.

50:27And I've tried every single way to get out of that situation without facing up to the reality. And I realized that every other single way was to run away, which didn't solve the problem. In my experience, Stig, I hope this is helpful and I'm not rambling. So, you know, we live in Switzerland and there are plenty of beautiful mountains to climb. And there are things called, in Italian, it's called a Via Ferrata. And in German, it's called a Kletelsteig. I don't know what it is in English, but it's extremely safe. You have a version of a harness which allows you to clip yourselves in to these metal guides, which it's impossible to have an accident if you follow some very simple rules about clipping yourself in.

51:13But at the end of the day, you're in a place where if you look down, you could fall 500 meters or more. I mean, you'd fall to your death if you weren't securely clipped in. I've never ever, I mean, I don't know, there are people who say that they love those things, they get an endorphin high and they get super excited to do it. I've hated it every time I've done it. I never enjoy doing it. When I'm finished with it, I say I'm glad it's over. I'm glad I got through. I'm glad I did that high line wire thing. And no, I didn't enjoy it. And so that's the same for me with this kind of truth telling, if you like.

51:47but I still think it's a better life nobody has to go on the high line nobody has to climb ridiculous places on a Klettersteig but it seems to me that all of us will be faced with very difficult situations in our lives where we're better off showing up even though it's not pleasant to show up you know I mean sorry I've because it's high on my mind there are phone falls or opportunities to show up somebody's had a terrible diagnosis, somebody's loved one has died, their mother has died. It's not an easy call to make. Nobody wants to make that call, but you're so much better if you do make that call.

52:29And that seems to me that that's just a part of life. And somebody that I was at university with, he says to me, well, I just want to be happy. I'm going to do what it takes to minimize pain and to maximize joy. And that's a really lovely idea, and I hope that most of us get to experience vast spans of our lives when that is true. But it just seems to me that for an individual, it's just universally, it's not universally true. At some point, we're all, it's part of the human condition that we'll be faced with something, whether our choice is to run away or to do what's meaningful. And you can run away, but then you're leaving a far diminished version of what your life is, or you can do what's meaningful.

53:18And my point to you, and I'm sorry if I've belabored this point, doing what is meaningful is not, don't have in your image, you the listener of some courageous hero who finds it easy. I don't think anybody finds it easier. Maybe afterwards, people say, oh yeah, that was a cinch. I don't believe it because I've not experienced that in my life. When Warren Buffett says, he shows up at Salim Brothers and he says something like, my mother has sewn my name into my underwear, so it's all going to be okay. I mean, he was actually being extraordinarily courageous and he can say what he likes, he was scared.

54:00His reputation was on the line. His Salim Brothers moment, showing up in Congress and deciding that he wasn't going to pretend about what happened. He was going to tell the truth as it was. It seems so easy in hindsight. But actually, I think that if we could get him talking about it, I don't know, he's a different personality to me. He's a different generation. Our generation are full of psychotherapists and feelings and examining your feelings. And probably you couldn't get him to say more than, yeah, my mother had sewn my name into my underwear, so it was going to be okay. come on Warren you were scared and probably he'd just say he'd just brush it over but I'm sure that he had the same feeling of butterflies in his stomach I'm convinced of it but we'll probably never find out no we probably never will and I also like that you brought up this point here about Buffett I think a lot of us myself included I should say are looking at different parts of his life and saying oh like how can Hey, can you do this?

55:04How can you say that? And I think it goes back to our previous conversation about, yeah, he made mistakes. And he talked about this here at the Q &A at the last Yehove's meeting where there are different things. He wasn't specific about some of the mistakes he made, but he certainly said that he made mistakes, but also that's the way it is. And I think we're evaluating a man who was born in 1930 based on 2025 standards and the upbringing that we have and the thing we experience and the values that we have. And so it's like, they're not the same. It's not a one-on-one thing to say that's not been a successful life.

55:42And this is not my way of saying that that is success. It goes back to this point about what is successful for that person and whether they're aligned with their values. And it sort of takes me to another thing I wanted to talk to you about, Guy, because I've talked to you in the past about this idea of being wealthy or not being wealthy in seconds. And as we grow older, we start to think differently about, well, everything, I guess, to the point you had before about it's a little bit easier to do the right thing as you grow older. There's probably an element of experience and perhaps even wisdom in that.

56:17Also, at a certain age, you just don't know what the right thing is. You haven't had a good feedback loop. And you start to think about time differently as you grow older. You think about minimizing regrets, or at least some type of regrets, but also being very frank about what is right to do at one age isn't necessarily right to do at another age, even though you don't need to regret what you did whenever you're 25, because life was just different whenever you were 25. But one of the things that I've increasingly started to think about as similar to you, perhaps, Gaia, having friends on many different continents, traveling and making decisions, it's going to sound very transactional, but that's not my intention.

57:01But there are friendships where you want to cross the ocean to see that person. And then there are probably good people who would show up at your doorstep, but where you're like, no, because I also have to do other things. And so that leads me to this question and your reflections of how do you think about which friendships to invest in and how do you invest in those friendships? Yeah, it's a good question, obviously. And in a way, it hits hard for me because I don't think that I've been, maybe none of us are conscious about it. And it kind of hits me in the gut because I don't think I've been very optimal about it either.

57:48And so you've got me kind of in a way trying to think it through on the fly, if you like. So one of the things that comes up for me as you say that is that I find it interesting that there are friendships that I've had at different parts of my life that were deep and very meaningful, but they have a natural lifespan to them. And so not every friendship has to have the same intensity, the same depth of exchange at all points in one's life. So that's one thing to be said. I think that I have friends from my time at school and my time at university where we don't have as much in common now as I would like.

58:35But I hold them dear to my heart because they are people who shared a certain part of my life with me and who knew what I was at the time. And so they knew what I was like then. And so even if that's not something I want to invest a lot of time in, I hold them dear. And it's interesting for me that I think that Warren has many people like that in his life, and he continues to invite them to Berkshire and finds that he's really happy when they show up, even though he doesn't necessarily meet with them and doesn't have a lot of time for them. And I know about that because I've been a regular at Debbie Bosanic's events, and I think that there are a number of people at Debbie Bosanic's events, which have been very meaningful for Warren Buffett at certain points in his life, but he doesn't have time for them today.

59:25So I think that one of the first things that comes up for me is to honor that. I also think of another kind of friend, and I'm thinking specifically of somebody, a couple that I met in Toronto. Sorry, I met them in Oxford. They now live in Toronto, where our interactions are intermittent and are not regular at all. But somehow, when we talk, we pick off from where we left off. And he is a lawyer. They're both lawyers, actually. They have three wonderful children. And I've been like a child in their household. And I could sort of like try and analyze and go through with you why it is that that friendship exists.

1:00:07But they're not family in a biological sense, but they feel like family to me in so many ways. And I feel no obligation to, and they don't feel any obligation to kind of hang out on a regular basis. I'm seeing all these categories of friendships. I also see that friendships can change over time or change life circumstances, reveal something about a friendship that you didn't see before. And I can say that, you know, when you go through a life change yourself, some people who I didn't know would turn out to be such good friends. And some people that I thought were very good friends were maybe less good friends.

1:00:55So there's a new light that's shone on it. I think the bottom line is that clearly friendship is one of the most important things in life. It's a complex phenomenon. There are many things that go on in a friendship. And I maybe think of the different friendships in my life as a bit of a garden. And there's some very strong oak trees. There are forgotten flowers. There's various different species in the garden. And every now and then, I realized I didn't fully understand what was in the garden. That's just a very long way of saying nothing, perhaps. I don't have any definitive answers, if you like.

1:01:30I think that there's a poem that somebody wrote about love, which comes out in the same way, where the poet or the character in the poem just says, don't talk to me about love. It's like, it's a complex thing. It's too complex for any individual to analyze. And everybody sees it differently. It's interesting because this poem, I wish I could bring it up. I'll have to ask ChatCPT or similar, is that in the poem, the character becomes quite angry about being asked the question. And maybe I'll come up with it, I'll send it to you if I find it. I don't know, have I enlightened you in any way, shape or form, Stig?

1:02:06No, I love the way that you think about this, Guy. And to your point, I don't think everyone solved it. Or at least I haven't seen anyone solve it. And it's one of those things where as you grow older, you learn that the only thing that's constant is change. And one of the things that my wife and I talk a lot about with the relationships we have in life is that very often those relationships are there for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. And most things are not there for a lifetime. And that's okay too. And it's not, I think probably because I'm sentimental as a default, it sometimes makes me sad that some of my relationships are not there anymore.

1:02:49But I think I'm more at peace with that than I used to, because there were reasons why we're close at some point in time. And there's a reason why we're not anymore. And that's not because there's a falling out or anyone is mad. It's like we were some of the friends that I had in back in university. That was mainly because we liked watching the same football and drinking the same beer and party together. I don't expect to lie on my deathbed and be like, oh, that was a deep regret. I didn't keep in touch with them. But I also don't think I'm going to lie on my deathbed and be like, oh, you shouldn't have done that.

1:03:33You should have started reading One Piece much younger. I probably should have, but we had fun those nights. you know, and there was a reason for that. And that's wonderful. And then you have some relationships that are sort of like ebbs and flows. And that's wonderful too. Sometimes there are, again, a reason for why those were ebbs and flows. And sometimes you experience different things. It's not because you have kids, or perhaps there's a parent that's passing at the same time, whatever. It might be a ton of different reasons why at some point in time that there are different things sort of like ties you together.

1:04:08And then sometimes it's just location. I know you've talked here with me, even on the show, I think it was on ValueX. And that started because you moved to Zurich and there was a different phase in your life and you wanted to say yes to different things. Robert Leonard In New York City, at a certain point, I'd met a guy who, I don't know exactly why we became friends, but he helped me to explore the dark underbelly of New York nightlife. And so he had an apartment on Madison and 67th Street, it's 62nd Street, which is just like just north of Midtown, really incredible place to have an apartment with some really beautiful restaurants around.

1:04:49And I, for a period of, I don't know, maybe it was a six months to a year, was a regular and then at restaurants that he would go to parties at his place, inevitably at like 11 30 12 at night would end up being taken by some limo zine to some nightclub that i never even heard of but there were some some of the most beautiful gorgeous people around and and i within a very short period of time had a most incredible set of friends i mean this was a most colorful set of friends i had in new york and then at some point i don't know what changed but I was like, I didn't want to be in that New York nightlife.

1:05:32And all of those friends disappeared. Like there were people who I only saw at the nightclubs at night and I only saw at the restaurants. And I don't know if they were ghosts. I don't know if they actually existed outside of that little world. And so that's an example. And I love those people. I adored them and I had a great time with them and they showed me things I never would have seen before and it just disappeared. And I think that's fine, you know? So I don't know if that is helpful to you. I can just one other, this is less of an anecdote and more of a kind of a wisdom bump that I've had recently is that, I mean, my health experience, I don't know, for some reason, I was able to see far more clearly the motivations of some people, why they were in my life.

1:06:20and one thing that I so one thing I noticed was people who are narcissists suddenly I became far more clear about what the narcissistic personality type is and how toxic it can be for you and that doesn't mean you shouldn't have a narcissist in your life or multiple narcissists but I learned that it can be toxic either for you or the people around you and I think I see that now and have a better handle on perhaps how to deal with it I also realized how many people were envious of me and envious of what I had. And it became starkly clear to me how negative an emotion envy can be and how necessary it is to not have envious people in your life.

1:07:09And what the envious people don't realize is that you may see somebody who you envy but you know don't know what else is going on in their life you don't know what disease they have you don't know how happy their marriage is you don't remember what difficulties they had to get to that point or what difficulties they have later in your life and so i i've been grown particularly sensitive to the people that i've know had envy of me and i've i don't want to that doesn't mean that i have to delete them but i just want to not have them in the mercury orbit if I'm the Sun or the Venus orbit. I want them to be in the Jupiter or Saturn or Uranus orbit.

1:07:47They can be there, but not so close. And another thing that I've really noticed is, first of all, you should want the people in your life to be living their most joyful life, so long as they're not harming other people. So, the corollary of not being envious and not having envious people in your life is you should wish, certainly for your friends, but any human, any life being on the planet, the most joy that they can possibly have, because you don't know how that's going to change. And I think that I've been thinking a lot about this King Croesus, who asked if one of his subjects, if he was happy, if he lived a happy life, and his subject says, well, we don't know that yet, because we haven't gone to the day of your death.

1:08:34So, I don't know if that's helpful to bring you to the question that you're about to ask or have I led you further astray down the garden path? Can I say both? Kai? No, that was wonderful. Thank you for telling those anecdotes. You know, I sort of feel like I am imposing a bit on you here what I value and then assume that you value the same, which shouldn't be the case. One thing I absolutely love is to have... thoughtful conversations. I don't necessarily think I'm thoughtful, but I can then speak with people who are more thoughtful than me. And so I find that, we talked here before about this idea of crossing the ocean to meet friends.

1:09:22And some of the best conversation that I have, I should probably preface to say, except not whenever it comes to you, Guy, but sometimes conversations that are, you go from two to three and it's on Zoom and then it's on to the next meeting. Those meetings are often not the best meetings. That could be an operational reason why you have that, and then that's all good and well. Really, the best conversations I have is whenever I can spend consecutive days with a really good friend and we can just pick up where we left, even it might be a year or two ago since we last met. So you have those conversations that It might on and off last 50 hours, if you're lucky.

1:10:03Most often, because we're all busy, those compartments would be shorter. It might be 10 hours. It might be 20 hours. But you have those ongoing discussions about everything in life. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. One part of being an investor that I don't think gets enough attention is how hard it can be to continue to improve as an investment researcher. And for myself, I often find that when I finish a great conversation with some industry expert or fund manager, my head is full of ideas. But by the time I sit down to write it all up, half of them are already gone. That's why I've been using Plod Note Pro.

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1:13:17And I use this and you should too. For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.ai slash tip. Built for every industry, ready for every boardroom, netsuite.ai.tip. All right, back to the show. And so my question, and again, I'm sort of like, feel like I'm imposing this on you guys, that how do you facilitate the most thoughtful conversations and which conversations do you most enjoy having? Yeah, that's, again, such interesting questions. And why is it an interesting question? Because to answer that question is to live one's life better.

1:14:02And I've not asked that question of myself. I've never heard that question asked of me in that way. And so I really appreciate the question and the listener and what you're doing, Stig, is a beautiful conversation. That's a natural curiosity for you. You're asking that question of yourself. And now you get me to ask that question of myself and I never formulated in that way. But I do have ideas. One of the reasons why, I mean, I've really, someday I'll get even more clarity on the way my relationship with my wife works because she's not into those kinds of things. She's like, you know, I need to go and make dinner for the children.

1:14:48So I leave, you know, if she was in this room, she'd say, you know what, Geinsteig, you continue to explore the nature of reality. I'm going to make dinner for the children, see you in a couple of hours. When we have dinner parties with Jeffersonian dinners, she enjoys it tremendously. And at some point, she's had enough. And she's like, she gets some and goes to the kitchen. And I say, can we help? And she says, no, I really want to leave you at the table doing what you're doing. By contrast, my wife can dance the night away, you know? And so, you know, different people have different capacities for different things.

1:15:24And I want to put to you, I see it in our three children, the personality that wants to explore questions of existence and reality in the universe is one personality type, but it's not the only personality type. And if you're not that personality type. You know, I have plenty of people in my family like that, and they have a very important contribution to make. It's like we don't want to live just in a world of the one. I would not have three healthy, successful children if I didn't have the yin and the yang of me who wants to explore everything in an intellectual way, and my wife who has, you know, she has far less patience for it.

1:16:09She doesn't have no patience for it, but she wants to see a practical outcome at the end of the day, which I think is very, very valuable. I think that there are another place where I would go is that some people, they don't realize they have it, but they're landmines of one kind or another inside their mental landscape that they're defending against. And they don't perhaps realize that they're defending against. But you discover them pretty quick because when they go there, when you go there, they get argumentative and they get difficult or they get defensive or they don't want to bring up that particular topic.

1:16:46And it's not fun being around people like that because it's fun to explore. It's not fun to come up against somebody's defenses. I don't particularly like dinner parties where there's a group of people there who say, don't bring up politics, religion, or those are the only things to talk about in a way. And I think that what I'm trying to say to you is an answer to your question is unless they're your parents or family members or friends from a part of your life that you treasure and hold dear and you want to help them explore those defenses and they have some openness to exploring those defenses, that's kind of like that they're not going to make good conversation partners, if you like.

1:17:29And I find myself disappointed. disappointed, I've been disappointed in various very, very smart interlocutors when I realized that there are places where they just won't go. And I don't have the right to tell them to go there. But if they're not going to go there, so if I have somebody, I'd like to believe, I think that my views on Israel are very, very clear. I'd like to believe that there's somebody who's very, very different viewpoints to mine. But so long as we're both willing to explore in our assumptions and question each other's assumptions without insisting that the conversation gets to a certain conclusion where I'm right and they're wrong or the other way around.

1:18:09I could have even interesting conversations about that. But now I'm really kind of floating around the ether in the stratosphere and I need to bring this down to earth for your listeners and for myself, I guess. And so here are some basic rules that I think contribute to valuable conversations. One is to examine another person's or to, when another person reveals an attitude, an opinion, a thought, to ask the question, that's really, rather than engage with the thought, the attitude, the opinion, you engage with the process by which they came to that attitude, thought, or opinion. And that's, this is I'm picking straight up from a book by David bricks called, I think, to know a person.

1:18:59And so the extremely productive question she asked, that's really interesting. How did you come to that viewpoint? How did you come to think that ABCD, whether you agree with it or disagree with it? I think a few other sort of like navigational rules are, I try to treat what the other person tells me is confidential, unless I get permission to share that engages them in ability to want to share. I try to never tell people what to do. I think that when people get told what to do, they become defensive, even subconsciously defensive. So, if they know that they're in the presence of somebody who's never going to do that, then that makes it easy for them to go to that kind of sharing place where they can reveal their vulnerabilities, if you like.

1:19:45And, you know, there's simply, you know, rather than telling them what to do, you can say, wow, I think that if I was in your circumstances, here's what I would do. You can do that. We don't say, oh, my advice to you is ABC, because that's very egotistical on the one in my case, in that example, to even think to know what they would do in those circumstances. And it puts them on the defensive. The last thing I would say is that there are certain formats that work extremely well. So obviously, you need time. But I've, and I can talk about a little bit, I've just fallen in love with the Jeffersonian dinner format that I try to have as many of them as possible wherever I can, because it's just so much fun.

1:20:29I conduct my meetings with investors when I have an investor dinner, I conduct those dinners in a modified Jeffersonian format because I like it so much. So those are some of the things that I do. But I think that I go back to the first question, which is, is this person really a growth mindset person who's open to explore whatever comes up with courage and to examine it with me? Or am I going to run into minefields and defenses, which is going to make the landscape difficult for that kind of exploratory and open conversation? To me, you are a very wise person. And I'm kind of curious to hear how you achieve wisdom, how much of that is reading, how much of that is interacting with other people, and how do you achieve wisdom through meaningful conversations?

1:21:22This is very kind of you to call me wise, even if it's true, which part of me wants to doubt, even though I'm flattered by you saying that. I'd rather be... So in the Wagner opera, opera, it's the third opera is called Siegfried. You've got the young and powerful idiot. The guy is, Siegfried is very, very strong. He fashions his own sword and he follows the birdsong to his call to adventure. But he's got no life experience. And the tragedy in And the Wagner opera Siegfried is that he dies because he doesn't figure out, he doesn't get wise fast enough if you like. But my point to you is that I'd rather be young and unwise than old and wise because if you're young and unwise, you have your whole life ahead of you.

1:22:16Whereas if you're old and wise, you have more of your life behind you in a way that's part of how you gain wisdom. So, I don't think that, you know, this friend who lives in Toronto, I guess there's no problem mentioning his name. His name is Arthur Fish. His wife is called Bonnie. They're wonderful people. A long time ago, he said to me, he just said, the unexamined life is not worth living. And I think that's a quote from Socrates. So, I think that the beginning of wisdom is to be willing to examine your life. And I don't think I've been particularly good at it. I think that if I'd have been good at it, I'd have been an essayist like George Orwell or William Hazlett or E.B.

1:22:57White. And I really envy those people because I think that those people have far greater opportunities for growing their wisdom. Montaigne is one of the first essayists or Bacon in the English language. But you've got to certainly examine your life. You've got to examine, you know, look inside and examine what's going on and courageously examine what's going on. I think that maybe is the beginning of wisdom. And if you want to do that, then what's so tragic and so difficult about watching the Siegfried Opera is that... And I don't remember, I have the first act clear in my mind, he fashions the sword and he's an orphan being brought up by a stranger and he breaks free of that limited environment.

1:23:45If I remember correctly, he just basically walks into a hornet's nest and dies. And by the way, the music of Siegfried's funeral in the Wagner Opera, Stig, is, I don't know if you like music, but it's one of the most phenomenal pieces of music you've ever heard. And it's sort of like, it emphasizes the tragedy. And you don't want to be a fool like Siegfried. You want to start getting learning and getting smart about what the games are being played around you and understand what it is. I was talking to my mother last night and I was expressing to her regret over when I was at business school, I didn't take it seriously and I didn't take myself seriously.

1:24:29And I just wish if I could have my life that time back, I didn't have the wisdom. I was like a young Sinkreed. If somebody could have come to me and said, not only are you not taking your life seriously, you're not taking yourself seriously, and that's a great waste and a shame, and you should do better for yourself. That would have been very, very nice. I think that this idea of curiosity about how the world really works, and so it's not reading for the sake of reading, it's reading for the sake of, I'm trying to understand how the world really works, and realizing, having the honesty to realize I actually don't have a good understanding of how the world really works.

1:25:11How am I going to find out more. So, it's reading with purpose, if you like, not just like reading for the sake of reading. I think that I would say that I think that in many ways, my learning has accelerated with the advent of AI because I now can have these great conversations with artificial intelligence. And I can say, you know, like I brought up Hazlitt. So, one of the prompts that I use on ChatGPT is I will run the post that I want to put on X through ChatGPT and I say, please look at this post and correct it for grammar and for spelling and for clarity. And then I say, please append suggestions for improvement, specifically make the post sound a little bit more like George Orwell, you know?

1:26:04Because who would not be impressed with how George Orwell wrote. And then today, earlier today, so I don't know if this is too much detail, but Chantal tells me at like 11.30 that I've got the podcast with you and the only window I have to go and do my workout is sort of like from 12 to 2, which is why I arrived slightly late to this. But I was asking, having done a post on Twitter and having asked ChatGPT to give me synonyms for words and like better ways of saying and a way that was... My language starts off with too many words. And actually, I can prune a lot of words. I'm a big fan of Ernest Hemingway, who also wanted to write in short, clear sentences.

1:26:55And so then I asked ChatGPT, who can I learn from to write better? And it came up with some great, great examples. And so why is this relevant to the acquisition of wisdom? Because I think, you know, saying to ChatGPT, hey, I really don't want to be an idiot like Siegfried was. And I want to read works of literature that help me to understand people's true motivations that are often hidden. What can you give me to read? You know, and it would come up, I imagine one of the works it would come up with, not just because I've talked about it, is War and Peace, but it would come up with other works.

1:27:39So here's the point. We thought that privacy was phone companies not hearing our phone conversations. But actually, it turns out that privacy is about a lot more than that. It's about all this metadata. When did you make the phone call? From where did you make the phone call? How many times did you call the person? You know, that has got no content in it. But those patterns are extremely valuable for understanding what somebody is doing and when. I just read the other day or I heard somebody say that if a teenage girl deletes a bunch of photographs from any social media that can detect it, that's a great time.

1:28:21She's clearly not happy with her image. And that's a good time to advertise some beauty products to her. So that's kind of the idea of metadata. What's my point? The reading and the acquisition of wisdom is greatly enhanced by not just reading Francis Bacon's essays or Leo Tolstoy or George Orwell. It's about having somebody say, here's why you want to read George Orwell. Here's why you want to read Leo Tolstoy. Here's what you're going to learn. well, here's the kinds, if you're curious about this, read War and Peace. If you're curious about that, so you're kind of primed in a certain way. And something that I, different paths in life, I don't exist in a university environment.

1:29:08But one of the things I think you gain in a university environment is that meta-knowledge, how to go about acquiring the knowledge. And so, I think that my ability to acquire wisdom is actually accelerated in the last year, because I'm using multiple conversations with these LLMs where if I'm reading a book, I then, you know, while I'm reading the book, I go and have a conversation with the LLM about what I'm reading. You know, I read the Canterbury Tales, like the Knight's Tale, who are these characters? Why did Chaucer choose those characters? So, that's already fascinating. I leave you with one last thought.

1:29:47So, I decided I need to read one novel in Spanish, And I haven't read any novels in Spanish yet. I've read bits and pieces. You know, as you know, Stig, my wife grew up in Mexico. Spanish is a language I hear a lot in my family. Because I had this operation, actually, my capacity to pronounce foreign languages has atrophied a little bit. And so I've decided that one of the ways to get it back is to read in that language. So I had to select a book. And of course, the great work of literature and Spanish literature is Don Quixote de la Mancha. And so I'm reading the introduction to the English version by Harold Bloom, and he names Cervantes, who wrote Don Quixote, as an equal to Shakespeare in his literary output, and there's been no equal since.

1:30:37Shakespeare and Cervantes are the two greatest creators of fictional works. He's written about Shakespeare and the creation of the human. We would not be the people we are today if Shakespeare's work didn't exist. I can get into that if you want to dive into it. Anyway, I'm reading Don Quixote, which is an enormously satirical work, but I'm finding so many aspects of people that I know in this Don Quixote character, which is so beautiful. And I'm providing the listener with meta-knowledge about Don Quixote right now, because it might make them want to read it. The guy clearly loves the character.

1:31:17Chavant has loved the character that he's created, while at the same time making fun of the characters that he's created, if that makes sense. He's lovingly making fun of him. And lovingly making fun of him, he's actually holding up a mirror to so much of what we see in the world, which is just, he spends a whole week in the very beginning of the book, and I'm only at the very beginning. Don Quixote spends a whole week trying to figure out the right name for his horse, Rocinante. And I was thinking, how many times do people spend a lot of time deciding on the name of something or on something which kind of involves their ego and they think it's important?

1:31:55Anyway, so I was able to start reading Don Quixote and start having a real relationship to the text because I'm constantly in conversation with the large language models that basically instantly bring up stuff that's relevant to the thoughts that I'm having. So that was a very long and discursive answer. A lot of sand and fury signifying nothing. But directed curiosity. So you require wisdom not by being curious for the sake of being curious, not by reading for the sake of reading, not for having conversations for the sake of having conversations, but directed curiosity, trying to answer questions that are in your mind.

1:32:36and trying to find a path to them, if that makes sense. That totally makes sense, Guy. And I want to talk a bit more about what you alluded to here earlier, about facilitating conversations and meeting people with different opinion. You know, some of the best, but perhaps also some of the worst conversations that you have is with people who see the world different than you. So we're having this conversation. There are a few things that I would say I probably see a little bit different than you. That makes me excited. It makes me curious. It makes me want to explore more things together with you.

1:33:16And not in a way of I'm right, you're wrong type way, but just like, oh, like understanding where you are coming from and what kind of experiences that has led you to having that opinion. And I think that's a wonderful journey. Now, some of the other discussions you have leaves you not curious, but basically leaves you cold. And that person also has a different opinion than you, but some people leave you with that positive energy, and then other people leave you without that positive energy, even though perhaps they've said the same thing. Are you consciously looking for people to challenge your worldview?

1:33:51you? And if you do, how do you engage with them to win together, for lack of better words? So, like studying and enhancing this Jeffersonian format for conversation, I ran across the parliamentary rules of order. It is just a fascinating area of knowledge. So, there's an American work called, I think it's called Robert's Rules of Order. And actually, in the English version, and I don't remember the name, it's actually written into the parliamentary rules and procedures. And the question becomes, how does an assembly, and you can start with two, but you can go as large as 600 people, conduct its business?

1:34:40How do you go about achieving something where you've got plenty of voices in the room and different opinions in the room, obviously. And before I go there, just, so this is something that goes deep into the roots of Western civilization going back at least a couple of thousands of years, if not more. So how do we achieve things as a group? And we know what an authoritarian system looks like. An authoritarian, you know, there's a leader, there's a general, there's a somebody, and basically, we need to follow their orders. And they can engage in some degree of consultation or not, but ultimately they decide and we follow.

1:35:22And then a deliberative assembly is very, very different to that. A deliberative assembly comes to a problem that needs to be solved without some kind of pre-conclusion as to how it's going to show up. So deliberative assemblies have rules about how they do that. So here are some basic rules, which is just fascinating. So one is, every person has the right to speak. So, you know, in my Jeffersonian meals, if somebody is not speaking, I will ask them to speak. Because the person who feels like they have the least contribute often has the most contribute. So, first of all, you know, don't filibuster is what it comes down to in a conversation between two people.

1:36:08Filibuster is when you continue to speak despite the other person have something they want to say. A conversation happens when, you know, in podcasts, I resort to the idea of saying I'm about to hand the mic over to you, even though this is not a physical mic that I'm holding over. But there's got to be balance in the ways in which two people are speaking to each other. And online now on YouTube, you can see plenty of debates where one person is filibustering another person. They're not allowing the other person to speak, to say what they want to say. And there are various ways of doing it. And that is unparliamentary behavior that doesn't facilitate conversation.

1:36:46And if you're around somebody who filibusters, it's a pain and it's a drag and it's a nightmare. Another basic rule, and it's surprising to me how many people don't understand this, is you completely refrain from ad hominem attacks, meaning that you never, never attack the integrity of the person. You always attack the integrity of their ideas. So you separate the individual from the ideas. And, you know, in the British Parliament, they have various forms to help that to happen. So you never refer to somebody who's spoken into a debate, you never refer to them by name. You refer to them by referring to their constituency.

1:37:33So you can say the right honorable member from XYZ constituency. Or you can just say my right honorable friend, but you don't see I disagree with my right honorable friend. You don't say I disagree with Guy Spear over there with the beard. So you're trying to create a situation where the ideas are attacked and not the individual. And that goes even further. Parliamentary conduct requires somebody to not accuse somebody of lying, even though that's what they think they're doing. So you say, I can't remember the formula, but there's formulas for doing well. You don't say the right honorable member from Richmond is lying.

1:38:14You say, you know, he may have inadvertently misspoken, you say. Those are all ways of saying, I respect you as an individual, even though I disagree fundamentally with your ideas. So all of that facilitates an abstraction away from the personalities and into what you really want to agree or disagree with. I think that if you get those things going in a conversation, it becomes easier and easier for me to talk to you, Stig, about something that comes from the opposite sides of the spectrum and constantly reassure the person. We're in the same room. I respect you as a human being. I respect the right to your own opinion.

1:38:56I respect your right to speak your own opinion. But I just agree vehemently with your ideas. Another very important point when you look at this sort of careful management of the environment in which ideas get discussed, if an individual feels like either their ideas or their personhood or their integrity is being put under attack in some way, then there's the right of reply. So the worst thing that you can do in a deliberative discussion, which can just be between two people, you know, if I say, for example, I love your ideas, but they suffer from the misfortune of being wrong, you know, everybody in the room needs to understand that when you do that, Stig has the right of reply.

1:39:43You can't go on for too long without giving Stig the right to correct the record. and if you have a conversation where somebody feels like they have not been given the right to correct the record to reframe what they've said to say it more accurately it becomes unfair if you like and people don't like unfair and I think that it's possible to have discussions and I would say that it goes to the very very core of our western civilization the reason why we've succeeded so well for the last 500 years in the west is that we've found the way to bring people with very different opinions into a room and to have them talk it out, basically.

1:40:23And this started happening in the 12th century. You had disputations on various different topics where they would, the king or the count or the leading power was curious to get the answer to the question and they would get two experts, but there would be rules as to how that disputation would go. So those are some of the things that are really very, very basic. And actually, I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk about it here, because I think that it's a subject to be taught at school, actually. We should all graduate school with knowing these things. And it's implicit in our civilization, but increasingly, we kind of lose touch with it.

1:41:03And when we lose touch with it, we lose the capacity to access the kind of debate that we want to have. And it would be nice to have it back. I mean, you know, something happened on the subject, and I don't know if you're going to the subject, I vehement in my opinions about Israel and who's right or wrong there, as you may have noticed in my Twitter account, and we can talk about it if you like, but there was a conversation recently between this famous TV host, Piers Morgan, and a lawyer called Natasha Hausdorff, and pierce morgan even though she who were the he was the host of the show i feel filibustered natasha didn't allow her to answer the questions that he posed to her and the way you know a lot of people cried out pierce morgan's an anti-semite and what i would have said is he you don't need to go there he was just not gentlemanly he was not he did not conduct himself in the interview according to the rules of parliamentary behavior.

1:42:03He made assertions of Natasha Hausdorff in that case, and he didn't allow her the right of reply. And when you inadvertently make an ad hominid attack, if you inadvertently accuse somebody of being misrepresenting the truth or lying, then you need to give them the right of reply. And so if you follow those rules, it should be possible to have somebody in the room who fundamentally, you disagree on fundamental issues in the most profound way, but you still accept them in the same room. That's actually what a parliament's about. It's a flat organization. You're all equals. You all have an equal right to be here, there.

1:42:44You all have the right to say your piece. You all have the right to be heard uninterrupted and every time somebody speaks in a room like that and even if it's just two people or more people opinions slowly and gradually shift and and we get progress and you know the hive mind in many cases that's what it gives the solution so i don't know i've rambled a little bit but it's something that's dear to my heart actually i don't know if i'm answering directly your question. No, I definitely think that you are. And to your point, Guy, about we need time. That's one of the things I love with the podcast format, that you do have the time to talk about.

1:43:28There are so many important things in the world that you just can't put in 160 characters, to put it mildly. And understanding where that person is coming from, I think if it's done well, it's empowering for both parties. But also to your point, you need to agree on those rules beforehand. So otherwise, they obviously don't work. It's like playing football. And then one team has 11 players and the other one's like, no, we're just going to put in as many players as we want because we make the rules. And that's obviously not what you want to have happen. I wanted to talk to you about another related topic, Guy.

1:44:10And I should probably say where I'm coming from as I'm talking about this. I come from this place of admiring your willingness to help others. I think in that sense, you're very much a role model for us in the value investing community. And I can't help but to digress a bit here. And I'm talking about you and I'm talking about everyone else whenever I'm digressing a bit here. But one of the interesting things that I found coming from a normal, I don't know, you shouldn't say normal, that's kind of like a loaded word, but I come from a very typical middle-class Danish family. And so I didn't know wealthy people growing up.

1:44:52It was not before I went to business school that I met people would have what probably other people would call rich, or I would call rich for that matter. But anyways, I think one of the interesting things I've realized from being around wealthier people, and here I'm not necessarily talking about wealthy people in business school, because in that age of our life, we were just all trying to figure out life and who we are. But once we grow up and we're adults, one of the things I found interesting about being around wealthy people is that they show you who they are because money tends to magnify who you are.

1:45:32And if you're a jerk, then you're going to be a jerk with money. And then you're going to do different things because you're a jerk. And if you're a wonderful person and now you have a bit of money, you do wonderful things for other people because you can. And that's because that's who you are. So I think that's sort of like my premise going into this here. But I know you, Guy, that whenever you meet people, you always come from this wonderful place and wanting to help that individual. No matter what the circumstances are, you're there to help, you're there to provide service. And I'm curious to hear how you think about this next part, because you might attend a conference or a gathering of very wealthy individuals.

1:46:19Let's say a young guy who wants to set up his own fund. I would imagine that over the years, quite a few young budding managers have been, as managers have been approaching you to help them set up a fund or whatever it might be. And the person might not have a high net worth right now on paper, but you also know the human capital is probably 50 million euros easily. But you can also help them to get to 50 million, 100 million faster if you really do whatever you can to help them. But then you could also spend that time and energy on helping other people with zero in net worth, but a different type of net worth, perhaps with the human capital that's 10 ,000 euros, whatever it might be.

1:47:01This is not my way of saying we shouldn't help young asset managers who have a lot of human capital ahead of them, even though they might have a very low net worth on paper. We should then instead buy food for the poorest globally. I'm not coming from a place of guilt, as I'm saying this. I'm more coming from a place of thinking about opportunity cost. And I'm inclined to say, who's the most deserving of your help? I think that's probably come, that sounds very negative whenever I say deserving, but how do you figure out how you can best be of service. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that I'm very monacious, said to me personally, number of times, you're just not good enough at saying no.

1:47:46So that maybe that's part of it. But I know what it's like, it doesn't feel long ago to me that I was a guy walking down, you know, the streets of London trying to get into somebody's office that I could get an internship and not knowing how to do it. And so I identify with that a lot. I think that, you know, I personally don't have a strategic approach to it. Maybe I should be more strategic and that is something that we could explore. I could try and think about, but I think that I'm reacting to what shows up in front of me. and I know that if I do more of the helping stuff, then good things will happen to me.

1:48:32So first of all, it's worth saying that in a way it's motivated by, I mean, Warren Buffett has called it long-term greedy. It's not altruism or it's more a case of I want to live the best possible life and I live the best possible life by helping others. And one example of that is 25 years ago or so, the first edition of the Manual of Ideas lands on my desk. And I was truly impressed with what John Miljavec had put together. And I had an office in Carnegie Hall Tower, and I write to him an email and I say, this is one of the best research publications I've ever seen. Would you like to come to the office and say hi?

1:49:13And yeah, I definitely want to subscribe at the right price. So I think that I was the first person that from the kind of like, it looked like I was a big fancy hedge fund manager. I was in Carnegie Hall Tower. So that would have been impressive to him, even though that was a bad real estate decision for me. So he came to my office and I remember saying to him, you're clearly a very small guy. And I just want to be clear here. I want to help you right now, because one day you'll be very successful, and then it'd be very nice if you remember me now. And then that's literally what I remember saying, and that's what I meant.

1:49:53And the fact of the matter is, 25 years later, the Manif of Ideas is still extremely successful, both publication and community of investors. He has a number of investor meetings, the Zurich Project in Zurich. He has a meeting in St. Moritz in the wintertime. And he walked with me there. So that was an investment that I made. So when you help people only in their lives, the investment can pay off in such a significant in a way is because it's very meaningful to them at that moment. Nobody's paying attention to them. And I know how that felt for me. You're in a way very vulnerable. So I remember that.

1:50:29And I'm doing it because it's a smart move to do it. And in a way, I want to make that move as often as I can, because I don't know. It's long-term greedy. I want the move to pay off. I'm not just doing it for altruistic reasons. But so when I can, I do. And something came up recently that I'm going to give a backhanded compliment to a guy called Ritavan. Ritavan is an Indian guy, grew up in, originally from Pondicherry in the south of India, now lives in Munich, studied in the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. It's an interesting story. And you wrote a book that I've got here, but I don't have one on my desk.

1:51:05And, you know, how traditional businesses can use, you know, can use data to their advantage. And I was just like, you know, is it the best produced book? And that's the backhanded compliment part. No, it's not the best produced book. Please send me a personal copy with a note on top. So I wrote him a note back saying, congratulations on writing this book. It clearly has a lot of very good ideas in it. Can't wait to read it all. I flipped through, and you're a very smart guy, something like that. But the most important thing that I wanted to do, this was not Isaac and Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk.

1:51:41It wasn't Robert Moses by Caro. It wasn't that kind of book. But it was a book that he'd produced. But that personal note, he was so excited. He wrote back to me and said, wow, I'm so excited by this note. Would you mind if I posted it on LinkedIn? I was like, of course you can post it on LinkedIn. Not a problem. What's my point? He posted it on LinkedIn, we ended up having a podcast together. And in a way, I feel like I think he deserves to be far more successful than he is. He's on his path to that. But I became a part of his story. And that's hugely kind of like, that makes my life more meaningful.

1:52:21In another case, the same thing happened with Luca Delana that I'm sure you know, he's written a book about agrodisticity and about playing long-term games. And he was at my ValueX event this year, where he talked about, you know, why you need to pay attention to near misses. And I looked at this guy's book arrived on my desk and I said, my God, this is an amazing book. It deserves, and nobody's paying attention to him. Everybody's paying attention to Ray Dalio. They're queuing up to interviewing him. They're queuing up for all sorts of things. And he's at the end of his career, but Luca Delano's at the beginning of his career.

1:52:56And so So I can say that I get an endorphin kick. I get an endorphin high about from making, really, from my perspective, minor interventions that will make a significant difference for them. I mean, what game are you playing? If you want to end up at the end of your life with the most money in the bank, congratulations. Maybe you'll do well, and maybe you're smart enough to do that. and maybe that's a game worth playing. But you know, what I am, I guess now I'm talking about it, maybe it'll become more conscious. I'm trying to maximize goodwill. I'm trying to maximize the number of people who are grateful that I exist on the planet, the number of people who are grateful that I took an action that made a difference in their lives.

1:53:45And that for me is extremely meaningful and it gives me great joy. Many of the actions that I take don't pay off in any specific way to me, but you only need a few for it to pay off. And again, it's kind of frustrating for me because one of these days, if Warren Buffett, if you ever listen to this, it's okay if you don't, I want to learn something that you haven't learned. So far, everything that I've learned, I realize Warren Buffett's learned. If you come to my office in Zurich, you'll see that Warren Buffett has sent me on the course of the last 10 years, maybe, I don't know, seven or pieces of mail personalized directly to me.

1:54:23And, you know, I mean, I remember the first letter I received from him. He'd read my own report and he had some nice words to say about my own report. You know, you could have peeled me off the floor. I mean, you know, and it's there framed and everything. And so if Warren Buffett's doing that for me, why wouldn't I do that for other people? And too many people have the perspective and it's so wonderful because they're trying to appeal to the Ray Dalios, the Ken Griffins, the Warren Buffetts, the people who have no time at all, and they're going to have a very, very hard time making a difference for them.

1:54:54Well, there's all these people who are doing, maybe they're not as great as Warren Buffett, but they still deserve a spotlight on them, and they deserve to have more attention on them. And even at a more fundamental level, everybody wants to be seen. Everybody wants to know that their life has meaning and what they're doing is meaningful. And I think it's a great gift to the world to say, you're being seen by me. I see you. I'm another human and I see you. I remember the first time I got that feeling, I was a very self-centered individual, but I'm having coffee in Harvard Square or not far away from Harvard Square.

1:55:33I can still see the rest, the cafe in my mind and I saw a blind person who was about to cross the road and I dropped everything and rushed out and I came up next to them and said, I see you're about to cross the road, can I help you? And in this case, many blind people don't like the help. They say, no, that's fine. I'm fine on my own. Thank you so much for asking. But they said, yeah. This woman said, yeah, sure. I'd love to, for your company and crossing the road. So, I crossed the road with her. She was happy. I went back into the restaurant. They offered me a free coffee, you know, in the restaurant because they'd seen what had happened.

1:56:05And I got that feeling of being seen. The waitress and the manager of the restaurant had seen me do a sort of simple good deed and it felt great. So Warren Buffett said, it's not money that makes the world go round, it's love. If you can give that, if you can give that feeling of being seen to an individual, why the hell wouldn't you do that? If Britovan writes a book and sends it, takes the trouble to send it to me? Why would I not make him be seen? And it gives me great joy in doing so. So, what's my point to you? It's kind of like bring this down to earth and give you back the mic, is that in a way, I'm doing it for purely selfish reasons.

1:56:48I'm doing it because it's long term greedy. It's great business. It's a great way to live your life. But it also gives me great joy to do it. You know, it's just fun to do. I mean, it's an enormous amount of fun. And it's wonderful how you want to use your platform to do such good things for the value investing community and the community at large. There are a lot of people out there, and I'm thinking about entrepreneurs here, and they get asked, so why did they start a certain company? And then they had some kind of mission that they wanted to help other people. And I wish I could say it was the same for me whenever I started TAP, that I just wanted to help other people.

1:57:32I did it because I had a good friend, Preston, and we wanted to talk about Buffett. And we sort of felt we needed a reason to do that, so we made it public. And then as it got a bit of traction, it was kind of like to the Chris Hahn, not necessarily because my dad was a car mechanic and he needed to make ends meet, but there was certainly an element of, oh, can I make a living of doing my hobby? But as TAP has become a bit more successful, there's this urge to wanting to use the platform to do something, to do good. And I've been approached by different people who want me to be political, for example, which I don't want to do.

1:58:15And I think that's, we've talked a bit about that, but I generally don't want to use the platform to be political, but that is one way to do it. There are other ways to do it. And I don't know if it's going to sound cliche, but one of the ways I want to use the TAP platform to make a small slice of the world, perhaps the value investing community a little better, is to speak with you, Guy, and other thoughtful people who come from a place that wanted to help. And we started out talking a lot about investing on the show, and we still have hosts on the show that talk a lot about investing, whereas I can almost feel like to an increasing extent, I've started to have conversations like I have with you today, Guy, about crossing oceans for friendships and have the right discourse with the right people.

1:59:01And it's different. But I'm going to do a very long segue here into my question at the end. But perhaps something that might be a bit of use and not sound as self-serving as what just went through, but something that might be a bit of use to the audience and something I know you figured out a long time ago guy, and certainly Buffett has because he always thought about things. Even whenever you're like, oh, I just came up with this, and then you study his work, and then he probably said something 30 years ago about it. I found the value investing community because I wanted to make a lot of money.

1:59:34That was sort of like my very brief introduction in my 20s into all of this. Like, no, we need to figure out how to make money. Buffett made a lot of money. Let's study Buffett. And of course, whenever you start doing that, you realize that there is so much more to it. And you sort of like stick around for all the life lessons and the values and all that good stuff. And I can't help but sort of like segue then to my long-winded question about all the past 12 months, Guy, I'm putting you a bit on the spot. When have you found that money has bought you happiness? I think to a large extent, especially in my 20s, I thought that money would buy me happiness.

2:00:08But also, when has it not all the past 12 months? No, I mean, clearly money does not buy happiness. I mean, that's just, we can say that, I think. I even don't think it would be controversial, actually. But money buys you comfort. Put it that way. It buys you headroom. It buys you the ability to abstract away from the problems that can be solved with money. And I realized that from my perspective, for me to say that money doesn't buy you happiness probably will sound very, very, not very down to earth for a lot of people. I remember, and again, I think I'm okay to mention him, a guy called Abel Halpin, a classmate of mine from business school, who said, you just have the freedom by having money to worry about the things that really count in life.

2:01:02And the rest of us who don't have enough money, in addition to getting to worry about the things that really count in life, have to worry about a whole bunch of other things like how to rent an apartment, how to get to work tomorrow, how to put food on the table for our wife and children, all of those things. But I think that I would still... And I understand that I'm kind of abstracting away from those everyday things that the vast majority of people on the planet, you know, in Hebrew, you'd say the word pal nasar, which means to make a living. And that is a fundamental problem that everybody needs to overcome in some way that we all need a way to make a living, to pay the rent, to buy the food, to do what we do.

2:01:46That's a part of what you were saying, whether you've got, you were interested in value investing, and then you realize, well, maybe I can do it also to make a living, and then I can have a hobby making a living. But when you go beyond that, and you see you're more than making a living, can it buy you happiness? No, it doesn't buy you happiness, period, end of story. What buys you happiness is all that other stuff that we've been talking about, this investing in goodwill, pursuing one's interests, having hobbies, and the right to have a hobby, and the freedom to have a hobby or an interest that is an interest purely because it interests you and not because it gets you to somewhere or gets you to some position.

2:02:24It's not an ulterior motive. Yeah, I mean, that just seems to me to be obviously true. Again, I'm repeating myself because it's always going to say easy for you to say because you have enough money. But I think that even if you feel like you don't have enough money and you still have a huge part of your life is directed towards those basic daily needs. You should create the space for the other stuff if you possibly can, or be aware that once you've reached those daily needs, extra money is not going to solve anything, if you like. I spent a good five years thinking that actually, you know, I probably would say I'm an immigrant.

2:03:08Immigrants go after the money and they don't question anymore because that's what immigrants do. And I spend a lot of time in that mindset. And I think that I'm coming out of that mindset now where I'm saying that's not very smart. In fact, it's asinine. I've only gotten anywhere close to answering your question. Yes. And Guy, I think you bring up a good point. Whenever you say, it's easy for you to say, because you have enough money. But on the other hand, it also sounds different if a person is struggling to make a living, and then also says money doesn't buy happiness. So I think you're, please don't beat yourself up.

2:03:44I think your perspective does have that impact because you are in that well-deserving privileged position. Guy, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for being so generous with your time. Do you have any concluding remarks here before I let you go? Yeah, there was something that came up for me. It's these thoughts that kind of come up and then they disappear before you had the chance to. So something like that, but I'm not going to remember right now. I just say that for the audience that, and for you, I don't give this much time to most people who want to call me up and talk to me, but I really value your conversations.

2:04:25I think my conversations with you, I think that they're... I learned a lot from being on this show with you, on this conversation with you. I know I've said it before, I really ought to make the time to come visit you and spend a few days with you in Aris. I think it would be a lot of fun. And we would have multiple conversations like this. But next best is to have it on a podcast at a distance. And that's why I allocated the whole afternoon to it because I knew that I wanted to go for as long as it went for. And we can retake this up. There's so many issues that we can take up whenever we get the chance to when the time is right.

2:05:05I would like to believe that we've discovered something with the people who gathered around the Berkshire Hathaway meeting so many years ago. We're onto something. And as humanity figures out that that is the right way to be a capitalist, perhaps we'll make the world into a slightly better place. Meaning, I think we're on the right track and we invite other members of humanity to come on board with us. There's plenty of space and this is not something kind of exclusive club. You know, Warren Buffett, I said this in some essay or some post that I made and it didn't get much play, but I believe that Warren Buffett can be seen to be a philosopher of capitalism.

2:05:51And there are different versions of capitalism that was the kind of capitalism that was practiced in the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom, which involved slavery and involved people working long hours in factories. There's the kind of capitalism that was practiced in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. And then there's a version of capitalism that Warren Buffett kind of identified and iterated upon, which is just a beautiful way to be. And we've kind of discovered that and we love it. And it's not just about making money, it's about all these other things that we've been discussing.

2:06:27and my word to anybody who's just tuning in, there's plenty of space for everybody. In fact, it's one of these beautiful things that the more people have that outlook, the better the world becomes for all of us. So maybe that's a thought to leave us with. And that's kind of the journey that you and I are on stick. We're continuing to explore the implications of what we've learned at the feet of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, and the implications are very broad. what better way to end the episode than on that note guy thank you yeah thank you thank you for having me on and wishing you a great rest of the day thank you for listening to tip make sure to follow we study billionaires on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes to access our show notes transcripts or courses go to the investors podcast.com this show is for entertainment purposes only before making any decision consult a professional this show is copyrighted by the investors podcast network written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting