Inside Warren Buffett’s Inner Circle: How The Elite Think

1. 0:00 – 5:41

   The Posse

   1. SPShaan Puri0:00

      I have a thought experiment for you. Imagine if you could just snap your fingers and suddenly there was a second version of you. A second body, brain, your eyes, your ears, the way you think, the way you operate, but with one caveat, one change. It would do whatever you said to do. You know what I would tell it to do? I would tell it to go study the art of investing. Investing, like Scott Galloway says, is like having an army of capital go wage war for you, right? Instead of you working for money, your money works for you. I love that. So how do you get great at something? Well, you would study the greats, and that's exactly what the person who's coming on this podcast today has done. He's gone back and for 25 years has studied everything that Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, all the great investors, what they have done, read every single annual letter, go and read all the reports, study their f- how they grew from bit by bit, block by block, step by step, and not just learn them in the book, but then went and practiced it. And so I wanted to ask this guy, what did you learn about investing and what can I learn? How can I spend an hour or two with you and download 10 years of your brain? His name is Guy Spier. He's a very cool guy. A lot of people really respect Guy 'cause he is a just incredibly humble, interesting guy. I think you're gonna love this conversation, so enjoy this episode with Guy Spier. [upbeat music] I have all these notes about where to start 'cause I'm like, oh, he's value investing. There's gonna be good investing knowledge. But the thing I was actually curious about when I was doing my research was about this group that you had called The Posse.

   2. GSGuy Spier1:34

      Oh, yeah.

   3. SPShaan Puri1:35

      And I don't know if The Posse still exists or this was just a moment in time, but can you explain what was The Posse? Who was in it? What was it?

   4. GSGuy Spier1:41

      Well, what's happened to me is I've discovered that I love Warren Buffett, value investing, Berkshire Hathaway, so I want to be all over anything that's got to do with that. And in New York City, there's this Ruane Cunniff firm that has a friend of Warren Buffett's, two friends of Warren Buffett's that run it, and they have a mutual fund, and they have an annual general meeting. And I get invited to some event before or after, and there's a guy, Whitney Tilson, there who's like master network to the power of master networker. And we're introduced to each other, and we're one year away from each other at Harvard Business School. And the next thing I know, he invites me to meet other people. And he doesn't invite me to the group on its own. He invites me to meet this person over there or that you're sort of like, "Hey, go have a coffee with that guy." And so before I know, I've met three or four members of this group. And then it w- it was Whitney who put together a, a group of five or six of us who were all fascinated by Warren Buffett, who all wanted to become better investors. And we'd meet, I think it was... Sometimes we'd meet even once a week in, in one of our member's offices. There was a member that had an office in Midtown. And we'd present ideas. And Whitney's friend, Bill Ackman, was part of that group for a while. That's how I met Bill Ackman for the few times that I'd met him. And I wasn't really aware of what that was or why. Well, I, I kind of... We'd had study group at business school, and obviously you want to get together with friends who have common interests. But I didn't realize what a powerful tool for success it was until at that dinner, lunch, first meal with Mohnish Pabrai where he talked about forums, YPO forums, and he said, "You should, you should get into one. You'd benefit." And then, then I got switched on. But, uh, but that posse met for about, I think it met for two or three or four years, and we're still part of an email chain. I mean, Whitney will send out an email, send out a happy birthday message to the group. Some have become very, very good friends of mine, and some are, uh, I'm not even sure where they are now.

   5. SPShaan Puri3:35

      So you... Wh- what was happening? So you're meeting, let's say, once a week or every couple of weeks, and you go to someone's office and you said you had... You, you would... All the commonality was you were all investors who were fans of the Buffett style of investing-

   6. GSGuy Spier3:47

      Yeah

   7. SPShaan Puri3:47

      ... value investing. What would happen at these groups? You show up. What actually... Is there a substructure? Did you just... Somebody's got a stock that they're interested in, and you start debating it? What would happen?

   8. GSGuy Spier3:56

      So what I, what I remember is that you needed to show up with a written, a written stock idea.

   9. SPShaan Puri4:02

      Everybody or one person?

   10. GSGuy Spier4:04

       Just one person, and then you'd discuss it in depth at, at that meeting. And then the following meeting, another person would come with a written stock idea that you would distribute, hand out. Give the handout, and then you'd talk it through. And obviously, at the end of that, like a half an hour, forty-five-minute sort of talk through that, there'd be various other ideas that were discussed. But as a result of that, what would happen, [chuckles] I remember once sitting in a car with, with Whitney driving somewhere in New Jersey to visit a company called Is- it was called ISWI, Interactive Services Worldwide Inc., I-S-W-I, that had gaming software for TVs, for example. So there were sort of follow-on meetings that happened, both social and business-related, or somebody would... And you realize this is at a time when transcripts of conference calls were not available.

   11. SPShaan Puri4:52

       Right.

   12. GSGuy Spier4:52

       So somebody would listen to a conference call, and they'd make notes, and they would pass them out-

   13. SPShaan Puri4:55

       [laughs]

   14. GSGuy Spier4:55

       ... by email, for example. So there's a kind of the structured part of those meetings. But what is really, really fascinating is that unstructured sort of like somebody mentions something or says something. And I think that many of these best ideas come because somebody says something that is really fascinating. So as a result of this, uh, I... We're at a dinner somewhere. Bill was at this dinner, and he started talking about MBIA, and he started talking about how the asymmetry of the bet on the credit default swaps on MBIA. And it was not... I could have read that in a document. I could have had that. But it was the way Bill talked about it that really stuck in my mind. I thought, "Wow, that is really fascinating." And so that kind of meta information, if you like-

   15. SPShaan Puri5:39

       Right

   16. GSGuy Spier5:39

       ... is, is what you really get out of it.

2. 5:41 – 17:30

   Farmer Mac

   1. SPShaan Puri5:41

      Can you tell the Farmer Mac story?

   2. GSGuy Spier5:43

      [laughs]

   3. SPShaan Puri5:43

      'Cause I think that was a, a great example of what-

   4. GSGuy Spier5:48

      So-

   5. SPShaan Puri5:48

      ... what came out of The Posse.

   6. GSGuy Spier5:49

      Yeah. So there I am investing. Started off investing. I'm investing for friends, fools, and family is I think how Mohnish would put it. So but I'm shit scared. I'm very, very scared because I really... I, I don't know what I'm doing. What's a Harvard MBA? A guy who pretends to himself and the world that he knows what he's doing when he actually doesn't, you know?

   7. SPShaan Puri6:07

      [laughs]

   8. GSGuy Spier6:08

      But I knew that I didn't know what I was doing. So- You know, so, so you're looking-- One of the ways in which I approached that challenge was to look for people who did know what they were doing, who were... I thought they knew what they were doing, and to kind of try and, um, uh, unwind what they did to, to backfill, to reverse engineer what they'd done and do the same thing. So I, I, I got all sorts of investment ideas through that, and I've -- obviously I was studying Warren Buffett, and I was also studying a guy called Tom Russo, and I can give examples of, for example, Tom Russo was invested in Nestle. And I started-- I kind of like, "Wow, brands. That's a really powerful way to- place to look. Where else can I find consumer brands?" So, you know, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae at the time were these, um, government-sponsored enterprises, kind of a duopoly/monopoly. Highly, highly profitable. Enormous balance sheets, but were super successful at making money for their investors, but also for organizing the mortgage market in a way that made sense for everybody. So there they are, and so I'm doing what I normally do, which it-- or normally do, which it had made sense for me is look for similar kinds of situation.

   9. SPShaan Puri7:16

      Because Buffett was invested in-

   10. GSGuy Spier7:18

       Freddie and Fannie

   11. SPShaan Puri7:18

       ... Fannie Mae for... Yeah.

   12. GSGuy Spier7:20

       Both of them.

   13. SPShaan Puri7:20

       So he was invested there. You're looking at Buffett for ideas.

   14. GSGuy Spier7:23

       Yes.

   15. SPShaan Puri7:23

       So you're saying-

   16. GSGuy Spier7:24

       And, and-

   17. SPShaan Puri7:24

       ... what's similar to those? All right, real quick, I want to talk to you if you are new to business. If you are just getting started, maybe you're new to this podcast, you're trying to get out there and do your first business. There's a lot of people who listen to this podcast that fall into that category, and HubSpot has made something pretty cool for you. Most people, in your first business, you might do something like freelancing or being a solopreneur. It's an easy way to get started. You don't need to have a lot of money. It's a great way to build skills and build that monthly cash flow. But knowing where to start is not super easy. The folks at HubSpot have created a kit that you can go download. It's a, it's a ultimate entrepreneurship kit for people who are really getting started in this journey. They also have a solopreneurship guide that will give you sort of the mindset that you need to go on this journey. Check it out. It's the Ultimate Ent- Entrepreneurship Kit. The link is in the description below this video. Check it out and enjoy.

   18. GSGuy Spier8:08

       And I actually had an investment in Freddie Mac, uh, and uh, uh, was making quite a bit of money in Freddie Mac. Was very, very happy with that investment. And so I'm saying what other similar government-sponsored enterprises are there? And I uncover Farmer Mac. So Farmer Mac is also a government-sponsored enterprise, and their goal is in the same way that Freddie and Fannie are funding the mortgage market by buying these mortgage-backed securities, buying and issuing mortgage-backed securities. These guys were doing the same thing, but in farms. Farm loans. So they would buy up farm loans, package them up, and resell them with their guarantee and, uh, the claim was that they were reducing the cost for farmers to borrow, while at the same time creating valuable securities for investors to buy. And I thought, "Wow, this is incredible. This is really, really good, and it's minuscule, and I just fricking love this." And so I, I think I probably did present on Farmer Mac and, uh, I kind of like sat down with the posse and said, "Hey, you guys, check this out. This is, uh, you know, this is the next Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae," except Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are sort of like tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions of market cap. This thing's got a market cap of, if I'm not mistaken, maybe one or two billion, and there's plenty of room to grow all that jazz. Maybe two or three weeks later, uh, Whitney says to me, "You know that company you presented? Well, I think Bill Ackman's either short it or he's about to take a massive short position and he wants to talk to you." So I'm like, "Okay." [laughs] So, uh, I, I take the call from Bill and Bill says, "Look, I just feel like I've, I need to tell you, I kind of got the idea indirectly from you, but I'm, uh, I've just taken a, a massive short position in Farmer Mac, and I feel like I need to tell you, I think that the company is borderline fraudulent." And, um, uh, I was like, "Okay, you've got my attention." You know, there's a, there's a saying, "Who's wise? He who learns from every man. Who's wise?" Uh, Guy Spier, who learns from Bill Ackman.

   19. SPShaan Puri10:12

       [laughs]

   20. GSGuy Spier10:13

       And, and I kind of said, "Look, you know, this is important to me. Um, can I just come down to your office?" He said, "Yeah, come on down." He says, "Prove me wrong. Prove, prove to me that I'm wrong." So I go down to his office and, uh, I also remember the, the black files. He had like sort of huge, several meters worth of files where he had taken... So every time one of these government-sponsored enterprises issues a mortgage-backed security, it's kind of like a, kind of like an IPO. They're publicly, public filings available. You need to know, you know, they're issuing, uh, debt on the one side to fund their asset purchases on the other. So what are their asset purchases? What are the terms of this mortgage-backed security? And so he downloaded... I, I have to confess, and I, I hate confessing this, but it's true. I hadn't downloaded one. I took them at their word.

   21. SPShaan Puri11:04

       Right.

   22. GSGuy Spier11:04

       And, and, you know, uh, we-- He, he kind of said, "Look, when you look at the, the entities that are created by Freddie and Fannie, each one of these mortgage-backed securities has hundreds, if not even hundreds, thousands of different individual mortgages. And the individual mortgage sizes would be anywhere from $50,000, $100,000 to half a million. And, uh, and they're kind of like they're classes of mortgage and there's distribution across the country. So these might be from East and West Coast, North and South, different income categories." He said, "I've downloaded..." I don't know. He downloaded a number of, uh, the Farmer Mac ones. He said, "Like there's, there's three mortgages inside." He said, "That doesn't create kind of the distribution, the risk of spreading. It's, it's like it's just three. It's like that's like a bank loan." He says, "Three different things that have gone into a, a kind of a bank loan. This is not..." And the mortgage sizes were far larger, uh, in... And that maybe three was an exaggeration, but 100 or 200 rather than tens of thousands. And-

   23. SPShaan Puri12:06

       So much more risk.

   24. GSGuy Spier12:07

       Yeah. And he just said, "Look, this is business lending. This isn't- This isn't a mortgage-backed security. There's no way you can call this a mortgage-backed security. You know, I debated him. I said, "Look, it's got, it's got a government guarantee behind it." And he said, "Yeah, it's got a government guarantee, but what they're doing is they're engaging in business-related lending." It- from his perspective, this was a, a, uh, lending against a business, not lending against real estate, and it just didn't deserve to be there. So-

   25. SPShaan Puri12:35

       Was he right?

   26. GSGuy Spier12:36

       I think he was right. Absolutely. And, and look, uh, what, what was clear to me in that moment was that I had not done the depth of analysis that he'd done. And I... First of all, I hadn't downloaded those documents. I could have downloaded them. I hadn't downloaded them. Or maybe, maybe they weren't... I, I could have located them and found them. It wasn't as easy to find as it was, would have been today, but I, I could have found them. And I'm kind of torn between [laughs] wanting to stay and learn more and, and rush back to the office and put in a sell order.

   27. SPShaan Puri13:07

       [laughs]

   28. GSGuy Spier13:08

       And literally, I mean, I, I got back to the office and I put in a sell order. I, I, I knew I didn't know it well enough. I knew that the points he made were good. And, uh, and I sold it by the end of the day. Lucky enough, the fund was small. Felt super relieved that I'd sold it. And then, uh, either I or Bill or Whitney got a meeting with the management. So what happened there was absolutely astounding to me, actually. The management came with its pre-prepared presentation, and they were ready to go through the presentation. And of course, it's very dangerous when a management does that because they lead you in the direction. They, they may not even do it consciously. They're leading you in the direction they want you to go. And Bill says, "Look, I know a lot about the company. I prefer if we dispense with the presentation. We just go to the questions that I have for you." They were a little nonplussed by that, but, uh, uh, they, they agreed to it. They, they didn't really have much choice. And then Bill came with the same kinds of questions that he posed to me that I didn't have good answers for, like, why is this different to business lending? How can you call this a class when there's only a small number of loans inside and they're all inside, and when they're all of different sizes? Whereas a mortgage-backed security will have, you know, many, many, many single-family homes. And they, they didn't have any good answers. At some point, the CEO said, "Well, maybe this might not be the right investment for you." [laughs] Which is a pretty, pretty weak... I don't know if that makes it into my book, but, uh, that was a pretty weak thing to say, and I was kind of absolutely shocked, shocked. Uh, and it's one of the... one of three stocks that I've shorted in my life [laughs] actually.

   29. SPShaan Puri14:47

       When presented with a counterargument, instead of simply, you know, explain- they should know their business better, they should be able to answer those questions. They just took their ball and said, "Okay, maybe don't play with us."

   30. GSGuy Spier14:58

       Yeah, exactly. And look, Bill was a way better, at that point, a way better analyst than I was. I had all sorts of other things that I needed to be doing just to keep my little business afloat. There are all sorts of good reasons as well for why I was unable to dive that deep. But it showed how from time to time, if you don't do the analysis all the way, especially when you're going to a place where other people haven't been, you're gonna get it wrong.
3. 17:30 – 28:57

   Lessons from going to 9 Tony Robbins seminars

   1. SPShaan Puri17:30

      in the funnel?

   2. GSGuy Spier17:30

      What strikes me about that is that what extraordinary act of generosity. So he was giving you sort of like something that... He was giving you the best part of his brain, and he was-

   3. SPShaan Puri17:41

      Mm-hmm

   4. GSGuy Spier17:41

      ... giving it to you just out of the desire to give. And it, and it feels to me, obviously, I wasn't there, he's giving it without any agenda and, uh, just maybe he loves to do it or because he really cares about you or because he knows about, a lot about the topic and, and that, that seems really special, friend, because there are people who know a lot, but they just don't have the time. They either don't want to have the time or genuinely don't have the time to talk to you about your stuff. And so that, that's pretty, pretty special, especially if he wasn't an investor yet or he wasn't an employee yet.

   5. SPShaan Puri18:13

      Yeah. Th- uh, I think we're, we're both Tony Robbins', uh, you know, uh, d- I don't know, fans or, or we, we-

   6. GSGuy Spier18:20

      Yeah, I noticed that

   7. SPShaan Puri18:21

      ... we have, uh, and he has a phrase, you know, the secret to living is giving, and he talks about, you know, almost like in the hierarchy of needs, eventually you get past yourself. Can you tell a couple of the lessons that you got from Tony or maybe that what-

   8. GSGuy Spier18:34

      Yeah

   9. SPShaan Puri18:34

      ... what shaped you out of, uh, out of that? 'Cause you, you like me are a self-improvement kind of infinite learner mindset person.

   10. GSGuy Spier18:42

       Yeah.

   11. SPShaan Puri18:42

       I think a lot of the audience, because that's what I like to talk about, is also wired that way. I would love to hear maybe some stories or some, some big takeaways for you.

   12. GSGuy Spier18:49

       So I think that in total I've, I've done, uh, sort of like eight or nine Tony Robbins seminars in my life, including a big one in Hawaii, and I'm just curious, uh, what, uh, what number are you on if... I, I wanna know if you're more of an expert than me or vice versa.

   13. SPShaan Puri19:02

       No, le- less than that. I've d- I've been to two, and as I've been to two or three. Uh, it was two or three, but-

   14. GSGuy Spier19:09

       Yeah

   15. SPShaan Puri19:09

       ... they're all, they were all the, uh, UPW, Unleash the Power Within.

   16. GSGuy Spier19:12

       Yeah.

   17. SPShaan Puri19:12

       I didn't do his like kinda deeper stuff, but then I just kind of devoured a lot of his old material.

   18. GSGuy Spier19:18

       Yeah.

   19. SPShaan Puri19:18

       Specifically like if you go on YouTube, there's really great stuff of him when he was very young-

   20. GSGuy Spier19:22

       Right

   21. SPShaan Puri19:22

       ... uh, talking and, you know, not all of it is the stuff he talks about today, but he has some really good stuff that actually for business people is useful about public speaking, about, um, sales, about marketing, about persuasion.

   22. GSGuy Spier19:35

       Yeah.

   23. SPShaan Puri19:35

       And he, he doesn't do a lot of that material now, but that was some of my favorite stuff that he did back then. So, so that's where I'm at.

   24. GSGuy Spier19:41

       I mean, and, and I think that what, what comes up for me as you say it is, so, you know, there's this moment where in a way my destiny is, um, is on a knife edge with this meeting with Mohnish Pabrai. And because I took the decision to, to, to approach him without an agenda, I got a very different Mohnish to the person I would have gotten if I'd have approached him with a, an agenda and first meetings are always very important. And so the decision to go to my first Anthony Robbins seminar was a bit like that. I had this really good friend in New York City who she says to me, "Oh, you're in San Francisco. There's an Anthony Robbins seminar there. You should go. It might change your life." And I remember at the time because I had this weekend planned with friends, I was like, you know what, I'm gonna go. Somewhere perhaps my deep wise- the deepest, wisest part of me knew that just to go hang out with friends would be something like same old, same old, whereas going to the seminar might give me something new. So, uh, you know, I, I show up at this seminar, Anthony Robbins' like six foot something tall and-

   25. SPShaan Puri20:47

       [laughs]

   26. GSGuy Spier20:47

       ... you know, and, and he's getting us to, uh, jump up and down. There's a huge amount, you know, as you've heard a thousand times anybody who's done Anthony Robbins, mo- emotion has got motion in it. If you wanna feel good about yourself, you need to look at your physiology and look at how you're moving and change the way you're moving in order to change your emotions. And I'm like this kind of snarky Brit at the back. You know, I'm just like sort of, "What is this?" And looking at my watch and thinking, "Why did I waste the money? Maybe I can still go out, hang out with my friends." But I did the fire walk, and once I'd done the fire walk, I was in a different place. And so, so for those who don't know, he, he kind of whips those who want to be whipped up into a state in which you feel very confident to walk across a bed of hot coals and, uh, you walk across them and you don't get burned. And, you know, there's all sorts of spiritual or non, uh, physical reasons. I, you know, is I think that the main thing is, is the state of mind that you're in and the firmness with which you walk if you walk in that way. Anyway, it was like I-- it really did, that metaphor of how if you have the right psychology and you have the right physiology, there are extraordinary things that you can do as a human. That metaphor went in for me such that I now stayed the rest of the weekend. And in my case, I was a guy who had my head up my rear end. I was, uh, I had achieved some early academic success in life, and I was getting to be quite bitter because I wanted success, but the things that I'd learned, the routines that I'd learned to get success, and at this point I'm age twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, they weren't working for me. And I, I, I've, I'm sad that I see other people who are in kind of similar circumstances, and I think the younger you are when failure hits you or when difficulty hits you, the better it is, 'cause the more likely you are to develop strategies and to adjust and to try different things. But I was at a point where I was kind of starting to get stuck in my ways, and I really needed a very powerful kick in order to... It wasn't enough that I knew things weren't working, and Anthony Robbins did that for me. And so after that fire walk, I was really quite enthusiastic about everything that came out si- after that, and I couldn't stop talking about Anthony Robbins when I got back to New York and started reading NLP and started neuro-linguistic programming and started like really diving into the self-help bookshelf to find more material that would help me in that way. And I think that in my case, I was so badly programmed f- for the kind of earlier part of my life that I needed-- You probably did fine with one or two Anthony Robbins UPWs. I needed every single one. [laughs]

   27. SPShaan Puri23:37

       [laughs]

   28. GSGuy Spier23:38

       And I'm, and I'm super grateful to him for giving me that. I mean, you know, there was a point on that first night where, where he, he kind, he kind of said, and I, and I bought it. So there was the fire walk, and he said, "Look, you think I'm here to make money out of you." And he kind of said, "Look, I'm definitely here because it's a business and you guys have paid money to be here and there's a lot... You know, yes, I definitely make money out of this, but it's not the true motivation. I really wanna help you. I really, really wanna help you guys in this stadium get a different result from your life." And, and that actually, I mean, y- you know, Mo- one of the books that Mohnish gave me to read when I first met him was this Power vs. Force book by David Hawkins, and I went strong at that I, he, he didn't strike me as just selling me a yarn. I was like, "Okay, I, I'm, I'm willing to open myself to this. He's, he actually wants to... I don't know if he can help me, but he's at least that's the intention he's expressed, and I believe him." You know, then what I knew was that I had an enormous amount of rewiring of myself that I had to do. And, and so I started doing that rewiring, and it was that w- rewiring, the process of rewiring myself and taking actions that I'd learned to do because I'd started doing Anthony Robbins that got me in front of Mohnish Pabrai.

   29. SPShaan Puri24:58

       What would be an example of a rewiring? So like a before my brain thought this way or worked this way, and after.

   30. GSGuy Spier25:06

       So I, I had this awful attitude that I was smarter than most people that I met. And you know, first of all, I, I was way less smart than I thought I was, you know? And this, that it, it's not important how smart you are, it's how smart you are-
4. 28:57 – 42:00

   Handwritten notes from Warren Buffett

   1. SPShaan Puri28:57

      you wanted to have the slicked back hair and all the money and the cars and the power. And then you have this kind of turning point which is, uh, you know, the Tony Robbins event which starts to get you to think about other things. You go study NLP. You study the Cialdini book about persuasion and, you know, how to win friends and influence people. You start working on, on other things. There's a great Tony Robbins line where he says, "You know, school is great, but learning is more important."

   2. GSGuy Spier29:21

      [laughs]

   3. SPShaan Puri29:21

      And uh, you know, his point is that the, uh, it doesn't matter what you, what happens when you're in school. Like the point is to learn, and sometimes it happens in school and sometimes it happens out of school. But the learning is the thing, not the schooling.

   4. GSGuy Spier29:32

      Yeah.

   5. SPShaan Puri29:32

      And so it's funny to me that it seems like you actually got your, your master's after you left Harvard Business School and, and started to pick up all these other traits that were important to you. Can you tell the story of the, the handwritten notes? 'Cause I found this... You know, initially when I read this, and I've heard this before, I kind of wrote it off as this sort of simpleton cheesy idea, and it's now come into my life three or four times.

   6. GSGuy Spier29:53

      Yeah.

   7. SPShaan Puri29:53

      So what did you read in that book, and then how did that lead to ultimately I think you meeting Mohnish was from a handwritten note also.

   8. GSGuy Spier30:00

      Absolutely.

   9. SPShaan Puri30:00

      So can you tell that little story? I think there's, there's something I need to learn there, 'cause I've heard this three or four times.

   10. GSGuy Spier30:04

       [laughs]

   11. SPShaan Puri30:04

       Never implemented it. Maybe this is the time.

   12. GSGuy Spier30:07

       So in the Cialdini book there is a story of the person who was the most successful car salesperson for the longest time. And the way, if I remember correctly, Cialdini writes about it. He just says it, he just wrote, uh, a, a thousand cards a year saying, "I like you And I don't know if he actually said, "I like you." If you go into an Anthony Robbins seminar, you'll learn about matching and mirroring. And this idea that it's very interesting, the at- well, the, the word like, to like somebody, and alike. We like people who are similar to us, and the, the idea is if you just match and mirror what they're doing, speak at the same speed, wear the same clothes, have the same hand gestures, they will... So I sort of say, I literally, I just said to myself, "Because I'm feeling raw and angry in a way because, because I want success and I'm not getting it. And so I'm willing to try things that I haven't tried before, and that's kind of key. And in a way, having gone to D.H. Blair, I've burned my bridges. I can't go back into, uh, all sorts of career choices where if I'd not gone to D.H. Blair, they would have had me. So in a way, I'm kind of desperate as well. And with this idea, well, you know, 1,000 notes a year, that's more or less three notes a day. I'm not gonna lea- leave the office until I've written three notes that basically say, 'I like you.'" Uh, and so I realized that saying "I like you" feels a little weird, and so-

   13. SPShaan Puri31:35

       Yeah. [laughs]

   14. GSGuy Spier31:35

       ... you know, but, but thank you feels a lot better, so I, I, I think I can do that. And if I leave the office without having done that, it means that I actually don't want success that badly. And somehow, if I'd written those three notes, I could forgive myself for not getting success if I did that thing. I think that in a way, that was me showing up, and I, just as an aside, I, I see people, often they're children of friends, where they're not showing up for themselves, and they're not even trying. And I think the worst thing is to fail either an exam or some test that life gives you without having shown up. So if you're gonna fail, fail fully and honorably by showing up and doing the best you can because then the failure means something. That was my way of saying, "I desperately want success. I'm even willing to spend the extra X amount of time at the office to write these notes because I'll... If that's what, what it takes to succeed, then I'll do it. And if I find something better to do, I'll do that. But for now, leaving the office, that's what I can do." And actually, funnily enough, uh, I remember in one conversation [laughs] with Whitney Tilson, he was like, "Guy, you know, all of my friends are telling me you're writing notes." [laughs] It's like, "You- they really think that's gonna get you anywhere in life?" It was kind of like, kind of ridiculous. And for some reason, again, I said to myself, "I don't mind looking like I'm a fool." And I think many people inhibit themselves because they're afraid of looking a fool. I really don't mind looking... At least at the time, I didn't. So, uh, it didn't stop me from doing it, and I just wrote endless thank you notes to people. And even better or often better is to send them something that you know will interest them. Now, it can, you can end up spending a lot of money if you're sending them each an expensive book, for example, but it might have been a printout of a transcript. And I realized that actually often whatever I'm sending them, I really didn't care genuinely about the people I was writing to. [laughs] I was doing it because I was going through the motions. In a way, I was faking it. So then, you know, I'm writing a note to XYZ person, and I actually take the time to think about them a little bit. And I realized that I... The act of writing the note changed my insides and made me care about them a little more. So I was actually becoming more caring through the act of writing the, the note, and this is this idea that, you know, sometimes you don't have to feel it to do it. Do it, and you'll feel it later, and that's absolutely fine. And-

   15. SPShaan Puri33:55

       That's a huge point right there. I just wanna add one thing, uh, almost going back to the Tony Robbins thing. He tells this story when you're at the event. He's like, "Okay, uh, we're gonna play a game. Look around the room. Find everything red. Find as many red things as you can. Winner is whoever finds the most red things. Look around. Look for red. Look for red. Look for red. Look for red." And all of a sudden, you're looking around. You see that the fire alarm is red. You see that the chair is red. You see that the screen has a little red thing on it. You see red everywhere. He says, "All right. Close your eyes and tell me about something blue." And everybody laughs, and they, uh, it turns out we didn't see anything blue. We were so fixated on red.

   16. GSGuy Spier34:29

       Yeah.

   17. SPShaan Puri34:29

       And he said, "There's a part of your brain," uh, he said, he said, "N- there's a couple things there. Number one, when I told you to look for red, you suddenly saw so much red. When I told you to look for blue, when I asked you what was blue, you saw none because you were only looking for red."

   18. GSGuy Spier34:41

       Yeah.

   19. SPShaan Puri34:42

       And he says, "There's a part of your brain called the reticular activating system, which is a, uh, it's your heat-seeking missile. It's the part of your brain that actually says, 'Ignore everything. There's too much stimulus. Only pay attention to what matters.'" But what matters is you get to program that.

   20. GSGuy Spier34:55

       Yes.

   21. SPShaan Puri34:56

       And so when you're searching for, when you're looking at buying a car and you're thinking about maybe I'll buy a BMW, suddenly on the road you see that's a, that's that BMW.

   22. GSGuy Spier35:03

       Yeah.

   23. SPShaan Puri35:03

       Oh, that's the one with the different wheels. That's the one with the trunk space. And you start to see B- it's not that the BMW suddenly appeared. It's they were always there, but your brain had called them white noise before, and now you've told your brain BMWs matter. Pay attention. And so there's a... How do you use this part of your brain to your advantage? And so what you were doing with the notes where you said doing it will cause the feeling later, which is if I'm gonna write the thank you notes, that means I need to thank them for something, so I need to pay attention to something that I appreciate about them or I need to pay attention to what they're interested in in order to give them this note. And you become suddenly a more caring, interested person because of that.

   24. GSGuy Spier35:38

       Yes.

   25. SPShaan Puri35:39

       Gratitude works the same way. I know I had this practice where every night I would say, you know, just me and my wife, we would say, "All right, let's give me three things, three things you're grateful for today."

   26. GSGuy Spier35:46

       Yeah.

   27. SPShaan Puri35:46

       Moments of the day you were grateful for. So not like I'm grateful for my family's health, this abstract concept, but like what was a moment of the day? And at first it's really hard and you realize, man, I'm such a jerk. I, I don't even pay attention to my life. Uh, you know, how could it be that I just went through the motions today and had nothing? You do that two or three days and suddenly during the day you start stashing it. You say, "Oh, that'll be one of my three things for the night." You train your brain to look for things to be grateful for, which makes you a more grateful person, and that was such a huge unlock for me. And what you're describing is essentially a s- a similar phenomenon, a similar pattern where the act of writing the notes caused you to then be more interested in other people and genuinely care about them.

   28. GSGuy Spier36:25

       And you know what's interesting for me is there was a certain point at which I would get interns to do just that. I'd just say, "Your job as an intern is just to get a list together of people that you care about because they're... and, and write notes to them." And you know, I don't think that there's even one case, or none comes to my mind right now, where, where somebody really implemented it. And I, and it kind of like really frustrating for me because it's not a zero-sum game. It's not like if you do it and somebody else we know does it, it ma- diminishes us. It actually enhances all of our lives, and it's not clear to me exactly why some people end up doing it and some people don't. I would tell you that what just blows me away is that, uh, you know, Warren Buffett gets this. Warren Buffett is giving gifts to me. He's writing the equivalent of thank you notes to me. I'm a nothing in his life, and he's not doing it every day. He's not necessarily doing it every year, but every two or three years, I... It's like he sends me something or does something via his assistant. Like, Warren Buffett is doing that, you know?

   29. SPShaan Puri37:26

       Wait, really? So Warren Buffett sends you something like a thank you note or something like this?

   30. GSGuy Spier37:29

       I mean, it's li- like a holiday card.
5. 42:00 – 59:22

   Don’t study lottery winners

   1. SPShaan Puri42:00

      with people's names or remembering like one thing about them. You know, why is that?" And he said, "Well, you know, f- feels good in the moment, right? But, but beyond that," he's like, "Look, this will be the only five seconds I maybe will ever interact with this person, but for the rest of their lives, they're gonna tell everybody they know. They might tell 3,000 people over the next, you know, the rest of their life about Kobe Bryant." And he's like, "So it's so simple, so lightweight for me. It's nothing for me, right? It costs me almost nothing, and yet for them it could be a huge payoff and that they will go and tell the world about, you know, this amazing interaction they had. So it's only five seconds for me, but it might last years down the road."

   2. GSGuy Spier42:36

      Yeah.

   3. SPShaan Puri42:36

      And it's same thing. Kobe got it.

   4. GSGuy Spier42:38

      Yeah.

   5. SPShaan Puri42:38

      Uh, he, he understood that.

   6. GSGuy Spier42:40

      Well, and I think that what's fun about these things is that you wanna make it yours. So you don't wanna necessarily follow the Guy Spier formula.

   7. SPShaan Puri42:45

      Well, um, I also wanna ask you about investing because- You know, that's what you're known for. I want to start with a quote from you that I found interesting. I don't fully get it, so I want you to explain it to me. You said, "Investing is like being a drunk stumbling around in a bar trying to find a drink."

   8. GSGuy Spier42:59

      Yeah.

   9. SPShaan Puri42:59

      And I think you were contrasting it to the idea of investing being you're like a fighter pilot, you're just scanning-

   10. GSGuy Spier43:05

       Yeah

   11. SPShaan Puri43:05

       ... you lock your target, and you just-

   12. GSGuy Spier43:07

       Yeah

   13. SPShaan Puri43:07

       ... you know, laser beam it. What do you mean by that? I-

   14. GSGuy Spier43:10

       Yeah

   15. SPShaan Puri43:10

       ... 'cause I don't fully understand.

   16. GSGuy Spier43:11

       Yeah. So another... I'm not gonna get the terminology wrong, 'cause I'm not a big bowler, but if you go bowling, last time I went bowling, every single ball I bowled went into one of those side channels.

   17. SPShaan Puri43:21

       [laughs] You got it.

   18. GSGuy Spier43:22

       It was very upsetting to me. I mean, I was really bad. But then you, if you're a child especially, you can get them to put up curtains so that it doesn't go into the side channel. And, uh, you know, it's this idea that you, you get on... When, when I've, the few times I've been bowling, I wanna hit the kingpin or the pin at the front and knock them all over. What a satisfying feeling, and that's what you're try- that's what you think you're trying to do. But actually you're just trying to keep it off the edges, you know? And anything that you can help, you can do to stop yourself from having it fall into those edges where you kind of lose everything is a good thing. And so spend less time aiming for the, for the, for the skittle at the very front, and so spend more time thinking just to keep it on the runway rather than in the sides, and set myself up such that when I miss really, really badly, I'm still gonna be okay. That is more important than actually hitting on the targets. It's gonna be more important for me or for many investors, not, it's not the question of whether you select that winner. It's gonna be about how you run your portfolio in such a way that you don't have massive, massive losses. You know, we spend a lot of time being impressed with success, impressed with people who seem to have succeeded, whether it's companies like Google, whether it's individuals like Jeff Bezos, and a large enough number of others. And this is this, uh, Fooled by Randomness idea of Nassim Taleb's, that many of those people are lottery winners. They were in the right place at the right time. And yes, they were working hard, and yes, they had all the attributes, but also they were lottery winners. And we need to be really, really careful when we study success. Don't study lottery winners. And there's a well-known phenomenon that even the lottery winner subjectively thinks that they had some input into their success.

   19. SPShaan Puri45:10

       Right. [laughs]

   20. GSGuy Spier45:10

       And, uh, the famous example there is that you get a, a room full of, uh, any number of people, and you have them all flip coins, and you keep them flipping coins. There will, after a certain number of flips, be somebody who managed to s- to flip nine heads in a row, 20 heads in a row, depending on how many people there are and how lucky you are. And in interviews, and I, I wish I could actually cite the study, they asked the person who threw the nine heads, and they're convinced they had something to do with it. So this is just like a, a really, really important phenomenon to be aware of and stay away from. So how do I set my life up in such a way that given the enormous randomness, I succeed well enough no matter what? And that is a, is a far more laudable goal than trying to ape the success of somebody who won a lottery ticket, you know?

   21. SPShaan Puri45:58

       Mm. You said something in your book that, that I liked. You go, "I don't know what it is about me, but when an idea captures me, like, I throw my f- my all into it." Like, for better or for worse, like, if somebody... You know, it's, it's the handwritten note thing, right? Like-

   22. GSGuy Spier46:11

       Yeah

   23. SPShaan Puri46:11

       ... okay, that's the thing, then I'm gonna do it. All, I'm all in on doing that. And it s- sounded like when you got interested in Buffett, you didn't just read about Buffett or study kind of like his, his high-level philosophies. It sounded like you went and you ordered the annual reports of the companies that he bought in the years before he bought them-

   24. GSGuy Spier46:33

       Yeah

   25. SPShaan Puri46:33

       ... to try to sit down as if you were Buffett and try to-

   26. GSGuy Spier46:37

       Yeah

   27. SPShaan Puri46:37

       ... read them through his eyes.

   28. GSGuy Spier46:38

       Yeah.

   29. SPShaan Puri46:38

       Can you describe this? 'Cause I thought that was pretty fascinating. I'd never heard somebody talk about something like that, but there was something in there that to me felt like a valuable practice or a-

   30. GSGuy Spier46:48

       Yeah
6. 59:22 – 1:05:13

   Berkshire vs Index

   1. GSGuy Spier59:22

      things"-

   2. SPShaan Puri59:22

      [laughs]

   3. GSGuy Spier59:22

      ... before he goes off. And again, this was one of these moments where I just like dropped to the floor as I couldn't believe it. My hero was just standing there. And look, why did he talk to me? This was not... He was not in the streets, although I've heard stories of him showing up at people's parties in, in, in Omaha. I mean, well-known around town, at least when he was younger. He was talking to me 'cause I- he felt like he was amongst family. He was with a Berkshire shareholder, and therefore he was family. I was family to him. And, uh... But that was a... You know, I'm there dressed in a suit. I'm, I'm Mr. New York investment banker. I've got an MBA. I mean, I've still got all of that wiring going on inside of me. But that was, that was kind of like a, uh, what would Anthony Robbins call it? It, it broke my pattern.

   4. SPShaan Puri1:00:04

      Right. Right. Well, I have a question. So you have your fund, and, uh, and I think you own a bunch of Berk B in your fund, right?

   5. GSGuy Spier1:00:12

      Yes.

   6. SPShaan Puri1:00:12

      It's like 20% of, of your fund. And Buffett doesn't take any... Buffett, uh, uh, Berkshire doesn't have any management fee or any carry, right? You're, you're just buying a piece of Berkshire Hathaway if you do that. Why... This is kind of a s- a silly question, a stupid question, but like if all the fund managers sort of idolize Buffett, and I think most would say, "I, I might not be better than him or as good as him, but I will, you know, I will try to learn from him as much as you can," why would anybody buy anything besides Berkshire if you wanted to do value investing?

   7. GSGuy Spier1:00:41

      You know, people say, "Well, should I invest in Berkshire Hathaway, or should I invest in the index?" Because they say, "Look, I think that Warren Buffett's getting older. Uh, Berkshire Hathaway just hit a trillion in valuation." And, uh, you know, I think the index might be better. And one of the things that I wanna say to them is, "Look, realize that the index is impersonal, and you might get spooked out of the index." And I, I think that m-many people, if they buy Berkshire shares and they attend the Berkshire meeting, and they, they really kind of become closely connected to the company, they're more likely to be in for the long haul and be in for the ride. And so it's not just, um, the choices whether to buy Berkshire or to buy the index, for example. It's how do I impact my own behavior through my investment actions? And the realization that when we invest, if we buy Berkshire or we buy the index, we buy something else, we're also making our own bed, and we're also creating the environment in which we'll be in. And we're in a kind of a relationship with these things. What I discovered when I shorted, uh, uh, Farmer Mac, just to go back to that, one of those original stories, was that I became all twisted inside. I kind of didn't like my internal wiring when I was doing that. Berkshire Hathaway strengthens my internal wiring in the right way. And, and it's, I think is a really important question to ask. If I become a shareholder of this thing or if I buy this asset, what does that do to me as a person? How does it improve or, or deteriorate my thinking? And that's the reason to own Berkshire. And, uh, and I actually tell people that's a reason not to own the index, 'cause the index is unbelievably impersonal. You- it'll-- You'll get manipulated into all sorts of things.

   8. SPShaan Puri1:02:22

      Well, the other thing I wanna ask you about is just performance. So you, um... So I asked my guy helps me with research. I said, "Okay, what's the performance, let's say, of your fund over the long haul?" And it looks like you basically have beat the, beat the S&P 500 by some amount. I, I don't know the exact numbers, but-

   9. GSGuy Spier1:02:38

      Sliver. By a sliver

   10. SPShaan Puri1:02:40

       ... nine versus... Nine and a half percent versus eight and a half percent or something-

   11. GSGuy Spier1:02:42

       Yeah

   12. SPShaan Puri1:02:42

       ... along those lines.

   13. GSGuy Spier1:02:43

       Yeah. Correct

   14. SPShaan Puri1:02:43

       Is that right? Like, since you started.

   15. GSGuy Spier1:02:44

       It's about, it's about eighty basis points at this point.

   16. SPShaan Puri1:02:48

       Great. Uh, and is that-- By the way, is that net? Uh, like kind of what-

   17. GSGuy Spier1:02:51

       It's certainly net. It's net of everything. Yeah.

   18. SPShaan Puri1:02:54

       Net of everything. Cool. So good job. That's, uh, that's something that's obviously very hard to do, is to beat the index over a, uh, you know-

   19. GSGuy Spier1:03:00

       Twenty-five years plus

   20. SPShaan Puri1:03:01

       ... yeah, more than twenty-five year timeline. So that's super impressive. At the same time, in the last ten years, I don't think you've beat the S&P 500 in most of those years-

   21. GSGuy Spier1:03:11

       Yeah

   22. SPShaan Puri1:03:11

       ... but that's a long time. I'm thinking, put- putting myself in your shoes. Man, the psychology. I don't know what I would do, you know, bas-- I, I, I would just be running around with my head cut off, like, basically-

   23. GSGuy Spier1:03:22

       [laughs]

   24. SPShaan Puri1:03:22

       ... if I, over a ten-year period-

   25. GSGuy Spier1:03:24

       Yeah

   26. SPShaan Puri1:03:25

       ... wasn't doing the main thing I wanted to be doing or, you know. And I felt this, by the way, in my twenties. I wanted to be a successful entrepreneur, and for eight straight years I failed.

   27. GSGuy Spier1:03:33

       Yeah.

   28. SPShaan Puri1:03:33

       And I remember what that felt like at the time. It was crushing, soul-crushing for me to, to be doing that. I wonder, how do you manage your psychology in a period of time where your performance is not as good as you want? 'Cause you seem like a really well-balanced, well-regulated emotion- you know, emo- emotionally regulated guy. But at the same time, this is the game you're playing, and how do you manage your psychology during a window of time like that?

   29. GSGuy Spier1:03:58

       So yeah. It's a, it's absolutely a spectacular question. It's funny because I did a sort of dry run through. I'm gonna be talking about, uh, the fund to our investors in, in a day or two's time. And I think it's like, it's seven or eight years that I've underperformed the S&P index in this case. And so I don't know why it always comes up for me when I think of this, is the question that was asked to me just after I'd published my book and I was invited to give a talk at Google. And, uh, the outperformance was looking better at that point than it was-- it is right now. And a very smart engineer asked the question: How do you know that the outperformance you've gotten to date is not luck? And my answer then as, as it would have to be now is, we don't know. I'm just one data point in amongst thousands of data points. And so, you know, you're, you're arguing that twenty-five years is a long period of time, but eight years of underperformance in that twenty-five years [chuckles] is also a long time. And so, you know, this was already a year or two ago where I said, um, in the face of underperformance, what am I going to do? Am I gonna say, "This sucks, this isn't working. I need to strain- change my strategy and risk, uh, everything that's dear to me potentially."

7. 1:05:13 – 1:13:26

   Finite vs infinite games

   1. GSGuy Spier1:05:14

      Uh, or am I gonna say, "Look, I understand what I'm doing. Somehow the market's not rewarding it the way I would like it to be rewarded, but I know that what I'm doing will, in the-- even in the worst possible cases, lead to a really, really good life, even if I am underperforming." And if I take for starters, you know, the, the-- my first investors, friends and family, had never invested in equities before. So in their case, even if they're underperforming the S&P, they've vastly outperformed that what they would have gotten in fixed income and all the cash instruments that they have there. They've won many, many, many times over. And, and I actually got to have, I like to call it courage, where, where I kind of realized that the key is to compound and to take, make moves that I know will enable me to compound. And if I can end up beating an index, then that would be great. But, but I cannot jeopardize compounding for the sake of beating the index. I have to focus on compounding. And, and that leads-- And, and if, if you step back, I mean, I think that, you know, this, this idea of playing the infinite game. So many people think they're playing a finite game, but they're playing an infinite game.

   2. SPShaan Puri1:06:27

      E-explain the difference, finite and infinite games.

   3. GSGuy Spier1:06:30

      Yeah, yeah. Sorry. So, so, uh, finite-- So, so it's a clear distinction between finite and infinite games. A finite game is one which has a clear set of rules, a clear, uh, space in which it's played out, both in terms of time and physical location. So an example would be chess. There's a set of rules, it's played across a board, and there's a winner and, and a loser according to the time controls. Or a game of American football. It's played on American football pitch. There are end players each side. The game starts, it ends. There's a winner, there's a loser declared according to the rules. And but the thing is, the most important things in life are infinite games. What is an infinite game? An infinite game has no clearly defined rules, no clearly defined game space, no clearly defined time when it begins and ends. And one of my favorite examples for an infinite game was the Cold War. The Cold War was fought across many battlefronts, whether it was the Southeast Asia or the, you know, b- building nuclear missiles or rivalry between the superpowers in all sorts of ways. It didn't... Not really clear exactly when it started. And here's the thing, and it played out itself, i- i- multiple rules, multiple places. The, in, in the infinite game, you don't really win or lose. Usually one or more of the players just decides to drop out. In the case of Russia, Russia kind of in a way imploded and dropped out of it. What's the most important point? The key, the key mistake that we make so often in life is we think we're playing a finite game when we're playing an infinite game. Life is an infinite game. Investing is an infinite game. So how many people, I would tell you, out of I don't know how many funds that were around at the time that I started, how many are around today? And it's, like, less than 2%. Now, some of the people left that game of investing because they actually were utterly superb, made enormous amounts of money and decided to go and do something else. A famous example of that is Nick Sleep. He's in William Green's book. And, and so that those people, there are those people. But I, I did a study of this about 10 years ago, and there was a Lipper database where I could look up all the funds that were around at the time. They don't really give their reasons for dropping out. It, because-- But in many cases, it, 'cause they had an in- an implosion of one kind or another. And so you don't wanna be the guy who implodes.

   4. SPShaan Puri1:08:52

      Well, I, I mean, I, I enjoy listening to you 'cause I think what's cool about your mindset, and is very different than the environment that I live in, which is, you know, I've lived in Silicon Valley here for the last 12, 13 years, is everybody here wants to be Zuck. Everybody here wants to be Elon. Everybody here wants to be, in, in your case it would be Buffett, right? And the venture capital game is a you win and you get all the glory, or most likely, you, you know, you fizzle out and lose. And, um, my life really improved when I asked myself, "What game do I even wanna be playing?" And I moved basically an hour outside of Silicon Valley, which helped just to not be right in the center of it. And you-- It seems like what you're trying to do is not be the next Warren Buffett, although if it hap- if, if your performance actually happened to be that way, it's not you would be, be, uh, annoyed by it. But your goal is compound well and live well.

   5. GSGuy Spier1:09:46

      Yeah.

   6. SPShaan Puri1:09:46

      And I think that that is a much more achievable goal that you've been able to achieve versus putting your happiness or self-worth tied to some moonshot type of outcome.

   7. GSGuy Spier1:09:59

      Yeah.

   8. SPShaan Puri1:09:59

      And I think I, I, I really respect that about you because I think it's, it's not gonna get movies made. It's not gonna get articles written about you. You're not gonna be on the cover of Forbes with that attitude. But those are the people who, you know, the guy swimming in the lake happily, um, you know, with his kids who's living well and gets to do what they enjoy every day, reading and writing and talking. And, uh, to me, that is a life well lived, and I had to almost deprogram myself from the media I was consuming, which was kind of shaping me to want something that I didn't really want, especially once I knew the odds of success in that game.

   9. GSGuy Spier1:10:34

      Yeah.

   10. SPShaan Puri1:10:34

       And so, you know, it really helped me to shift my thinking that way. So y- y- you know, you're a good example of that for me.

   11. GSGuy Spier1:10:39

       If I do the same contemplated action given the same set of circumstances throughout the rest of my life, how's it gonna turn out? So there's this sort of like, just this once. Just this once, do this. Just, just this once, get blind drunk. Just this once-

   12. SPShaan Puri1:10:53

       Right

   13. GSGuy Spier1:10:54

       ... uh, drop out of an airplane without a parachute 'cause it'll be fun. And just to ask the question and, and for me, for example, just take this meeting. Just help this person. Just give this person a, uh, an, an internship. And, uh, I think that something that is helping me to say no more often to those things, to say, "Well, if I, in every time I'm faced with these circumstances, I say yes to this, how will my life look? And if every time I'm faced with these circumstances, I say no, how will my life look?" And it, it makes it far easier to come to a quick no and an understandable no where I can say to the other person, "Look, I'm sure you can understand I can't say yes to this. And, and I'm sure you can understand, because if I did, here would be the consequences." And so-- And I think that that's a huge part of Warren Buffett's wisdom. Never, ever fall for the just this once. But another one of those is if everybody in the world did this contemplated thing that I'm contemplating on doing, what would the world look like? And I think that a world in which everybody's trying to be Zuck is utterly miserable.

   14. SPShaan Puri1:11:57

       [laughs]

   15. GSGuy Spier1:11:58

       Really, really miserable. By contrast, a world where everybody is writing their own story, a world in which everybody's trying to discover some, a new scientific discovery, uh, that is a really, really beautiful world. And it's possible. It's really possible, you know. Uh, so, so I'm, I'm doing a sort of part-time a history degree for fun. And, uh, so I've been thinking quite a bit about empires, you know. And, and we kind of like-- I think the way that we feel today across the planet is that empires ought to be a thing of the past. There was a period when empires were built. We don't want to build empires like the Roman Empire or the Persian Empire or many different empires that were around. Do we-- You know, we could imagine a world where every man, every, every working person is doing the equivalent of being a watchmaker or a novelist. Why does it have to be on a grand scale? You know, so long as the work that you're doing is satisfying and you're creating something that, that is of beauty, of, is worth, it has its worth in itself, isn't that a more beautiful world, actually?

   16. SPShaan Puri1:13:02

       Yeah, that's a, that's an interesting point, 'cause al- also the other side is true too, which is if nobody was Zuck, if nobody was Elon, uh, [chuckles] then we would also have a problem. And so I think the answer isn't be one way or the other. But l- like you just said, what, what is the satisfying ... version of life for you. And if you could figure out that answer for yourself and then just act in accordance with that, that's really powerful. I think for somebody like Elon, this, this is the

8. 1:13:26 – 1:18:25

   Be a promiscuous reader

   1. SPShaan Puri1:13:26

      satisfying version of life for him. I don't think he would be satisfied doing what I'm doing-

   2. GSGuy Spier1:13:30

      Yeah

   3. SPShaan Puri1:13:30

      ... or what you're doing. And so I think we need that sort of... The ecosystem has to have that diversity in order for it to work. I, I think it's a great point you just said, like, this... It's almost like this action in the limit, you know? If every time I was in this circumstance I did this thing, if every time I was craving chips, I ate chips-

   4. GSGuy Spier1:13:47

      Yeah

   5. SPShaan Puri1:13:47

      ... where does that lead me?

   6. GSGuy Spier1:13:48

      Yeah.

   7. SPShaan Puri1:13:48

      If e- if everybody did this action, if everybody just took from the cookie jar, what happens? There's nothing left, right? And so I think that there is a... That's a very powerful question that simplifies... I, I'm a big fan of single decisions or frameworks that simplify thousands of future decisions.

   8. GSGuy Spier1:14:05

      Yeah.

   9. SPShaan Puri1:14:06

      And that seems like one of them. We should wrap up with this. Can you just leave me with, I am a newbie on my, what I would call the Buffett-Munger school of thought, which is around, partially around investing, partially around how to conduct oneself, how to-

   10. GSGuy Spier1:14:20

       Yeah

   11. SPShaan Puri1:14:20

       ... avoid, you know, the trappings. Uh, you know, what is the, the Munger talk, like the 24 common, um-

   12. GSGuy Spier1:14:26

       Common causes of human misjudgment, yeah.

   13. SPShaan Puri1:14:28

       Yeah, causes of human misjudgment.

   14. GSGuy Spier1:14:30

       Yeah.

   15. SPShaan Puri1:14:30

       So things like that. What are the best essays that I should go read? If I was gonna go read three things, what would you point me to? The kind of the, the pinnacle, you know, either essays, letters, blog posts. Could be books, but I'm looking for the shorter version if you have them.

   16. GSGuy Spier1:14:46

       I'll give the ans- the answer that I think most people want to hear, and then I'll give a non-answer, which I think is more valuable. Uh, but-

   17. SPShaan Puri1:14:52

       Okay

   18. GSGuy Spier1:14:52

       ... I'll start with the actual answer. So, you know, I think you gotta go to the source. You gotta go to the Buffett letters. You gotta go to the transcripts and all the recordings of the annual meetings, which are phenomenal. Uh, and obviously, as, as you brought up, I think that that Poor Charlie's Almanack really is just an incredible collection of stuff that is... That's not too much, and some of it can just be listened to online, but it's, it's, it's an amazing start. But, so there's, there's the answer, which is kind of pretty straightforward. But then what I want to give is a non-answer, which I think is far more important, which is that I can't tell you or anybody else what to read because you're a different person in a different space. Your brain is different. So, so if you'll say, "Well, what can I read to learn about dot, dot, dot?" And the answer is, you know, pick up 20 books that you think might lead you in a good direction, and go through them quickly, and ask yourself the question once you've kind of flicked through and read a few pages, is this getting me somewhere or not? If it's getting you somewhere, keep reading it, and if it's not, put it down. Maybe tomorrow will be a good day to read that book. And I really do believe that we... life is too short and our reading time is too short to force ourselves to read things that aren't giving us win after win after win. And so if you go to the Buffett letters and it's not speaking to you, put it down quick. Don't waste your time. Don't have that sense of obligation that you're supposed to be reading. Go, go use up your valuable brain energy or to, to... on something that really works for you. So what I really wanna say is, you know, start with any reading list, but start iterating quickly, basically.

   19. SPShaan Puri1:16:24

       Yeah. I, I like that. That, that is the answer I needed, not the answer I wanted-

   20. GSGuy Spier1:16:28

       [laughs]

   21. SPShaan Puri1:16:28

       ... uh, which is good. You have a good quote, by the way, that, that stuck with me. You said, "I treat my library like a cocktail party."

   22. GSGuy Spier1:16:34

       [laughs]

   23. SPShaan Puri1:16:34

       Uh, you know, you're gonna mix and mingle and hop from one conversation to the other, and if it gets boring, you'll go grab a drink. I love that metaphor because I, I also am a promiscuous reader, and I just didn't have the, the right mental model or metaphor for, for how to treat-

   24. GSGuy Spier1:16:48

       Yeah

   25. SPShaan Puri1:16:48

       ... you know, this, this stack of books that's here in my room, but I think a cocktail party is a, is a good one. Guy, thanks for doing this, man. This was a really fun conversation that I was looking forward to. And I gotta say, one thing about you that's really cool, probably I'll leave you just with a compliment, which is I texted a few people before this that you were coming on, and I said, "Give me, uh, what's a good story or nugget?" And I was disappointed at first 'cause they didn't give me like a specific, "Oh, you gotta ask him about this," which is what I'm looking for. It's a, it's a shortcut for me in my research. But the, the way people talk about you is incredible. You're like a mensch, right? Like, people just have such a high regard for your character and who you are as a person to them. Like, what's a brand? It's what, what people say about you when you're not in the room. What's a reputation? It's what people say about you when you're not in the room. Uh, your brand, your reputation is very, very strong amongst people I respect. The way they think about you is, is that you are sort of, um, you know, just such a value giver. So, you know, congrats to you on that. That, that is... It showed me something that I can strive for, like, "Oh, how would people talk about me if somebody asked them in this way? Would they, would they do this today?" I don't think... Honestly, no. That's the answer, is no, they would not talk about it the same way, but that became a, a bit of an aspiration.

   26. GSGuy Spier1:17:59

       Well, I'm delighted, and that's extraordinary kind of them. Whoever the hell said that, thank you so much. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 1:18:25