Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story? Runs that poignant lyric from the American hit musical, Hamilton. Well, storytelling has been at the heart of this podcast for many of the four hundred fifty weeks and counting we've shared together, but it didn't occur to me until a few years ago to start a new episodic series that features some of your favorite Motley Fool personalities telling their story.
Because regardless of who lives, who dies, and the truth is we all do, the unanswered question is, who tells your story? And so I thought, why not have them do so? Why not have you do so this week, Bill Barker, Robert Brokamp? Where you come from? If you had to tell your story in just ten sentences, how would you tell it? And what does the stock graph of your life look like? And what were the three key moments that made you into the investor you are today?
Telling their stories, volume six kicks off right here, right now, only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing. It's the Rule Breaker Investing podcast with Motley Fool cofounder David Gardner. Okay. Welcome back. And if you missed that espresso shot of optimism that Bill Burke uncorked on this podcast last week, go back and listen to it, or or share it with a glass half empty friend, at least recognizing the serious and real health benefits to being more optimistic, etcetera.
As I said last week, that episode is timeless. It's gonna be a great one to bookmark and go back to anytime you or someone you know needs a pep talk. Thank you again to the Optimism Institute's Bill Burke for suffering fools gladly last week. And now without further ado, this week, the sixth in our episodic series, Telling Their Stories. Let me remind you how this works. Telling Their Stories features the life stories of some of our favorite investors, long time Motley Fool personalities.
The storytelling has three building blocks. The first, the story of your life in ten sentences. Have you ever done that, dear listener? It's available to all. Try it sometime. Well, two people who have definitely done it are this episode's guests, Bill Barker and Robert Brokamp. They will tell their life stories in ten sentences. That's building block number one. Building block number two, hey. We're all investors. My dear listeners, you are too.
All of us understand the concept of a stock graph. But what if instead of graphing a stock, you're graphing your life? What are the highs and lows? Bill and Robert have done that too. They'll speak to whatever they'd like to in the stock graphs of their lives. And then the third and final building block is the three key moments that have shaped these fools into the investors they are today. They'll share all this, and we'll talk about it, thereby hangs a tail or two. Let's get started.
Bill Barker, welcome. Thanks, David. Bill, what are you doing today at The Motley Fool? Primarily working on, firecrackers, the the small micro cap, service with Bill Mann and little work on, hidden gems in The Motley Fool one portfolios and little podcasting here and there and sometimes, Motley Fool live. How many years have you been at The Motley Fool? Well, we'll get into that. We'll get into that. Spoiler alert. We're gonna go there. Bill, do you have ten sentences set up? I do.
You're ready? I'm ready. Excellent. William Stevens Barker, tell your story. Thank you, David. I was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, not far from, where, you and and Tom spent a little bit of time. In fact, we may have gone to the same preschool, for a period of time even if we didn't necessarily overlap. We'll get into that. Grew up a big sports fan. They're not a Philadelphia sports fan.
That's a product of neither of my parents being from Philadelphia, which is an unusual thing for those, in Philadelphia to have neither parent from there. Was taught how to play tennis at an early age by my father, who's a much better tennis player than I ever was. But that led me into a number of other racket sports, which have been a big part of the exercise at least in my life and a lot of my time.
Did some, public school through about seventh grade and then went to private school and then, to Yale for college where I was an African studies major through junior year and, then switched to political philosophy for my senior year and graduated with that degree. Then to, University of Virginia for law school. Met my wife, during one of my summers there at the summer softball game on the fields of DC near the Washington Monument.
Spent a few years at a big law firm here in DC, then, I was back in Philadelphia, my home, for couple years in the commercial litigation section of the, City of Philadelphia City Solicitors Office. Most of the time that I was in law, both at the law firm and with City of Philadelphia, I knew I wanted to do something other than law and litigation and didn't know what it was until I found The Motley Fool, and its blend, completely unique of, education and investing and and humor.
And I found myself here shortly thereafter, couple years of posting on the boards, but, I had about, three and a half years during my first stint here, then I and a couple of others, left around two thousand and one. I came back in two thousand five. In the interim, I worked in the treasury department, working on terrorist finance, freezing and tracking and thwarting. Then I was back. And, two thousand eight helped start Motley Fool Asset Management.
With a small team, things are still going in money management, but I came back to the publishing last year. And somewhere in all that, had, a growing family, three kids. One is out of college. Two are in college, one about to graduate. And, two dogs and two cats. So that's more or less an outline of my life story. That was about ten sentences. It was about ten. Some of some of the sentences were run off. And I detoured a couple of times from what what I had written here.
African American studies. Why were you intending to major in that when you started at Yale? I certainly was not intending to start on it. When I got to Yale, I was, at the time, something that is more uncommon today than it was back then. I was just there for a liberal arts education. I was there to take courses that interested me and figure out what interested me more than other things.
And even the concept of having a major was sort of an imposition on the the freedom that I would have preferred to just take the most interesting four or five courses every every time, but I had to organize it into a major. And I guess when I was, in that period, I had been to Africa, as just a tourist, but had had enjoyed the trip I had made there.
And I took a great course my very first term at Yale, which was a survey course, which had all of the teachers or the, who who did a week or two, they would just do their best lectures. Mhmm. There the music teacher would do a week on African music, and then there would be a week on African religion and philosophy and history and politics. And so, I got to see the sort of the best, most high level version of of everything and thought it was all interesting.
And I didn't commit until the end of sophomore year to the major as you didn't have to, where I was at that time until the end of sophomore year. And and then by the end of junior year, I had learned enough about myself to know that I wasn't going to go off to Africa, and spend my life, really. You were gonna go off to Poli Sci. Poli Sci land. Well, I had to look at what I had, and I had a lot of the African studies courses that I had taken were about, the political science, there.
And I had taken a lot of political science, a lot of philosophy, and and was able to cobble together, this political philosophy major, which was under the political science department, but had a lot a lot of the philosophy was applicable. Racquet sports and sports, obviously, coming up multiple times in your story. I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about that. Let's do a little bit more of that now, Bill. Hand eye coordination. You've got it.
Well, I as I say, my dad was quite a good tennis player, and I probably you know, genetics, have a lot to do with what happens to you on the courts. Growing up as a fan, I know you're a baseball fan. I'm sure you're a fan of other sports too, including tennis, of course. But were you kind of that guy cheering on the Yankees in your Philadelphia classrooms? That guy. Well, I I guess I probably kind of hit it a little bit. The reason why people ask why, why are you a Yankees fan?
And it was that I was already interested in baseball, baseball cards, of course. Of course. Of course. Baseball, just playing baseball. It was a bigger sport back then. And something you would do in the neighborhood, and I loved it. And I, when I was very young, my dad, in order to encourage me to read more, would buy books that were very, you know, easy to read and and were geared toward the history of baseball, and it was all Yankees.
Like, if you were if you were being given a book in the late sixties, early seventies that was about baseball's best sluggers, baseball's greatest world series, you know, greatest pennant races. Half the book was without the Yankees. That was that was just the Yankees took up such a large chunk. So I was in a way just, you know, a front runner, although the Yankees were terrible, in in the late sixties I remember that. Seventies.
But but the history that I was being indoctrinated with by these random house books, were what led me to to root for the Yankees. And as I say, I wasn't I wasn't raised as a Philadelphia sports fan. Like, in this household, we root for the Phillies and the Eagles and the Sixers. It was my dad was from Utah. My mom was from Illinois, and I was left to choose my own, teams. How'd your parents meet? College. Good way to do it.
You met your wife, though, your bride to be, sounds like on a softball field in Washington DC, summertime. That is true. Yes. So sports really runs deeply through your life. Was there a chance that you and Diana would not have met on that field that night? Could it all not have happened in the alternative universe? Very much so. Yeah. Well, we had both been, at Yale, but she's, as she'll point out, when she has the opportunity, much younger than I am, two years.
And so we didn't really know each other, although we we traveled in in circles that overlapped just enough that when I saw her on this field, I recognized her face. Although, I didn't know where I was recognizing it from, we we were not really acquainted, although we had met. And it's been a few years and I don't have a very good memory. So, ultimately, I I stared at her long enough in a way that was no doubt upsetting, but, but she was wearing Yale shorts. I bet it's that.
That's where I recognized her. Introduce myself. She had no idea who I was, of course. But, yeah, she as she would tell the story, her office was loathed to play our office because we were this, lobbying firm. I didn't do any lobbying. I was doing litigation, but they they were Really good at softball. They fancied themselves.
She worked at a congressional office as not ones who should, associate with lobbyists, unless we were picking up the check for the meal and drinks after the game, which we were. So so that's that's, yeah. She her office might well not have ever played our office, and we would not have met, I don't think, or, you know, remet. Bill, I see you starting to brandish the stock graph of your life, so we're gonna go to that in a sec.
But before we do, I'm sure you're gonna get into this a little bit more, but the law and then all of a sudden, the stock market. What in your mind is the single greatest advantage you have as a lawyer, a recovering lawyer, a present lawyer? I don't know how you think of yourself with the law as an investor.
I think that the training in the law and legal writing, where you have to have support for every fact, Every you you have to have a citation for every argument, either you're you're citing a a previous case or you're citing something that's in the record. You have to have that to move forward to the next thing, which is not the way much of argument works in the rest of society.
You don't ever have to show your facts or have any facts as is more and more the case in in, you know, both social media and and political world. You can just make up your own facts a lot of the time, but you can't really make them up for very long in the stock market. You can make up a story, you know. Story's doc. And and it might hold for couple days or week, but it's not gonna not gonna hold up to an investment horizon. Really appreciate that point. I'm glad you're on our team.
Build a stock graph of your life. They can't see the graph. In fact, I can't even see the graph. It's on your laptop. So make sure that as you talk us through it here just over the course of the next couple minutes, you make it visual for us. Alright. There are ups and downs like other stock graphs you've seen. And I think there is well, go ahead. Yeah. And then I'll I'll discuss why the shape is what it is. It could it could be whatever shape you want. It sure can.
And, really, the way we've done this on this episodic series on Rule Breaker Investing is to just invite the presenter to touch on, alight upon a few different highs and or lows. It's whatever you'd like to share about your life. But, of course, because this is an investing podcast, we see lives through through graphs, which usually go somewhere in the lower left and usually a little bit higher in the upper right somewhere, but thereby hangs a tail, as I said.
Well, Bill, we can both picture your x axis. That is, of course, time. It goes from left to right. It is unstoppable. But your y axis the y axis seems to me I mean, for a lot of people, I think it's happiness. Well and I do think that to feel that it should keep going up into the right, I I think works against the actual experience of life, not just ups and downs, but, like, I don't know. What it it it it wouldn't be that sad. Like, when is when is it better than when you're seven? You know?
You don't you don't have to do anything. There are there are Many of us peak at seven. Is is that what I'm hearing? I mean, if if it's terms of happiness, you probably there's probably some study on when happiness peaks, and it's not it's not at the end of your life. I mean, it moves to the right. And and the way I graphed it, it does move up into the right, but it it doesn't relentlessly move up. What's the first thing you wanna share?
The first thing that I wanna share, I guess I mean, the the one one of the peaks here is as we've discussed, yeah, in in nineteen ninety when I when I met my my wife to be, things things were sort of on, you know, a nice ascending trajectory. I mean, I started at a point value of a hundred the day I was born randomly. But but, you know, that seems like a nice round number and one that That's often the way things start. Right? We index to a certain number. We make it a hundred.
Yeah. So so, and and up through college and and all that, it was, certainly, feels like those things are getting better and better. And, yeah, met her. And and and then I had to become a lawyer aft you know, this was during the summer where I was still in law school and I had a summer associate job at a law firm and they wine and dine you and they don't make you do much work and they introduce you to your fiance and all that stuff. That's that's how they that's how they rope you in.
Find find a a boyfriend or a girlfriend or or whatever for you, and then you feel like, you gotta go work for them. You're making it sound as if this is all controlled by a a puppeteer, a Marriott Net man or something. I didn't realize that's how it actually works. Keep going.
That's how that's how that's how law firms, well, that, you know, they they give you a lot of a lot of, carrots first and as as many jobs do when they're when they're getting people to work for them, and then you you learn along the way how many carrots and how many sticks there are. So nineteen ninety, a high. Keep going. Yeah. And then, I would say that actually working in in a legal office, working as a lawyer, Certainly introductory big law firm life is not for everybody.
And after a few years I had gone to Philadelphia and and did more litigation. And by the way, litigation is just arguing with people all the time, which is also I don't recommend as something you must try, to get yourself into a a position where what you do on a daily basis is get into arguments. Yeah. I hear you. Can you give an example? Maybe I'm sure the names can be changed to protect the innocent, but what would be a typical argument you'd find yourself in?
I I mean, I'll I'll go I'll go with a good argument. There was one client was the this was one of my favorite pieces of work to have done was representing the, the library for the blind of Phil of Philadelphia. And, they were about to be kicked out of their space as a library. And and so in terms of a client Right away, they're already they've won the sympathy lottery here. This is you you can't argue against these people.
It's it's a library for the blind, and and they were going to be kicked out, and and I found a letter that was in a file that was in the court that, was sort of nobody had had found and sent it to the the entity that was trying to kick them out. And I said, look, under the terms of the the bequest, you don't get to kick them out. In fact, I think what we might be looking at is whether they can kick you out. So if you'd like to continue your litigation, by all means. And that resolved the case.
So Congratulations. So that was that was fun. They don't all wrap themselves up that tightly. Take us along further on your graph. What else can we see here? You know, the things things move up when when I found The Motley Fool. To be perfectly honest, it was, an unexpected thing. I was on AOL back in the day, and and they would relentlessly push the the Motley Fool icon on their little tiny homepage. I remember it. And and That was big, by the way. That was a lot of eyeballs. Early days, AOL.
Huge fish, small pond. And so anybody who was thinking to use the Internet was probably using AOL for a couple of years there. And to be up on the main screen with our Elvis logo, that's what we've always called our gesture internally. That was huge. Yeah. Did they even have data to, like, put that in front of some people and not others? Did they have an algorithm? That was the age of hits. Right? It would be like, how many hits does your website get? So I'm sure they were counting hits.
Yeah. But but would would you know would my use of AOL have been incorporated into their, you know, targeting me? I would say probably not initially, but certainly in time and most of all and this was really helpful for The Motley Fool. Enough about me. We're going back to you in a sec. But I do wanna say that back then, older hands will remember you were paying per hour or per minute connect fees to be using Internet. As Ryan Gumbel and Katie Couric once said, what is Internet?
Famous thing on the Today Show. You can watch it again on YouTube. It's classic. When they first kind of broached the topic of Internet. But, yeah, people were paying per minute. So we knew very specifically who was in what area because we were making money from that, and that was a fantastic way for The Motley Fool to start. We didn't have to have venture capital.
We had a cash flow positive business model thanks to AOL bringing in lots of people, mailing out discs that served as cocktail coasters. There were so many of them out there at in the nineteen nineties. But, yeah, enough of you found your way to us. And, Bill, some of you were so bright we hired you. Yeah. I had, posted quite a bit, on the message boards or at least had posted enough to get a number of, message of the day or post of the day.
Definitely. Post of the day. You made me and Tom and a lot of others laugh, and it was smart. Well, it was fun to do, and, that was, boy, that was early days of social media, which were and I don't know what your experience is today compared to then. Certainly, during those years where the stocks were generally going up a lot. The market went up twenty percentage points or more four years in a row.
Yeah. And people S and P. Were very, very nice to each other largely, online in at least in the Motley Fool Yeah. Message board world. Everybody was, generally helpful, and maybe some people were jealous of some people's making money when they were making money, but not as much as, you know, people taking victory laps for things they were doing, but there was, far, far less, hostility. There was a lot of esprit de corps, and I think in part, I still think this exists in Foldsons there.
You go to our gatherings and you see this. I agree. A lot of social media doesn't seem to work this way, and a lot of people seem to use it as a foghorn to call out things or people they don't like, and that's what seems to get a lot of the clicks today. But I think it was discovering that we could work together by having our computers dial in through phone lines to each other's computers and share information, especially as individual investors.
There were doctors who were prescribing or using, solutions that were manufactured by companies we were looking at. We didn't have any access before AOL or Internet. We had no access to that kind of knowledge or conversation. And so I really think that was a big part of that early. Yeah. Ninety five, and I posted, I didn't post right away. I I think I lurked for for better than a year year, maybe two, but started posting in ninety seven Okay.
Possibly ninety six, was hired in ninety eight, and, did a a year remote, and and then I moved here, which was, something my wife was very happy to do because it she's from here. Bill, point out one or two more spots along the graph of your life. I realize we're oversimplifying, but that's what we do on this episodic series. Well, you know, we we talked, about this briefly. Right? I did.
I was here for a few years, and then two thousand one, I and a number of other people, were not able to stick around for Yeah. We had mass layoffs, and it was extremely painful two thousand one. I remember that we had three layoffs, and they were about eighty five to a hundred people each time. And I remember Tom and I, as we talked with our team at the time, that first layoff, we were like, that's the only one. That's we're not gonna need anymore after this. People are not investing anymore.
They've a lot of the online brokers are shuttering. Everything's kind of shutting down. We have too many people. And then we had to do it again, and then we had to do it again, at which point we're laying off people who aren't just some of our most talented fools, some of our family members. It was it was gut wrenching. It was. And I I was involved in in laying off people as in a management position and and Mhmm.
Actually, much much more painful to lay people off than to be laid off, or it wasn't in my experience. And, of course, by the time of this third round of layoffs, which is where, I got laid off in two thousand one, that was after nine eleven. And, you know, there there there were a lot of problems out there and being laid off was relatively easy to digest, and and felt like I was going to be able to go off and and do something.
And the people who were left might be the ones that really needed to be, you know, you needed empathy for because the task left was tough. It was hard for everybody and not just for our small company, but for our society, our world as you point out. The events of that year are just I think that was the worst year of my life. So I I'm not looking at your graph right now, Bill, but at least mine goes down that year. Did yours? Yeah. I mean, it goes down. I'd it does go down from two thousand.
I I did have a child born in that year, and I found a job pretty quickly, working in terrorist financing. That it was a hiring, you know, time in terrorist finance. Sense to me. Right here in Washington, DC. You know, tracking and and, freezing and thwarting and and was the kind of thing that, I I could, Get behind. And and and it was a wonderful job in at least one respect, and that is everything that I was working with was classified. And when I left my job, I was done for the day.
There was no bringing work home. There was no working on something. And when I went home, I was free. And and that's never been the case before or since. You know, you've always got Yeah. Something you leave there. I should work on this a little more, and it's it's, hanging above you all the time that you could be. And maybe you are kind of working a little bit while you're watching the baseball game, while you're talking to your kid.
Like, it's it's a distraction that is unfortunate opportunity, in most jobs now that you are never fully not working. Yeah. I feel you. And I think a lot of us do. Although, I love my work, so I'm happy to answer emails or even sometimes send them on Sunday nights, not expecting my fellow fools to even open them until the next morning. But thank you for that, Bill Barker. We're about to go to the three key moments that have made you the investor you are today.
Before we do that, I want you to share one more point on your graph. And if you're not including a racket sports championship that you have won because you're being too modest, could you please mention that and then a life moment, and then we're going to your investor development story. A racket sports.
I I get I I won the US Amateur, doubles, in the game of court tennis, which nobody's ever heard of, but is played by about, I don't know, thousand to fifteen hundred people or so in this country and, maybe another three or four times out around the world. And my son has also won the US amateur in doubles. We haven't won That is amazing. Together, but that's that's something, I'm happy to talk about his win because he's got more in front of it. And I'm I've wrapped up mine.
I I'm I'm heading off to England in a couple of weeks to play the world, fifty and over, championships. That's wonderful. Good for you. That'll be fun. But Share one more graph moment. One more graph moment. I guess I would talk about just with just coming back, from asset management, back to publishing, which has been good. I mean, it's still it's a little bit on a down. I well, as I look at where I plotted things, things, are I only tracked through twenty twenty three.
I haven't, you know, looked into twenty twenty four. But, I think there's definitely a little bit of a downward trend through that time because you know the office life has not come back to what it was. And I I think that that's probably been something a lot of people, in the company appreciate, the ability to work from home. There is the ability to come into the office, but, frankly, the office life was much more vibrant pre pandemic than I think it could ever be again.
And that's, you know, that that shows up in my graph. So Yeah. Today, there are a few more people in the office. Tomorrow's gonna be a good day of people coming into the office, and those are those are good days for the company. Yeah. We have we call them sync days where everybody kinda comes in. No one's forced. We've never really been compulsory about that at The Motley Fool. I think that's our strength, but sometimes in your strength is your weakness too. And I appreciate that point, Bill.
I I'd I'd recognize that we once had four floors in the office building in which you and I are broadcasting today, and we're down to just one. We actually have more employees than we did before pandemic, but we also started to go more and more remote. So we have employees in states where we wouldn't even have an office, and, we we're a lot more spread out. I also share with you a love and appreciation of the times that we have spent in and around Fool HQ.
And, you know, the only constant has changed, so who knows where things are headed next. But thank you for that, Bill Barker. Well, let's close it then with the three key moments that have made Bill Barker the investor that he is today. What's number one? Number one, and we're talking about a moment we've already talked about. It is just find just finding the Motley Fool really was, a a key moment, foundational moment on AOL.
I didn't I had been doing a little investing, but not Were you raised to think about the stock market? Did your parents care? No. No. I think it was more, my experience with it became more from, sort of the the gambling, world, that that part of it appealed, to that part of my brain. And and knowing how to invest, or knowing how to do my own research was not Mhmm. Generally something that anybody was was talking about. You would get ideas from your broker or or the Wall Street Journal.
So it was, it was great fun to find that. That really was how the world worked back then, and it's still not that different today. A lot of people do still have brokers and still read The Wall Street Journal, but it was a smaller world with fewer resources and possibilities for investors. Definitely more of a a Yale than let's go within Ohio State University when we think about it. Just sort of the walled gardens, a fewer people.
By the way, did you watch Yale beat Auburn in March Madness this year? The men's? Sort of. I was at a a dinner with my my wife and a friend of hers, and we are in a place where I could keep an eye on the game. And then I was frequently you know? But two of the people beside myself were Yalie. So Okay. So I was able to defend it. And the fact that, you know He won.
I would down when it got down to about two or three minutes and and I had I had been paying more attention to the table than to the TV. So all of a sudden, I looked up and Yale was up by five with two, three minutes left And and sort of paused the conversation and Yeah. Everybody agreed to watch the last couple of minutes of the game. Yeah. There went my final four entrant, Auburn, game one.
Well, I got to got to live, you know, a a little bit less than forty eight hours of hope for Yale, but they were they were finished off in about the first five minutes of their next game. Alright. So, well, I guess I could have predicted maybe what investing moment number one is, especially because that wasn't a big part of your background, but you had well, you're a smart guy. You're also intellectually curious.
And there's a little bit of the gambler, the sports, the lover of chance and risk, and and it sounds like that's maybe what appealed to you when you found a little jester icon on your AOL login screen. Bill, what was investor moment number two? I'm gonna take this out of order chronologically. That works. Second one was, signing up to take the, the the CFA. Was, so it's certainly not a moment taking the CFA. It's a three year process or or back then it was, or more for most people.
And It's rigorous. It's it's a rigorous, thing. It's much harder than taking the bar. And, it was the moment was I was a couple of months into my job at Treasury, when I signed up for it knowing that I wanted someday to get back into the world of finance, and to this was this was one element that might help with that. And so it was a long process, but for those that are interested in studying finance, I I recommend it. Now we glibly throw around acronyms sometimes, especially around Fool HQ.
I think a lot of listeners will know that the CFA does stand for chartered financial analyst, I think. But then there's, like, certified financial adviser. There's there's a lot of possibilities, but do I have that right? It's I think it's is it chartered financial analyst? Yeah. I mean, you're one. I'm not. Alright. So you're not you're not actually supposed to throw around the acronym CFA as as of now or something like that. So, so I'm violating some sort of term, I don't know.
But, that is it. And it's, the way that it worked back then, and they've it's been tweaked a little bit. Okay. You take a test. It's, whatever, four or five hour test, level one. Yeah. About half fewer than half the people pass it. A year later, you're allowed to take level two if you have if you're one of the forty percent or so that have passed level one, and then same thing happens even though level two is only people who have gotten that far. Minority pass.
A minority pass level two, and then a year later, you're allowed to take level three. And if you don't pass, you just take it over. You wait a year to take the test again. I really admire that. I think it's I think it it seems to promote excellence. All the CFAs I know around the Fool, and we have a number of them, these are people I esteem. It's it's a real thing. It it's much more work than, you know, you probably anticipated being. What do you feel like you took away from it?
Like, the biggest takeaway, the the number one reason you're grateful for it. I we have people listening right now who are probably considering. I know some are actually in the midst of it, but for those younger fools thinking, should I do that? Why? Well, I so I had been sort of raised on The Motley Fool, Analysis School. And it's it's a less valuation oriented or certainly was back in the late nineties Still is for me. When when a lot of valuation went out the window.
So I think that, learning sort of what the traditional valuation I mean, it's a radically different method of looking through Mhmm. Financial statements. And it it it I mean, there's a lot of discipline, not in how you conduct it, but just that in how you have to manage your time in order. If you are working in a job that has nothing to do with the the material and also with young kids, there was not a lot of time to waste in in my schedule. And you you study for months.
And if you don't pass it, you've gotta look your spouse in the face and say, like, I didn't pass it and I'm gonna do it again next year. Like like, I am no further along than I was and I spent all this time. It's it's a it's a brutal thing that a lot of people go through of not Yeah. The majority of people who walk away from that have to tell their friend, spouse, or partner, I I know I spent a lot of time. I I didn't pass. Didn't pass. It's it's it's tough. So yeah.
In my in my case, I I did pass, all three times. I don't say that, to take a I mean, that's a little bit of a humble brag. How can it not be? Anybody who has a CFA is humble bragging. I yeah. I mean, there it's hard to talk about without making it seem that way, but it's it's plenty of people pass all three. It it's but not certainly not all. And it it just it's it's a matter of doing the work. It's a matter of doing the work. You can't just be smart and and Yeah.
Know how to do the Black Scholes formula. Right. It's not math. There's a lot of math. But some people just are great at math, and so they could they they could just pass anything. But this this is applied math. I had never taken statistics, pursued apparently African studies for a while. Mhmm. But I love statistics. I I've often heard it said. Should take statistics. Yes. I I there's a whole school of thought out there. I've I've see this.
Maybe Kevin Kelly once said it, but there there are people who say we should be teaching statistics in high school rather than calculus. Yes. It's much more relevant for more of us throughout our whole lives, estimating probabilities of things rather than the the shape of a curve or the speed of something. It it it I would a hundred percent agree that statistics should replace calculus as, you know, for most people in terms of, your I mean, it's it's it can be very rigorous.
Statistics can can be less rigorous. But there's there's plenty that you will learn, and it's, I can't I I struggle to think of when I have used calculus in my Let's move on to the third moment that has helped formed you to be the investor you are today. Bill, it sounds like these are out of order, which is completely fine. So nineteen ninety nine, this is a little bit before I started, which would have been the spring of two thousand and two is when I signed up for level one of the CFA.
But nineteen ninety nine, November, stock market's doing very well. Warren Buffett comes out, with an article in Fortune magazine, which was not an article that he wrote, but it was taken from some speeches and it was done by, Carol Loomis, I think, who is some time biographer. Yeah. And he talks about I think at the time, the, there was a poll of what investors anticipated making in the market. It was, I think, seventeen percent or something annually.
And Buffett laid out this argument that, you know, this could not be done. Here are the reasons why it cannot be done. And his best estimate, was that investors over the next fifteen to twenty years would make five percent in real terms. That's subtracting inflation. Mhmm. And I was looking it up to that. I mean, it always, has been it's been an article I've reread many times. I've written about it a number of times, on our site.
And in the twenty five years since he wrote since the article was published, the the market in real terms has has produced four point eight five percent returns. So there are reasons why math can be applied to the market. And in the short term, not as much so, but over the long term, whether things have, you know, look bleak or look great, you know, the the the math, is a heavy hand in dictating what can happen over the long term. Well, there you have it. William Stevens Barker.
Bill, thank you so much for sharing so much about yourself and what you've learned and inspiring a lot of us to back up our claims, whether it's well, you don't have to be a lawyer to, appreciate the importance of understanding where someone's financial advice comes from and any of their analysis and asking them to cite in a world of fake news, asking them to cite why they think something, that kind of rigor. You make us better as a fool in that way and many other ways besides.
I don't think we made people laugh as much as you normally do, but we weren't trying for that this time. I mean, it was still fun. Yeah. Well, we we could do we could redo this. Tell us if we have any bros coming. I think you're gonna laugh. You're gonna have some laughs with bro. You're right. Bill Barker, thank you so much. Full on. Thanks, David. And, oh my gosh, he's here. He's in the house. Robert Brokamp. David, hello. I'm delighted to welcome you.
In some ways, I think when I started the series a few years ago, it was just waiting for this moment, Robert. How long have you been at The Fool? Since nineteen ninety nine, I will celebrate twenty five years this August. That is phenomenal. And we're gonna talk about some of those years. But we're gonna go a little bit deeper, or we're gonna go as deep as you want to take us. The one thing I know for sure is that you're gonna tell us the story of your life in in ten sentences.
Are you ready for that? I am ready for that, David. Excellent. Robert Francis Brokamp, tell your story. Well, I was born in Chicago. At age five, my family moved to Tampa after my dad bought a ship supply company that he saw advertised in The Wall Street Journal. I thought I might wanna be a priest, so my first year of college was at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary in Winona, Minnesota.
But a year later, I transferred to the Catholic University of America, which brought me here to the DC area, and I became an English pre med major. But before going to med school, I wanted to do some service work. So I joined the Archdiocese of Washington's teacher service corps, which placed me in Holy Trinity School in Georgetown, two blocks from the famous Exorcist Steps.
I taught sixth and seventh grade English and religion for five years and also developed a massive crush on the school counselor, which worked out fine because we eventually got married, and we'll celebrate our twenty fifth anniversary this September. Meanwhile, my desire to be a doctor waned, but I realized that a teacher salary in the capital of this country would not go far, so I decided that I need to be much smarter about money.
I read as many books as possible and used a newest thing called the Internet, which led me to to discover a newest company called The Motley Fool. I became so interested in personal finances that I thought maybe that should be my profession and worked for two years as a financial adviser with Prudential Securities under the mentorship of my high school English teacher's husband.
But I kept an eye on The Motley Fool, and when I saw a job opening for an editor, I leapt at the opportunity and have been here, as I said previously, since August of nineteen ninety nine. And finally, I now live in Northern Virginia, have four kids, two dogs, and a lot less hair. Fantastic. Just like Bill's story, I feel like I knew that story, but I'm always being reminded of things that I've forgotten and learning new things. You know, Bill left it's my fault.
Bill left a smoking gun when he mentioned we may have gone to the same preschool. And I I didn't even remember what school I went to when I was four. It was just one year. We were in Gladwin, Pennsylvania about to move to Washington, DC because my dad is a lawyer, kinda like Bill's a lawyer moving to Washington, DC. And so it was Bryn Mawr Presbyterian, though. Bill reminded me.
And as you mentioned, Holy Trinity School, I was raised Catholic at Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown, the very same place that you were a teacher, Robert. So I did not intend when I invited you both into this episode to have these these school connections, but wow. Yes. And if you've seen The Exorcist, you've seen Holy Trinity in the background there. The it was the church where JFK attended his last Catholic mass, and it's where my wife and I got married. That is excellent.
Robert, where were you, like, growing up? Like, I I heard Winona, Minnesota at one point. Were you bouncing around? I obviously, you have to tell a little bit more about your father's story. Reading an ad in The Wall Street Journal ended up buying the company. Yes. So it was a ship supply company, which means when ships were coming into the port of Tampa, they would send a telex, because this is before the days of fax, seventies and eighties.
And they would say we need some food. We need some tools. Whatever they needed, he would buy it and then bring it to the port. So really, I grew up in in Clearwater outside of Tampa. Uh-huh. I'm I might be the the DEC area's number one Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan, by the way. And and that's pretty much what we did. I grew up running around, riding my bike, swimming in the summers. I spent in my grandmother's farm outside of Cincinnati, which was great.
My I was thinking earlier, like, my family never took a vacation. Like, I've never been on a plane with my entire family. But those summers on the farm in Ohio were just magical. Why? Well, you got to run around a lot. The animals were there. And it really was a time where and and Bill Mann said this when he was, doing this previously. Like, the Gen X kids was like, get out of the house, come back at dinner time. We're allowed to go to really just about anywhere where we wanted to go.
We could ride the tractors. We could ride the horses, go by the creek. It was a lot of fun. You actually listened to Bill tell his story, and you just alluded to it. Robert, thank you. Quick question. Compare and contrast yourself with Bill Mann. One point of comparison, similarity, and one contrast that you have with Bill. Okay. Similarity, we started in the exact same day. No way. August of nineteen ninety nine. That's awesome. The difference was I am, when you first meet me,
I'm an introvert. Bill Mann is not. So we sat very close to each other, and I sat very quietly, awestruck, really starstruck by all the people around me. Bill Mann, not that way. Hey, world. I'm Bill Mann. And we love him. And indeed Yes, sir. Thank you for reminding me that Bill appeared on the previous episode in this series, Telling Their Stories volume five. Of course, a cavalcade of fantastic fools. This is our sixth episode of Telling Their Stories.
I can't believe it took me this long to get to this wonderful friend and fool. Robert, do you still teach at all? Yes. Because one of my roles here at The Motley Fool is an internal role. So I'm on a four zero one k committee, and I'm on something what we call the wallet team, which is a group of fools that try to help our colleagues optimize their finances. Because even though we're a, you know, a finance company Surely, all of our employees would know all the things about money.
Unfortunately, that's not true. Fortunately, they know a lot more about tech and sales and marketing and running an office. Indeed. But not all of them are investing experts, personal finance experts. Experts. So we on the wallet team sort of advocate for good financial benefits and then educate about those benefits. Either I teach the classes, other people teach the classes. Next month, we're bringing in Virginia's five twenty nine plan to teach about college savings.
So we just do those types of things. Being raised with a father who is a businessman, what kind of feelings and thoughts did you have as, let's say, an eighteen year old about capitalism? So I'll touch on this a little later as well. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. The good thing was that my dad taught me a lot about business. He he took the opportunity to teach me about things, really, about all kinds of things. Right?
Like, I I mowed the lawn in our house, and he taught me how a lawnmower worked. And he would bring me to work and teach me things about business. And one thing he taught me was you always do more than they expect. Right? If if they expect x, you you give them x y z. Wonderful. But as I'll mention later, his business failed. And that was a very hard time for my family, which has which has made me, sort of I have two sides of my approach to personal finance.
Love the stock market, love risk, think long term. But there's a part of me that I call the awfulizer, and then I'm always prepared for the worst case scenario because my dad's business went under, and it was devastating for our family. So I saw the good and the bad part of being a business owner and capitalism.
Well, to be able to integrate those is, in some ways a privilege that you actually And to actually try to see the best and integrate those things into the investor that you are today and the fantastic fool, Robert, is something that you've succeeded at. Thank you for sharing that. We're about to get to your the stock graph of your life where we might talk some more about these things.
Now I'm not gonna take this personally, Robert, but I felt like the moment that you and I met I I I realized that Elizabeth that was probably more important. But the moment that you and I met, at least for me, the music slowed down, and we went into, yeah, slow mo, high def video as we shook hands at a book signing. I think you said you complete me. I think that's what you're saying. Actually, that's not what you said. You were very kind, though.
I mentioned you had a book signing. I was still a teacher. It was at the Books a Million, maybe, in Old Town, Alexandria. You and Tom were there signing book. I still have my copy of the Motley Fool Investment Guide with your autograph. Love it. You mentioned that from time to time on this podcast. We have some new listeners who probably don't know that. So but thank you. I just love that we met that way. Let's move now to the stock graph of your life.
Robert, thank you for putting in a little bit of time to think it through. This is an investing podcast, so, of course, we see things in investing terms. And when I think about graphical investing terms, I see graphs. That's always how it's been. A lot of people, even before they first understand what a stock is, they kind of see, I don't know, they see Amazon plotted on a graph. And for them, the stock market is a series of graphs. It kind of still is for me decades later.
I was joking with Bill that everybody agrees that the x axis of this graph is time, which goes from left to right, but it's not actually clear what the y axis stands for. It might be happiness, contentment. It might be something else. Do you wanna label your y axis? So I think given my approach towards finances and some of my history, I would say it is peace of mind. Love it.
Financial security, that balance between earning enough to pay your bills to save a little bit and still be happy, I would probably call that my why. I'm gonna say that you just helped me innovate with this particular episode because we've never really talked about labeling the y axis before, but I think that's a fun creative choice. You just did it. Take us through.
Alright. So Stockenbro, as I'm known around these parts, had a fantastic IPO coming public on July eleventh nineteen sixty nine, just two weeks before the moon landing, the Manson murders, and Woodstock. So it was an eventful summer. And my IPO was fantastic because I was born in the United States of America. And boy, what a way to start out your life. Plus, I was born to very loving parents. My mom was demonstrably loving.
My dad was a little more old school, like, wouldn't change diapers, maybe a little stern, but taught me a lot as I said. Do you ever see your dad cry as a kid? I did just but just when his business went under. That was the only time I saw him cry. And I really had a very happy childhood. And so I would say if if there's a a stock price, it's going up fine.
And it really I started flourishing really in high school, Did student council, youth group, very active in sports, ran track, specialized in pole vaulting, did a couple of decathlons. Wow. Played football. Still have my high school's record for most interceptions in a game at three. Thank you very much. You had three picks? Three picks in one game. Incredible. You were also a decathlete? I was. What was your strongest event? What was your weakest event?
So strongest was pole vault hurdles, high jump. Weak was anything with strength. Like, shot put, discus, and discus I forgot that was part of the decathlon. Yeah. Of course it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In Florida, we didn't do the javelin because, unfortunately, someone got killed one year. Oh my god. So I never had the chance to throw the javelin. It does remind us that lawn darts were actually a toy that some of us grew up with back in the day. Not anymore. Absolutely. True true story.
I had a friend and I, we would shoot arrows at each other and try to catch them. Did you both live to tell the tale? I know you did. I did, and he did as well. Okay. Good. Are now Facebook friends. Anyways, so yeah. So my stock's going up, but then really it was junior year when my dad's business failed. And just a lot of things happened. Right? Yeah. Car got repossessed, our utilities got shut off. I had to go to the principal and tell her we can't afford to pay, the bills.
And it was, devastating for all of us. My I we had a very loving family. I would never say that my parents had a great marriage, but that was the end of it. So it began the start of their separation and divorce. So, it really affected my financial personality in a way. And I remember saying at that time, like, I'm never gonna put my kids through what my sisters and I went through. And then so that's that awfulizer part of me.
But then, I I just add here at this point, it was also very difficult for my parents financially. Mhmm. But now they're fine. They found people that are good for them, and they're in their mid eighties. And I I they're genuinely friends now. They call each other and check on each other. So it all worked out. But that time period was very difficult. Thank you for sharing. So go to college and, you know, bro stock was pretty volatile.
It was truly like the best of times as well as among the worst of times, but very formative. The year at the seminary was very interesting, and then coming to, Catholic U here in DC to come from Clearwater, Florida to the big city was just so cool. And then I did the teaching as I said. And if you were to value my stock and as a price to sales or price to earnings, it's not very high because teachers aren't making a lot of money.
But I was very fortunate to be at a great school with a great community, great principal, great teachers, of course, met my wife there. And then I did that transition to, becoming a financial adviser, which is a bit of a change. I think it was like a you know, it's like a business changing its whole business model. Right? Yeah. Were friends and family expecting this? Were people shocked? They were shocked. They were shocked.
And, really, I think the seeds of it were that I was dating my my now wife at the time. This is a guy who was in seminary a couple years before that. And all of a sudden Right. You're dating, and you're about to go into the in the business. Yes. Exactly. And And I remember my dad specifically saying, like, I'm not sure this is the right business for you. And it makes me think of, one of the first stocks I ever bought was Nokia. I bought it in, like, two thousand, two thousand one.
It did not turn out so well. Cell phone company and tech still around. It began in eighteen sixty five in Finland as a lumber company. And so that's also like me, like, I'm changing my business model. I'm not sure how this is gonna work out. Out. In the end, I'm grateful for my two years of financial advisor. Learned a lot about the nuts and bolts of the financial services industry behind the scenes, but it wasn't for me. I wore a suit every day.
I had to, you know, do some cold calling and salesman stuff. But it was a great experience, and I'm sure it gave me a leg up to getting, my job here at the Fool. And then, you know, the stock took off at that point. I mean, it like, I I truly feel like getting a job at the Fool in nineteen ninety nine. I won the lottery Partially because it was the dot com days, right, and and feeling very fortunate to be part of that. But even now, I feel like I won the lottery.
Even though, as you know, sometimes we're a little difficult along the way. Yeah. Bill and I talked a little bit about that. We laid Bill off in two thousand one. Right? The final of our three layoffs, our company went from four hundred thirty five employees to eighty five employees in nine months. Yes. And that's why if if you were to do the graph the stock graph of Brostock, that's where it definitely took a dive. And my wife was among one of the people who got laid off.
Ugh. And all of us who are still here, you know, we're we're brushing up our resumes because we don't know how long this is gonna last. But the truth of the matter is that would have been a good time to buy bro stock because and I'm also feel bad to say this. The layoffs were good for my career. Because up to that point, I was like the fifth string editor, and I did very little writing even though really what I wanted to do was be a writer.
After the layoffs, those of us who were still here had to do a lot more work. So I became, like, the third string editor, and I gradually did more writing to where I eventually led and launched our early retirement service in two thousand four. I was gonna ask what year. It feels like it's been around forever. Celebrating twenty this year. Twenty year in in June. Rule your retirement. So many fools have benefited over the years. Thank you.
Yep. And so and since then, really, all I can say is the stock is has gone up. Not like in a NVIDIA sort of way. I I I view myself more as like a a blue chip dividend pair, steady as she goes, but I've been very fortunate. You did reference Bro stock a few times. Do you know that the ticker symbol's unfortunately taken? Are you aware of that? I was not aware of that. What is it? You don't know who has BRO? No. Nor did I. But I just looked it up, and it's Brown and Brown Inc.
They're insurance brokers. I mean, I'm kind of embarrassed. I like to think that I know what's going on in American business and the stock market. This is a company with a twenty four billion dollar market cap. Holy shavenger. It has your name as its ticker symbol. Neither of us know anything about it. Well, if anything happens to my job here at the Fool, I can always get a job with an insurance company. I just love that it's Brown and Brown.
I mean, this sounds like it's from another century, which it probably is. Maybe it started also as a lumber company in eighteen sixty something. Robert, do you remember how rule your retirement started? Yes. I don't. I bet you must. I think at that point, we had stock advisor, rule breakers, and income investor. And we decided that we needed something that wasn't just focused on Stock picking.
Stock picking. So, Buck Hartzel, who's still here at The Fool, Diana Yocom, who is not here at the Fool, and I were tasked to create a service. So we created it, proposed it, but then I had applied for the job to lead it. And I know I was up against at least two or three external people.
So as a you know, in in one period, I'm with these people planning and creating the service, and then maybe a month later, I'm in that same room with a with a suit on just to be funny, applying for the job to lead the service, and sure enough, I got it. So twenty years in, Robert, really your retirement has served so many. And, I I I know we've we're changing up our services some here at the Fools, so exactly what form it takes is unclear maybe as we enter summer.
But one thing's for sure, looking backward from the future, we will continue at different levels of our business model for different members to provide the kind of advice that you have for two decades now. Can you just briefly summarize a couple of your cardinal points that I, as maybe a knowledgeable person about finance, could share with friends around me to get them inspired and moving forward?
Yeah. I would say number one, we talk a lot about investing, but the number one reason most of us are investing is retirement, financial independence. And there are some things we control and some of the things we can't. And what I focus on in rural retirement is sort of marshaling all of your resources to maximize your ability to be financially independent. It's obviously your portfolio, but decisions about your your portfolio. Right? Should it be a traditional or a Roth account?
When it comes to retirement, still the foundation in this country for most people is Social Security. When do you claim it? How much should you plan to get given that, you know, it has financial issues? Mhmm. How do your taxes change in retirement? And there's a strategy about that. If you enter retirement with a traditional account, a Roth account, and a taxable brokerage account, which should you tap first?
So there's all these little tweaks that are within your control that sort of optimize your ability to be financially independent for the rest of your life. Alright, Robert. Well, as we wrap up our look at the stock graph of your life, remind me how you entitled the y axis again? I considered it financial peace of mind. Right? Your ability to pay your bills, save for your future, but still enjoy yourself. Value the way you spend your day every day. Good news. Your life is not over.
At least as far as I know, I think you're gonna walk out of this podcast studio just fine, Robert. So it's gonna keep going from here. Where do you find yourself at this present perch twenty twenty four? Very high, really, because I talked previously about how when I was a kid, it's like, I don't wanna put my kids through what my sisters and I went through. And I think I've succeeded in that. Right? I am, as of this year, an empty nester.
One kid who is married and is a digital nomad in Europe, three kids in college, all their colleges pretty much saved up in five twenty nines. They've had good lives. And for me, that was such an accomplishment. I feel good about that. Congratulations. I love it. And otherwise, you know, my wife and I get to spend more time together, and I love my job at The Motley Fool, so I'm very happy. Traveling any? Not quite yet. My wife I'm so proud of her.
She, as a mental health counselor, had her has had her own practice for many years, but then got her PhD, at age fifty two and is now a professor. So but she's got a job that is a little too much because she's department chair. This is her last year's department chair. This is the danger of being so capable. I know. That's the problem. Plus, you were just you were getting ready to be empty nested, and all of a sudden, you can't do anything. I know.
Well, so this she's already told the dean that this is her last year. So once she's done, then we will have more opportunity to travel. Alright. Let's close it out with the three key moments that have made Robert Brokamp the investor that he is. And there might have even been some of these spoiled ahead of time. I'm not sure we've had a wide ranging conversation. Robert, what's number one?
Number one, when I was, again, a very, low income teacher, I was listening to radio, and I heard The Rick Edelman Show. Rick Edelman is well known financial advisor, author, and he was talking to someone who called in and said they couldn't find enough money to invest. And he was talking to her, and she said, well, I I do spend a lot of money on Diet Coke. And he said, don't buy so much money spend so much money on Diet Coke, buy Coke stock.
Spend your money on things that appreciate in value, not that depreciate in value. And it just the the light turned on for me. Switched on moment. Exactly. Because we're always spending money, but we can choose to spend our money on things that we appreciate five, ten, twenty years from now or things that we appreciate for about five minutes, and then we get rid of when we go to the bathroom. Not just that we appreciate, but that will themselves appreciate or not. Yes. Exactly.
So that was really a big key moment, and and it really did lead me to sort of learning more about finances. Again, I did discover The Motley Fool very early. Rick's books were very helpful as many as other books, and I'll get on to those, here in a little bit as well. But that was like the light bulb moment to turn me into an investor. We like reading suggestions on the show. Let's move to key moment number two. Okay. So I'm still the poor teacher.
At night, I'm teaching SAT and GRE classes at Kaplan Okay. To make extra money. The Kaplan office was in a mall that had a Barnes and Noble. So before and after, I would go to the Barnes and Noble and read the books there because that's too poor to buy books. And I just read any book I could. And if So wait. You were at the Barnes and Noble? You just, like, pull a book off the shelf, sit there on maybe a stool, and just hide out and read? Exactly.
Which is why now, when I go to a Barnes and Noble, I do make sure that I buy books on a regular you don't need to feel guilty about that, Robert. I honestly believe a bookstore is a community service. I am happy to support them. Love it. So there you were hanging out in the corner of the the Barnes and Noble. Kaplan, by the way, that that company was, maybe still is owned by the Washington Post company. Yep. For a while, it was like the profit center.
Everyone thinks about the Washington Post, back in the newspaper days when it was quite profitable, but Kaplan was a a real shining star for a while there. Yes. Yeah. And it was, frankly, a great way to make some extra side money as well. Sure. They pay well. Yes. Pretty well. Yeah. So as I'm reading, of course, I'm I'm learning everything. Right? Not only about stocks, but about mutual funds, like the basics. But, of course, I learn about index funds. I learned about a guy named John Bogle.
My very first IRA that I opened when I was twenty five or twenty six was Vanguard. And I just came to, first of all, admire John Bogle so much, but also learn the value of index investing. So I have many individual stocks, many like most of the people listening here, I get my ideas from The Motley Fool. So thank you, David, for my ten baggers in Tesla and Starbucks and my twenty bagger in Intuitive Surgical. I love it. Yes. You're welcome.
But a good part, if not most of my portfolio, is actually in index funds. Because I know it is hard to beat the market, so I understand. I wanna sorta hedge that. But index funds are also very useful to add other components to your port portfolio. So when we think of index funds, we think of S and P five hundred. But I also invest in international index funds. Mhmm. Most of my individual stocks are US.
They tend to be very large cap growth oriented, so I use index funds to add a little value and a little small cap and a little real estate to my portfolio to sort of round it out. I'm very diversified, which is, in some ways limited my returns. But in two thousand twenty two, when, you know, this market was down twenty percent, the Nasdaq's down thirty three percent, my portfolio was only down five percent, which suits me just fine. You You ever get to meet Bogle? I did. I've met him twice.
He came here to the Motley Fool You didn't meet? As you know. And I I sent him a letter once, and he sent me a handwritten note back. And he was famous for doing things like that. And that was the character of the man. And I'm so glad that you got to meet him, that I got to meet him, that we got to be friends with Jack Bogle because Bogle had an amazing ability to translate complex concepts down to the common man, someone like me, the common fool, you and me, Robert.
It wasn't just that he explained things really well through his books. It's that he gave us instruments, like financial instruments that would make sense in a very confusing world where a lot of people can't really figure out what a fund even is. Index funds beat mutual funds as we once wrote in our Motley Fool investment guide. We turned that into a song that used to be sung by an operatic singer who is a fool fellow fool of the time. Index funds beat mutual funds.
We sang that many a time on our Motley Fool radio show. But to have Jack Bogle on this podcast, I once did an episode. Google it. Love letter to Jack Bogle and then had him on the week after, a favorite memory of mine. We have many of them here at The Motley Fool with with Jack Bogle. But it's especially and I know you appreciate this about him as I do too, Robert, his character. Such an ethical guy, really. I mean, he could have been a billionaire if he structured
Vanguard differently. He did fine. I'm sure he died a decamillionaire. But I I don't know if you remember one of the things what he said when he was here in two thousand and eight Remind me. That, he was gonna come in sort of a, basically, a raggedy shirt. And his wife was like, you can afford to buy a new shirt. It's just the type of guy he was. Uh-huh. Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you for that memory. Let's move to your final key moment, the making of Robert Brokamp, the investor.
So this isn't one key moment, but really a series of moments. And it did start with my dad's business going under, and then the tough time we had at The Fool. And, of course, The Fool still survived, but a lot of other, you know, so called dot coms didn't survive. And then soon after that came, like, the Enrons and Worldcoms of the world and all those people losing their jobs.
And you may remember that your very first installment of the series was with Emily Flippen, and she talked about how, important it was to her, as a moment in her life when her mother lost her job as an attorney for JCPenney's for more than twenty years. She not only lost her job, but she had company stock, so it was a double whammy. So what that all taught me was, like, the best investment I can make is my human capital.
My ability to earn a growing and safe income, because that's the foundation of everything. Right? You can't invest unless you're earning enough money to pay the bills and have money left over to invest, to save for college, to buy health insurance, to buy life insurance. And it has to be strong enough so that if your company goes through layoffs, that you're hopefully one of the people who survive. Or if you're not, you can get a job very quickly. Right?
Unemployment is very low right now, but we still heard over the last few years, people at Microsoft and Facebook and Google and Twitter probably thought they just also won the lottery, had great jobs, and then they got laid off. You know? A lot of tech layoffs. Yep. Elon Musk buys your company and then half the company is gone. So you have to have a plan b. And part of that depends on your situation. Right? But for me, it was education. When I was a teacher, I got a master's in teaching.
When I became a fool, I got my certified financial planner designation. I just finished getting my master's in personal financial planning. Hopefully, I will be at the fool for the rest of my life. But if at some point, you all figure out that we could just use AI to to create the brobot and you fire me, I can get a job somewhere else pretty quickly because I've I've worked to make sure that my resume is compelling. Let's hope that day never comes.
But if it does, you are well prepared, and you've just taught a great lesson to many listening. And, yeah, I can only imagine. Yeah. I mean, you just named some of the world beating companies, many of which I've invested in and very grateful for, but there was a huge round of layoffs in the last six six months. They were fantastically profitable companies, but they still decided to lay people off.
Right. And I think some people would really object to that and say, how can you do that when you have so much money sitting in the bank? But then the other side of me thinks, you know, as a business, you need to make sure things work. And while it may look like you have a lot today, if you don't keep changing and dynamically reacting, AI, etcetera, to what's happening in the world, that might be a big mistake. I respect them for who they are, those kinds of businesses.
In some cases, I'm a shareholder, but I also know it's very hard. So in the end, we're adults engaging in lifelong learning. There's simply no substitute. You can't fake it till you make it with a resume. No. You can't. Maybe George Santos. I don't know. Right. And one of my my little rules, and I don't always follow it, is to try to update my resume once a year.
And if I haven't added something interesting to it or compelling to it, then I know the last year has not not been as productive as as I would have liked it to be. And the other rule of thumb I I I try to have, and this is an aspiration because I don't always admit it. I don't always I don't always hit it, but that is, if I'm doing a job, I wanna be in the top ten percent of people doing that job.
And if I don't know what that looks like, you ask everyone around you, like, tell me about the people who did this job beforehand. Who is the best and what made them the best? If you can do that, then you're definitely developing your human capital. Robert Brokamp has influenced literally millions of people to be better. And it's not just financial advice or retirement advice. We just heard some good life advice as well.
Robert, in investing in business and in life, thank you for the foolishness that you continue to bring so many of us, me included. It's such an honor to be here, David. Thank you. Full on. Alright. Well, there you have it, Telling Their Stories, volume six. I think I wanna reiterate one thing at close here. Because if you're an investor and the truth is we actually are all investors whether we yet know ourselves by that name or not.
So I should say that if you've switched on to that, you recognize that you are an investor. Maybe you were a lawyer clicking some full icon on the welcome screen of your AOL service one day, or maybe you started in seminary and then thought, I wanna have a family. In fact, maybe as you raised your family, you wanted to ensure that whatever bad things may once have happened to you, you will not let that happen to the family you're going to lead.
Well, you'll realize that your story will inevitably be shaped by the investing that you do. Stock stories and our stories, they become intertwined. They weave their way through our lives, as Robert mentioned, intuitive surgical, for example. So here's one more key insight.
Boy, if it isn't also true that the more investing that you do and the more care you take with it and the better you do, that story of your own making has a better and better chance of being a story with more and more possibilities. Oh, the places you'll go, and one, I hope, with a very happy ending. Thank you again to this week's special guests, Bill Barker and Robert Brokamp. And when you're gone, who remembers your name? Who keeps your flame? Who tells your story?
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.