I try never to say never, but I'm nearly there with a few things. One would be running for public office. I'm I'm more drawn to the platform of my company, The Motley Fool, striving to make the world smarter, happier, and richer. I see immense value in what I call private service. That's work I see done in the private sector every day by thousands of people that I know serving others through the private sector, often finding it more enjoyable and rewarding than traditional public service.
Not to demean it, but the phrase private service is rarely used. Another never for me is repeating a Rule Breaker Investing podcast. We've delivered a new podcast every week since July of two thousand fifteen, four hundred plus weeks without repetition. This approach suits me. I thrive on innovation rather than repetition. Another reason I wouldn't work too well in politics since you're supposed to say the same sound bite over and over from one zip code to the next, not for me.
Yet continuously introducing new stories, new ideas, and frameworks can lead to sometimes neglecting the essential ones, the timeless truths. And that's why a couple of times a year, I revisit and highlight key lessons in our Blast from the Past series, which ensures both new listeners and long time listeners catch important takeaways, whether you're hearing them for the first time or as a reminder from years ago. Blast from the past volume nine, only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.
It's the Rule Breaker Investing podcast with Motley Fool cofounder David Gardner. And welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. When I think about this series blast from the past, this being the ninth, I think this might be a pretty effective short course in rule breaking. As I mentioned, this is the ninth in this series, so I'll be making five more points pulled from the past presented to you right here in the present.
Nine episodes times five points, that's forty five points made across this series. In fact, if you just start listening with my first blast from the past, which I did in two thousand eighteen, and you just focus on these episodes, these nine, they take forty five to sixty minutes each, they're a pretty good cliff notes shortcut to learning how we think and act as fools and as rule breakers. So there's a pro tip. By the way, next week, it's what have you learned from me. Thank you.
It's my birthday next week, and the annual birthday gift this podcast presents that you give me is to drop me a line. R b I at fool dot com is the email address. You can tweet me at r b I podcast or at david g fool on Twitter. We look both places. Drop me a line. What have you learned from me through this podcast either in the past month or the past year or over history. What have you learned? At a root selfish level, I really appreciate that and love to hear it. It means a lot to me.
But slightly more magnanimously, it also creates a pretty good podcast in the middle of May every year because when you summarize the points that have been learned, speaking of short courses, it's a pretty good way to understand the root lessons and the really important takeaways that have come through Rule Breaker Investing, whether it's the podcast or online services or stock picks made over the years. So whether it's from investing or business or life,
I love to hear all of them. This means a lot. It usually leads to a pretty great podcast, which I'm looking forward to sharing with you next week. What have you learned from me? Drop me a line. Alright. And now five points, five blasts from the past. And the last time I did this, which was actually in January of this year, I started to organize them by investing points, then business points, then life points. So that's what we're gonna do.
I've got two investing, one business, and two life on this episode's blast from the past. Let's start with investing as always. Blast from the past number one. This one comes from December ninth two thousand fifteen, that Rule Breaker Investing podcast. Just three months in for this podcast. You can go back and listen to it if you like or listen to my blast right now. It was entitled Style Boxing. And here's how the story goes.
One summer at Fool HQ, we had a Russian American intern, and I said to him over an intern lunch, how'd you get started, Igor? In fact, I wish every nineteen to twenty year old was as thoughtful and as smart and really wise beyond his years about investing with his own money. I wish everyone could be Igor in a sense, so I said, how'd you do it? And he said back, my mentor? You mean the one who got me started investing? And I said, yeah. And he said, it was a guy a year ahead of me at college.
I said, well, that's great. I'd like to hear a little bit more about that. And Igor said, well, the funny thing is he's no longer investing. And that was funny to me because Igor clearly understood the long term. That's what investing is. He was getting all that, and he had had he'd had a mentor, somebody who wasn't much older than he was, but this particular fellow was no longer investing? What Igor said was that his friend had two things going on in his mind about investing.
The first was he loved to find very early so called development stage companies to invest in. These are, you know, companies that not only don't have profits, but in some cases, they don't even have revenues yet. These are very early stage companies, and his friend loved this kind of company. And it was part of the passion that his friend had about these companies that led him to wanna teach others, others like Igor, about investing. He just he loved development stage companies.
That was one of the two traits that marked his approach to investing. The second was he loved to go almost all in when he invested. He was a so called focused investor. He had very few companies. When he found something that he liked and he believed in, he would pile what you and I might think of as an alarmingly high percentage of his money into those few ideas.
And as I thought about that, and we're gonna talk about that style box framework in just a minute, I could see why his friend might not still be in the investing game anymore. It doesn't really take a long time or that many iterations if you play the system I just described for you forward a little bit to see what's gonna happen. He might get it right a few times, but if you get it wrong, if you invest in a bad investment, you're gonna lose a lot of your money.
And specifically, when you're targeting early stage development stage companies, it seems fairly likely that a few of those aren't gonna play out so very well. So from my standpoint, and I hope Igor agreed with me, I said, well, I'm not surprised that your mentor is no longer still in the game. And so that leads to thinking about about style boxes. So picture a two by two matrix.
On the vertical y axis, let's put mature companies at the top, and then right down below it, early stage development stage companies at the bottom. So that's the y axis. Mature companies at the top, early stage companies at the bottom. And then along the x axis, at the bottom, you've got the all in focused investor on one side that goes all the way over to the highly diversified investor on the other. Now I realize this is a podcast. I don't have big visuals for you, but I know you're smart.
I know you've got this in your head. If you're following me, you could see that one of those four boxes says development stage companies and all in investing, and that for me seems a recipe for disaster. Now the exact opposite is what's going to lead to long term success for foolish investors. The box that says, mature companies, and and I like to be diversified as an investor.
You know, too many of us who come, especially new to the game of investing, are in probably one of the wrong boxes in that simple four box quadrant. It's generally because we haven't had that much experience or coaching. We may not have had a mentor who's done this very well. In my own case, I was very fortunate to have a dad who totally understood this. He had me in the right one of those four boxes, the one I just mentioned, mature companies and being diversified.
But if you if you don't, it's not necessarily easy to intuit yourself into the right box to be if you don't have good coaching or guidance. I will say that over the course of time, I've had more and more love for emerging companies. I do like some development stage companies. I somewhat shun very mature, sometimes stodgy to me, less interesting companies.
So I've progressed a little bit myself over the decades from where I started, but I think there's no substitute for starting in a very conservative way and thinking about finding really good companies that we all know. Last week on the podcast, we mentioned Hershey's. What a great company. What a market beater over decades. What a simple decision to invest in the chocolate company and and yet build nice diversification from that company to the next and have a widely diversified portfolio.
So that's one of the style boxes I wanted to share with you in this blast from the past. The one that I heard in my head as I listened to Igor tell me the story of why his mentor, who was maybe twenty or twenty one years old, was no longer investing. But now I wanna share with you a second style box. To me, this is the key to rule breaker investing, so we'll call it this is the rule breaker's matrix.
Now I don't wanna oversimplify what I'm about to say or do or think, and I wouldn't want you to oversimplify either. But anytime we're talking about frameworks, whether it's a four box or a nine box style box, it's always going to oversimplify, of course. Think about other frameworks. I know a lot of us are familiar with Myers Briggs. These are always, of course, somewhat oversimplified. Are you this letter or that one? Which box are you in?
What we're doing is we're typing, and we're getting quick pattern recognition through coming up with types. If If you ever watch golf, they'll sometimes have the flyby of the whole hole. A drone takes you from the tee right out to the eighteenth green, and it's that kind of flyby that I think good frameworks can give us. So I don't wanna oversimplify what I'm doing, but I'm gonna share with you something that I hope you'll understand and I hope is illuminating. So I myself see two more axes.
I'm gonna call the y axis here long term at the top and short term at the bottom. And across the x axis, we're gonna go with predictable on the left right through to innovative on the right. So what am I talking about here? Well, long term and short term are the terms over which you and I can play the game of investing or trading. If you're thinking acting short term, I would say you're not investing. I would say you're trading.
So maybe I should have just said investing or trading, but it's the same either way to me. It's the time frame that you're putting your capital into the markets. Now along the bottom, we have the types of companies that you're investing in. It's not a perfect yin and yang here, but I would say that most companies either fall in the bucket of predictable, rote, going through the motion, doing that business. They might be an oil operations company, or they they might just be Dunkin' Donuts.
It's gonna be a company that's staying within what you'd expect it to do. And it might be innovative in its own way, by the way, but for the most part, you and I wouldn't point it out and say, wow. That's a real innovator there. So that is, of course, the predictable side of the x axis. But over on the right, on the far side are the innovators, the companies that are less predictable. There's more risk associated with them, but there's also much more opportunity associated with them as well.
And by the way, if you've ever worked with consultants who use these kinds of four box frameworks, you know that of those four boxes, you always wanna be in the upper right box, not any of the other three. So So I've set it up that way. So you can see where I think I am, where the investing approach I teach is, where rule breakers live. We're invested in the box that says long term and the one that also says innovative companies.
So we are we're, like, way up in the far upper right of that box, ultra long term and ultra innovative, and here's why I think that's magic. Here's why I think it works. The reason is that there are very few other people in our box. Very few other kids swimming in that same pool. And it's understandable because for a lot of people when they think about innovation and technology, they're thinking it's all fly by night.
In fact, great investors like Warren Buffett have said in the past, they don't invest in that area. They don't swim in that pool because, well, it's so unpredictable. They can't know ten years from now who's really gonna win the battle for leadership in drones or the Internet of things or cloud computing? It's just too hard to predict. So so this type of a person does not even invest there.
And then those who do, those who really do enjoy technology innovation, the bleeding edge, they're often taking a lot of risk, and they're thinking much shorter term. So when you hear people talk about tech stocks on CNBC, often it's very short term oriented, and it sounds crazy to allow yourself to lose, I don't know, twenty percent on one of those stocks.
People like author William O'Neil, the founder of Investors Business Daily, a longer time friend of the Fool, otherwise very good investor no longer living today. But William O'Neil used to counsel people to sell before you ever lose more than seven percent on any stock. And, yep, that leads to very short term action taking. So by contrast, often, the people who are long term with their investing shun innovative companies because we can't predict them.
They tend to find mature, very predictable road businesses, the Hershey's, if you will, of the world. They're great companies. I'm not demeaning them, but I'm explaining their thinking. Often, they use phrases like value stocks or value investor, phrases I don't use. They're looking for dividend players like we talked about last week. There are a lot of people swimming in that pool, in that box.
There are a lot of people there because the long term investments that we make in mature companies are the predictable companies, and that's why that box is so populated. There's one thing that I've learned about games and game theory over the course of time, by the way. Malcolm Gladwell once wrote a great article, How David Beats Goliath. Makes this really clear. By the way, you can search online, Google the New Yorker, and how David beats Goliath.
You could reread Malcolm Gladwell's great article from years ago, which subsequently turned into a full length book. Also, on a side note, you can search for that same title, How David Beats Goliath, because it was a title I use for a Rule Breaker Investing podcast on the very same topic.
Anyway, How David Beats Goliath is that David, while he's playing the same game, in this case with David and Goliath, we'll say warfare, takes a totally different approach than the way that everyone else is doing it. And for that reason, he's able to win. He's able to win in that context, and Gladwell has lots of examples of underdogs that are consistently winning.
And the way that underdogs typically are winning, and I think we're underdogs, and I think we're winning, is by on the same field with the same rules, just taking a totally different stylistic style box approach. So I've just shared with you as I close-up the longest of my five blasts from the past, this podcast, and maybe the most important one.
I've just shared with you my matrix, which is that if you're really fascinated by innovation and these are your kinds of companies, one of the best things you can do is invest for the ultra long term. And that's because when so few other people are playing that game, they're gonna be the first to sell, I don't know, Salesforce if cloud computing has a bad month, which over the course of the last decade, it's had some bad months or quarters.
So they'll be the first to sell monster beverage when there's an alarming but largely overreported somewhat misleading story. This is true. Do you remember this? That energy drinks are killing people. It did happen. A couple of people had energy drinks, and they had other conditions, I think, that caused them a heart attack or some other unfortunate event that led to the end of their life.
And the media picks up on that, and all of a sudden, it becomes a big story and briefly sinks one of the great stocks of the last three decades, Monster Beverage. And the list goes on for these kinds of stories, Short term oriented Tesla. Remember the batteries were catching on fire underneath the car's early days, and that was gonna be a big problem for Tesla, and it sells up. And these stories pop up all the time for innovators, and they're not great stories. They're sad.
I mean, there was an e coli outbreak for Chipotle. Do you remember that? Years ago, much reported on a serious problem. Chipotle acted on it. But what this does is this sets a tone where these companies hit headlines and they're negative, and they seem like a really big deal, and the shorter term players are all ready to sell.
So in conclusion, when you take an ultra long term focus into these kinds of companies, I think you and I, as rule breakers, stand a better than average chance of beating the market because so few others are taking the same approach.
That's what we've been doing for years and why I hope we're enjoying that together as we enter this next decade, twenty twenty four to twenty twenty, thirty four, why I'm very excited about Rule Breaker investing in this approach that continues to win one decade after another for, I think, some of the style boxing insights I've tried to convey here as I shut down Rule Breaker Blast from the Past number one, style boxing, and shout out to Igor.
Alright. On to rule breaker blast and pass number two. I'll be short and sweet with this one. This is rule breaker habit, rule breaker investor habit number two, one I've talked about in past years. The date was September nineteenth of two thousand eighteen where I talked about six hows of Rule Breaker Investing. We talked about not the stocks this time, but you as a Rule Breaker investor. How do you roll? What are the habits you're developing?
And the reason this podcast was important, and I wanna bring it back from the past, is to remind us that it's one thing to have a great stock or stock pick in mind, and I hope over the course of time you found these. And you will find more in future, and I hope we've helped. It's one thing to know the right ticker or the right company or even industry to buy into, but if your own habits have not been developed properly as an investor.
For example, if when you hear that Teslas are catching fire underneath the cars and you think that's a reason to sell the stock and stay out, then the problem is not with Tesla. The problem is inside ourselves. And so the habits that we develop as investors seem so important to me. And rule breaker, investor habit number two is Blast from the Past number two, and it's add up, don't double down.
I don't need to spend a lot of time on this one because I hope it's fairly self evident and any regular listener probably already has heard this from me before and I sure hope it's not just about words, but you've inculcated those words and you've made them implicit in your own actions. They've become, I hope, with James Clear, a habit, an atomic habit that comes naturally to you as an investor.
When I have new money and it's a great problem to have, and those who earn a salary check have that problem every two weeks when I have new money and I've saved some of it, which is really important to do. I wanna add that to existing investments much of the time. It's not always a new stock every new month. It's great to find new stocks, but sometimes our best investment, as we know, is that stock we already hold and we just wanna add to that stock.
And I invariably, over time, have added and counsel you to add not to the ones that are down or the ones that are just treading water doing nothing for years. No. Add to the ones that are going up. It's as simple as that. In a world where people here buy low, sell high, and they know that mutual funds we talked about this in recent weeks. Mutual funds rebalance by selling off their winners to add to their losers.
The old line, I think it was Peter Lynch's line, it probably predates Peter Lynch, but that we are watering our weeds as we cut our flowers. That doesn't work, especially for rule breaker investing. It's a very suboptimal approach. My dad, early on, when I was a kid, my dad said, hey, David. Suggestion. Don't throw good money after bad.
In other words, with a stock down and things aren't going so well, that company just missed earnings or there are developments in its industry that don't favor it, don't take new money, good money, and throw it in the same direction of a bad investment you've already made. Do with rule breaker investor habit number two the exact opposite. Add up. Don't double down, and it's hard to do. That's part of the reason it works.
When you go contrary to the crowd, when you when you're David trying to beat Goliath, it's awfully helpful to be taking an approach that goes contrary to other people's instincts and seems crazy until you really think logically, step away from it a bit, and realize how obvious this is. We should be continuing to add, nurture, and support the things that are winning. Add money to the stocks going up over time, not the ones going down. You'll do a lot better.
So rule breaker, blast from the past number two this week is a simple reminder of that simple habit that is not, in my experience, practiced by most people who are doing their own investing. I'm not really sure. Perhaps your experience is different than mine. I'm not using research data here, but just my own horse sense of what I've heard people say and do. I've met many investors at Motley Fool events over the years and spoken to many through our website.
My hunch is most people still tend to try to buy low hoping one day to sell high, and low for them means the ones that are down. The fifty two week lows, not the fifty two week highs. And I wanna remind you, and William O'Neil, who I mentioned earlier, was a hero making this point. I wanna remind you, you're gonna be more successful if you add to the things that are going up. By the way, it doesn't work every time. It works enough of the time that it works. Alright.
Rule Breaker blast from the past number three. This one comes from last summer. It was authors in August and my friend, Sunny Vanderbeck, joining us to talk about how to sell your company. The date was August ninth twenty twenty three, selling your business with Sunny Van Der Beek. And not everybody is in a position of having their own business and having someone approach you and say, could I buy your business from you?
But I also know my audience well enough to know many of you over the years, and many of you have been with us over the years are entrepreneurs yourselves. You've got a family business. You've got a small business. You might have a big business. Often, it's multigenerational, and it's you that Sonny wrote his book for.
And it was my pleasure to host Sonny as he provide the insights he's gained from being someone who who once sold his company and didn't do it very well, but these days buys other people's companies and is full of great insight. So I'm not gonna hit you with any of Sonny's frameworks.
Largely, I'm just gonna briefly summarize this podcast as an advertisement for anybody for whom right now this topic could be really helpful and really important for where you are here in life as we start to move into the summer of twenty twenty four. I highly recommend you going back to last August's podcast or if you have a friend who's thinking of selling their business such valuable material. We talked about the emotional and practical challenges of selling a business.
It's not just always about the business, is it? Often the importance of aligning with the right buyer. Specifically, if you care about the legacy and culture that you've created in the business that you've created, it's so important to make sure the buyer is aligned with preserving your legacy and your culture. Again, some some people don't care too much about that. It's just about the financial transaction, and I'm certainly not gainsaying that.
But a lot of others reflect on whether they created the business or someone earlier generation of their own family did that. Legacy and culture counts for a lot. And Sonny speaks so well to the mistakes made by people who just take the highest offer and don't realize what's gonna happen next. There are strategic buyers, you know, people who are gonna completely buy your company because it fits into their strategy. But there are also financial buyers, and I think I kind of just referenced them.
They're looking at the financial metrics, and they probably don't care too much what you think about what they'll do with your business after they pay you top dollar for it. They're also entrepreneurial buyers, and these come in the form of former CEOs, former founders themselves. And they often bring valuable insights, operational insights maybe, and they'll be more involved in the growth of your company post acquisition. So understanding the types of buyers, Sunny speaks so well to that.
And then just preparing for selling, conducting reverse due diligence. Right? A lot of us understand that due diligence will be exerted on us by any potential buyer. They wanna kick the doors. They wanna do their background checks and look through our financial accounting and rightly so, but there's reverse due diligence that's so important. And Sunny speaks to that.
The due diligence you do on the people who are talking about buying your company, What have they done in other transactions, maybe one similar to your own, to understand their culture and their operations. Sunny makes a point of visiting the buyer and going through their office, meeting their employees in order to really see, is this a trustworthy thing that I feel aligned with or not?
So it's crucial to prepare not just your business for sale, but I would also add, I think, from that podcast that you yourself emotionally and practically acknowledge the profound impact that that sale is gonna have on your personal life and on your identity. And the last thing I'll mention, since Sonny's a conscious capitalist, is that concept of conscious selling, where you're thinking through the welfare of all your stakeholders. That includes your employees.
You're selling your company along with those employees. You might not stay on as long as many of them may. Are you winning for them? Of course, your customers. Is it gonna transition well? Or all of a sudden, are all their prices gonna be jacked up or their quality jacked down? The community, many businesses matter a lot to the community in which they exist.
So rather than focus solely on the financial transaction, a conscious seller, a conscious capitalist is gonna be aligned with a win for everybody sustainably, ethically. So I think I've conveyed enough. I hope to entice anybody who may have missed that podcast and may now or in future be in a place where that could be very helpful. Of course, Sonny's book, Selling Without Selling Out, is also a worthy read in a lot of ways.
We did a Cliff's Notes version of that book when he joined me on the podcast last August. So I mentioned we started with investing points. We're now into a business point. Let's now move to Blast from the Past's number four and five life points. Alright. Blast from the past, number four. This one comes from the year two thousand seventeen.
It was November first when I had Royce Spence, entrepreneur, world class marketer, somebody who thinks a lot about purpose in branding, cofounder of GST and M, the Austin branding and marketing firm, Roy Spence, on this podcast. And at one point early in the podcast, I said to Roy, I'm curious, Roy.
You know, looking at the world today, you don't have to cast any nastiest versions here, but but is there is there a company that comes to mind when you think about, you know, who may have lost their purpose at some point. Maybe maybe tried to redefine its purpose, maybe even failed at that, but who comes to mind?
And Roy's answer, which I'll always remember in part because I'm making it a blast from the past right now, and I quote, Roy said, my instinct in life and I know this sounds, again, a little bit naive. And a really good friend of mine, Roy went on, validated this the other day. And if I told you who it was, you'd go, wow. He looked at me and he said, Roy, you know what's interesting about you? And I said, Roy said, Yeah. Everything. He was joking, of course. No. He didn't say that.
This friend of his said to Roy, you are a four person. Roy said, I said, I beg your pardon? And he said, you're for things. You're not against things. And Roy concluded by saying, and I am. So I was asking him not to cast aspersions, but I was asking him for a negative example, a counterfactual, some some company that had really screwed up. And Roy kind of declined to answer that not because he doesn't have good ideas in mind probably or could name companies, but he's a foreperson.
Elsewhere in that podcast, speaking of four, he said, and I highly recommend the whole podcast, which is why I'm bringing it back in this blast from the past, but he said, you become what you look for in life. So if you're on the road to look for enemies, you'll find them. If you're looking for hate, it'll live in your heart. If you're looking for gossip, it'll consume you. If you're looking for fear, it will follow you.
But if you get on the road and you're looking for friends, you'll be befriended. If you're looking for love, you'll be loved. If you look for the truth, it'll set you free. If you look for hope, it'll go to the mountaintop. And Roy concluded saying, I know now in life, All of you listeners and viewers out there, you actually become what you look for. So let's go look for goodness. And I'm a for person. And I've used that phrase a lot ever since.
It's now seven years later because that's exactly what I think I am, or at least I try to be. And I hope you do too. We're living at a time where especially politics seems to be against all the time. Many of the best known politicians are the loudest voices against. They are the opposite of four, why I and I think many of us tune out politics and kind of look askance here in twenty twenty four because it's become an environment against. And against is exhausting.
Against doesn't really help anybody, especially people, by the way, who are against. The quickest way to become a demon is to demonize others. And so on the other side, if you're a four person, what benefits? Four people foster collaboration. People who are four others cultivate environments where collaboration thrives. We're focusing on mutual goals and successes win win rather than against, especially in killing forms of competition or talking down others.
People who are for people build trust. I I mean, when you consistently support and affirm others do you have someone like this in your life? You trust them. They are building trust. People feel more comfortable and secure when they know they're in a supportive environment, a for not an against environment. It also obviously reduces conflict. I don't think we need any more conflict in our world today.
So instead, if you focus on what can be done and what supports others, the four people that I know naturally reduce the potential for conflict. Their approach emphasizes understanding and cooperation over conflict, over divisiveness. I think two more things that I can see in four people like Roy Spence. Four people improve mental health.
They probably have better mental health themselves, but being supportive and positive for those around them, creating positive interactions, nurturing relationships that decreases stress, increases your satisfaction and happiness, definitely benefits your own mental health, and very likely benefits the mental health of those around you. Four people.
And I think the last thing I'll say about four people as we close down blast in the past number four, and boy, if Royce Spence isn't an example of this, go back and listen to that podcast anytime you need some positive ups. Four people inspire others. And that might be the most powerful benefit of being a four person, your ability to inspire others. Positivity.
We've talked about positive intelligence a lot in this podcast, the benefits for your investing and your business and your life, positivity and support. You're motivating others, and they're unconsciously or consciously mirroring back to you the inspiration, the four that you are showing them, and it multiplies. That effect is a force multiplier, as Colin Powell once said about optimism, multiplier through a community or an organization. So go back, listen to that podcast.
But if you wanna skip it, I hope you've gotten enough from this blast to realize and appreciate that Royce Spence is a four person. I'm trying to be a four person. I hope you're a four person too, or at least I hope you're trying to be a four person. Alright. And on to Blast from the Past, number five. The date, February first of two thousand seventeen. The podcast was Campfire Stories volume two. I'm gonna retell a story now that I told around the campfire in that podcast.
I'm reminded, by the way, when I say the phrase campfire stories of the fantastic one hundredth mailbag I enjoyed with some of our best storytellers, some of this rule breaker, Investing Communities' brightest stars. I hope you enjoyed them a couple months ago on the podcast. And that was stories around a campfire in retrospect. And what it reminded me of is the benefit of those kinds of podcasts and my intention to do some more of them in the months and years ahead.
Community members telling their stories. So here I am around the campfire with you just for this one story to close. And it's a baseball story and one of personal significance. And I tend to turn all stories, by the way, whether from sports or otherwise, into investing and life stories. And, yeah, this one's gonna be no exception. So it was my spring break. It was just after ninth grade. I had the great good fortune of getting to be a bat boy for the
Minnesota Twins. I got to go down for spring training. It was at old Tinker Field in Orlando, Florida where the then hapless twins did their Vernal sojourns. Back in those days, in the years nineteen eighty two, nineteen eighty three ish, the Twins had a bunch of exciting upcoming players, but they were also losing a hundred games a year.
Now these same youngsters, I know not everybody's a Twins fan and not everybody cares about the Twins in the nineteen eighties, but some of you will remember Ken Herbeck, Gary Galletti, Frank Viola. These same youngsters that I got to be bat boy with that spring, they would wind up winning the world Series, the World Championship just five years later. The year was nineteen eighty seven when they did it, and again, by the way, in nineteen ninety one.
But this is nineteen eighty two, eighty three. My own batboy days, which, by the way, were their salad days, as Shakespeare puts it, when they were green. So they were young players not winning. And speaking of green, being green, so was I. Salad green bad boys don't exactly command respect among Major League Baseball players. Maybe I benefited because my grandfather owned a piece of the team, but actually, I don't think that mattered at all.
But there was one player who stood out to me, different from all the rest, in contrast to his peers, his peers who were young, strong, likable, cocky, loved to joke around younger players, this player was older, sadder, and wiser. He was low key to their high key. He was actually a rookie, but he was thirty years old. He'd worked his way up long and hard through the minor leagues, and he just exuded humility. So my locker was right next to his. I can still see the masking tape affixed there.
Wash, his simple nickname, scrawled in black letters on masking tape. The thing about Wash was that he actually got to know my name rather than call me, I don't know, kid or bucko or whatever friendly, but patronizing nickname other players used. And as a fifteen year old, I could relate to him as well on a special level because he was only five foot eleven. He weighed a hundred sixty three pounds. That's pretty much my own size my whole life long.
Of course, back then I was a bit smaller, but you can see how he was kinda my guy. Indeed, to the only kid in the Twins Clubhouse, he was like an uncle. Someone I could talk to in contrast to the plucky, obnoxious older brother types that the rest of the players represented for me at the age of fifteen. So maybe my locker was put there for a reason. I remember Ron Washington, aka Wash, well.
The baseball encyclopedia will show Ron as a dependable but unspectacular, weak hitting middle infielder who batted four hundred fifty one times for the Minnesota Twins that season, nineteen eighty two, and never got that much playing time again. He was released by the Twins during the spring training of nineteen eighty seven, the year they would win it all. He left the game some years later. I didn't really follow where he went after that. To me, he'd been a standout in the clubhouse.
But like most fans, I admittedly wind up spending more of my time following the standouts on the field. Well, fast forward to today, twenty twenty four. This past offseason, Ron Washington was named the Major League Baseball manager of the Los Angeles Angels. I wasn't totally shocked by this. I don't think many real baseball fans were because he has a background in management.
His was an increasingly visible presence in the third base coaching box for the Oakland Athletics back in the day, you know, in the age of their Moneyball fame. There was Ron Washington in the third base coach's box. And then later on, he was named manager of the Texas Rangers. And before I get to my investing lesson, here's an Associated Press story quote from Ron. From my own distant memories, boy, does this ring true.
This was at the press conference when he was named manager of the Texas Rangers. Walsh said, quote, I'm gonna be a player's manager. My job is solely to make sure that every player on the Texas Rangers feels like they are part of everything going on here. Washington said Monday night when he was introduced at a news conference, quote, as a manager, he continued, I'm no good if the players don't get it done. If the players get it done, I'm great, end quote.
No bluster there. No, we're gonna win the championship. No, I came from such humble beginnings. I've earned this. Nope. Very little focus on the self. Wash would end up leading that team, the Texas Rangers, to the World Series four years later in two thousand ten and then again in two thousand eleven. I wish him the best now with his next adventure here in twenty twenty four. I will note, by the way, that my Minnesota Twins the Twins, by the way, were picked to win their division this year.
Everyone knew that the Angels this year need to start rebuilding. But are you ready for the investment lesson? You want your CEO to be Ron Washington. Any company that you've invested in, if you have significant dollars on the line over a long time period, you better make sure that the qualities I experienced firsthand in Wash are there in the individuals who not exactly indirectly affect your retirement. Right?
The people leading the companies you're invested in and good people don't really, most of the time in my experience, change. So it's now thirty two years later since my locker sat next to wash, but that same wash is there in Los Angeles today. Thirty two years later, same Ron Washington, same perspective. Again, that is the type of person you want running a company. It is a powerful business and investing lesson and one I've learned over time, character matters.
I think it matters more than more than anything. So to the extent you can find excellent character in who runs the companies in your portfolio, who you work with professionally, who you marry, who you play golf with, who you pay to teach your kids. So fellow investor, fellow traveler in these lands, fellow fool, remember my Ron Washington lesson. I wish him the best now with his next adventure here in twenty twenty four.
I will note, by the way, that my Minnesota Twins swept his Angels somewhat ironically, and that's most of Blast from the Past number five. I do wanna add in passing that no one is perfect. I've made more bad stock picks than anyone in Motley Fool history. And Ron Washington has made some real mistakes personally, which he's owned up to. So I'm not trying to put Ron up there as your ultimate human exemplar, unless you wanna imitate maybe his best characteristics, his resilience, his humility.
What you're seeing in this story, this blast in the past through the eyes of a fifteen year old, is someone who from a place of humility would rise to leadership and then some measure of fame and a bit of infamy too as Wash takes over the Angels this year. We'll see if he can get them into the World Series from a standing start four years later as he did with the Rangers.
I'm grateful for my experience, which for me, thanks to him, has been a powerful investing lesson that I have used over and over years and years since to find the companies, but more importantly, find the people I admire, Steve Jobs, and invest in them. Character always wins. As we shared on this this podcast in a nuanced discussion with Oxford Character Projects Ed Brooks, you may remember that from last fall, which can be a part of a future blast in the past perhaps one day.
Who is running your organization matters a lot for better and sometimes for worse a lot more than most people think or realize. The angels, to me, have a figure who, by the way, is no angel himself and yet embodies humility as I first encountered him and resilience these many years later, who is running your organization matters a lot. Go Ron Washington.
As always, people on this program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. Learn more about rule breaker investing at r b I dot fool dot com.