#279 What I Learned Before I Sold to Warren Buffett

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/bce9035a1dea6015

As I walk past the Plaza Hotel on a glorious May morning in nineteen ninety four,
I heard someone call out
Warren Buffett.
Turning in the direction of the voice, I saw a woman
Stop Buffett on the sidewalk.
And start a friendly conversation with them.
Buffett listened patiently to the woman
who, as it turned out, was a shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway.
At the time, the legendary investor
Was the second richest man in the United States.
As it happened, I was in New York that day to meet with our financial advisors at Morgan Stanley.
To talk about our company.
Which at the time operated a hundred and forty three jewelry stores.
Nationwide.
Personally.
I felt uncomfortable expanding the company
Beyond my ability to know every single manager.
On a first name basis.
We had grown well beyond that point.
And we were still growing.
We had no interest in
In going public.
And we certainly didn't want some financial butcher.
Carving up this jewel.
And selling it piecemeal.
As the woman said her goodbyes and turned to go,
And as Buffett prepared to cross the street.
I saw my own opportunity.
Stepping forward.
I thrust out my hand.
Hello, Mr Buffett, I said.
I'm Barnett Hellsberg.
of Hellsburg Diamonds.
In Kansas City.
I didn't sense any recognition in his face, but he politely shook my hand and said hello.
Willing to hear me out.
Then
Right there on the sidewalk.
I told one of the most astute businessmen in America.
Why he ought to consider buying our family's seventy nine year old jewelry business.
I believe
That our company matches your criteria for investment, I said.

Send me the information.
It will be confidential.
My conversation with Buffett lasted no more than half a minute.
My idea, of course, was to grab his attention.
How often do you encounter Warren Buffett
On a sidewalk.
And pique his curiosity.
in your family company.
As I walked away
I wondered whether my approach might have seemed abrupt.
If not downright presumptuous.
Yet I felt certain that our successful
Three generation family business.
Made a perfect fit.
with Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.
which Fortune magazine had repeatedly named
as one of the ten most respected companies in America.
In NT Nighty Four.
Berkshire's eleven point nine billion dollar net worth.
was greater than Coca Cola.
and PepsiCo combined.
It was at the time a collection of thirty businesses.
Including such signature names.
As C's candies
World book.
And Nebraska furniture mark.
It was the largest shareholder.
In Gillette.
Coca-Cola.
And American Express.
Imagine.
Our gut busting pride when as the third generation owners of Hellsburg.
Buffett later explained why he decided to buy her business.
We associate ourselves with some real jewels of the American business world, he said.
And I think it's quite fitting.
that Helsberg joins this collection of jewels.
It's just exactly the kind of company
That we like to invest in.
It's got outstanding management.
I would hate to compete with you fellows.
I'd rather be on your side of the fence.
And that's the side we're going to be on.
My dream buyer for the family business all along was Warren Buffett.
I knew we could trust him to keep the headquarters in Kansas City.
Resist changing the company's character.
And retain the jobs.
Of all of our associates.
It might have been simpler.
To sell to the highest bidder.
But that notion
Seemed as sensible.
As choosing a brain surgeon.
Based on the lowest price.
rather than on talent and reputation.
That sounds like something Buffett would say himself.
But that notion seemed as sensible as choosing a brain surgeon.
Based on the lowest price.
rather than on talent and reputation.
I had purchased four shares of Birchar Hathaway stock.
In nineteen eighty nine.
Just so I could attend Berkshire's annual meetings.
and pick up some of Buffett's wisdom. So that is four year five years.
before he randomly runs into him.
on the sidewalk in New York City.
She said I push it purchase the shares.
So I could attend Birkshire's annual meeting and pick up some of Buffett's wisdom.
His presentations are warm and unpretentious.
He genuinely enjoys people.
He's often quoted saying
Great people do great things.
He also likes to say
We only buy companies
That we trust.
My first visit
to a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting.
was quite a revelation.
And taught me a great deal about Warren Buffett and his philosophies.
My notes included.
Hire seven footers.
That is hire people with incredible abilities.
Another very, very strong impression was obtained through an answer he gave a Kellogg business school student who asked him.
How do I determine which job to take?
Warren's answer.
Was simply
Get a job you love.
At a company you respect.
His people orientation
Was obvious.
And since I had been taught from day one by my dad.
That business is people.
This was most impressive.
Buffy recounted the story of how he acquired our company to shareholders this way.
Burnett said he had a business that we might be interested in.
When people say that, it usually turns out that they have a lemonade stand with potential.
Of course, to quickly grow into the next Microsoft.
So I simply asked Barnett to send me the particulars.
That I thought to myself
Will be the end of that.
In fact, it almost did end there.
I promptly went home and
And sent Buffett nothing.
A flicked with hang ups.
About confidentiality.
But one night
I re read the chairman's letter.
in the Berkshire annual report.
And I'm just gonna interrupt this real quick. This is another example of why I've repeated over and over again. I've said this many times too, that I think Berkshire's Warren Buffett's shareholder letters may be the greatest example.
are the most successful example of content marketing in the history of business.
The amount of opportunity, unique opportunity that flows to Buffett or that has flown flowed uh to Buffett as a result of this is just remarkable. This is another example of that. But one night I re read the chairman's letter in the Berkshire Annual Report.
There was Buffett again.
inviting companies that meet his acquisia to send him information.
And he would
Promise complete confidentiality.
While shaving the next morning
I looked at the slow learner in the mirror.
And began to scold myself for for procrastinating.
He told you in person
It would be confidential. He told you in writing.
Do you want it set to music?
Send him the information.
So I finally did.
Not long after we sent Buffett our financial information. So Buffett also talks about the fact that you'll get a response from him really rapidly.
Not long after we s and this is another example of that. Not long after we sent
Buffet our financial information. He called us.
And told us he wanted to talk.
Soon we were in his office in Omaha negotiating a sale.
And this is more on the speed of the process. This can be the fastest deal in history, Buffett said.
But what about due diligence, I asked?
Surprised at how fast the negotiations were moving.
Most suitors demand to see every scrap of paper you've ever generated and to interview every top manager.
This wasn't Buffett's way.
I can smell these things, he said.
And this one smells good.
That would not be my last surprise.
I asked about a non complete clause.
You'll certainly want that, won't you? I said.
Buffett shrugged.
You wouldn't do anything to hurt this company, he said.
When a guy says that to you
He has
You on your honor?
For the rest of your life.
When Buffa buys a company, he's not looking for a quick resale to make a buck.
He told us.
Someone asked one time
What my favorite holding period for securities is.
And I said forever.
And that's exactly the way we feel about our businesses.
When we were ready to leave his office and asked if a cab could be called, he insisted on walking us to the elevator, riding it down with us, and standing on the street to wait with us for the cab.
Typical
Buffett treatment.
Warren Buffett's approach to purchasing companies.
Is very straightforward.
He will give you an answer immediately if he has any interest.
And he will immediately
give you a non negotiable
Price.
Let me interrupt this real quick. I read another I read an entire book called uh Jim Clayton First of Dream. It's episode number ninety one.
of founders about this non negotiable price.
Buffett bought that guy's company as well.
And in that book it was hilarious. I think I talk about it in episode number ninety one.
But they start out Buffett's like, Okay, I'll give you, you know, twelve fifty bid if I remember correctly, and they're like, Okay
What about sixteen?
It's like twelve fifty bit.
Okay, what about fifteen?
twelve fifty bid.
What about thirteen?
twelve fifty bid. And like, Okay, fine, twelve fifty bid. So apparently
I'm curious if you if you have any other uh examples of
Of him
Of Buffett uh not uh of Buffett actually willing to negotiate a price, but this is something I've I've seen a few times, the fact that he will give immediately give you a non negotiable price.
So back to this.
After buying Helsberg, Buff explained to his shareholders.
That our ownership structure enables sellers
To know that when I say we are buying to keep
The promise means something.
Buffett continued, We like dealing with owners who care what happens to their companies and people.
A buyer is likely to find fewer unpleasant surprises
Dealing with that type of seller.
than with one simply auctioning off his business.
Explaining how he makes this hands off approach work
Buffett said
That it was because the managers operate with total autonomy.
And they do such a terrific job, we don't really need anyone to supervise them.
Managers of Berkshire subsidiaries run their own shows.
When we get somebody who is a four hundred hitter
We don't start telling us
How to swing.
Now back to Barnet.
I think if my dad
Barnett senior and my grandfather Morris had still been alive.
They too would feel proud and comfortable.
That our family business.
which started in nineteen fifteen from a single store in Kansas City, Kansas
Had grown by nineteen ninety four.
Into a group of a hundred and forty three stores in twenty three states.
With total sales of two hundred.
And eighty two million dollars.
Our business was in capable hands.
As Buffett himself finally described the deal.
That began on a New York sidewalk.
We weren't talking.
Lemonade stand.
That is an excerpt from the book I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is what I learned before I sold to Warren Buffett.
An entrepreneur's guide to developing a highly successful company.
And it's written by Barnett C. Helsberg, Junior.
Okay, so I wanna jump to the very first page, be even before the instruction I just read you.
And he has a very unique
Uh, I guess you almost consider this like a preface. It says a confession of plagiarism.
And he says I was always taught that many, many people
were out there developing ideas that I could use.
I have found that to be true throughout my life.
These thoughts and ideas have all been borrowed or stolen from many wise people.
Therefore this confession.
I have always solicited other people's opinions and try to listen intently when they were espousing things.
Eve, this is such an important part too.
Even when I was in pretty violent disagreement.
Therefore.
I claim only one original idea in my entire life.
And with his book
Wish only to reveal myself as a plagiarist.
Of wonderful ideas.
From a lot of great people.
Through the years.
Think of the world. This I love this part.
Think of the world as your garden of marvelous people and ideas of
with unlimited picking rights for you.
Enjoy the flowers.
And so it's obviously an idea I very much agree with.
obviously I'm dedicating my life's work to uncovering the ideas from people in the past.
And and hopefully like push those ideas and help help push those ideas rather.
uh down the generations, but it this I this idea of like we all use other people's ideas. Is something almost every single person you and I study on this podcast also did.
I was telling a friend of mine.
Uh, one of my favorite quotes ex comes from poor Charlie's almanac, which is that uh he
Obviously uh
Charlie Munger is a very ad an advocate for this idea. He's calls himself a biography nut.
He said he's run h he's read hundreds and hundreds
of biographies he says if he ever had a chance to teach
I I think he said teach finance, maybe teach business, but I'm pretty sure he said if I ever had the chance to teach finance, my entire curriculum would just be studying
a hundred different companies that did something right and did something
uh incorrectly.
Uh, but he my one of my favorite quotes from from Munger is that Cicero is famous for saying that a man who doesn't know what happened before
He's born goes through life like a child.
Right. So you have
Now it's me quoting
Munger who's quoting Cicero.
Back to Munger. That is a very correct idea. Cicero is right.
To ridicule somebody so foolish
as to not know history.
And so Barnett Junior, two of the people that he constantly references, learning from
Are his grandfather Morris, who started the company over a hundred years ago.
And his dad.
And so I'm gonna tell you this right up front.
because I discovered this as I went through the pages almost to the very end of the book.
He's constantly talking about
Вот his father ta third generation.
That is
been trusted to manage this family business, right?
А вот крази або дес за д.
Had been dead.
For almost thirty years.
by the time that this book came out, and the book is almost twenty years old itself.
And that is a main this is such an important part. I'm getting like tears to my eyes, I don't even know why.
This is such an important part to reading all these books over and over again, and you see this pattern. The fact that
I had no idea. Maybe it's just because I was younger
But I had no idea.
How it was possible
That are the decisions that you and I are making now.
Are going to resonate through the generations.
And in many cases, the people that we study are fixing
Poor gen poor decisions made by previous generations. Like some of them are positive. I um I was just recently thinking about this because when I read the book Cable Cowboy.
Uh on episode two sixty eight.
The founder of the cable company, T C I, that John Malone's gonna come in and and
We're trying to rescue, really.
Uh his name was Bob Magnus.
It blew me away in that book, right?
Hm.
Bob didn't have a lot of money, he goes to his father.
And his father loans him twenty five hundred dollars on a very speculative
you know, decisions like, Hey, I'm gonna jump into this new industry called cable.
And you know, see what happens. And it hit me later on in the book. I'm like, Oh my God.
That twenty five hundred dollar loan.
That Bob's father gives him.
winds up because the business is so successful, obviously Malone plays a part in that.
That twenty five hundred dollar loan
turns into hundreds of milds of dollars
For his grandson's
Imagine the difference.
In his grant that one decision had
On the effect.
Of the lives of people that weren't even born yet.
And so the book that I'm holding in my hand is an example of like
A great
Dad took
Time.
Тич санби е за акцію.
All of the importance that he learned.
The lessons he learned, most of which
were how to build and run a successful business that generated unbelievable wealth.
For that family.
And so when I read a book like this and I get to the end, it's not okay, well
I learned all about Barnett Helsberg Junior and his dad and maybe his grandfather Morris. I'm like, how do I do that?
So that was c playing through my mind.
as I worked my way through the book, let's I have a lot of highlights, so let me jump into he's he gives us the background. He starts off
There's like n you know, seventy s miniature chapters, just about
lessons he learned what he said, what I what did I learn before I sold to Warren Buffett.
But he starts the book talking about
Let like what he learned as a young child growing up in this family business.
My father was fourteen.
When he took over the family business.
My grandfather Morris had a stroke and there was no one else to run this little jewelry shop in Kansas City, Kansas.
Because dad was in school, the family persuaded an uncle to watch the store each day.
Until dad arrived from school.
I don't believe
My father ever questioned the
The family's decision.
So the year that is happening, his dad is fourteen, has to take over the the jewelry shop.
That would mean this is the year nineteen seventeen.
At seventy so now three years later dad moved the business into a larger, grander building.
and with high spirits of youth proclaimed himself a diamond merchant.
The shops sold the same mix of rings and watches ever as everyone else.
But that label let the world know that he had big plans for himself and his family business.
And so we see his dad through his actions saying, Hey
I was forced, I was kinda like thrown in. You're gonna teach me how to swim? He threw th threw me into the deep end of the pool, uh as like a metaphor for that.
He does the same exact thing to his son.
So he says he nurtured and demanded that same positive drive to succeed, whatever the challenges in his three sons.
He gave me summertime employment when I was fifteen.
Dad knew the importance of learning by doing.
So of course
He started me off in selling.
And so he immediately feels the thrill of making his own money.
He starts making his first sale and he says I began to have confidence
That I could do this.
It wasn't work, it was fun.
And another main theme of the book is like hey listen, I didn't f start this business, I didn't found this business.
People might not even consider me an entrepreneur.
But he has found her mentality and he that's the way he thought about himself.
He had he thought about even at such young he's like, I'm gonna take ownership of this.
I was an entrepreneur, a master of my own destiny.
I could do whatever I set my mind to.
Anything was possible. Listen to these are all lessons that he got from his dad.
Like
I try to do the same thing with my kids. I try to hype them up. It's like I don't care what you do, just know that if you really love to do it, you can do whatever you want to do.
I could do whatever I set my mind to. Anything was possible. I can't tell you where other entrepreneurs get their drive, but I'll bet many catch the bug young like I did.
That feeling that you're your own boss, that your future is in your hands is a frightening and
Thrilling prospect. That's something you and I talk about.
Euphoria and terror, right? Frightening and thrilling.
We are addicted to the ones and the tens. We are not living
how most people like most people live lives of quiet desperation, right? That famous throat that famous quote rather
you know, they're their range bound between maybe four and sixes. So entrepreneurs say we get a lot of ones, but we also get a lot of tens.
I became
President of Hellsburg Diamonds in nineteen sixty two, at age twenty nine,
When my father became ill, so think about that, his dad.
His dad's a fourteen.
has to take over because his father had had a stroke, got sick.
Now he now we see that Barnett Junior
twenty nine, his father's ill, so he's like I need to jump in and do exactly what my dad did.
I was nervous and definitely not ready. I made mistakes and had my my share of failures.
All successful people have failures. And the one thing I love about this guy, he's just super positive. I mean
Maybe you could say yeah.
You'd be positive too, you sold your your family business for a fat bag of cash to to Buffett.
But I do love his optimism, his p his positivity.
Lessons that his dad taught him.
uh which is actually lesson number one, which I'll get to I think, uh indicates like the kind of
The kind of family that he w that you know, his dad
set out definitively to try to build.
It's this idea that you're the master of your own destiny.
Like everybody has bad shit that happens to them. So what? What are you gonna do about it?
Uh, so he says I made my s mistakes and had my share uh my share of failures. All successful people have failures. Despite missteps, entrepreneurs are a special breed who do not give up on their larger goals.
And then this is another example of him having
Positive role models.
He y he finds role models through books, he finds mod role models through his family, he finds role models through mentors.
And talking to other uh
entrepreneurs and business people, this is the first one. I gotta see if there's a book on this guy,'cause this is remarkable.
His name is Ewing Kaufman.
uh who went up being uh Burnett's mentor. He says he was a founder of Marion Laboratories.
And a former owner of the Kansas City Worlds baseball team.
He became a pharmaceutical l this is why I want to read a book about him. He's giving us like a one paragraph description of his life.
Uh he became a pharmaceutical salesman in the nineteen fifties and turned his love of people into a phenomenal success.
He beat every quota and earned more than his boss.
The next year the boss reduces territory.
Up for the challenge, Kaufman sold even more.
again earning more than his boss. The next year his boss cut his commission. His boss sounds like a terrible person.
By then Kaufman hadn't had enough. He quit and started his own pharmaceutical business.
Packaging his own products in his basement.
And selling them from the trunk of his car.
That's exactly how Phil Knight
And
The story of Nike begins. He did the exact same thing. Sold shoes out of the trunk of his car. How bad do you want it?
In nineteen eighty nine, Kaufman sold.
Marion Labs.
For six point five billion dollars.
And so he's gonna bring up
uh some lessons that he learned from
Ewan Kaufman several times. That's the first time we hear his name, but that won't be the last.
back to Barnet. No one has an easy prescription to become a successful entrepreneur.
If they say they do, they're fibbing. We just covered this last week.
in that book when I re read Zero to One.
Peter Tiel says is like there is no formula for entrepreneurship. No one can teach you how to innovate.
The next paragraph is gonna echo
Uh when in in Paul Graham's fantastic essay Relentlessly Resourceful.
he mentions the best metaphor to describe like the best founders is like the running backs. They they had like
if i if you think about the running back has one goal, he's like, I gotta get to the end zone.
But he's willing to
Cut to the left.
Go forward, go backwards, go to the right. He's just very flexible in how he's gonna get there. We see the same idea here. Entrepreneurs possess an almost naive belief that nothing can stand in their way. They are mentally deaf to those who belittle their chances.
They love to compete.
And they have the skills broken field runners who take the bumps and bruises along the way, change course when necessary, and stay focused on the goal.
If this is not you, do not
Try to fool yourself.
It is not worth it.
Thinking you could start your own business or wanting to be your own boss just because you hate your job when you really have no desire or stamina.
To go
in on your own.
Is courting disaster.
Where there is no real will.
There is no way.
Some people are more enamored by the concept than by the reality. They would rather contemplate the beauty of the mountain from the base.
The entrepreneur wants to climb the mountain first, briefly appreciate the gorgeous vistas from the summit,
And then find the next mountain.
This is fantastic line here. If you possess this obsession.
Of seeing your own creative notion succeed.
And are willing to pay the price.
Then you have no choice.
But to pursue the life of an entrepreneur.
I'm telling you right now, you probably know this.
Talk to all your founder friends.
They we don't have a choice.
I've heard a variation of the statement. I think it was even Mark Cuban that made the point. He's like, I'd rather make a hundred thousand dollars with my own business.
Then ten million.
Uh working for somebody else.
That is irrational.
But you just have this fire in your belly. You must have control.
over how you spend your time, over the work it is doing, and you want the independence.
And as as you and I've talked about before, like those kind of people usually have also
larger egos or more self belief. So they feel okay, if I have the control of the independence, I will get the money anyways. But I love what he said. This is like listen, if you possess this obsession of seeing your own creative notion succeed and are willing to pay the price, you have no choice.
But to pursue the life of an entrepreneur.
My own particular motivation included an obsession with proving wrong.
This is really fascinating.
Proving wrong.
The shirt sleeves.
to shirt sleeves in three generations. Myth.
He calls it a myth.
It is something that's repeated over and over again because you
usually this this plays out where you have somebody I call them generational inflection points
Some people say it's like the founder of the the the family founder or the founder of the family, I think it's probably a better uh uh line to use. Usually they come from
you know, not doing too well financially.
They're the ones that change their financial trajectory of their family forever.
Then you have
usually passed on to the next person, but by the
By their grandkids time.
people that did not have to work for the wealth usually are the ones that squander it. So that is a a well known uh, you know, uh idea through history that
shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations. You start poor.
That one family founder gets you rich and then by the by the time you get to there three generations later, they're back to shirt sleeves.
The other way I heard this was uh Dan Carlin talked about this in his fantastic podcast Hardcot Hardcore History.
It's like uh wooden s wooden
Clogs, wooden shoes walking upstairs, glass slippers walking downstairs. It's the same exact idea. It's just a different different way to describe it.
And then I'm gonna finish a section.
With his mentality on this.
You don't have to start a business in order to be an entrepreneur.
I certainly did not. I think founder having founder mentality is more important than if you actually founded the actual company you're working with. I know a ton of CEOs that did not start their company, but they have founder mentality.
So this is exactly what he's talking about here. You don't have to start a business in order to be an entrepreneur. I certainly did not. Some people inherit small businesses or are thrust into leadership in them, like I was.
Others run entrepreneurial departments within larger enterprises. There's a ton of people that listen to founders that are that this describes them completely.
The ideas in this book will help those entrepreneurs too. I just think the idea of
Thinking s thinking of yourself like a founder, thinking of yourself like a entrepreneur is the important part there.
It can be
The greatest job.
in the world.
Okay, so now we jump into all the different lessons that he learned before he's old to Warren Puff. It starts out with one that he learned from his father.
says you should only concern yourself with things that you can control. When growing up, I was intrigued
That my father only concerned himself with those business elements that were controllable. He refused to acknowledge the depression and did quite well during that period.
He was unwilling to talk about recessions or twenty inch snowfalls.
He's he only thought about and talked about
Those conditions within his control.
Dad was a great believer.
In not sweating the small stuff.
He taught us to concern ourselves only with those things.
Which we have over which we have control.
I thought he was unique in this until I realized this is one of the key common traits of highly successful people. Those folks are never victims.
They take what comes and handle
The situation.
The rest.
Із time.
Then we jump ahead to another lesson. Remember he started out the book saying, Hey
I don't ha even have any unique ideas. I just listen when other smart people say things.
And if it makes sense, I'm gonna use that for my business.
We see this uh idea, so
the No Life myself is upgrade the herd annually or what is the highest and best use of your time.
Um I guess you know what
I'm gonna read you my the this Charlie Munger quote that that popped my mind when I got to this section. Charlie says intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs.
So in other words
It's your alternatives that matter.
That's how we make all of our decisions. He's saying that's how him and Warren make all their decisions. Let's jump into this lesson that Barnett learned from another founder. When you're when you're operating a group of retail stores, there's always a usual bell curve of weak to great performing stores.
At one point we were struggling with the store doing eight hundred thousand dollars in volume.
And through gargantuan efforts
trying to get to eight hundred and fifty thousand in annual sales. So one store
trying to increase it, they're struggling, they're trying to bump it up by another fifty thousand dollars.
A year.
Much conventional practice dictates committing great effort to the weakest segment. When I discussed this with my friend Steve Lieberman,
Uh he was he's a hot dog magnet.
Who ran hundreds of carousel snack bars.
uh in shopping centers for many years, he said, You make more money closing bad stores than by opening new ones.
His philosophy made sense. We decided we would rather spend time and effort
on a four point five million dollar store
That could ultimately achieve six million in revenue.
than on lower volume store with less potential. So instead of trying to bump up fifty thousand.
And dedicating all these resources.
Let's focus on something that's already doing well and get and get an extra one point five million is what he's saying here. Did this mean we gave up immediately when things did not work? Absolutely not.
If the store lacked great people, proper merchandising or other controllable variables there's that word control again.
By all means we fixed it. However, our attitude became to upgrade the herd annually.
Closing the weakest stores each year.
And then he goes into his reasoning behind this. Each activity you undertake exacts the price of not being able to pursue of all pursue alternative activities.
This is sometimes called opportunity cost. What is the actual cost of sending a highly talented person
to create an average performance out of a dry well.
Rather than sending him or her to a gusher.
That can be turned into a super gusher.
Then he extends this idea by talking about something he learned from Warren Buffett. Perhaps one of the key reasons Warren Buffett has been the world's most successful investor.
He does not buy turnaround opportunities.
Something that
Buffett.
Spend a lot of time discussing
over many years in his shareholder letters.
He doesn't believe turnarounds turn turn around.
Uh he does not buy turnaround opportunities, only successful companies.
Focus is your lever to success.
Do not underestimate the incredible amount of mental discipline it takes to focus yourself and your teammates.
Wonderful alternatives and seductive opportunities abound.
And temptations to go in multiple directions are unlimited.
That is he's writing these words in two thousand three.
Now imagine how much temptation and distraction we're exposed to on a daily basis almost twenty years later. Way more than than the world in two thousand three.
Uh, this sings to m this is uh the last thing I'm gonna read to you from the section, but this sings to my soul.
Commit yourself to be the best.
Define what that means and focus on the head of that pin.
Like no one in your industry. I gotta read that again.
Commit yourself to be the best.
Define what that means.
and focus on the head of that pin.
Like no one in your industry.
And he's got another great idea.
Uh I'll I'll probably reference Estee Lauder several times, uh episode two seventeen.
If you haven't listened to it yet, highly recommend you do.
So she was maybe the best practitioner of Paul Graham's idea that you should do things that don't scale.
Uh
d what Barnett has says here is that
Just providing super service is actually a friend to the entrepreneur. It's something that you can do that giant companies can't.
And so he talks about you know going to a locally owned grocery store.
He says I went to the grocery store to get a few items, unloading the groceries, I found that the home phone numbers of the owners.
Mike and Libby.
Were listed
Right on the sack.
With the invitation to call if I was not happy with the store.
It was clear that the owners took responsibility for good service.
What I also liked about the book is at the end of every chapter, he's got all these quotes that he loved, usually from other founders or other interesting people throughout history.
You know I'm a sucker for maxims.
This one I actually read a biography on Thomas Watson.
Uh it's called The Maverick in the Machine, Thomas Watson Senior in the Making of IBM.
I did that a long time ago.
Uh, I think it's episode eighty seven.
Uh, but he put this at the end of one of the chapters that I really loved.
A quote from Thomas Watson who said To be successful, have your heart in your business and your business in your heart.
Another lesson from his father.
The importance of keeping your ego in check.
that it could be used to to drive you, but you have to you should hide it. People do not like arrogance on other people.
And his father so uh his father um is quoted a bunch in the book at the end of these chapters like a j w uh was just referencing these maximums he puts in there.
And this is the way I could y basically you could summarize the the main w idea
In the entire chapter in one sentence and it's a quote from his father. It says
Big people grow.
Little people swell.
So again, the name of the chapter's keeping your ego in check. Big people grow.
Little people swell.
So then he talks about another idea that he learned from his father.
This is gonna happen in the mid nineteen sixties.
His father had this idea of uh he calls it the s the two supplier principle.
And then this is the first time he mentions this
uh or the first time I mentioned to you, but it's mentioned a lot in the book that
They were his father and
Everybody in the company's like, Don't burn a bridge. This is repeat not do not burn a bridge is repeated over and over again in this book.
And so this was the first introduction I heard about the two supplier principle.
One bitterly cold January in the mid nineteen sixties, I went to our bank, uh one of the banks, actually.
uh to the first national bank of Kansas City to make our routine loan.
We needed to cover the checks that we sent out the day before.
to our suppliers for the immense amount of merchandise we had bought for the Christmas season the month prior.
We had a longstanding relationship with First National Bank going back thirty years.
We had gotten the usual letter reassuring us that a five hundred thousand dollar line of credit was available to us.
When we needed it.
We hardly notice that the last paragraph of the letter which would rescind the bank's obligation if our cred credit w
credit worthiness changed.
To our shock and surprise, the bank refused to loan us the money.
One particular director of the bank felt that we were not credit worthy.
So they just sent out a bunch of checks.
There's not enough money in their bank account.
They're in dire need.
And so they the the bank's not budging even though they've been uh uh had a relationship with them for thirty years. We'll come back to that in one second. So what do they do? We immediately drove over to the security national bank.
uh where the family that owned the bank had served my dad for untold years.
Now that guy who had worked with his dad
Now his son is in the bank. So this guy named Morris
Brendan Thal Junior.
had only one question for us.
How much do you want?
So back to Barnett.
We came to the precipice and we were saved by the two supplier principal.
When at death's door
You may be saved by a relationship.
We were.
Did we continue to now this is what he means about
you know, maybe other people would be mad. Hey, we we w we're we're a customer of yours for thirty years. How dare you you change
uh our relationship overnight, you put like you could have put us out of business.
You know, we're done here.
Barnett did not do that.
He says w do we continue to do business with both banks? Yes, absolutely.
Never burn a bridge was our mantra.
And we still wanted two suppliers.
And then he has parting advice in this chapter.
Get your second sources now.
When you do not need them.
And then he quotes this great African proverb on this chapter that's about the the needy the need to test
uh your new ideas and it says only a fool
Test the depth of the water.
With both feet.
And so in the nineteen seventies and before.
It was a long established uh like uh idea in their industry.
That you should handle the financing and the credit for uh the extending the credit uh to your customers yourself.
And then one of uh Barnett's executives like no, I'm pretty sure like we could outsource this and then just focus on the one thing that we're actually really good at, which is selling diamonds.
So he says the stakes were high in terms of the loss of interest income and fees from outside providers of credit.
So Marty chose one of our best store managers to test his idea.
That jewelry stores could make more money
If they focused on selling diamonds, so this is his hypothesis, right?
We're actually gonna make more money if we focus on selling diamonds.
and left the credit business and interest income to banks and other lenders who were experts in such things.
And so the one principle uh at play here, he's like, listen, if you're gonna test something you think is important, it's gonna be really important to the future of your business.
put one of your best people on it. That's what they did. They picked a great store. They didn't do a test and a crappy store and then couldn't figure out did it work'cause it's a crappy or did it
Did it work because it was a crappy idea. It's like, Well, no, this guy's really good, he's really smart, he's one of our best, let's let him test it.
After the and it wind up being success, and then this is what they did next. After our test of outsourcing customer credit, we could now say to the other stores it had proved to be successful.
As each of our stores began to implement the new system, our total focus on buying and selling diamonds. So remember, he talked about
The importance focus.
He said in a previous chapter that focus is your lever to success.
And the implementation of that is obviously a competitive advantage because I'm not sure humans in general
can focus on many things and certainly not in today's day and age.
So that is also going to be a main theme over and over again.
That focuses a lever to success. We just see this here. It says, Hey
As each of our stories began to implement the new system, our total focus.
On buying and selling diamonds.
And not being in the banking business.
brought incalculable dividends.
And so reducing that lesson down back to that proverb, which is fantastic, only a full test the depth of the water with both feet.
And so then Barnett talks about this maxim that he learned from his dad that business is people.
And he actually if you just treat people better and don't create
inhospitable environments, you wouldn't imagine.
that cut that companies do this for their customers, but you probably see it every day.
In your day to day lives.
that y that's actually an advantage and an edge that you can have.
This is going to remind me of uh Paul or Fala. I I always pronounce his name incorrectly, but it's the founder of Kiko's.
Uh I covered his fantastic autobiography called Copy This.
uh back on episode number one eighty one.
But uh let me actually read that section from the the copy of this book'cause I think it's fat it's
fantastic and it's gonna it's going to echo
uh what Barnett discovered
uh with rival jewelry stores.
And how he actually
Just did the opposite.
And so Paul writes uh he Paul is essentially just spent his time
traveling all over the country, visiting Kinko stores, looking for the best and the worst ideas, and then spreading those ideas to the network.
uh stores.
And so Paul says, Some of our partners created an inhospitable climate for customers. Some posted negative signs. Remember this for what I'm about to read to you in this book.
At one store a manager hung a sign in red warning customers that they would be charged a steep fee if they bounced the check.
It said the bank doesn't make copies and we don't cash checks.
That really got me boiling.
I jumped on the counter.
And ripped it down.
As customers and co workers looked on amazed.
That may sound extreme, but I needed to make the point in a memorable way. I don't want signs like this.
Staring our customers in the face.
I told our co workers
So Paul wouldn't ever use the um
the term employees, he hated that term. He considered everybody.
Co workers.
I told our co workers that the occasional hit
That we took for a bounce check.
Cost far less.
Then we lost and could not quantify.
By creating a subtly
Hostile.
atmosphere.
And so this is Barnett's version of that. You've probably seen this this sign everywhere if you go into like a a a shop or s or a store, rather.
says, Hey, don't bring your food and drink, no food and drink, he's like, Well I'm just gonna do the opposite.
Bring it all in. Let's go.
One of the best things we did was to invite shoppers to bring their food into the store with them.
Ice cream cones?
Hot dogs and mustard? No problem.
The standard store sign
In a mall says no food or drink.
R said
Your food and drink.
Or welcome here.
We were trying to say
We are here on your terms.
And we are different.
Uh, just a few quick lines here, which I thought was fantastic. He puts a
a premium on speed and urgency. He says you need to constantly be moving with a sense of urgency. By acting with a sense of urgency, you are modeling the behavior that you want from your associates. So he's saying
This starts with a leader and works its way down.
Nearly any action or communication means far more when done urgently.
And then he quotes this fantastic uh
I I love this maxim. This is from Alfred Adler, who apparently was a psychologist and author.
And he says trust
Only
Movement.
I've been rereading a lot of my highlights from the
two or three books that I read on Andrew Carnegie and I'm pretty sure
I'm getting ready to reread his autobiography because it's just been top of my mind so much. I've been spending so much time uh thinking about it.
But he says something very similar. It's like I love that maxim. It's like, hey, we're only gonna trust trust only movement.
Andrew Carnegie says as I grow older, I pay less attention to what people say and I just watch what they do.
That makes me think of my favorite one of my favorite maxims, which is actions express priority. We are only what we actually do, not what we s profess to believe.
Here is a few great quotes.
Uh
one person the this is the importance of of belief
One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety nine.
Who have only interests.
And the second one is uh this actually anonymous quote.
Quality is never an accident.
It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort.
Intelligent direct direction.
in skillful execution.
It represents
The wise choice of many alternatives.
And I guess I should have told you w what that chapter's from. Th his his whole point is that
uh it's the p the execution that matters. A ton of people have ideas. Execution is actually the key. So
I just skipped over that and gave you the two maximums at the end'cause I thought it illustrates that point better.
So jumping ahead a little bit, this I absolutely loved because you and I have talked about this theme over and over again.
None of this works if you can't trust your own judgment. When you're learning from history, when you're learning from other people, you're gonna find conflicting advice. The only one that knows if it's actually going to work.
Is you.
So says one of my most prized mentors shared his wisdom.
You don't need shopping centers, you need business districts.
I took that as gospel.
And did not think things out on my own.
Remember, none of this works if you can't trust your own judgment. I took that as gospel.
In this case he's not even using his own judgment, right?
And uh I took that as gospel and did not think things uh out of my own. The country was about to explode.
In the mauling of America.
We elected to pull out of our lease in one of the first eleven covered malls in United States.
His this is it this winds up being his entire business.
It takes place.
Almost exclusively in malls.
And he's like, Yeah, we'll just run away from this giant trend that could help our business.
So that's what he's describing here.
No, we elected to pull out of our least in one of the first eleven covered malls in the United States. This was a nearly fatal error.
causing us to waste years of precious time
And resources
And he did it because one of his prize mentors like, Hey, get the hell out of Malls.
Years later, we and our advisor realize.
That our avoiding Malls was not the right posture. We pursued Malls.
Locations slowly at first and then vigorously later.
And so this is what he learned from that. He who takes bad advice is the one and only culprit in the scenario.
Advice is advice.
Not a command. That is fantastic. Advice is advice. It's not a command.
The mall locations later became the success of the company.
We nearly put ourselves out of business.
By staying
out of them.
And then he quotes
One of my heroes, Benjamin Franklin.
Who said the only place
Where fools may learn.
І за скул оксперєнс.
I spent a few hours actually.
in a used bookstore yesterday.
This place was a treasure trove. I w I left with like six or seven books. I think s I think I got seven books.
For a hundred dollars and one of them
The most expensive book was actually a biography first uh on Benjamin Franklin.
First published in nineteen thirty eight. It is a beautiful, like leather bound.
book. It was like wrapped in plastic, uh never been uh like actually opened and used.
And that was four that one book alone was forty. So it's forty percent.
of the cost,'cause it was forty dollars out of the hundred.
Um, I can't wait to get to it though. So I'm almost gonna feel bad.
about taking notes and and marking up that book, but I'm going to
Then we move ahead.
This is about barring wisdom and knowledge.
About your business. Again, main theme of the books book. He's gonna talk about his father, he's gonna talk about his grandfather, he's gonna talk about his mentor, he's gonna be talking about the books he reads.
fact he leaves at the very last page is just like a
A reading list of all these books that were helpful for his business.
And the main theme of the book is like learning from the experience of others. He talks about the fact that he does not think he was the smartest person in his company by far.
And so one way to fix that problem was just find out what people smarter than him.
I thought.
Humans have accumulated incredible amounts of knowledge over hundreds of years, and it's constantly being refined to experience.
This reservoir of knowledge and human experience creates tremendous opportunities and advantages for you as an entrepreneur.
You are heir to the discoveries of many entrepreneurs who skin their shins
Trying something new.
It is likely
other entrepreneurs before you have experienced the same challenges and problems and found ways to surmount them.
You do not need to invent a new industry to start a new business. Studying an existing industry and do just studying an existing industry and just do it lots better.
Henry Ford
Did not invent the automobile, nor did Kinko's invent copying. That's funny. Then he mentions Kinko's because I just re referenced the fact that they had similar ideas.
uh a few chapters ago, you have the experience of thousands of experts and mentors
At your fingertips.
And then he brings up something that Steve Jobs said that I I've tried to use as well because I think it's just genius advice, is like just f reach out and ask somebody.
In his case he's like pick up the phone call, is exactly what Steve Steve would say too.
But he's like, listen, maybe you you try to get in touch with somebody, maybe they're gonna be unwilling to talk to you. But what's the worst case scenario? You wasted a phone call.
What a fabulous risk reward ratio.
Many business people will reach out to share what they've learned.
Why not listen to many people, ponder what they have to say, and then follow your own instincts?
The incredible, wonderful, and unavoidable truth.
is that seeking the help of others can put you light years ahead of other people who beat their heads against the wall.
Trying to reinvent the wheel.
There's an interview I've mentioned this a million times.
According to this I took first took notes on this and
August fourth, two thousand nineteen.
And Steve was talking about the fact that he just picks up the phone and call. He's just like, I I always ask for help.
And more times than not, people
Will help and he says I never found anybody that didn't want to help me if I asked them.
I called up Bill Hewlett, that's obviously one of the co founders of HP when I was twelve. He answered the phone himself.
I told him I wanted to build a frequency counter. I asked if he had any spare parts I could l have, and he laughed and laughed and laughed.
He gave me the parts and then he gave me a summer job at H P working on the assembly line.
putting together frequency counters.
I have never this is his punchline here.
I have never found anyone who said no or hung up the phone.
I just ask.
Most people never pick up the phone and call.
And that's what separates the people who do things.
versus the people who dream about them. You have to act.
And so Barnett's point's like what's the
Risk reward r ratio.
Right?
They say no, I they never answer or they don't want to talk to you. Okay, I wasted, you know, a couple of minutes of my time.
Or you wind up having a conversation.
You learn something valuable for your business, maybe make you millions and millions of dollars over the course of your lifetime.
Or you d and and
And or you develop a a like a lifelong friend.
It's like th that's a a fantastic
And I don't mean just go out and spam people.
I would find a way if I was doing this to find a way to like provide value to them first, you know, and then ask them the question. I had one of the best uh
Cold messages I ever received was from this like
He was like a twenty one year old kid still in college at the time. Uh his name's Michael actually.
And he just messaged me, I didn't know who he was then.
He had listened to the podcast and he's like hey, I
Took this idea that I learned from your podcast, I made a video on it, and I got I don't remember it was like three million or 10 million views or some I forgot it was some crazy stuff like that. I was like,
He's like, Can we talk? I'm like
You did what?
That is a really good'cause he's like, Hey, I can show you how to do this. You can like
Ga take the ideas, rehash them, gain attention, and then you get more listeners. That
He got attention by showing, Hey, I actually have val I can actually provide value to you as well. So I just like that idea. Most people never pick up the phone and call.
That's what separates the people who do things versus the people who just dream about them. You have to act.
So then Barnett gets into the importance of add the more uh the more experience you get.
The more you should start to trust and actually follow your gut.
This is something Steve Jobs talked about, like the later in life he got, the more he valued his own intuition. He said intuition is a very powerful thing.
More powerful than intellect, in my opinion.
And it's had a big impact on my work. So it's Steve Jobs. This is what Barnett said about that. To some people
His ideas put the company he's he's talking about his dad. I sh I should have backed up and and read something on the f next uh the previous page.
So it says like many successful entrepreneurs I've since since met, Dad relied on his intuition as much as he relied on his business plans and market forecasts. To some people, his ideas put the company on a limp.
But to him the ideas felt right.
And usually they were right on. Dad listened to other people. He loved mentors.
But perhaps because he started out so young and had to rely on himself.
I mean, started out on the business of fourteen.
He learned the value of tuning out other people's voices when they became a distraction and listening to that pristine inner voice.
That is in all of us.
Your inner voice talks to you through your gut feelings. Your gut feelings are intuition.
emanate from your unconscious mind.
He s he sa he says, uh, your your unconscious mind is a repository for all of your life experiences and then some. And he compares
uh Warren Buffett using his intuition to buy uh as part of the way he bought diamonds. When Warren Buffett bought Hellsburg Diamonds,
He felt so positive about the deal.
That he cut out the usual due diligence to speed negotiations.
Sure, Buffett did his homework, but he also had a strong intuitive response.
I can smell these things, he said, and this one smells good.
Trusting your gut isn't meant to r mean
isn't meant to replace using your conscious brain.
The two work together.
And then he's got another great quote uh to end this chapter from Warren Buffett.
Who says my idea of a group decision is to look in the mirror.
And then this is Barnett on making sure that you're prepared to take advantage of luck. He calls this on how to have uncanny luck.
This is gonna remind uh this reminded me actually
I think we talked about this uh
Pretty sure it's in the
Peter Teal's book Zero to One and M've in Paul Graham's essays.
But it was a quote from this famous explorer called Rold Ametsen.
And he says victory awaits him who has everything in order.
Or luck, as some people call it.
This is what Barnett says.
An example of luck would be my chance meeting with Warren Buffett on the streets of New York.
I was prepared because I'd been attending his annual meetings for a few years
And I felt
I knew the kind of person he was. I was also in New York dealing with the very subject I spoke to him about.
Which is selling the company.
And there was top of mind.
And it was a top of mind awareness of my mission.
add in the unmitigated gall to walk up to him.
Introduce myself.
And offer to sell the company to him.
And you have an uncanny case of luck.
And then like almost every entrepreneur
Barnett spent some time.
talking about the importance of making sure you're only working with and hiring
the very best people you absolutely can.
He actually got something uh from another entrepreneur who says Larry Bossity, former head of Allied Signal, said good people hire good people.
I fear the reverse is true also. When I got to that page
Made me think of something uh Max Levchin said.
Uh my in that book, uh, The Founders, which is a story of PayPal and the entrepreneurs who shape Silicon Valley, written by my friend Jimmy Sony.
That's ac actually episode two thirty three, if you haven't listened to it.
But Max said something that was very interesting. It's like at the very early days of Paypal
they kept the bar for talent like exceedingly high. You know, this is like the the genesis of the the PayPal mafia, which is well well known.
in uh like the Silicon Valley and the the technology industry.
And Max would repeat
over and over again. And he was doing this, you know, twenty f almost twenty five years ago.
And he says something very similar to what
This guy just said good people hire good people, but I fear the reverse is also true. Max kept repeating. A players hire A players.
B players hire C players. So the first B player you hire
Takes the whole company down.
And he ends this chapter with a quote from Bill Gates that I've never seen before, which illustrates this point.
Effectively.
the greatest thing you could do for your competition.
is hiring poorly.
This is another example of
The importance of focus.
Uh and not only uh focusing like your time and attention, what you're focused on, but also focusing your product line.
You wouldn't think.
That a company called Hellsburg Diamonds.
uh sold luggage or radios, but at one time they did.
And so this is him correcting that mistake. We had decided the future course of Hellsburg Diamonds
was indeed in diamonds, and that we should discontinue non July lines of merchandise.
We phased out lines of merchandise such as China.
Crystal
Silver
Luggage and radios.
We believed
На дала волюс.
But
the profits would increase saying on a store an individual store level.
Like, hey, we're gonna cut all this crap out.
The dollar volume of the business might go down, so our revenue might go down, but our profit would increase, our profit margin would increase. Wrong.
We were wrong.
Both volume and profit went up.
This was when we found out that less is indeed more.
Focus is a lever.
Of your success.
So then he brings up another lesson that he learned from his dad in a chapter called Digging Out the Answer.
I'm always delighted when someone in a group can view a scenario in a wholly different way.
And suggest an unexpected solution to what seemed
to be an intractable intractable problem.
I've seen it happen so often I'm convinced nearly any problem
Can be solved by bringing together a variety of smart people to brainstorm.
My dad quoted a slogan for the tactic.
That was printed on the agenda.
For every executive meeting.
All of us know more than one of us.
And then he quotes his dad again.
At the end of this chapter.
There is always an answer.
And he goes back to this idea of the importance of having mentors, of learning from other people.
But I like the way he thinks about this.
My personal vision of mentoring is that no individual advice will necessarily fit you.
I see mentoring as a process of brain marination.
When your brain is adequately marinated.
You will look in the mirror and a light bulb.
On top of your cranium.
Will flash the answer that best fits you and your situation.
It may be a combination of your thoughts.
And some you received from your mentors.
And he ends this chapter with one of my favorite Charlie Margaret quotes, where Charlie's really talking about the role
That he played
with Buffett in Berkshire. I just the discipline. This is so important.
Just the discipline.
Of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else.
is a very useful thing.
And then he talks about towards the end of the book he talks about
The more successful you get, the more people around you that rely on you for the success, it's really hard to get honest feedback. The greatest the gre I don't know why things like uh like certain things stick in my mind when they do, but I read um the founder of UPS, Jim Casey.
I read a biography of him back on episode one ninety two.
And he realized this too, where he's just like, Man, I can't I'm can't sure if like the
information I'm getting from my executive team is not filtered.
So he would just every time he was out and about, when he any time he saw a UPS uh you know the UPS brown trucks
He'd ask his driver to pull over.
And he would just go and talk to him. It's like these are the people to have
the best information for me because they're on the the front lines. They have direct
Contact.
They're the lifeblood of my organization, but they have direct contact with the customer.
And so Barnett has three questions where he's like, This is I ask these people three questions in a way to force
to get honest feedback. Number one, what am I doing that you like?
Number two, what am I doing that you do not like?
And number three, what am I not doing?
Than you would like.
I highly suspect you may get
like muddy answers for the first two questions, but that third question
will probably give you some useful ideas. What am I not doing that you would like?
Another lesson from his dad.
Bad boys move in silence. You and I talk about this over and over again. Dad was the ultimate extrovert.
Yeah, he told me that the right strategy was to be, quote, a sleeper.
That is not to be known for success when it did come.
Interestingly.
This thought was also confirmed by Leonard
Lauder of Estate Lauder when I covered
So in that book, the autobiography of essay laughter, Leonard is still like a young man.
Um part of the beginning of the book, he's in college, actually.
Now I think he's still alive to this day. I think he's in like late eighties.
Uh, but this is a quote that uh that
That Barnett Hurt learned from him, Leonard Lauder of S Lauder.
Uh, told an audience of entrepreneurs don't communicate your success.
So that's another idea from his dad, be a sleeper.
Leonard Lauder says don't communicate your success.
And then he actually ends the book on something that's very important to me.
It's why the title
of episode two twenty two is my personal blue print.
It's this idea that entrepreneurs are prone.
Founders are prone to
Get wrong.
Like how do you balance your life? How do you balance your work?
Play meaning having fun, children, health and money.
And this also ties into what you and I talked about at the very beginning of this podcast, like
The decisions that we're gonna make are gonna resonate. They're not just they don't just affect our lives.
They affect the lives of everybody around us right now, that we're actually going through life together, right? But also
Future generations.
And I think if we view you and I view our decisions like that, we're gonna make d better decisions like hey this what not just today.
What is this gonna hap what's the consequence of this?
Ten, twenty years from now.
What if my grandkids
Read about the decision I'm gonna make today.
Will that will I change that? Like will that change what I'm about to do here?
What do you want to look back on?
When your children are adults.
And then he ends on this fantastic quote that puts this into perspective.
I wish that I had known sooner.
That if you miss a child's play
or performance or sporting event.
You will have forgotten a year later.
The work emergency
That caused you to miss it.
But the child
Won't have forgotten.
That you were not there.
And that is where I'll leave it.
Thank you to the person uh that actually sent me this book. The person on Twitter that actually sent me this book. I did not know it existed.
If you want the full story.
If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you're a podcast player.
Or by going to founderspodcast dot com. You'll be supporting the podcast at the same time.
If you want to use the same app that I use and that I love.
to store all the highlights for the books that I read and all the notes so I constantly remind and go back and reread them.
You can test it for free for sixty days and see if you like it as much as I do. It's an app called ReadWise.
I'll leave the link down below, but you can go to readwise.io forward slash founders.
And they'll give you sixty days for free.
That is two hundred and seventy nine books down.
One thousand ago.
And I'll talk to you again soon.