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The Next Warren Buffett? w/ Andrew Wilkinson (TIP540)

发布时间 2023-03-30 23:45:02    来源

摘要

💰Click here to download your FREE guide to Stop Worrying About Your Finances In 4 Simple Steps: https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/subscribe-youtube/ 🎧 Listen to our episodes here: https://link.chtbl.com/WSB My guest today is billionaire entrepreneur and investor, Mr. Andrew Wilkinson. Andrew is the co-founder of Tiny, which has been called the Berkshire Hathaway of Tech companies. Andrew turned his first business, MetaLab, into a not-so-tiny conglomerate in a similar fashion to how Buffett turned an old textile mill into the juggernaut Berkshire is today. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:01 - The philosophies behind Tiny and how it operates 00:10:03 - How he partnered up with Bill Ackman and Howard Marks on some exciting deals 00:24:04 - The art and science of self care, de-stressing and delegation 00:27:05 - Andrew’s insights from his conversations with Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger 00:29:07 - Andrew’s thoughts on parenting, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, investing and a TON of amazing resources, most of which I was unfamiliar with.  00:34:22 - What it means to set “Anti-goals”  🖊️ Access the transcript and learn more about the guest here: https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/episodes/lessons-in-life-and-business-from-a-self-made-billionaire-w-andrew-wilkinson/ 📖  BOOKS MENTIONED: - How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis: https://amzn.to/3TOmMvc - The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber: https://amzn.to/3JPkBD9 - The Dhandho Investor by Mohnish Pabrai: https://amzn.to/3nkz961 - The Tao of Charlie Munger by David Clark: https://amzn.to/40HoWPs - Influence by Robert Cialdini: https://amzn.to/40mUs5B - The Psychology of Human Misjudgement by Charlie Munger: https://amzn.to/3KcTbIB Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links that we may earn commission from. This helps keep our show going! 😀 💡 OTHER RESOURCES - Seeking Alpha is a crowd-sourced content service for financial markets. Take control of your financial future — Use our link here for a 14-day free trial: https://www.sahg6dtr.com/59QC8Z/R74QP/ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ABOUT OUR SHOW 🎙  On We Study Billionaires, we interview and study famous financial billionaires including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Ray Dalio. We teach you what we learn and how you can apply their investment strategies in the stock market. 🌍 Website: https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/we-study-billionaires/  ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ 📚OUR FREE INVESTING COURSES/RESOURCES https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/tip-academy/ 📊TRY OUR STOCK INVESTING TOOL: TIP FINANCE https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/tip-finance/ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ❗ DISCLAIMER: This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

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中英文字稿  

You're building what any considered to be the Berkshire Hathaway for tech. Mr. Buffett's in his office. Here's the number. Call him right now. He immediately picked up and he talked to me for an hour and a half. That whole idea of not wanting to meet your heroes, because they'll let you down. Buffett absolutely did not.
你正在构建被认为是科技界的伯克希尔·哈撒韦。巴菲特先生在办公室里。这是他的电话号码。现在就打给他。他立即接起电话，与我交谈了一个半小时。通常人们认为与偶像见面是会让人失望的，但是巴菲特绝对没有。

Welcome to the Investors Podcast. I'm your host, Trey Lockerbie. Like I said at the top, I am here with Andrew Wilkinson. Andrew, this has been a long time coming. I wanted to do this interview for a while. So really happy to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on.
欢迎来到《投资者播客》。我是您的主持人 Trey Lockerbie。就像我之前说的，我今天有幸邀请到了 Andrew Wilkinson。Andrew，这次采访确实等了很久了。非常高兴能够请你来到节目中。谢谢你的光临。

Thanks, Trey. It's great to be here. I've actually been listening for years, so it's really cool to be on.
谢谢，特雷。能够来到这里真是太好了。实际上我已经听了好几年了，所以能上节目真是太酷了。

Well, it's funny because there's a small community, the podcast community. So I've seen a lot of friends interview you and vice versa. I know you've listed a few of your own podcasts through Tiny. It's just a small community. I felt like hopefully one day our pass with Cross. So I'm glad it's happening today.
嗯，有趣的是因为有一个小社群，即播客社群。所以我见过很多朋友采访你，反之亦然。我知道你通过Tiny列出了一些自己的播客节目。这只是一个小社群。我觉得希望有一天我们的道路会交叉。所以我很高兴今天会发生这件事。

I wanted to kick things off with a little bit of your view of the markets only because there's a lot of noise happening all around us. Banks are starting to fail here in the US, over in Europe, etc. This environment where funding has become scarce, valuations are declining, interest rates are going up. I was just thinking to myself, I imagine someone like you might be one of the few who are currently on offense, right? Because these kind of scenarios might create opportunities where businesses that you've been looking at for a while become attractive all of a sudden, either affordable or potentially illiquid and needing help. So as an acquirer, is this something that you are kind of viewing as a, as not a positive, let's say, but opportunistic in some degree for it this year?
我想先从你对市场的看法开始，因为我们周围有很多噪音。在美国和欧洲等地，银行开始破产等等。在这种资金紧缺、估值下降、利率上升的环境中，我自己在想，像你这样的人可能是少数能够处于攻势的人之一，对吗？因为这种情况可能会创造出机会，你一直在关注的企业突然变得有吸引力，要么是价格合适，要么是可能出现流动性问题需要帮助。所以作为一个收购方，您是否将这种情况视为今年的机遇，虽然不能说是积极的，但在某种程度上是有利可图的呢？

Yeah, I mean, we really have long periods of inaction. So in many ways, for the last two or three years, with a few exceptions, we've mostly been sitting on our hands. And the beauty of my business is that at the end of the day, I don't have a ticker for every individual business. I own about 30 plus companies. I don't know what each of them is valued other than whatever Chris and I kind of do math in our head. And so we don't get caught up in the macro. We mostly just focus on the micro. And at the end of the day, we examine every individual business. And each business has some kind of competitive advantage or something that we like about it. And so we're quite happy just to hold the business. We can't panic sell and freak out as someone would traditionally with a stock portfolio or something like that. And I think that's been wonderful for us. I always, whenever I talk to friends about this, I always say, okay, what's your biggest investment? And invariably, they'll say, unless they're a professional investor, that it's their house. And I say, okay, well, your house goes up in value. And it goes down in value, depending on what's going on in the market. But you don't see it every day, you never panic sell your house. You're not counting your eggs before they hatch. You might have a rough sense that it's gone up or down, but it's not down to the penny. And so I think that's one of the nice things about owning a lot of different businesses is you don't have tickers like that. So yeah, we're just kind of sitting and waiting and getting excited to start buying businesses again, which we really haven't done much of for the last couple of years.
是的，我的意思是，我们确实有长时间的不动作期。所以在过去的两三年里，除了少数几个例外，我们大多数时间都是束手无策的。我的生意之美就是，在一天结束时，我并不会为每个企业设置一个涨跌幅。我拥有大约30多家公司。除了克里斯和我在脑海中大致计算的价值，我不知道每个公司的价值是多少。因此，我们并不会陷入宏观经济的困惑中，我们大多数时间只关注微观经济。最后，我们检查每个独立的企业。每个企业都有某种竞争优势或我们喜欢的特点。所以我们很高兴地保留这些企业。我们不能像传统的股票组合一样惊慌失措地抛售并疯狂。我想这对我们来说是很好的。每当我和朋友谈论这个问题时，我总是问他们最大的投资是什么。通常，他们会说，除非他们是专业投资者，否则最大的投资是他们的房子。我会说，好吧，你的房子价值上涨了，也可能下跌了，这取决于市场的情况。但你每天都不会看到这一点，你永远不会惊慌地抛售你的房子。你不会过早地数小鸡蛋，你可能只有一个粗略的感觉它涨了还是跌了，但不是到每一分钱。所以我认为拥有许多不同的企业是美妙的，你没有这样的涨跌幅。所以，是的，我们只是坐而待购，而且正兴奋地等待着再次购买企业，过去几年我们并没有做太多这样的交易。

I love that house analogy so much. It reminds me of my wife who was learning how to invest, but almost resorts to just saying, hey, should I buy this stock? It's sort of like me saying, you know, should I buy this house? And you go, okay, what neighborhood is it in? What state, what are the comps? There's so much more information that needs to be known. But it's just kind of minding of that.
我非常喜欢那个房屋的比喻。它让我想起了我的妻子学习投资时的情形，她几乎总是直接问我：“嘿，我应该买这支股票吗？” 就好像我在问你：“你知道吗，我应该买这套房子吗？”然后你会回答：“好的，它在哪个社区？哪个州？附近有哪些相似上市的房价？”这里需要了解的信息实在太多了。但这比喻正好让我想起这一点。

So for those who don't know, you're building what any of considered to be the Berkshire Hathaway for tech. And that may or may not be evolving to different sectors. But I know that's kind of how it originated. Using this analogy, what is your source of float? Is it simply the cash flows from the underlying portfolio companies? Because I imagine, you know, a lot of companies who are relying on funding as we kind of alluded to earlier are running into to trouble, whereas your companies hopefully are casually positive and positioning you guys well to potentially pursue more acquisitions.
所以对于那些不了解的人来说，你正在建设的是被认为是科技领域的伯克希尔·哈撒韦。这可能会不断扩展到不同的行业，也可能不会。但我知道这是初始的思路。使用这个类比，你的负债来源是什么？仅仅来自基础组合公司的现金流吗？因为我可以想象，很多依赖融资的公司，正如我们之前提到的，都在遇到困难，而你们的公司希望能够保持良好的现金状况，有可能进行更多的收购。

Yeah, I mean, with a few exceptions, almost every business that we have ever acquired or operated has been profitable. And we started out that way, not because we set out to be bootstrappers, but because we knew no other way. So when I started my business, I was up in Canada. I didn't know what a venture capitalist was. I couldn't have got a bank loan if I tried. And so at the end of the day, I had to bring in more revenue than my expenses.
是的，我是说，除了少数例外，我们曾经收购或运营的几乎每个企业都是盈利的。而我们之所以从那时开始就盈利，不是因为我们本来就打算成为自力更生者，而是因为我们不知道其他的方式。所以当我创办我的企业时，我在加拿大。我不知道什么是风险投资家。如果我尝试去贷款，我也贷不到。所以到最后，我必须让收入超过支出。

And in the early days, I barely understood accounting. But what I did understand was that if my bank account balance was larger on day 30 than on the first of the month, things were going well. And so that was where we started almost 20 years ago. And we followed that thread. And what ended up happening was, we built quite a few bootstrapped, highly profitable businesses. But we always thought our businesses were terrible. Every business internally is a dumpster fire knife fight where you're just trying to stay alive.
在最初的日子里，我几乎不懂会计。但我明白的是，如果我的银行账户余额在第30天比第一个月的时候更多，事情就进展得很顺利。所以这就是我们近20年前的起点。我们一直跟随这个思路。结果是，我们建立了相当多的自力更生、高盈利的企业。但我们总认为我们的企业很糟糕。每个企业内部都是一场垃圾场火与刀的激烈争斗，你只是试图活下去。

And over time, as we got to know more and more business owners, we realized that many of them actually were just not operating with best practices. They weren't operating with the same discipline that we had learned out of necessity. And so as we started seeing those businesses, we realized a lot of those founders were exhausted or they wanted to sell their business. And so we would buy them and really just implement those best practices, hire a CEO and have the baton pass to us.
随着时间的推移，我们越来越多地了解到了很多企业主实际上并没有按照最佳实践来运营。他们没有像我们出于必要学到的那样严格要求自己。因此，当我们开始看到这些企业时，我们意识到很多创始人十分疲惫，或者他们想要出售自己的企业。于是我们会购买这些企业，并且真正实施这些最佳实践，聘请一位首席执行官，并将权力交接给我们。

I want to touch on that bootstrapping history of yours because I'm curious if there are downsides to that. I saw a tweet from our friend Alex over at Morning Brew the other day. And he said, Scrapiness is a gift and a curse. So it's a gift because you learn every skill before you delegate it. It forces you to default to an action mindset. You can stretch every dollar. But it's a curse because it creates a scarcity mindset, which is not often helpful. You risk taking on low leverage tasks and you feel every part of the emotional roller coaster. I don't know if that last part goes away at any point, but the risk of taking low leverage tasks is something I really resonated with when I saw that. It's hard to be strategic sometimes when you're so reactive on the bootstrapping path.
我想谈谈你的自力更生的历史，因为我很好奇这是否有不利的方面。前几天，我在我们朋友Alex在早餐时报上看到一条推文。他说，手段粗糙是一种恩赐也是一种诅咒。这是一种恩赐，因为在委派任务之前，你会学习到每一项技能。它迫使你采取主动行动的思维方式。你可以精打细算每一分钱。但这也是一种诅咒，因为它会造成稀缺思维，这往往不是有帮助的。你冒着承担低效任务的风险，而且你会感受到情绪过山车的每一部分。我不知道最后一部分是否会在某个时刻消失，但当我看到这一点时，承担低效任务的风险确实让我有共鸣。有时，在自力更生的道路上，很难战略性地思考，因为你过于被动。

So I'm curious, how did you grow out of that? How did you learn to get beyond maybe the limitations of bootstrapping? A lot of really disastrous hiring and a lot of really sleepless nights and a lot of misery, to be honest.
所以我很好奇，你是怎样克服这一切的？你是如何学会超越自助创业的局限性呢？实话实说，为了解决许多灾难性的招聘问题、很多个夜晚无法入眠以及无尽的痛苦。

The way I think about this is like if you own a bakery and let's say that you're the number one place in Los Angeles selling croissants and there's a line down the block and you have one oven and you need to go and spend $200,000 to buy another oven in order to actually be able to service your customer. But your capital constrained. Of course, it's logical in that world to go to the bank or to go to an investor to buy another oven because you have access demand and you need to keep your customer happy and you can maximize the business that way. I think everybody understands that.
我对这个问题的思考方式是，就好像你拥有一家面包店，假设你是洛杉矶卖羊角面包的第一家店，门外排着一条长队，但你只有一个烤箱，为了能够满足顾客需求，你需要花20万美元买一个新的烤箱。但你的资金有限。在这种情况下，当然在逻辑上你会去银行或者投资者那里购买另一个烤箱，因为你有能源需求，你需要让顾客满意，并通过这种方式最大程度地发展你的业务。我认为每个人都能理解这一点。

But I see a lot of tech entrepreneurs who have that same situation. They have the line down the block and they just won't deploy the capital required to serve the customer or to maximize the business, usually out of fear. People get into this mindset and I used to have this mindset of I need to own 100% of the pie. It's not worth giving up 5% because I can't have anyone else in the business or that creates a risk or something like that. But I think it's very logical to have a slightly smaller slice of pie in order to have a larger pie in the long run.
但我看到很多技术创业者也有同样的情况。他们排起了长队，但他们就是不愿意投入所需的资本来服务客户或最大化业务，通常是出于恐惧。人们会陷入这种思维方式中，我以前也有这种思维方式，认为我需要拥有整个“馅饼”的100%。放弃5%是不值得的，因为我不能让别人加入到企业中，这会增加风险或其他什么的。但我认为，从长远来看，为了拥有更大的“馅饼”，有一小块馅饼是非常合理的。

And so what I ended up realizing over time was that I was limiting my businesses by not investing in R&D, not buying capital assets, that kind of thing. And we kind of came to this realization over time. It's a lot easier when you're at scale. So for example, when you own five businesses and you have one that has a big opportunity where there's a lever you can pull to five exit, it's a lot easier to do that when it's one of five eggs. But when it's your only egg, it is terrifying.
所以我最终意识到的是，我没有投资研发、购买资本资产等一些事情，从而限制了我的企业发展。这个意识是逐渐形成的。当你发展到一定规模时，这就容易多了。比如说，当你拥有五个企业，其中一个有很大机会可以通过某种方式实现五倍回报时，这样做起来就容易多了，因为你还有其他四个企业。但当这是你唯一的企业时，这种尝试会令人恐惧。

And I was sitting in a board meeting with a SaaS software business that I'm a large investor in a couple years ago. And I remember talking to the founder and he said, we're doing really well with pay-per-click on Google. And I looked at the P&L and they were spending $10,000 a month. And they were getting a $20,000 payback within a month or two. And I said, well, why are you only spending $10,000 a month? And he said, well, because that's what we budgeted to it. That was their kind of conservative thing. And I was like, hey, look, there's $100 bills lying on the ground. You need to pick up as many as possible. But for some reason, that servitism, that bootstrapper mentality held them back from doing that.
几年前，我参加了一家SaaS软件公司的董事会会议，我是该公司的大投资者之一。我记得当时与创始人交谈时，他说我们在谷歌的按点击付费广告上表现非常不错。我看了一下损益表，他们每个月花费1万美元，并在一个月或两个月内获得2万美元的回报。我问他，为什么你只花费1万美元呢？他说，因为这是我们的预算。这是他们比较保守的做法。我告诉他，嘿，地上有100美元的钞票，你应该捡起尽可能多的数量。但由于某种原因，他们那种保守的思维方式使他们无法做到这一点。

And so we see a lot of that. And I really empathize with it because I've been there, I think bootstrapping is a bit of a blessing and a curse. But I've been surprised by how big some of our bootstrap businesses have been able to become with very minimal reinvestment.
因此，我们看到很多这样的情况。我真的能够理解它，因为我曾经历过同样的情况，我认为自助创业是一种福祉和诅咒。但令我惊讶的是，一些我们的自助创业企业在非常少的再投资下能够发展得如此之大。

Another company that's been a huge success for you is WeCommerce. And there is a merger underway where tiny and WeCommerce will now both be public and Howard Marks and Bill Ackman and some other folks are somehow in the mix here. And I like to kind of talk through why the move to merge and go public and how you got investors like the Titans of industry behind you on this move.
你们的另一家巨大成功的公司是WeCommerce。现在正在进行一次合并，tiny和WeCommerce将同时上市，Howard Marks、Bill Ackman以及其他一些人都融入其中。我想谈谈为什么要进行合并并上市，以及你们是如何得到像这样业界泰斗般的投资者支持你们这个举动的。

Yeah, well, the story actually goes back to about 2010. So at the time I was running Metalab, my original agency, I was experimenting, incubating a few SaaS software businesses and other stuff. And I was at a conference and I met Harley Finkelstein, who is the now COO of Shopify. And at the time, Shopify was just this tiny little Canadian software company, you know, doing e-commerce. And he said, hey, we need someone to build themes. They wanted an easy way for merchants to sign up and then select a theme. So for example, let's say you're in electronics, manufacturer, and you want to sell online, you'll want a different template than somebody who's selling a skin cream. And so we would create a variety of templates and we would sell them in the Shopify marketplace. So we were their first partner in their theme marketplace.
是的，实际上，这个故事可以追溯到2010年左右。当时我正在经营我的原始代理商Metalab，我在尝试孵化一些SaaS软件业务和其他项目。我在一次会议上遇到了Harley Finkelstein，他现在是Shopify的首席运营官。当时，Shopify只是一家小小的加拿大软件公司，专注于电子商务。他说，嘿，我们需要有人来制作主题。他们希望商家能够轻松注册并选择主题。比如，假设你是一家电子产品制造商，想要在线销售，你会需要一个与出售护肤霜的人不同的模板。因此，我们创建了各种各样的模板，并在Shopify市场上销售它们。我们成为他们主题市场的第一个合作伙伴。

And that ended up turning into a wonderful business. You know, we would build a theme in a matter of months and we could sell it for years. It's a digital good, very high margin. And our only cost is really maintenance and updating it, doing bug fixes and then doing support. So that business took off. And in 2014, I received an offer to sell that business. And at the time, I was not an investor. I didn't really understand finance in a major way. And so I ended up selling what was really an exceptional business with a huge tailwind. You know, this was the kind of dominant theme seller on the Shopify platform and Shopify was growing at a wild clip and it just gone public. But I ended up selling the business.
然后，这一切发展成了一个非常成功的业务。你知道，我们可以在几个月内建立一个主题，并能够连续多年销售。这是一种数字产品，利润非常高。我们唯一的成本就是维护和更新，做一些错误修复和技术支持。所以这个业务起飞了。2014年，我收到了一个出售这个业务的报价。当时，我并不是一个投资者，也不太了解金融方面的知识。所以我最终卖掉了这个非常出色且风头正劲的业务。你知道，这是Shopify平台上最具主导地位的主题销售商，而且Shopify正以极快的速度增长，并且刚刚上市。但是我最终卖掉了这个业务。

And for the first time, I had this large sum of money. I had millions of dollars in my bank account. And I decided I needed to read a book, you know, about investing, I needed to finally figure that out. And the first book that I picked up was The Warren Buffett Way. And as soon as I read that book, I realized, Oh my God, you know, I've made a mistake. I shouldn't have sold this wonderful business. But I still own 20% of it. I stayed on the board. And I used the knowledge that I learned from Buffett to start tiny. And I continued to follow along with that business as it grew.
第一次，我拥有了一大笔钱。我在银行账户里有数百万美元。我决定需要读一本关于投资的书，你知道，我需要最终弄清楚这个问题。我拿起的第一本书就是《巴菲特的路》。当我读完那本书后，我意识到，天哪，我犯了个错误。我不应该卖掉这个了不起的生意。但我仍然拥有其中的20%股份，我继续担任董事会成员。我利用从巴菲特那里学到的知识，从小规模开始。随着生意的发展，我继续跟随着它。

And the folks that we had sold it to, they were a family office and they decided that they wanted to sell. And so I said, okay, well, can I buy it? And so we ended up buying back the business. And I had met Bill and Howard in passing over the prior years. And at one point, Bill kind of pulled me aside and said, Hey, if you ever want to do a deal, I would love to partner with you. And having been a bootstrapper and having never raised money, I figured, Hey, this is an interesting experiment to a great way to work with someone that I really respect and try raising capital. And so we did that with Bill and Howard and a handful of other investors. And we ended up buying more businesses within that platform. And then we took it public in 2021. And that business is still a public company.
那个我们卖给的那家公司是一个家族办公室，他们决定要卖掉。于是我说，好吧，我能买下它吗？结果我们最终回购了这个企业。在过去几年里，我和比尔和霍华德有过一面之缘。有一次，比尔把我拉到一旁说，嘿，如果你想做交易，我愿意和你合作。作为一个自力更生的人，从未筹集过资金，我觉得这是一个有趣的实验，也是与一个我非常尊敬的人合作的好机会，并尝试筹集资本。于是我们与比尔、霍华德和其他几位投资者共同实施了这个计划。我们在这一平台上购买了更多企业。然后在2021年将其上市。目前这个企业仍然是一家上市公司。

And over the last year, Chris and I, meanwhile, had built this very significant portfolio of other businesses. And we decided that we wanted to take that public. And so we thought, Hey, what better way to do so than to merge into we commerce and have a single stock where we can allocate capital across all the different entities in one place. And so we just announced that merger about a month ago. Congratulations on that. It's very exciting.
在过去一年里，同时，克里斯和我已经建立了一个非常重要的其他业务组合。我们决定将其公开上市。因此我们想，嗨，有什么比与我们商业交易合并更好的方式，从而在一个地方分配资金给所有不同的实体呢。所以我们大约一个月前宣布了这个合并。对此表示祝贺！非常令人兴奋。

The Buffett book is interesting for obvious reasons. He's one of my big references. And I know that we both study him. And there's a a lot about tiny that resembles Berkshire. But some something that stood out to me that may or may not resemble Berkshire in a way is that tiny seems to be almost agnostic to existing management when they're looking at acquiring, you're looking at acquiring a company. And you seem pretty confident in the idea of placing a proper leader at the helm. If you need to. And I'm curious how many or have you found many founders that can make the transition from leading what I call pirates to sailors, right? Or do you find that it's often best to find a more seasoned person to put in place to run a much larger operation? And maybe best not to leave it to the founders. What's it?
巴菲特的那本书因为明显的理由而有趣。他是我最重要的参考之一。我知道我们俩都在研究他。在很多方面，小公司有很多像伯克希尔的地方。但有一件事引起了我的注意，可能与伯克希尔有些相似，那就是在考察并购时，小公司似乎对现有管理层几乎没有偏好。而你似乎对于在公司中找到一个合适的领导者的想法相当有信心，如果需要的话。我很好奇，你找到了多少创始人能够从主导我所称之为"海盗"到"水手"的过渡？或者你是否发现，为了管理一个更大的运营机构，找到一位经验丰富的人来接替会更好？也许最好不要把这个任务交给创始人们。你的看法是什么？

There's really no rules. There's only experience. And I think for myself, I realized pretty quickly that I was a great zero to one person. I loved starting things. But and I really loved operating at large scale. But I didn't like the in between.
真的没有规则，只有经验。对我而言，我很快意识到我是一个非常擅长从零开始的人。我喜欢开启新事物。但是，我真的喜欢在大规模上操作。但我不喜欢中间的过程。

And for me, personally, I actually didn't like managing large groups of people. I love managing a 20 person company. But I don't really enjoy managing 100 or 1000 person company. And so it's much better for me to hire CEOs who enjoyed that phase of growth and operations.
对于我个人来说，我实际上不喜欢管理庞大的团队。我喜欢管理一个20人的公司，但是不太喜欢管理100人或1000人的公司。因此，对我来说更好的选择是聘请那些享受增长和运营阶段的首席执行官。

I often think about a business like just using example, Chipotle. So if you think about, there was somebody invented the burrito, right? That was one person. Another person came up with the concept of a fast casual burrito joint. That was the founder of Chipotle. Somebody else scale or he scaled it to five locations or something like that. And then he likely brought on a president or CEO who had experience in fast food who took it to 100 locations, and then perhaps handed the baton to somebody else who took it to 1000 locations.
我经常思考像是Chipotle这样的商业模式。所以你想想，肯定有人发明了墨西哥卷饼，对吧？那就是一个人的创意。另一个人提出了快速休闲式墨西哥卷饼连锁店的概念。这就是Chipotle的创始人。然后又有其他人将它扩大到五个地点或类似的规模。接下来，他可能会找来一个有快餐经验的总裁或首席执行官，将其扩展到100个地点，然后也许将接力棒交给其他人，使其发展到1000个地点。

And I think each of those baton passes, each of those different CEOs or leaders is a different skill set. Now, are there exceptions to the rule like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg? Absolutely. But I think there are few and far between. And if you look at someone like Mark Zuckerberg, he still hired Cheryl, Cheryl Sandberg, who is an experienced executive who had scaled a very similar business at Google and had basically already done it.
我认为每次接班，每次有不同的首席执行官或领导人，都需要不同的技能。当然，比尔·盖茨或马克·扎克伯格这样的例外情况是有的。但我认为这样的例外是少之又少的。而且，如果你看看像马克·扎克伯格这样的人，他仍然雇佣了经验丰富的高管谢丽尔·桑德伯格，谢丽尔在谷歌已经成功扩大了一个非常类似的业务。

And so, effectively, what we tell founders is that if they want to stay on, they're absolutely welcome to and we'll leave them alone and they can keep operating the business as long as they like with minimal interference. Some of those founders want us to help. They'll say, hey, I really need a COO, a CFO, new team members, and we'll help them with that. But a lot of the time, they'll just say, hey, I just want to keep running my business. And I went with you guys because you're easy to deal with and you leave me alone.
因此，实际上，我们告诉创始人的是，如果他们想继续留任，我们非常欢迎，并且会让他们自由发展业务，尽可能少地干涉。其中一些创始人希望我们的帮助。他们会说，嘿，我真的需要一个首席运营官、首席财务官和新的团队成员，我们会帮助他们解决这些问题。但是很多时候，他们只是说，嘿，我只想继续经营我的业务。我选择和你们合作是因为你们易于相处，并且对我保持距离。

Then there's other founders who just want to sail off from the sunset. They want the easiest deal ever. 30-day cash in the bank on day 31 payment, sign the documents and you're done with a little transition period. And we do both. So, we have really great experiences with some founders who have stayed on, grown their business significantly, and then we've also brought in CEOs around the business.
然后还有另一些创始人，他们只是想在日落时驶向大海。他们希望得到最轻松的交易。在第31天收到银行账户里的现金支付，并签署文件，稍作过渡期就完成了。我们两者都有。因此，我们与一些留任并显著发展业务的创始人经历了非常良好的合作，同时也引入了围绕业务的CEO。

And typically, the way we think about that is just we want to find somebody who's done it before. So, like I said with the burrito example, if I have a 50-location, fast, casual business, I want to find someone who's grown a similar business from 50 locations to 200 locations in a business with similar values. And so, we basically find people like that, we plug them in and we leave them to it.
通常情况下，我们对此的思考方式只是希望找到之前已经做过的人。就像我之前提到的墨西哥卷饼的例子，如果我的快餐业务已经在50个地点开设，我希望找到一个在相似价值观下，将类似业务从50个地点扩展到200个地点的人。所以，我们基本上会找到这样的人，让他们去做，然后我们离开他们自己去完成工作。

That quick deal, a 30-day deal is super interesting to me because one thing I've really admired about Buffett over the years are these how he simplifies almost everything. And there's a certain beauty to that. And I know that he's done a few deals just over a handshake. And you seem to follow the same sort of philosophy in songwriting or I guess in writing general, there's this idea, first idea, best idea sometimes. And it reminds me of that because it's sort of like, let's not over-complicate this or rethink it. Your gut feel probably has to be pretty spot-on. So, I'm curious how you really ultimately decided to do that and how hard it might actually be to do that because while it all sounds very simple, that's a lot of work, probably in a very short period of time, a lot of hard big decisions to make pretty quickly. Maybe walk us through what a 30-day deal really looks like.
那个快速成交的30天的协议对我来说非常有趣，因为多年来，我真的非常欣赏巴菲特之处，他几乎可以将一切事情都简化。而这其中有一种特殊的美。我知道他有时只用一个握手就达成了几笔交易。你似乎也遵循了同样的哲学，无论是在创作歌曲还是写作中，有时候第一个想法就是最好的想法。这让我想起来，就好像我们不要过度复杂化或重新思考。你的直觉可能必须相当准确。因此，我很好奇你是如何最终决定做这个交易的，以及实际上做起来可能有多困难，因为虽然听起来很简单，但这需要大量的工作，可能是在很短的时间内做出大量的艰难决策。也许你可以走过一遍一个30天交易的过程，让我们更加了解。

So, I'd say there's no set timeline. At the end of the day, the founder is the one who sets that. So, if somebody comes to us and they say, look, I've got an incredible deal. Here's everything you need to know. I want to transact in two weeks. My lawyer's already drafted the purchase and sale. Here you go. We could totally get that done if we loved the business and we loved the person. And then at the same time, often the founder has advisors. They have a lawyer. The lawyer really wants to dial everything in. Sometimes that takes three to six months. So, there's really no rhyme or reason. Sometimes they take a long time. Sometimes they go really quick. And we don't pressure people to close in 30 days. It's more an indication that if they're comfortable and they want to move quick, we can do that.
那么，我会说没有固定的时间表。到最后，创始人是决定时间的那个人。所以，如果有人来找我们说，“看，我有个令人难以置信的交易。这是你需要知道的一切。我希望在两个星期内完成交易。我的律师已经草拟了买卖合同。给你。”如果我们很喜欢这个企业和这个人，我们完全可以办到。与此同时，创始人通常有顾问。他们有一个律师。律师真的想把一切都搞清楚。有时候这需要三到六个月的时间。所以，真的没有什么规律可循。有时候会花很长时间，有时候会很快。我们不会对人们施加压力，在30天内完成交易。这只是表示如果他们感到舒适并且想要快速办理，我们是可以做到的。

From my perspective, you can't do a good deal with a bad person. And if you need a contract and you have to rely on a contract, that's not a good sign. So, we do have a general counsel and obviously we draft all the requisite contracts and that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, if somebody is going to defraud you or something like that, that's going to happen regardless of a contract. And a contract, it gives you legal protections, but you have to go to court. It's a five-year process.
从我的角度来看，与一个坏人做生意是不可能得到好的交易的。如果你需要一个合同，并且必须依赖于合同，那是一个不好的迹象。因此，我们确实有一个总顾问，显然我们起草了所有必要的合同等文件。但是在结束的时候，如果有人要欺骗你之类的事情，那将会发生，无论是否有合同。合同为你提供法律保护，但你必须去法庭。这是一个五年的过程。

So, to be honest, while we do all that stuff, I'm really trying to examine the quality of the person and do a lot of qualitative analysis of this person. Are they authentic? Are they nervous? Do we have friends in common? What's their pattern of behavior in the past? Do we trust them? Would we let them babysit our kids? There's a lot of these kind of qualitative checklists that we go through. And yeah, that's how we're assessing people in terms of these deals.
所以，说实话，在我们做所有那些事情的同时，我真的很努力地审查这个人的素质，并进行大量关于这个人的定性分析。他们是真实的吗？他们紧张吗？我们有共同的朋友吗？他们过去的行为模式是怎样的？我们相信他们吗？我们会让他们照顾我们的孩子吗？有很多这样的定性检查清单我们需要遵循。所以，这就是我们在这些交易中评估人员的方式。

In my recent conversation with Christoph Goliath, he highlighted a study that showed that people are incentivized by remuneration but more motivated by equitable remuneration. So, in other words, people essentially weigh being paid fairly more than the actual wage itself. From your experiences, have you learned anything about, what have you learned about incentivizing and motivating so that you can increase delegation going back to this Berkshire model?
在我最近与克里斯托弗·戈利亚特的对话中，他强调了一项研究，显示人们受到报酬的激励，但更多的动力来自公正的报酬。换句话说，人们实质上更注重公正的报酬，而不仅仅是实际工资本身。根据您的经验，您对激励和激励方面有了什么了解？您学到了什么，以便您可以继续实践伯克希尔模型，并增加授权委托？

So, I used to, in the early days of my agency business, I had this feeling like, why am I the only one that cares? Or why am I the only one that's excited? And I think that people obviously work for the work. There's people that are intrinsically motivated that love what they do. But at the end of the day, if you're winning, I think everybody needs to win together. And so, we found that as soon as we actually figured out incentives and we started bonusing people in line with the numbers that we cared about. So, for example, free cash flow or net profit or e-bittar, whatever makes sense in that particular situation, that alignment of incentives, as long as the employee or CEO understood how they won, had some control over those numbers, and understood the numbers, we found that people all pull together and achieve whatever needs to get done to hit those numbers. And so, that's worked really, really well for us.
在我公司经营初期的那段时间，我常常有一种感觉，为什么只有我一个人在乎？为什么只有我一个人感到兴奋？我认为人们显然是为了工作而工作，有些人内在地受到动力驱使，他们热爱自己的工作。但是，归根结底，如果你获胜了，我认为每个人都应该一起获胜。因此，我们发现只要我们真正明确了激励措施，并根据我们关注的指标对员工进行奖励，例如自由现金流、净利润或者EBITDA，具体情况而定，只要员工或者CEO理解他们如何获胜，能够对这些数字有一定的掌控力和理解力，我们发现所有人都会齐心协力，完成达成这些数字的任务。所以，这对我们来说非常有效。

And we try and ensure that we don't have kind of lottery ticket incentives. So, if the quarter doesn't get hit perfectly, they're still getting paid, right? We don't want somebody to be dejected and punished by rewards. Can you say more about that? I'm curious about the lottery system there.
我们尽量确保我们没有类似于彩票奖励的激励措施。因此，即使季度没有完美完成，他们仍然会得到报酬，对吗？我们不希望有人因奖励而感到沮丧和受到惩罚。你能多说点关于那个彩票系统的事情吗？我对它很好奇。

Well, so, for example, let's say that you, let's say your stock price is $20 and you issue and employ $100,000 of stock options. And then the business, let's say the stock price drops to $15. Suddenly, that employee went from being in the money on their options to their options being worth absolutely zero. It's completely binary. Whereas an owner, they would have gotten, they would have the equity at $20. Their equity would become worth a little bit less as it dropped $15, but they would still care. They'd still have something to lose. And so, we try and, as much as possible, avoid those kind of lottery ticket incentives.
好的，那么，举个例子，假设你，假设你的股票价格是20美元，你发行并使用了100,000美元的股票期权。然后，假设股票价格下跌到15美元。突然之间，那位员工从之前的期权中有利可图变成了期权完全没有价值。这完全是一个二选一的情况。而一个股东，他们本来可以以20美元的价格拥有股权。虽然股价下跌到15美元后他们的股权价值会减少一点，但他们依然会在意。他们仍然会有一些损失。所以，我们尽可能避免使用这种类似彩票的激励机制。

Very interesting. So, Buffett in delegation seemed to go hand in hand. He, apparently, we were talking about before how we're kind of still curious and scratching our head how he lives this very stress-free life and has nothing on his calendar apparently doesn't do email. So, from what I've learned about you, from some of the other interviews you've done is that the ladder is a bit of a struggle or still a struggle. And I think for most of us, it is. So, it's not just you. I relate what has worked and what hasn't worked for simplifying your life and trying to de-stress it as you continue to delegate.
非常有趣。所以，巴菲特在委派方面似乎与他的生活密切相关。显而易见的是，我们之前讨论过他是如何过着无压力生活，日程上似乎毫无安排，不使用电子邮件。根据我从你以前的一些采访中了解到的情况，似乎你在这方面仍然有些挣扎。而我相信对于我们大多数人来说，也是如此。因此，这并不仅仅是你一个人的问题。我想了解一下在继续委派的过程中，你在简化生活和减压方面已经尝试过哪些方法，以及哪些方法并不适用。

Well, ultimately, the number one thing that's worked for me has been taking every single piece of responsibility for a subsidiary business and ensuring there's somebody who's responsible for it. At the end of the day, there's no way I could keep all the businesses in my head. And so, I have to rely on a wonderful group of CEOs to operate those businesses. And so, that covers off most of the day-to-day fires.
好吧，最终，对我最有效的事情是对子公司的每一项责任都亲力亲为，并确保有人负责。到了一天结束的时候，我无法把所有的业务都记在心里。因此，我必须依靠一群出色的首席执行官来运营这些业务。这样，大部分日常火灾都能得到解决。

When I was running my agency, I would get a phone call every day saying, oh, this client won't pay us and this employee is quitting. And each of those required an actual next action, I had to immediately that day respond to the client and get on a phone call or whatever.
当我经营我的机构时，每天都会接到电话，说这个客户不愿支付我们的款项，那个员工要离职了。而每一个情况都需要一个实际的下一步行动，我必须当天立即回应客户并跟他们通电话或采取其他措施。

My problems now are much more high level. Like, it's kind of like a, are we going to buy this business or not? And I've got 30 days to decide. Are we going to restructure our debt into X or Y facility? And there's a lot of time for analysis. So, it's much slower.
我的问题现在更高级了。就像，我们是买这个企业还是不买？我有30天的时间来决定。我们是将我们的债务重组到X还是Y设施中？有很多时间进行分析。所以，进展得慢得多。

That said, I still, as you mentioned, struggle to not have a full calendar and email. And to be honest, I don't know how Buffett does it. I think that he, I mean, it's, I think it's real. So, I once got an introduction to Buffett via email and I got a response from his assistant the next morning, and I just said, Mr. Buffett's in his office. Here's the number, call him right now. And he immediately picked up and he talked to me for an hour and a half. And I don't understand how that happened or why he decided to make time for some random kid in Canada. But he seems to be pulling it off. And I don't know what the secret to that is. Maybe it's not doing email.
话虽如此，正如你提到的，我仍然很难保持日程和电子邮件的空闲。老实说，我不知道巴菲特是如何做到的。我认为他就是如此。所以，有一次我通过电子邮件向巴菲特打招呼，第二天早上我收到了他助手的回复，他只是简单地说巴菲特先生在办公室里，这是他的电话号码，立即给他打电话。他立刻接起了电话，和我谈了一个半小时。我不明白为什么他会这样做，也不明白为什么他决定为一个加拿大的陌生人腾出时间。但他似乎做到了。我不知道其中的秘诀是什么。也许不写电子邮件是其中之一。

From my perspective, you know, I've tried a lot of different stuff. I have an assistant who reviews all my email and flags the most critical ones. So, if I don't want to look at email, I can just look at the three or four that are kind of burning or time sensitive. But I struggle with this like anybody else. And I, you know, I always joke, I'm tough on for tasks. If there's anything that comes to me, I'm allergic to it. I want to delegate it. But I still somehow managed to have a lot of stuff to do.
从我的角度来看，你知道，我尝试过很多不同的事情。我有一个助理来审核我的所有电子邮件，并标记出最关键的邮件。所以，如果我不想查看电子邮件，我只需查看那三四封比较紧急或时间敏感的邮件。但我与其他人一样也面临困扰。我总是开玩笑说，对于任务，我是一个很难应付的人。如果有什么事情来找我，我会对它过敏。我想委托他人来做。但一些事情我还是设法要自己做。

Can you tell us more about that call? I mean, you had a little bit of time maybe to prep, but you knew you had to call right now it sounded like. So, there wasn't a lot of time to think what was going through your mind and what questions maybe were you able to ask Buffett that you were maybe hoping to and were you surprised by anything he said in response?
你能告诉我们更多关于那次电话的情况吗？我的意思是，虽然你可能有一点时间进行准备，但你知道你必须马上打电话。所以，你没有太多时间来思考你的想法，还有你或许能问巴菲特什么问题，他对你的回答是否让你感到惊讶？

I mean, I think, you know, there's that whole idea of not wanting to meet your heroes, because they'll let you down. And Buffett absolutely did not. I've met both Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett now. And, you know, he was just so high. I was struck by how high his EQ was, you know, he really listened, he mirrored back. You know, he clearly was listening to what I was saying. He asked a lot of really great questions.
我的意思是，你知道的，有这种不愿见到自己的英雄的想法，因为他们会让你失望。而巴菲特绝对没有让我失望。我现在见过查理·芒格和沃伦·巴菲特。你知道的，他非常睿智。他的情商很高，他真的倾听，回应我说的话。他问了很多很好的问题。

And I got the sense he was, you know, you talked to a lot of old people and they're not, you know, they're not aware of you. They're not really kind of digging into what you want to talk about. It's just, you know, them talking about whatever they want to talk about. And I felt that he, yeah, really took the time to see me and understand me and ask really good questions. And I got to ask him a lot of questions primarily around raising children and money and philanthropy that was fascinating.
我感觉他是这样的，你知道，你跟很多老年人交谈过，他们并不总是关注你，也不会真正深入探讨你想聊的话题。他们只是在讲述他们想谈的事情。我感觉他真的花时间观察我，理解我，并且问了很好的问题。我也有机会问他很多问题，主要是关于如何教育孩子、金钱和慈善事业，这让我着实着迷。

But the interesting thing about Buffett is that he's very public with his opinions. And if you've listened to all of his public interviews, and you've read all of his letters, you pretty much know what he's going to say on any topic. Munger, I find, so if Buffett is like, you know, classic rock, you kind of know how it's going to go are 12 bar blues. Munger is like jazz, you know, he'll just spout off about any topic. You never know what he's going to say. I mean, if you've seen the Daily Journal, Annual General Meeting, you'll know this, right? You never know what he's going to say next. And it's fascinating. But I really enjoyed talking to both of them.
不过，有趣的是巴菲特非常公开地表达自己的观点。如果你听过他的所有公开采访，并阅读过他的所有信件，你基本上可以知道他在任何一个话题上会说什么。而我发现蒙格则完全不同，如果说巴菲特就好比经典摇滚，你差不多可以猜到他会怎么说，那么蒙格就像爵士乐，你知道他会不受约束地谈论任何话题。你永远不知道他会说什么。我的意思是，如果你见过他主持的《每日日报》年度股东大会，你就会明白，你永远不知道他接下来会说什么。这很迷人。但我真的很喜欢跟他们两个交流。

One of Buffett's quotes about raising kids that I've come across is that he wants to leave them enough to do something, but not enough to do nothing. I'm kind of curious, well, you're now wealthy individual raising parents and what have you, what philosophies have you grabbed on to either from Buffett or others that have helped direct you with raising your own kids? I think it's really, really challenging. And to be honest, I haven't really come to a conclusion.
巴菲特关于抚养孩子的一句名言是，他希望给孩子们足够的条件去做一些事情，却不希望给他们过多的条件什么都不做。我有点好奇，你作为一个富有的个体，同时也是一个养育孩子的父母，你从巴菲特或其他人那里获得了哪些理念，帮助你在抚养自己的孩子时指导你？我觉得这真的非常具有挑战性。老实说，我还没有得出一个结论。

At this point, my kids are five and three. And I, you know, imagine if you're, you come from a long line of farmers and you are the generation that, you know, created a large industrial farm that can feed an entire town. Is it logical for you as a someone in a farming family to then go teach your kids how to grow root vegetables? Or is it better to say, hey, you know, here's how you can run this large business? Or here, help me give away the money to everyone in the town or, you know, hey, go play violin and study philosophy. Or, you know, should I say, hey, all this is mine. You go start your own farm from scratch. And I think every single one of those has a pitfall. And I don't really know what I'm going to do yet. I'm still trying to figure that out. But I'm trying to explain it to my kids.
现在，我的孩子五岁和三岁。你知道的，如果你来自一个农民世家，而你是一代人，你建立了一个可以养活整个城镇的大型工业农场。作为一个来自农民家庭的人，教你的孩子如何种植根菜是合理的吗？或者会更好地说，嘿，这就是你如何经营这个大型企业？或者，嘿，帮我把钱分给镇上所有人，或者，你知道，去玩小提琴和学习哲学。或者，我应该说，嘿，这一切都是我的，你从零开始自己建立农场。我认为这些选择都有缺陷。我还不知道自己将要做什么。但我正在努力向我的孩子们解释这个问题。

I think that one of the mistakes that I've heard is not talking about the wealth, not exposing them to it, not helping them understand it. So I'm, you know, as best I can with a five year old, I'm trying to explain all the different businesses I own and how we make money. And whenever we go to a cafe and we buy something, I try and explain that, you know, that came out of my bank account and we walk through how I made the money. But yeah, it's a really hard decision. And it has pretty serious consequences. Relating because I have a five year old, two boys as well. So it's very topical for me.
我认为我听过的一个错误是不谈论财富，不让他们接触到它，不帮助他们理解。所以，我尽我最大的努力，以五岁孩子最易懂的方式，解释我所拥有的不同业务和我们如何赚钱。每当我们去咖啡馆买东西时，我试着解释，你知道，那是从我的银行账户里出来的，我们一起详细了解我是如何赚钱的。但是，这是一个非常困难的决定，而且后果相当严重。我有一个五岁的孩子，还有两个儿子，所以对我来说这是非常当前的话题。

And one thing I'm really curious about is how you're thinking about teaching them investing, because you mentioned earlier, you kind of had a windfall at one point and you said, okay, what do I do with this? You went and bought a Buffett book and you kind of started, I guess, maybe later, it would seem it or didn't come as natural. And at least for me, that's how it was. I didn't learn about what the S&P 500 was till my mid 20s. So I was way behind the curve. And I'm curious about maybe how you're thinking about starting someone out earlier than maybe you did.
有一件事我真的很好奇，那就是你如何考虑教他们投资，因为你之前提到过，你曾一次获得了一笔意外之财，然后你说，好的，我该怎么处理这笔钱呢？你去买了一本巴菲特的书，然后开始入门，或许稍晚一些，或者并不像你表现得那么自然。对我来说，情况也是如此。直到我25岁才了解什么是标准普尔500指数，所以我远远落后了。我很好奇你是如何考虑让某人比你更早开始投资的。

Well, I think that everything I've ever become passionate about, I was just slapped in the face by, or there was a really important reason why I wanted it. So when it came to investing or starting businesses, I grew up in a family where we didn't have a lot of money. We weren't super poor, but money was always a really tense topic in our house. My parents were in a lot of debt. My dad's business was failing. And so I just didn't want everyone to be stressed out. And so I always told myself that I was going to make a lot of money so that I wouldn't have to deal with that anxiety. So that's what fueled me starting businesses and getting into investing really out of fear.
嗯，我觉得我所热衷的一切，要么是因为我遭遇了挫折，要么是因为有一个非常重要的原因。所以当涉及到投资或创业时，我成长在一个家庭里，我们没有很多钱。我们并不是非常贫困，但在我们家，金钱始终是一个非常紧张的话题。我的父母背负着很多债务，我爸爸的生意也在失败。所以我不希望每个人都感到压力重重。因此，我一直告诉自己，我要赚很多钱，这样我就不必面对那种焦虑了。这就是推动我从恐惧中开始创业和投资的动力。

In the same vein, I never wanted to play a musical instrument. My mom would try and set me up with piano lessons or singing or any of that stuff. And I just didn't see why I should care. And then one day in grade 11, I had a crush on a girl. And she really liked this guy who played guitar. And so I was like, oh my God, I need to learn guitar. So I taught myself guitar really, really quick to try and impress this girl. Of course, it didn't work, but I had an incentive to do so.
同样的道理，我从来都不想学习弹奏乐器。我妈妈会试着给我安排钢琴课或者唱歌之类的东西。但我真的不明白为什么我要在乎这些。然后在11年级的某一天，我迷上了一个女孩。她特别喜欢一个弹吉他的男孩。所以我想，天啊，我需要学吉他。于是我迅速地自学吉他，希望能给这个女孩留下深刻印象。当然，这并没有奏效，但我有一个动力去这样做。

And with my kids, I really don't want to pressure them into getting into investing. I'd rather that maybe I talked about it passively, or they just noticed that I have all those books. And one day they crack one, or I take them to a Berkshire AGM or something and see if it resonates with them. But I really don't want to push it on them. And I think that at the end of the day, they need to find their own passions and get obsessed with something. And that's going to have to happen naturally.
对于我的孩子们，我真的不想让他们感到压力去投资。我更愿意以一种被动的方式谈论这件事，或者他们只是注意到我有这么多的书。也许有一天他们会翻开一本，或者我带他们去伯克希尔年度股东大会，看看这是否与他们产生共鸣。但我真的不想强加给他们。我认为，最终他们需要找到自己的热情，对某件事情着迷。这种情况只能自然而然地发生。

I love following the stock market and learning about investing concepts. But sometimes I fall victim to information overload. That happens to you too, right? Hundreds of news headlines from CNBC, Forbes, and Twitter all pulling for my attention every hour. How are we supposed to know what's important when everything is made to seem important? Thankfully, you can simply read our free newsletter. Our newsletter only takes about five minutes to read per day. We curate the most important topics in the financial world each day and deliver them straight to your email inbox for free.
我喜欢关注股市并学习投资概念，但有时我会陷入信息过载的困境。你也有这样的感觉吗？每小时都有来自CNBC、福布斯和Twitter的数百条新闻标题吸引我的注意力。当每件事都被夸大为重要时，我们怎么知道什么是真正重要的？幸运的是，你可以简单地阅读我们的免费通讯。我们的通讯每天只需约五分钟的时间阅读。我们每天精选金融界最重要的话题，并将它们直接免费发送到你的电子邮件收件箱中。

Join over 30,000 readers now by simply clicking the link here on the screen and then entering your email. It's that simple. Just click the link here on the pop up on your screen, enter your email, and start knowing what's happening with your money.
现在只需点击屏幕上的链接并输入您的电子邮件，即可加入超过30,000名读者。就是这么简单。只需点击屏幕上的弹出窗口上的链接，输入您的电子邮件，开始了解您的金钱动态。

That monger quote right show me an incentive. I'll show you a result comes to mind. There's another monger quote that comes to mind too, which is all I want to attribute a demonger off. And I'm not sure if it's something he picked up. But it's all I want to do is know where I'm going to die so that I never go there. And with this in mind, everyone's familiar with this idea of goal setting. And that seems to be a big part of what it takes to become successful. But I know that you and your partner have developed a practice that you call anti goals. So can you talk to us about what an anti goal is and how you go about doing something like that?
这个“monger”的名言用来向我展示一个激励，我就能给你展示一个浮现在脑海中的结果。还有另一个“monger”的名言使我也想抹去一个“恶习”。我不确定这是他学来的什么，但我只想知道我将在哪里死去，以便永远不去那个地方。有了这个想法，每个人都对设定目标这个概念很熟悉。这似乎是成功所需的重要因素之一。但我知道你和你的伙伴发展出了一种叫做反目标的实践。所以你能告诉我们什么是反目标，并谈谈你们如何去做这样的事吗？

Yes, we read that monger quote and it really resonated. And a couple years ago, Chris and I were feeling really unhappy. You know, on paper, we were very successful financially. We had wonderful businesses. We had a lot of freedom on paper, but our actual day to day lives were really stressful. And so we started kind of looking around and saying, you know, what actually makes us miserable. It's really hard to think about what's going to make you happy. You know, you might go, oh, when I have a Ferrari and a mansion and a private jet, I'll be happy. But in reality, it's hard to predict. But you know, for sure that you don't like being, you know, really, really tired, overbooked on your calendar, you know, back to back meetings and phone calls, a lot of business travel, etc. And so we made this list of anti goals of things we didn't want to do. And then we kind of reverse engineered it from there. And that was very instructive for us in terms of hiring. So who could we hire? For example, let's say that Chris was spending a lot of time with our banking relationships. Who could we hire to go and do that for us? And then, you know, finding someone who loves doing the banking relationships will do a better job than Chris. And in doing so, we'll free us up to not have to do the things that we hate. So we found that very instructive actually wrote a medium post. If you search the power of anti goals on Google, it should come up as the first result.
是的，我们阅读了那个行销名言，并且深感共鸣。几年前，克里斯和我感到非常不开心。你知道，在表面上，我们在财务上非常成功。我们拥有美好的事业。在纸面上，我们有很多自由，但我们的日常生活非常有压力。因此，我们开始四处寻找，问自己，到底是什么让我们痛苦。想要知道什么会让你开心其实很难。你可能会说，哦，当我有一辆法拉利、一幢豪宅和一架私人飞机时，我会很开心。但实际上，很难预测。但你当然知道，你不喜欢自己非常累、日程安排过满，会议和电话连绵不断，商务旅行等等。所以我们列了个反目标的清单，列出了我们不想做的事情。然后我们反推思考。这对我们的招聘非常有指导意义。比如说，如果克里斯花了很多时间处理我们的银行关系，我们可以雇一个人替我们去处理。找一个喜欢处理银行关系的人，他会比克里斯做得更好。这样，我们就不用做我们讨厌的事情了。我们发现这非常有启发，甚至写了一篇关于此的文章在 Medium 上。如果你在谷歌上搜索“反目标的力量”，它应该会作为第一个结果出现。

You mentioned your family and debt. And you mentioned earlier with restructuring debt when we're coming to deals. I'm interested about your history with bootstrapping and your relationship to debt as you became an acquirer and an investor. So as Carl Icahn is known to say, your valuation, my terms, and a lot of people think of acquisition simply as just the price. But there's a lot more to it than that. And the structure of a deal is almost just as important. So a lot of nuance can go into a deal. But I'm more curious about where you started, how you refine your approach and what resources you use to kind of educate yourself on how to create deal structures.
你提到了你的家庭和债务。在讨论交易重组债务时，你之前也提到过。我对你的自力更生经历和你在成为收购者和投资者时与债务的关系很感兴趣。就像卡尔·伊坎经常说的那样，你的估值、我的条款，很多人只把收购定价视作全部。但实际上，这其中还有很多其他因素。交易结构几乎同样重要。所以，交易中可能涉及很多细微差别。但更让我好奇的是你是如何起步的，如何优化你的方法，并且你使用了哪些资源来学习如何创建交易结构。

Well, we were really country bumpkins. We had no clue whatsoever. Chris and I were really good operators. We knew how to read a financial statement, but we didn't know anything about deal terms or structures or cap tables or anything else. And so in the early days, the way I kind of think about it, or thought about in the early days, and I still kind of think about it is, if I buy this business, how do I pay myself back in five years? So that can be, I pay five times earnings, right? And the business just stays flat, pay myself back in five years. Let's say that I pay 10 times earnings. Let's say it's a business that's growing a little faster. I've got to double the earnings. Well, how hard is that going to be? What levers can be pulled? So for example, when we bought dribble, which is our social network for designers, we looked at the business and we said, okay, we're going to pay, I think we paid about 10 times earnings for the business. And we identified two or three kind of low hanging fruit opportunities within the business, where we were confident that in the first two years, we could pull those levers and that we could double the earnings. And so that's kind of how we think about it to this day. So even if I'm paying 20x, I'm still thinking about, can I grow the earnings appropriately to get to the point where I can pay myself back in five years if I was cash flowing the business?
嗯，我们真的是土里土气的乡下人。我们完全不知道任何事情。Chris和我是非常出色的经营者。我们知道如何阅读财务报表，但对交易条款、结构、股本结构或其他任何事情一无所知。所以在早期，我对此的想法是，如果我购买这个企业，如何在五年内把钱还给自己呢？这可能是通过支付五倍的收益来实现的，对吧？企业保持稳定，我在五年内将钱还给自己。假设我支付十倍的收益。假设这是一个增长稍快的企业。我需要将收益翻倍，那会有多难？可以采取哪些措施呢？例如，当我们购买dribble这个面向设计师的社交网络时，我们审视了该企业，并确定了其中两三个低悬果实的机会。我们相信在头两年，我们可以操作这些杠杆，将收益翻倍。所以这就是我们至今的思考方式。即使我支付了20倍，我仍然在思考，我能否适当地增加收益，在五年内将钱还给自己，如果我在经营这个企业的话。

I noticed that there's, I think you're under what, 30 fully owned companies now, and there's something like 90 that you're a minority investor in. What is there? Is there often a path where the minorities are something that ultimately become majority or the minorities more bigger pies already that you're just wanting to write along with?
我注意到现在有约30家完全归您所有的公司，并且还有大约90家您拥有少数股权的公司。这些股权中有什么情况呢？有没有一种情况是少数股东最终成为多数股东，或者这些少数股权已经是更大的收益机会，您只是想乘坐其中？

Well, it's interesting. So being an entrepreneur, I have a lot of entrepreneur friends, and they often start companies. And so as they've started companies, they'll come to me and say, hey, I'm raising money for my company, and we'll throw in 50 or 100 grand. And I kind of look at it as roulette chips. It's not our primary business. It's fun. We get to engage with great entrepreneurs, and we put down a whole bunch of chips. And now and then we win, I think we're up, at least on paper, we're up a reasonable amount, and it's fine. And it gives us some market intelligence. We get to see kind of what's happening in the startup world. And occasionally, we will buy a majority stake or buy one of the startups. That's quite rare. It says probably one in, one in 50 that we'll do follow on or buy majority in. Our core business is buying majority stakes in cash flowing businesses. And I think that's like playing poker. You actually have an advantage and skill matters. So that's the primary focus. And I think it's like 97% of our capital or something. I'm making that number up, but it's something very significant that's in the majority deals. And the venture stuff is very small percentage of what we do.
嗯，这很有趣。作为一名企业家，我有很多企业家朋友，他们经常开办公司。所以当他们开始创业时，他们会来找我说，嘿，我正在为我的公司筹集资金，我们可以投入50或100万。我把它看作是轮盘赌筹码。这不是我们的主要业务，只是玩乐而已。我们可以与优秀的企业家互动，投入一大堆筹码。偶尔，我们会赢一些钱，至少在表面上，我们是赢得了相当可观的金额，这没关系。这也使我们获得了一些市场情报，我们可以看到创业界发生了什么。偶尔，我们会购买一家初创公司的多数股权或完全收购它。这种情况非常罕见，大概有50个项目中可能只有一个我们会跟进或者完全收购。我们的主要业务是购买多数股权的现金流企业。我认为这就像打扑克牌一样。你实际上有一种优势，技术很重要。所以这是我们的主要关注点。我认为这占我们资本的大约97%或其他很大的比例。我只是编了这个数字，但是绝大部分是用在多数交易上的，风险投资只占很小的比例。

I was kind of asking because I know Buffett does this and Tom Gaynor introduced me to it as well. But they'll sometimes own tiny little pieces of hundreds of companies. And it's sort of to just get their appetite wet. They put a little bit of money into it. They're all of a sudden, that much more interested in it. I was kind of curious. It's almost like a screener. You're building a screener with a little bit of money on the table.
我之所以问这个问题是因为我知道巴菲特和汤姆·盖纳也在这样做。但他们有时会拥有数百家公司的微小股份。这只是为了激发他们的兴趣。他们会投入一点点资金进去，然后对它变得更感兴趣。我对此感到很好奇。这就像是一个筛选器。你在桌子上放上一点点钱，然后对它感兴趣。

Exactly. And with that in mind and your relationship with Munger, he obviously is the right handman of Warren Buffett. But he's made his own choices along the way and his own investments. Have you picked up anything from being around him that has sort of informed you on where his mind takes him or why he's opposed to certain deals or in uncertain deals? He loves Costco. He loves Alibaba. He loves certain companies that Buffett, for whatever reason, isn't invested in. I'm kind of curious if you've seen something that differentiates them that may or may not be obvious to the public.
确实如此。考虑到这一点，以及您与门格的关系，他显然是沃伦·巴菲特的得力助手。但他在这个过程中做出了自己的选择并进行了自己的投资。您是否在与他相处的过程中学到了一些东西，这些东西在一定程度上告诉您他思虑问题的方式，或者他为什么反对某些交易或不确定的交易？他喜欢好市多，他喜欢阿里巴巴，他喜欢一些巴菲特出于某种原因没有投资的公司。我很好奇您是否观察到了他们之间的一些不同之处，这些差异对公众可能不太明显。

No, I have no unique insights into Munger's portfolio or anything like that. But I will just say, what I've taken from Munger has mostly, despite knowing him, it's mostly been from a distance. He's reading all the quotes that you've shared and reading endless books on him. He's someone you can learn from a distance very effectively. And the thing I love about Munger is just his level of patience is staggering. He'll buy one. I think he had a great quote. He said, I read Barron's magazine for 40 years and I bought one stock from it. And on that one stock, I made 100x. He just sits on his hands year after year after year. And he does not do anything that he does not want to do. So he does not interact with shareholders. He runs Daily Journal exactly the way that he wants to run it. He's a total character. He lives a life that is truly tailored for himself and his own interests.
不，我对芒格的投资组合或其他方面没有独特的见解。但我只想说，尽管了解他，但我大多数取得的收获还是通过远距离学习。他读了你分享的所有引用，并读了无数关于他的书。他是一个你可以从远处有效学习的人。而我喜欢芒格的一点就是他的耐心令人震撼。他会购买某一只股票。我记得他有一句很棒的名言。他说，我连续读了40年的《巴伦周刊》，只买了一只股票。而在那只股票上，我赚了100倍。他年复一年地坐在那里，不动手。他只做自己愿意做的事情。所以他不和股东互动。他以他自己希望的方式运营着《每日简报》。他是一个非常有个性的人。他过着一个真正适合他自己和他的兴趣的生活。

I know you recently started your own local newspaper. Have you taken any tips from the Daily Journal or any insights or how to structure things with those new businesses?
我知道最近你开始了自己的当地报纸。你从《每日新闻报》得到了一些技巧或经验吗？对于那些新的业务，你有关于如何组织结构的见解吗？

No, not really. I think that I'm fascinated by the news businesses of old. And I think that at the end of the day, news is still important, especially local news. And it's been decimated over the last five or 10 years. And so my goal in getting into that originally was kind of almost philanthropic. I did it as a for-profit business because I wanted the numbers to work out. But I was quite surprised by how much interest we had. So we started a publication here in Victoria where I live. And we very quickly got up to 50,000 subscribers. And it was just a daily email that summarized what was going on in Victoria. We started doing original reporting and investigative journalism. And it really took off. And so now we've expanded that across Canada. We have about 14 different publications. And really what we're betting on is that there's still a demand for local news. There's still a willingness to advertise. It's a very unique way to advertise locally that no longer exists on Instagram and Facebook. But more than that, we try and find ways to connect people in the community. So hopefully you're seeing people you recognize, you're seeing what local businesses are happening and trying to create more connection. Because I think that's really been lost over the last couple of years.
不，不完全是。我觉得我对旧时的新闻业务很着迷。我认为新闻在社会中仍然很重要，尤其是本地新闻。在过去的五到十年里，本地新闻行业受到了严重破坏。因此，我原本进入这个行业的目标几乎是出于慈善目的。我将其作为盈利企业来运营，是因为我希望能够达到经济收支平衡。但我对我们获得了多少关注感到非常惊讶。于是，我们在我居住的维多利亚市开始创办了一份报纸。我们很快就获得了5万名订阅者。最初，这只是一份每日摘要了维多利亚市的动态的电子邮件。后来，我们开始进行原创报道和调查新闻，事情真的就起飞了。所以现在我们已经在加拿大扩展了14个不同的出版物。而我们打赌的便是，本地新闻仍然有市场需求。广告商们仍然愿意投放广告。这是一种非常独特的本地化广告方式，Instagram和Facebook上已经不再存在。但更重要的是，我们试图找到连接社区内人们的方法。希望你可以看到你认识的人，看到本地企业的动态，并试图创造更多的联系。因为我觉得这在过去的几年里确实已经失去了。

From what I understand, you were moved to Victoria. You've mentioned it a couple of times. And I know you have this really deep love. It seems for Victoria from what I can tell. But at first, it seemed like you were kind of kicking and screaming being brought over there. But you've stayed there, which is just kind of something I find really interesting because you've also managed to stay in Victoria, but create your own luck. And I want to kind of explore this idea.
据我所了解，你被调往维多利亚。你曾经提到过几次。我知道你对维多利亚有着深深的爱。从我所看到的情况来看，你似乎一开始对去那里有些抵触。但是你一直留在那里，我觉得这非常有趣，因为你不仅在维多利亚生活下来，还顺利地创造了自己的机遇。我想进一步探索这个想法。

You didn't seem to feel the need to go to some major metropolitan area and network and do things you've been more on, almost defense, I would say, in a way. But you've managed to create your own luck. And I'd like to see if you agree with the philosophy of creating your own luck. And one example I would bring up is actually bidding to have lunch with Bill Ackman, right, knowing that you wanted to meet him and taking that opportunity to put yourself out there and do that. Are there other examples that you found have helped you create your own luck and build relationships or especially being based somewhere not super remote? I mean, it's across from Seattle, not to. But you know, I'm saying, like, it's almost that Omaha reference with Buffett we brought up earlier.
你似乎没有觉得有必要去一些大都市地区进行交际和从事你一直以来更感兴趣的事情，几乎可以说你采取了一种防守的立场。但你设法创造了自己的幸运。我想知道你是否同意创造自己的幸运的理念。我想举一个例子，就是竞拍与比尔·阿克曼共进午餐的机会，明知你想见他并借此机会使自己显露出来。你是否还有其他例子，帮助你创造自己的幸运和建立关系，尤其是在一个不是特别偏僻的地方。我的意思是，它在西雅图的对面，不是吗？但你知道，我是说，就像我们之前提到的巴菲特和奥马哈的比喻。

Yeah, so I moved here when I was 15, I grew up in Vancouver. Vancouver is about a two and a half million person city. Victoria is about 300,000. So it's very, very small. And I hated it. You know, I was 16 years old, did not want to move here. And over time, you know, I really wanted to move to a bigger city, but I always had a girlfriend, my business was here. And I ended up falling in love with the city. And I still, you know, I'd still would travel to Los Angeles and New York and San Francisco and go to conference, business conferences and stuff and meet all sorts of interesting people. But I found that I got a lot of independence by being in Victoria, because there's not a lot of, you know, business people that I would be interacting with. And there's not this kind of memetic desire. You know, I was just in Los Angeles last week, and I visited a house, this beautiful house that my friend had rented. And I asked him how much the house was worth. And he said $70 million. And I think that that's just the next level of competition, you know, a world where the best house costs 200 million in Victoria, the best house costs 10 or 12 million, which is a lot of money. But that's for the best house in town. And so I think the level of competition is much lower. I feel that, you know, I'm quite an anxious person. And I think that my anxiety is just lower, not having to be surrounded constantly by people talking about business and all competing. And so I really enjoy the quiet pace of life.
是的，所以我15岁的时候搬到这里，我在温哥华长大。温哥华是一个约有250万人口的城市，而维多利亚只有约30万人口，所以非常小。而我非常讨厌这里。你知道，当时我16岁，不想搬到这里。然而随着时间的推移，我真的想搬到一个更大的城市，但我总是有女朋友，我的生意也在这里。最终我爱上了这座城市。我还是会去洛杉矶、纽约和旧金山旅行，参加商务会议，与各种有趣的人见面。但我发现，住在维多利亚给了我很多独立自主的感觉，因为这里没有很多我会接触到的商业人士，也没有这种模因欲望。上周我刚去过洛杉矶，我去看了我朋友租的一座漂亮的房子。我问他这座房子的价值，他说7000万美元。我觉得这只是竞争的另一个层次，你知道，在一个维多利亚，最好的房子价值2000万，而这已经是一笔很大的钱了。所以我认为这里的竞争程度要低得多。我感觉我是一个很焦虑的人，不过不必时刻被人们讨论生意和竞争的事情困扰着，我的焦虑感就会降低。所以我真的很享受生活的悠闲节奏。

In terms of networking and stuff, you know, we've been fairly, really lucky with some of the people that we've been able to connect with. And it's been a strategy of either really targeted reach out, or it's been getting into the right room. And so, you know, the way I would think about that would be a lot of people will kind of say, okay, I'm not going to go to Davos, or I'm not going to go to Ted. I'm not ready for those. I'm going to start at little small conferences. I just said, okay, and I paid $15,000 to go to Ted when I was a nobody. And I knew that if I put myself in a room with all those amazing people consistently, year after year for 10 years, eventually I would befriend people and connect with them and do business with them. And so via conferences like Ted, I ended up meeting all these fascinating people, building my business, meeting amazing philanthropists and billionaire business people and all that kind of stuff.
就网络和相关的事情而言，你知道的，我们在与某些人建立联系方面非常幸运。这要么是有针对性地联系，要么是进入了正确的场合。所以，你知道，我会这样考虑，很多人会说，好吧，我不去达沃斯，我不去 TED。我还没有准备好。我要从小规模的会议开始。而我却说，好吧，我作为一个无名小卒，付了一万五千美元去参加 TED。我知道，如果我一年一年地与那些优秀的人保持在同一个房间里，最终我会与他们交朋友、建立联系，并与他们做生意。所以通过像 TED 这样的会议，我最终遇到了所有这些令人着迷的人，发展了我的业务，遇到了很多了不起的慈善家和亿万富翁商人等等。

And then otherwise, I would really study people from a distance. So Buffet and Munger, you know, I read everything I could for seven or eight years before I met them. You know, Ackman, I studied for years, Howard Marks, you know, all people that I've connected with, but I would study them. And when I really wanted to meet someone, I'd try and find a clever way to do so.
然后另一方面，我会远距离地研究人们。所以对于巴菲特和芒格，我在见到他们之前读了七八年的相关资料。对于阿克曼、霍华德·马克斯等人，我也是进行了多年的研究，虽然我与他们联系过，但我仍然会对他们进行深入学习。而当我真的想见到某个人时，我会尝试找到一个巧妙的方式去实现。

So for example, with Bill Ackman, you know, I, you know, followed him for ages. And I just happened to see that he was doing a charity lunch. And so I decided I was going to win that charity lunch. I did $60,000 to go for lunch with him. And I had no idea what to expect. I'd actually invested in his publicly traded company. And so I looked at it as diligence. I had a very large position in it. And I said, okay, if Bill's a jerk, I'm going to sell at the end of the lunch. And if I like him, then I'm maybe I'll buy more and I'll hold.
所以例如，对于Bill Ackman，你知道，我已经关注他很久了。我碰巧看到他在举行慈善午餐，所以我决定要赢得那顿午餐。我出价6万美元去和他共进午餐。我一点也不知道会发生什么。实际上，我曾经投资过他的上市公司。所以我把它当作尽职调查。我在其中占有很大的头寸。我说，好吧，如果比尔是个混蛋，午餐结束后我就会卖掉。如果我喜欢他，那我也许会买更多并持有。

And Bill was lovely. You know, he, we spent three or four hours together. I ended up meeting his whole team at Pershing Square. And we really connected. And, you know, at the end of the lunch, he said, hey, let's find a way to work together. We should do business. So, you know, I've done a lot of stuff like that. And it's worked out really, really well. But I didn't go into that lunch with Bill expecting that something would happen. I mean, he, he's somebody that invests in, you know, railways and huge real estate, you know, multi billion dollar public companies. I just wanted to learn from him.
比尔人很可爱。你知道的，我们一起度过了三四个小时。最后我还见到了他整个Pershing Square团队。我们真的很合得来。你知道吗，在午餐结束时，他说：“嘿，让我们找到一种合作的方式。我们应该做生意。”所以，你知道的，我做过很多类似的事情。结果都非常好。但是我去和比尔吃午饭的时候，并没有期望会有什么事情发生。我的意思是，他是一个投资于铁路和巨大房地产，身价数十亿美元的上市公司的人。我只是想向他学习一些东西。

And that's really been the approach that I've taken with all of the people I've met is just how do I get as much out of their brain as I possibly can. There's a framework that I've been adopting recently, which is sort of this idea of increasing your luck surface area. And I think you kind of touched on that there.
这真的是我与所有相识之人所采用的方法，我尽可能多地从他们的头脑中获取信息。最近，我采用了一个框架，即扩大您的幸运面积的概念。我觉得你也有所涉及。

And we, you know, with the economy where it is, I know people are budget cutting. There was this big conference last week that a lot of companies I know were planning to not do just to save money. But our decision was, well, will it increase our luck surface area? Well, we will create this potential serendipitous moment moments and it did. So I really love that idea.
我们知道，由于经济状况不佳，我知道很多人都在削减预算。上周有一个大型会议，我知道很多公司都计划不参加，以节省资金。但我们的决定是，这会增加我们的机遇范围吗？我们将创造这些可能的意外时刻，而事实也确实如此。所以我非常喜欢这个想法。

Talk to us about Bill Ackman, because he's not someone we've actually studied all that much on this show. He's had, I wouldn't say spotty track record, but he's definitely been in the headlines and out of the headlines. He's been very active. He's been more quiet. He's had, you know, losses than these massive wins, you know, actually fairly recently. What is it about him? Maybe that sets him apart from maybe the other people you studied?
跟我们聊聊比尔·阿克曼吧，因为在我们这个节目中我们并没有对他进行过深入的研究。他的业绩并不算不稳定，但他确实时常成为头条新闻的焦点。他一直非常活跃，但有时也会比较低调。他经历了一些亏损而不是大规模的成功，最近事实上就发生了一些亏损。那么他有什么特点，或许与你们研究过的其他人不同呢？

So first of all, I'd say, Bill, if you actually look at his track record, I think it's mostly wins with a huge, a few huge losses. And the problem is that the big losses that he's had have been very loud. And I think that Bill, because he, you know, formerly was an activist and was quite loud, I think the tallest blade of grass is the first to get cut. So when things don't go well, everyone loves to dunk on Bill. But he has an exceptional track record. And I think he's an amazing investor.
首先，我想说的是，如果你真正看一下比尔的历史记录，我认为他主要是赢了很多次，但也有几次巨大的损失。问题是，他的大的损失一直非常显眼。而且我认为，由于比尔以前是一个活动家，而且一直非常大声，所以最先被批评的就是最突出的人。所以当事情进展不顺利时，每个人都喜欢拿比尔开涮。但他的投资记录非常出色，我认为他是一个了不起的投资者。

Bill, I think what impresses me about him, what made him stand apart from a lot of the other value investors is most, most value investors, they effectively are buying a ticket on a cruise ship.
比尔，我认为令我印象深刻的是他，也是使他在许多其他价值投资者中独树一帜的地方是，大部分价值投资者实际上都像是在买一张乘坐豪华邮轮的门票。

So what I mean by that is let's say you want to go to Hawaii, you know, there's a lot of different ways to do so.
所以我的意思是，假设你想去夏威夷，你知道，有很多不同的方式可以实现这个愿望。

You could go and build a boat yourself by hand with some logs on the beach and try and sail to Hawaii, but you'll probably die or, you know, drown or, you know, get sunburned and maybe you make it one in 100 times, but it's probably not going to work. That's like starting a business, so that's venture. Then, you know, you could maybe go buy a speedboat or something like that, you're going to arrive battered and bruised. That's, you know, find a difficult business or a turnaround or something like that.
你可以去海滩上用一些木材亲自动手建造一艘船，然后试图航行到夏威夷去，但你很可能会死去，或者说，淹死，或者说，晒伤，或者你有可能成功一百次中的一次，但这很可能不会起作用。这就像创业一样，是一种冒险。然后，你可以尝试购买一艘快艇或其他什么的，但你很可能会受伤。这就类似于经营一家困难的企业或者做一个重整。

The cruise ship would be, you know, you find a cruise ship that's sailing to Hawaii, the course is charted, it's a reputable cruise line, it's been operating for 20 years, you buy your ticket, a stock certificate, and you go and suntan on the deck for the entire time and you enjoy the ride. You know, that's what a lot of more passive investors like Buffett might do or Guy Speer or Monish Pabrai, they're really buying the business, they're trusting that the business is going to go where management says it's going to go and they kind of let the business do what it's going to do.
这艘豪华邮轮呢，你知道的，你找到一艘开往夏威夷的邮轮，航线已规划好，是一家有信誉的邮轮公司，经营已有20年，你购买了票，相当于买了一张股票证书，然后你就可以整个行程都在甲板上晒太阳，享受这段旅程。你知道，这就是像巴菲特、盖·斯皮尔或莫尼什·帕布莱这样的被动投资者可能会做的事情，他们真正购买的是企业，他们相信企业会按照管理层的说法走，他们会让企业自己去发展。

Bill, on the other hand, is much more entrepreneurial. So, you know, historically, when Pershing Square buys into a business, they actually have a thesis around change and, you know, in some instances, you know, it's been mismanagement. Historically, I think they've done a lot more of that kind of turnaround stuff like they did at CP Rail, where they felt that the business was just not being operated well, you know, had the wrong board, etc.
另一方面，比尔更具有创业精神。那么，你知道，从历史上看，当彭辛广场(公司)入股一家企业时，他们实际上会有一个关于改变的论点，有时候是因为经营不善。从历史上看，我认为他们更多地做了这种转型工作，就像他们在CP Rail(加拿大太平洋铁路公司)所做的那样，他们认为那家企业的经营不善，董事会选择不当等等。

I think they've since evolved to seeing opportunities in businesses that are already wonderful, where they think that they can perhaps influence them in a positive direction from the board, but in a much friendlier way. But what I like about Bill is that he'll actually wrestle with the universe to try and see the outcome that he, you know, sees come to fruition. And I really like that. I think that he manifests things more than other investors. And so I find that very inspiring as someone who's an operator.
我认为他们已经进化到对那些已经很棒的企业中寻找机会的程度了，他们认为自己或许可以通过董事会推动这些企业朝着积极的方向发展，而且方法要友善得多。但我喜欢比尔的一点是，他愿意与宇宙搏斗，为了看到他心中所希望的结果实现而努力。我真的很喜欢这一点。我认为他比其他投资者更能实现自己的想法。所以作为一个运营者，我觉得这非常鼓舞人心。

I imagine having that much spotlight on you can be difficult. And we've touched on this a little bit, but I happen to know that you, I know from some of your other interviews that you've been into self care in certain ways. And you've gone as far as taking a month long sabbatical, a digital detox, if you will, a couple years ago. I'm curious if you were able to do that again late last year. If you saw the same effect, is it becoming something you're really proving out to be helpful for you? And is there something beyond something that you maybe even picked up from these people that you're around and learning from that's helped you understand? Because that's one side of the equation that's not often talked about. You know, you see these people maybe get kicked around in the headlines or every move they make is scrutinized, but that's so stressful. I know it talks about how they manage it.
我可以想象，在你身上聚焦这么多的光芒可能会很困难。我们已经稍微谈到过这个问题，但我知道，从你之前的一些采访中，你在某些方面一直在进行自我照顾。几年前，你甚至采取了一个月长的休假，数字断舍离，我很好奇你去年年底是否还能再次这样做。你是否看到了同样的效果，它是否正在成为对你很有帮助的事情？还有你是否从你身边的这些人身上学到了一些超乎寻常的东西，帮助你理解如何应对这一方程的另一面。因为这是很少有人讨论的一面。你知道，你看到这些人可能在头条上被人们批评，他们的每一个举动都受到审视，但那是如此的有压力。我知道他们如何处理这些问题。

Well, you know, I think someone like Bill is incredibly tough, right? Bill talks about falling down and just brushing yourself off and getting back up. And Munger talks about that too. I think that the people who get back up are the people who continue to do well and they learn lessons and they become better investors or better business people as a result.
嗯，你知道，我觉得像比尔这样的人异常坚强，对吧？比尔谈到跌倒后只要抖擞精神再站起来。曼格尔也曾提到这个。我认为那些能够重新站起来的人是那些能继续做得好，并且通过经历学到教训，成为更好的投资者或企业家的人。

For my personal experience. So one of the things I realized is that at the end of the day, I've only got so much dopamine in my brain, right? So I, you know, every email you read, every decision you make, you are depleting, you know, some chemical in your brain. And I think most people observe that when they wake up, they're the most full of ideas and excitement and forward momentum and quality decision making and that kind of fatigues throughout the day. And so what I've tried to do is make as few decisions as possible to abstract things away as much as possible to remove time constraints and time pressures so that there's nowhere I have to be. I can always cancel appointments. I can make a decision later. There's no burning fires.
根据我个人的经验，我发现在每一天的结束时，我的大脑只拥有有限的多巴胺，对吧？所以每次你阅读一封邮件、做出决策，你都会消耗你大脑中的某种化学物质。我认为大多数人会观察到，当他们醒来时，他们充满了想法、兴奋、前进的动力和高质量的决策，而这些感觉会随着一天的逝去而逐渐疲惫。因此，我尽量减少决策的次数，让事情尽量抽象化，消除时间限制和压力，这样我就没有必须到达的地方。我总是可以取消约会，稍后再做决定，没有紧急情况要处理。

But like I said earlier, I still struggle with the feeling of overwhelm. Now, they're wonderful problems, right? I have all these fascinating businesses each with their own unique opportunities to dig into. But I feel a little bit like somebody with a Netflix queue that's in the hundreds, right? There's too many good movies to watch. There's too many TV shows I want to see. There's too many great books to read. So that's what I struggle with, which I think is a good problem to have. But it's very difficult. And I, like anyone else, swing into periods of excitement where I'm doing a lot, and then I get into overwhelm and I dial everything back. And then I start to get busy again. And I just seem to repeat that pattern annually.
但就像我之前所说的，我仍然在战胜被压倒感的问题上努力。现在，这些都是美好的问题，对吧？我拥有许多迷人的事业，每个事业都有独特的机会可以深入了解。但我有点像一个有数百个影片在等待的Netflix用户，对吗？有太多好电影要看，太多电视剧要追，太多好书要读。所以这就是我所面临的问题，我认为这是一个好问题。但这非常困难。就像其他人一样，我会在兴奋期进行大量的工作，然后感到压力过大，然后缩减一切。然后我再次变得忙碌起来。我似乎每年都会重复这个模式。

That last point resonates because when I was a musician, I was looking up to have this year. I made enough money and I was like, okay, I can not worry about money for a while. And every day was actually kind of torturous because I would wake up and not know what to do with my time. Do I practice scales? Do I read poetry? Do I, you name it? And I would end up just going to get a sandwich because I was like, I don't know what else to do.
那最后一点让我感同身受，因为我曾经是一名音乐家，对于未来，我也曾期望像这一年一样顺利。我赚了足够的钱，我当时觉得，好吧，我可以不用担心钱的问题一段时间了。但实际上每一天都让人感到煎熬，因为我醒来后不知道该怎么度过我的时间。是练习音阶还是阅读诗歌？等等，种种选择摆在面前。最终，我只会去买个三明治，因为我不知道该做什么别的了。

So do you find at the helm when you get to this level where you delegated and, you know, if you're not someone who just enjoys reading, and maybe you are like Buffett, you know, for six, eight hours a day, how do you manage that? It's actually something that's probably harder than people even think about, you know, they think it's probably fairly easy to do. But I found it to be quite torturous.
当您达到这个层次时，您会发现自己处于指挥的位置，您知道，如果您不是一个只喜欢读书的人，也许您像巴菲特一样，每天花六、八个小时阅读，那么您如何应对呢？实际上，这可能比人们想象的要困难得多，人们可能认为这可能相当容易做到。但我发现这实际上相当痛苦。

Yeah, it's surprisingly hard. So when Chris and I first started Tiny, at the time we owned about five or six businesses that we had started, we delegated the operations to CEOs. And really, we said to all the CEOs, look, don't call us unless you need us. So the phone stopped ringing. We went from getting hundreds of emails a day, solving people problems, getting texted constantly to absolutely nothing. And at first it was bliss. We were thinking that we would become a young Buffett in Munger. We had this tiny little office and we would just sit there in our lazy boy chairs reading 10Ks. And I realized that I do not have that capacity. I think I can read for maybe one to two hours a day. And maybe if I'm really obsessed with something a little bit more. But I am very social. I like to meet people. I like to be out and doing things. And so I do struggle with that.
是的，这真的很困难。所以当我和克里斯创办Tiny时，那时我们拥有大约五六个我们创立的企业，我们把运营工作委派给了各个公司的CEO。实际上，我们对所有的CEO们都说过，除非你需要我们，否则不要给我们打电话。于是电话停止了响起。我们不再每天收到数百封电子邮件，不再解决别人的问题，不再接到短信。刚开始的时候，这种宁静让人感到很愉快。我们想象自己会成为年轻的巴菲特和芒格。我们有这个小小的办公室，我们就坐在那里的懒人沙发上读10K报告。然而，我意识到我没有那种能力。我想我可能每天只能读个一两个小时。如果我对某件事情非常着迷的话，可能会多读一些。但是我很喜欢社交，喜欢和人们见面，喜欢外出做事情。所以我在这方面有困难。

I find that there's currently, at our scale, there's enough going on that every single day, there's still kind of two or three priorities or things that I'm pushing forward. But a lot of what I'm doing is texting people and saying, hey, remember that thing we talked about? How's that going? Checking in? And then otherwise, unless a CEO calls me with a critical problem, which doesn't happen that often these days, I'm not getting into the actual underlying businesses.
在我们目前的规模上，我发现每天依然有两三个优先事项或目标需要推进。但是，我大部分的工作都是给别人发信息，询问他们，嘿，我们谈论的那件事如何进行了？跟进了吗？除非是CEO给我打电话说有重大问题（这种情况如今并不经常发生），否则我不会涉及实际的业务层面。

So when you talked to Buffett, you were talking about philanthropy, I think you mentioned as well. And his initial game plan was to just compound until he died, basically. And I think luckily for everybody, Bill Gates at some point, convinced him to start giving back with a warmer hand. And I'm curious what he impressed upon you with philanthropy, how you approach it, and maybe what causes, if any, motivate you the most.
所以当你与巴菲特交谈时，你谈到了慈善事业，我觉得你也提到过。他最初的计划就是一直积累财富，直到去世为止。幸运的是，比尔·盖茨在某个时候成功劝说他以温和的方式开始回馈社会。我很好奇他对你的慈善事业有什么印象，以及你如何对待它，还有哪些慈善事业最能激发你的动力，如果有的话。

Well, yeah, I was talking to him about the Giving Pledge. And I really like the idea that any wealth that you build is just going back to society, because it allows you to reframe from a kind of greed mindset, and maximizing, I'm getting as much as I can to go buy a super yacht to instead saying, you know what, I'm the world's best fundraiser for philanthropy. Right? So saying that every dollar I make from this point on basically is going to go back to society at some point, I think is quite a nice way to reframe, because at a certain point, I described earlier in the interview that my family didn't have a lot of money. And so I just wanted to get rich, I wanted to solve that problem.
嗯，是的，我正在和他谈论“承诺奉献”。我真的很喜欢这个理念，即你建立的所有财富最终都会回归社会，因为它使你能够从一种贪婪的思维方式中转变出来，不再追求最大化利益，不再把一切都花在豪华游艇上，而是去思考：“你知道吗，我是全球最优秀的慈善筹款人。”对吧？所以说，从现在起，我赚的每一美元基本上都会在某个时刻回馈社会，我认为这是一种很好的重新定位方式，因为在某个时刻，我在之前的采访中提到过，我家没有很多钱。所以我只是想变得富有，解决那个问题。

And I'd say probably almost 10 years ago, I had enough money where I could retire, and then I had enough money that I could retire very comfortably. And then I had enough money that I could have my whole family retire. And at that point, I was like, okay, well, what's the point? And I ended up feeling a bit empty. So it wasn't until I actually decided to give away most of my money that I was able to reframe and get excited again about working.
我想大概在近10年前，我有足够的钱可以退休，然后我有足够的钱可以舒适地退休。接着，我有足够的钱可以让我的整个家庭退休。在那个时候，我开始思考，嗯，这还有什么意义呢？我感到有些空虚。直到我决定捐赠大部分财富，我才能改变观念，重新对工作感到兴奋。

Is that around the time you I'm trying to find the time when you spoke with Buffen and we're seeking advice, were you coming from that place of what knowing or trying to figure out what to do next exactly?
这是在你与巴芬交谈并寻求建议时的大致时间吗？当时你是基于已知的事实，还是试图弄清楚接下来该做什么？

Yeah, totally. It was, I think it was January 2021, right after we took WeCommerce Public. And the interesting thing about that was that before that moment, I only owned private businesses. So while I had a lot of cash flow coming in, I was almost constantly reinvesting the cash flow. I never had any real sense of what my businesses were worth or how they'd be valued in the market. And when we took WeCommerce Public, that was actually only a very small percentage of my net worth. And those shares, very quickly were worth tens and then even hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on what the stock price was doing. And so it was kind of slapping me in the face. I was like, okay, I got to figure this out. I had a bit of an existential crisis. I talked to Buffet. I interviewed a ton of other wealthy people to ask them what they were doing. And one of the frustrating parts of it is that everyone does something slightly different and all the advice seems to counteract one another. So yeah, it was quite interesting to try and figure out.
是的，完全正确。我记得那是2021年1月，就在我们让WeCommerce上市之后。有趣的是，在那之前，我只拥有私营企业。虽然我有很多现金流入，但几乎一直在不断地重新投资现金流。我从未真正知道我的企业价值多少，以及它们在市场上的估值。当我们将WeCommerce上市时，那实际上只占到我的净资产的很小一部分。而且这些股份很快就以数十甚至上百亿美元的身价，取决于股价的涨跌。这让我有点被打醒。我意识到，我必须想办法弄清楚这个问题。我陷入了一种存在危机的困境。我和巴菲特交谈过，还采访了许多其他富有的人，向他们询问他们是如何处理这种情况的。而其中令人沮丧的一点是，每个人做的事情都有所不同，而且所有的建议似乎互相矛盾。所以，尝试解决这个问题真的很有趣。

What else keeps you grounded? I mean, we talked about living in Victoria. I imagine you might have friends you've known your whole life to a degree, just from growing up there. Have those relationships changed over time? And is it hard to relate to people? Or is having that around you actually what is rounding for you?
还有什么使你保持脚踏实地的呢？我是说，我们谈到了生活在维多利亚。我想象你可能有一些朋友，他们从小一起长大，你对他们的了解可能有些深。这些关系随着时间改变了吗？与人相处是否很困难？或者说，身边有这些人反而对你来说是一种平衡？

Yeah, I mean, I still have a lot of great old friends who roast me and bring me back down to size. So that works out really well. It does change things. And it's such a blessing and a curse. I think that being known as a successful investor and business person is wonderful as an extrovert because I will be sitting in a cafe and I'll have some random business person walk up to me and say, hey, I heard you on a podcast last week. Here's my business. And wow, I just made a new friend. But I also find that it also can sometimes convert you into a meal ticket for people. People will email you constantly asking for things, people wanting loans. It just changes that stuff. Whereas before we went public, the first business went public when we were kind of quiet and private, no one really knew. I was just some guy in a hoodie working out of a cafe. And so it's a double edged sword. Don't cry any tears for me. I've got a great life. But it is an interesting dynamic to try and figure out.
是的，我的意思是，我还有很多老朋友，他们总是拿我开玩笑，让我保持谦逊。所以这一切都很好。这确实改变了一些事情。这是一种祝福，也是一种诅咒。作为一个外向的人，被人誉为成功的投资者和商人是很棒的，因为当我坐在咖啡馆里的时候，一些陌生的商人会走过来，对我说，嘿，我上个星期在播客中听到了你的声音。这是我的生意。哇，我又交了一个新朋友。但我也发现有时候这会把你变成别人的摇钱树。人们会不断给你发邮件要求各种事情，人们想要贷款。这只是改变了这些方面。在我们上市之前，我们的第一个企业一直很低调和私密，没有人真正知道我们。我只是一个穿着连帽衫在咖啡馆里工作的人。所以这是一把双刃剑。别为我流泪。我有一个美好的生活。但这是一个有趣的动态，需要去理解和应对。

What would be some of your favorite books or resources that you recommend to people who are just getting started? I know that there's an interesting debate around even higher education nowadays. I'm curious where you would push people to start learning either about investing or starting a company or simply just living a good life.
对于刚刚开始的人，你会推荐哪些你最喜欢的书籍或资源呢？我知道现在甚至对高等教育也存在一场有趣的辩论。我很好奇你会建议人们从哪里开始学习投资、创业或者只是过上美好的生活。

Okay, so I'm a dropout. I went to journalism school for three months and then dropped out. And then I became a barista. And then there's two guys that kept coming into the cafe every day who are web designers. And I was looking at them and they would just sit in the cafe all day, drinking espresso that I had made and going on their laptops. And I was like, well, that seems better. So I became a web designer and just stumbled into it. And then my web design agency was doing well and was profitable. And so I kind of had to learn business. Then I started multiple businesses. And so it was very organic.
好的，所以我是一个辍学生。我上了三个月的新闻学院，然后就退学了。后来我成为了一名咖啡师。然后，咖啡店里每天都有两个经常来的人，他们是网页设计师。我看着他们整天坐在咖啡店里，喝我做的意式浓缩咖啡，然后在笔记本电脑上工作。我想，这样似乎更好。于是我成为了一名网页设计师，就这样踏入了这个行业。然后我的网页设计机构运作得不错，也是盈利的。所以我不得不学习如何经营业务。然后我开始了多个企业。整个过程非常自然。

One of the things that I noticed was that every job I ever had, I wanted to shove my boss out of the way and take over. I just didn't get why they were doing things the way they were. I thought I could do it better. I was kind of unemployable, which is the quality that so many entrepreneurs have. When I talk to kids who say, I want to be an entrepreneur, I'm going to go to school for entrepreneurship. It sounds a little bit like someone saying, I really want to be an Olympic athlete. I'm going to go read a book about running. And it's like, no, if you want to become a cross country runner, you should start running tomorrow. And that if it's not completely slapping you in the face, that you don't feel the urge that you have to do it, then you probably shouldn't. Because being an entrepreneur is a very, very difficult life, especially in the early days. It's really hard. It's extremely exhilarating for the right type of personality. But it's really, really hard and stressful. And the failure is brutal.
我注意到的一件事是，我曾经做过的每份工作都让我想把老板推到一边接管。我就是不明白他们为什么要按照那种方式做事。我认为我可以做得更好。我有点不适合受雇于他人，这也是很多企业家的特质。当我与那些说自己想成为企业家并且要去学校学习创业的孩子们交谈时，感觉他们有点像说：“我真的想成为一名奥运会运动员，我打算读一本关于跑步的书。”但实际上，如果你想成为一名田径运动员，你应该明天就开始跑步。如果你没有强烈的冲动感，如果你感觉不是明摆在你面前的事情，那你可能不应该去做。因为成为一名企业家是一种非常非常困难的生活，尤其是在早期阶段。它真的很难。对于适合这种性格的人来说，这是极其令人激动的事情。但它真的很、很难，也非常有压力。而失败是残酷的。

So I would say, first of all, don't start a business unless you feel compelled to. Don't do it because it sounds good or your parents want you to do it. Do it because you feel you have to. From there, the best resources for me were, there's a variety of business books that I love. The best one is a book called How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis. The title is Not Great. It's really cheesy-looking and has a photo of him sitting on a golden throne on the front. But it's really, he's publishing Magnet from the UK who built a fortune. And it's a fascinating book because he kind of says, here's everything you need to know in order to start a business and to get rich. And I'd say it's quite accurate. I'd say follow many of the steps. But then the last quarter of the book is about why you don't want to get rich and how miserable it made his life. So it's a fascinating book. That was kind of my first book that really inspired me.
所以我想说，首先，除非你感到有必要，否则不要创业。不要因为听起来好或是你的父母想让你这么做而去做。要因为你感觉你必须要这么做。从那里开始，对我而言最好的资源是一些商业书籍。我特别喜欢一本叫做《如何致富》的书，作者是费利克斯·丹尼斯。书名不是很好听，封面上有一张他坐在金色宝座上的照片，看起来有些俗气。但这本书是他出版的英国杂志《磁铁》的创始人，他积累了一笔财富。这本书非常有趣，因为他在书中说，这是你开创事业和致富所需了解的一切。我要说，它相当准确。我建议你们多多遵循其中的步骤。但是，书的最后四分之一是关于为什么你不想致富以及他的财富给他的生活带来了多么痛苦的一面。所以这是一本很有意思的书。这本书是我读过的第一本真正启发我的书。

In terms of learning accounting and finance, like as someone progresses, Khan Academy is amazing. You could probably spend two hours doing the finance and accounting course and learn everything you need to know. The Emith by Michael Gerber is amazing about delegation. When I first started my business, I was kind of like, imagine if I owned a bakery and I was trying to bake all the baked goods in the back at two in the morning and then work the till on the front and then run back and forth, covered in flour, trying to do a little bit of everything. And the Emith was the book that allowed me to kind of see that my business isn't me. My business is a machine and you have to build a machine built up of process and people in order to scale. So that was a breakthrough for me.
在学习会计和金融方面，像是一个人的进步，可通过使用可汗学院达到惊人的效果。你可能会花两个小时学习金融和会计课程，掌握所需的一切知识。迈克尔·格伯的《企业主的炼狱》则是关于委派的神奇之书。当我刚开始经营我的业务时，我想象自己拥有一个面包店，凌晨两点在后厨烘焙所有面点，然后在前台工作，来回奔波，浑身沾满面粉，试图做各种事情。而这本书让我意识到，我的业务并不是我自己，它是一台机器，你必须建立一个由流程和人员组成的机器，才能实现规模化发展。这对我来说是一个突破。

And then investing the Dandho Investor by Monish Pabrai, I think is the best kind of manual on value investing, just basic value investing. And then there's the final book I'd recommend would be The Tower of Charlie Munger, which is much more qualitative. I always think of Munger as a wonderful qualitative investor. So Dandho Investor is kind of like, here's how to buy a dollar for 50 cents. Munger is much more about how to examine business quality, psychology, and incentives, which you come to realize is far more important than any of the numbers stuff.
然后，我认为莫尼什·帕布拉伊的《Dandho Investor》是关于价值投资的最佳指南，只涉及基本的价值投资。然后我推荐的最后一本书是《查理·芒格的高塔》，它更加侧重于定性分析。我一直认为芒格是一位出色的定性投资者。所以《Dandho Investor》可以说是教你如何以50美分买到一美元。芒格的研究则更多关注企业质量、心理与激励，你会意识到这比任何数字都更重要。

On that last point, I'm just curious if Munger, Buffett, Bill, anyone has put a book in front of you that was maybe interesting. I know for me, I had dinner with Buffett once and he gave me a couple Adam Smith books to read. And for me, that was eye-opening to this idea of owning a business, be able in the book that they described it as peeling off equity to create liquidity and things that just stuck with me, the visual. But it was this idea of how people grow and make a living off of the business. And I'm curious if there's been references from anyone like that that maybe have stuck with you as well.
对于最后一点，我只是好奇是否蒙格、巴菲特、比尔或其他人曾经向你推荐过一本有趣的书。我知道对我来说，我曾和巴菲特共进晚餐，他给了我几本亚当·斯密的书让我阅读。对我来说，这让我对拥有企业的理念有了新的认识，在书中他们描述了如何剥离权益以创造流动性等等，这些描述给我留下了深刻的印象。但是这本书里面描述了如何通过经营企业来生活和获得收益。我很好奇是否有其他人曾给你推荐过一些与此类似的书籍，是否有什么引用的内容让你也深受启发。

The most important book that I've probably ever read is Influence by Robert Sealdini, which Munger is a huge fan of. He was the reason why I discovered that book and effectively it's like an encyclopedia of every kind of cause of psychological misjudgment. Charlie Munger also has a really great speech that he did at Harvard called the Psychology of Human Misjudgment. He made it in the 90s. It's kind of this old crackly recording, but it summarizes all the kind of key ways that people don't think through stuff properly. That book is incredible. I still use all the skills I learned in that book every day.
我可能读过的最重要的书是罗伯特·西尔迪尼的《影响力》，这本书是芒格的一个铁杆粉丝。他是我发现这本书的原因，实际上它就像一本涵盖了各种心理判断错误原因的百科全书。查理·芒格还在哈佛做过一个非常精彩的演讲，名为《人类判断的心理学》。那是他在90年代做的，录音有点老旧，但它总结了人们不正确思考的关键方法。那本书令人难以置信，我每天都在运用我从那本书中学到的所有技巧。

Fantastic. Well, Andrew, I've learned so much from you today and I have a whole laundry list now that I'm so excited to go dig into because a lot of these I never even heard of before. So really exciting. And we will list all of these resources in the show notes. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. And before I let you go, I would love if you could share a little bit more with the audience about how they can learn more about Tiny because it's a really fascinating thing you're building. And just if you want to direct them anywhere to learn more about it, please do so.
太棒了！恩，Andrew，今天从你这里我学到了很多东西，我现在有一个长长的清单，非常兴奋地准备去挖掘，因为其中很多东西我以前甚至都没听说过。真是令人激动。我们会在节目备注中列出所有这些资源。非常感谢你抽出时间和我们交谈。在让你离开之前，我希望你能向听众分享更多关于Tiny的信息，因为你正在建立一个非常有趣的东西。如果你有什么指引他们更多了解的地方，请告诉我们。

Yeah, so the best place to learn more is just go to tiny.com, our website. You can kind of see a high level overview of all the businesses that we own and how we buy businesses. I've done a lot of podcast interviews and I go on my first million very often. That's more kind of off the cuff brainstorming, more entrepreneurial. I've also done a couple interviews on kind of more philosophical side with Shane Parrish on the Knowledge Project. And then I did one on 20 minute VC, which is like a really good summary in 20 minutes of exactly how we invest and how we construct our business. But yeah, Trey, thank you so much. It's great to finally come on and as a long time listener, it's very cool. Will we see you in Omaha? I don't think so. I've been traveling way too much. I don't think I'm going to be there, but I'll be there probably the next year. Sounds good. Okay. Thank you so much again.
嗯，所以要了解更多信息，最好的地方就是去我们的网站tiny.com。在那里，你可以大致了解我们拥有的所有企业以及我们如何购买企业的高层概览。我参加过很多播客采访，经常在"我的第一百万"上露面。那是更多即兴的头脑风暴，更加创业。我还参加了一些在知识项目上由Shane Parrish主持的更多哲学性的访谈。还有我在"20分钟创投页面"上做过一次访谈，这是一个非常好的20分钟概述，准确地展示了我们如何投资和构建我们的企业。但是，Trey，非常感谢你。能终于参加这个节目真的很酷。我们会在奥马哈见面吗？我想不会。我一直在旅行，太忙了。我不认为我会去，但明年可能会去。好的，再次非常感谢你。

And one of the problems with that stretchy is this. If you buy your poor company, apart from the fact that it does destroy value while you wait, if you get the your timing roughly right, yeah, it will make some value for you. It will create some performance for you. The problem is then you have to go find another one. Whereas with our companies, if we select them right, we never have to go and find a new company. We can sit there, not deal. And as a result, cut down the costs of running the portfolio.
而这种伸缩性的问题之一是，如果你购买了一个不景气的公司，除了在等待的过程中破坏价值之外，如果你的时间选择差不多正确，它确实会为你创造一些价值。它会为你创造一些绩效。然而问题是，然后你就得去寻找另一个公司。而对于我们选择的公司来说，如果我们选择正确，就永远不需要去寻找新的公司。我们可以坐在那里，不去交易。因此，可以降低投资组合运营的成本。