What happens when you bring together three storytellers, three themes, and a podcast devoted to making you smarter, happier, and richer? Well, you get Three Fools. It's our newest episodic series. And this week, I'm joined by superstar guests, Randy Zuckerberg and Morgan Housel, as we each share three stories. One to educate, one to amuse, and one to enrich. Only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing. It's the Rule Breaker Investing podcast with Motley Fool cofounder David Gardner.
Welcome back, Fools. Wasn't it a treat to have Jamie Stegmaier on the podcast last week? So much wisdom and creativity packed into one episode. If you missed it, go back and listen. Speaking of favorites, next week is our January mailbag. Your questions, our answers, always one of my highlights each month. A reminder, our email address is r b I at fool dot com.
So if you found yourself moved by anything we've yet done this month or especially by this week's podcast, I would love to hear your reaction, questions, thoughts, and poems. Our email address again, r b I at fool dot com. You can tweet us at r b I podcast. Well, we're about to get started with a fantastic episode with my two guest stars. But first, this week's page breaker preview.
As I shared at the start of the year, my twenty twenty five book, Rule Breaker Investing, is available for preorder now. After thirty years of stock picking, this is my magnum opus. It's a lifetime of lessons distilled into one definitive guide. And each week until the book launches this summer, I'm sharing a random excerpt. We break open the book to a random page, and I read a few sentences. Let's do it.
Here's this week's page breaker preview, three sentences from early on in the book, and I quote, now I want to extend this metaphor in my own way in support of habit number one because to the row boaters, I say this, toss away your rowboat and at least try a canoe. Because when you're in a canoe, you're facing forward. You recognize that what truly matters is what comes next around that bend in the river as you paddle forward, paddle, paddle, paddle, looking the right way.
Alright. That's this week's page breaker preview. Of course, I wanna add more context, but then if I did, it's no longer a quick preview. I think many long time listeners may get where I'm going with that, sailboat, To preorder my final word on stock picking shaped by three decades of success, just type rule breaker investing into amazon dot com, barnes and noble dot com, or wherever you shop for great books.
Randi Zuckerberg is an entrepreneur, investor, and media personality best known for her pioneering work as a Facebook executive and author of three books, including Dot Complicated, Pick Three, and her children's book Dot. As the founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media, Randi champions creativity and innovation, inspiring audiences with her expertise in technology, storytelling, and leadership. She's also a Tony award winning Broadway producer and an ultra long distance runner. Welcome, Randy.
Thanks. This is so fun. I I love that we get to tell stories today. I do too. And thank you so much for leaning in. Morgan Housel is a partner at the collaborative fund and the author most prominently of the best selling book, The Psychology of Money. I bet you've read it. It's sold millions of copies worldwide, been translated into over fifty languages.
Known for his insightful and relatable writing on investing, business, and human behavior, Morgan helps readers and listeners alike better understand how to think about money and life. Morgan, a delight to have you back. So nice to see you, David. This is gonna be fun. And to you both, it may be too late, but happy New Year. Let me ask you each, Since it's really cold in the United States this week, where are you right now, Randy, and what is the temperature roughly?
Yeah. I'm in New York City, and right now it is feels like six degrees outside. And, that's stupid cold. Have you been outside? I have. Yeah. I was I was out running for two hours this morning. It was not smart that maybe maybe no one should be taking advice from me today. That is phenomenal. Morgan, I haven't done any running myself. Where where I am in Washington, DC, it is it's eleven right now. So, so that's my answer. Where are you, Morgan?
I'm at home in Seattle, Washington where it is a balmy twenty seven. So I might be sweating relative to you guys, but our our unique thing right now is it has not rained in Seattle in about ten days, and there's no rain for the next ten days in the forecast. This time of year, that never happens. I hear you. Well, there's a lot of things that have never happened before that are happening this week, and, this is one of them. Thank you so much for helping me kick off this series,
Three Fools. Each of us has brought three stories. The first will educate. The second will amuse, we hope. And the third will enrich. We know, and we're delighted to have these two guests and you with us. Pull up a chair, maybe get by the fireside if you have one, and let's get started. Well, we drew lots for this. And first up, for our first educate story is Randy Zuckerberg. It's gonna go Randy, Morgan, then me. Randy, you're first. What do you got? Alright.
My first story is called how I accidentally became an early Bitcoin adopter. So, about a decade ago now, I was asked to give a keynote speech about crypto. I didn't know very much about crypto, but, I was they kind of begged me to give the talk. They were like, you have a background in technology. You probably know more than the people in the audience. And that kind of forced me to research it, learn more about Bitcoin.
I actually got paid for that talk in Bitcoin, which my husband was extremely angry about. He was like, why would you work so hard and get, like, pirate money as payback? He's not angry about it right now. I'll let you know. But, it you know, once I had some skin in the game, it really forced me to pay attention to what was going on. And, I definitely learned from that experience.
If you wanna learn about something quickly, like, put a little bit of money into it, and then guaranteed you're gonna pay attention. You're gonna follow the trends. You're gonna learn. And, also over the next ten years, I gave started to give countless keynotes beyond podcasts. And because everything is on the blockchain, it's documented that I'm one of the earlier women that invested in Bitcoin.
And so now here we are a decade later, and what, you know, what was new and crazy and something that I wasn't trained in at the moment is now a, you know, ten plus year old industry that I've been in from the start lines. Wow. So I think, you know, that's something that I've really learned in my career is if you can get in at the ground floor of new things, you can develop expertise really quickly because everyone around you is new. And, so much in life, we write things off.
You know, I didn't go to school for that. I'm not trained for that. But those are myths in our heads. So I I truly believe now the best investments any of us will ever have probably don't even exist yet. It's such a such a great story, Randy. And I think you can almost say that for any new technology, that fifteen years ago, nobody was an expert in Bitcoin. Ten years ago, nobody was an expert in Bitcoin. You couldn't no. Nobody had experience doing that.
David, I don't know if you remember this, but so I I I was a Motley full contractor for about ten years. I was on a remember that part. You remember that part, of course. I don't know if you remember this part. I think it was around twenty twelve. The platform that we used to pay contractors, I forget the name of the the vendor that was doing it, but they sent everybody an email that said, hey. Rather than paying you in cash, we can pay you in Bitcoin. This is probably twenty twelve.
And I remember thinking, what a joke. Who who would possibly do that? And, of course, in hindsight, that looks much different, back then. Lots of sent lots of things like that make a lot of sense in hindsight. Randy, is there a fourth book in you? I feel like there's a story here. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe maybe we need to coauthor something together, but I I definitely you know, I hope anyone who's listening to this, you know, maybe feels inspired to get on the ground floor or something new.
Absolutely. What a wonderful lead off. Thank you, Randy Zuckerberg, for your story. Do you have a title? Oh, I I called it how I accidentally became an early Bitcoin adopter. Exactly. Thank you for double underlining that, and that is one to remember. And you're you're not gonna mention the amount that you've ended up getting paid for that initial speech, are you? Is that private? I'm not gonna say the amount, but let's just say that it is like, we're no longer calling it pirate money.
Oh, that's great. Alright. Pass the ball over to Morgan. Morgan, you're up next with your first story to educate. Yeah. I'm calling this the best story wins. And it's a story from back in college that I think a lot of people will probably relate to, which is now that I'm, fifteen years or so beyond college, I look back and I say, what did I what were the concepts that I remember that I've learned the most from? And I'm probably not unique in saying not that many. Not that many.
Every formula that I memorized the night before the final, I don't remember. Every every, you know, long complicated theory that I was forced to to learn a lot. I I I don't remember them anymore, except for one class. The class was environmental economics, which to be true to to be honest, I don't really have that much of an interest in, but the teacher did something very unique. On the first day of class, he said, there is no textbook in this class.
He pointed to the chalkboard and he said, I will never write anything on that chalkboard. I'm gonna stand here every day for the next semester and just tell you stories about economics. He was a long time economic consultant. I think he was an expert witness was his job And he just sat there and told us war stories about how economics actually works in the real world. It was so useful. It was so entertaining. Under his name was Charles Duchetti.
And when I look back at my college years, I I remember more from that class than every other course combined. And I think the takeaway from that is people love a good story. They do not want a lecture. They're not good at memorizing formulas over the long term. They will always remember a good story. And you can apply that to almost any other field and even very technical fields. Stephen Hawking was a storyteller. Richard Feynman was a storyteller.
In physics, the most math based field that exists, they just told stories, and that's why they were so famous. My friend Nick Magulli wrote a blog post this morning that said attention is the new currency. And I think that's really true. If you can get people's attention with a story, they will remember it forever. And I think that applies to so many things outside of college, outside of economics. That's fantastic, Morgan. Did have you do you ever correspond with Charles
Duquette afterward? Is he listening right now? And here's here's the interesting thing. I disagreed with him on a lot of things. He was very political in the stories that he told in a way that I didn't agree with them, particularly at the time. But it didn't matter. He told good stories that I remember. Even if I like, even if I could poke holes in them, I remember them. And isn't there tremendous value in that versus all the other professors for whom I don't really remember much of anymore?
Randi, do you wanna jump in with anything before we move on? Please do. Yeah. No. I, I I love that so much and it reminds me of, when I was in college, this this I was in a giant lecture hall and the professor kept saying, you know, I'm gonna be having lunch in this cafeteria today. Come spend time with me. And I was like, I'm I'm one of four thousand people in this lecture. I'm not gonna go do that.
And, at the end of the, semester, I showed up for the lunch, and he was like, you're the first person who's come to see me the entire semester. And, like, that it just stuck with me so much. So I so I agree with you. I think sometimes, these, like, unconventional ways of connecting with information or with people are actually our our strongest assets. What a great story.
And you did just remind me of a moment of my own freshman year actually, sophomore year, Randy, where I met my wife in a creative writing class. Didn't know it at the time, but she just said I I invited her for breakfast, like, later that week. And she said, no, I'm I can't. I I'm going to breakfast with my professor. And I said, I'm sorry. You're what? She said, I go to breakfast with each of my professors each term. You don't? Wow. Oh, wow.
Totally, you know, same university, but totally different approach. So yeah. You're right. Connecting in with people and, Morgan, telling stories that you still remember, and shaped you, years and years later. Well, thank you for that. And I guess that leaves me with the final educate story. Number three, I'm gonna call this one trust the builder, not the noise. So growing up as a young investor, seventies and eighties, investing was basically like a math exercise back then.
You're estimating growth rates. You're calculating valuation multiples, projecting target prices. It was basically taught to me as math. And honestly, back then, what else could an armchair investor do? Basically, research meant finding a company's investor relations phone number, which is was itself its own research task and calling them and hoping they'd send you a paper copy of their annual report. We were so far removed from the businesses themselves. There weren't any websites.
You couldn't see people's product videos. No YouTube talks from the CEO. And, of course, free real time data. Forget about it. So when we started the fool and the online medium took off, everything changed. And suddenly, we were basically running our own business, and we were connecting with other businesses. And I wasn't just crunching numbers. I was now seeing how businesses really work. They had strategies, decisions. They had leaders.
So it opened a whole new dimension of investing for me beyond my little spreadsheets, to the company's story and and its vision and how much those truly matter. And I would say the entrepreneur I got to know best back then was Steve Case. He was the founder and CEO of America Online during its golden age, the nineteen nineties. As you'll remember, that was the decade that America went online. And back then, going online was expensive. AOL charged hourly connection fees over dial up.
Later, by the way, those would go to flat fees, and that would kinda flatten AOL. But at the time, AOL was the top dog with pricing power. And at one point, they raised their rates. So the day the news broke, I I happened to be at an off-site with AOL partners. And that evening, I remember having a cocktail in hand. I sidled up to Steve Case. And the headlines that day, New York Times, CNBC, all day long basically screamed, AOL makes a horrible decision. It's raising rates.
But Steve, right there in front of me, calm and confident, asked me a few rhetorical questions. He said, don't you think we've already market tested this rate for six months? Don't you think we know exactly how this is gonna play out? Do do you really think this is a bad decision? So this was early AOL, early fool too, but that moment left a mark. So the teenage investor in me with his spreadsheets and his math may well have panicked at the headlines that were coming out that day.
But now as a young businessman, I saw the entrepreneur himself and his team, the AOL people we were working with all felt like the smartest people in the room back then in the early online days. And it as it turns out, to close it out here, the price hike was brilliant. Consumers basically didn't blink. The extra cash accelerated AOL's growth, left their competitors in the dust.
And by the time AOL merged with Time Warner, ill fated, it didn't end well as we'll all remember, but the year was two thousand. My original pick of AOL stock had gone up a hundred and fifty times. So I had my first hundred bagger. The the lasting lesson, visionary entrepreneurs might not get the loudest voice, but they're the ones who truly understand their business. So I would say don't let the headlines or your own doubts drown out the wisdom of those who've built something remarkable.
We're not gonna be right every time when we go that direction, but Ty definitely goes to trusting the builder and not the noise. So early days. By the way, Steve's gonna come back in in a in a few minutes for me, but, that's what I got. That's so I love that so much because having spent my career in Silicon Valley, I saw I got to be right next to so many visionary entrepreneurs who did things that maybe to the public seemed, like, completely bonkers or completely out there.
But, you know, I just saw time and time again that people who are truly just so visionary and so connected almost understand what people want more than people know what they want. And time and time again, we would launch things at Facebook or I would see other companies launch things that people were like, we don't like this, but then they they used it more. And, and it actually enriched and enhanced their lives.
So, I can see how that would be stressful on the investor side of things, but, it is really cool to have the opportunity to work alongside people whose minds work like that. Randy, I can think of of one example of that that might be close to you. I remember when Facebook introduced the news feed. This was probably two thousand five, maybe two thousand six, and the amount of backlash that came from that.
Because the narrative back then was you are bombarding me with useless information about what all these people are doing on a daily basis. And, of course, in in hindsight, that was that was one of the biggest moves to creating what social media is today. And and it it it seems silly to think about the the backlash that came from it back then even if in in hindsight, it was a brilliant decision. Yeah. Absolutely. I can think of so many things.
Like, I mean, people are so up in arms with caller ID. Like, they were like, stop believing. What kind of is he now? Like, if I don't recognize a number, I don't mind. Absolutely. Yeah. And so there are just so many, you know, illustrative examples like that. And I guess the lesson is let's maintain our humility and self awareness and realize who knows what's gonna happen next. Yep. No idea. That's great.
Well, Randy, you've operated at a high, high level seeing things that I will never see, and I've not spent nearly as much time as I'd like to in Silicon Valley. But at least over here in Washington DC, in this area, for AOL back in the day to be here made it a big deal for the greater DC area, even though AOL has kind of disappeared over the last twenty years. But, well, thank you, and thank you each for our educate section. And I think there are already a lot of takeaways.
I'm writing down my own. I hope that listeners at home, as Randy just said, will be inspired inspired to think different, take some new actions. We are doing this in the first month of the year. I think we already said happy new year, possibly too late. Let's move on to section number two. It's our amuse section, and by lot, oh my gosh, I drew myself, so I'm going twice in a row.
I probably designed I should've designed the show better, but I I think I can carry forward what I just said because the title of my amused story, story number one, our amused section is actually Steve. It has nothing to do with Steve Case, but I have Steve on the brain this week. So this one also goes back to early days for me. This is freshman year of college.
I went to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and kind of like Morgan took that meaningful environmental economics course, I took a course in speech. It was an intro to speech course. It wasn't that great of course in retrospect and I'm not gonna say my professor spellbound me with stories that I can still remember today, but I do remember our first exercise. Our first exercise was you had to introduce yourself next week in a way that people would remember.
Introduce you yourself by first name in a way that would be memorable for your classmates. So I premeditated. I thought some about this over the weekend. I decide, okay. This would be silly. This would be funny. I'm gonna say my name is Dave. My name is Dave, and I'm gonna be increasingly animated as I do that. And then I'm gonna say, and you might think I rant and rave, but it's lemon meringue pie that I crave.
And then I'm gonna pie face myself with the lemon meringue pie, and surely people will remember my name. And, so I did it. My name is Dave. My name is Dave. And you may think I ran Ray, but it's lemon meringue pie that I crave. Wham. And I was laughing. I think people in the classroom were laughing. I wasn't laughing because I had to clean up after class because there was lemon meringue pie all over the wall behind me.
So that is slightly amusing, but what what amused me in some dark ways going forward in a lesson that I'll I'll always remember was, what happened in the spring term. So that was fall freshman year. And, spring term, there's a guy walking across campus just like I am and he starts gesticulating to me, like, his hand to his face. And it was clearly a guy in our class. And he's like, hey. And then he points, he goes, Steve. And I was like, hey. You know, thanks for remembering.
Like, that's awesome that I don't even know you and you're halfway across campus, but you're like gesticulating with pie face. Thank you. That's so that's so dear of you. Steve. Now, I think you you both know my name is Dave, and that's kinda what I said as I ran it and rave. And then fast forward to sophomore year, junior year. Just chance meetings, same guy, cafeteria, maybe outside a dorm. Hey, Steve. Gesticulation. And each time I'm I'm in a little bit deeper at this point. I'm like, yeah.
Yeah. And, we had that relationship for three more years, and each time it became increasingly stressful because it would have been the ultimate awkward moment for me to finally admit to him after allowing him to Steve me the whole time that I was actually Dave the whole time. So I would have friends walking around me and I'd see the guy coming up and I'd be like, please, guys, just so you know, for the next minute, I'm Steve. No one would know why.
And, and I think my conclusion is and my important lesson is correct early, correct direct, or you too may live the legend of Steve. I love it. David, that's a that's such a good story. And I have a very quick story. I will not monopolize, the response with another story, but it's so related to this. It was a story that I heard from our friend, at The Motley Fool, Steve Broido. And this was many years ago and I think it was The Motley Fool holiday party.
And Steve and your your brother Tom were at the holiday party and your your late mother, who we were talking about earlier, starts approaching them. And Steve turned to Tom and says, Tom, I'm so sorry. I forget your mother's name. What's her name? And Tom said, Barbara. And then your mother walks up to Steve and Steve goes, Barbara, nice to see you. And, of course, your mother's name is not Barbara. And Tom just did it just to make it so awkward for him, and I love that. It's such a funny story.
It's such a good prank to to play on people. So completely unfair, but my brother with his impish sense of humor gets people every time. And thank you for that, Morgan. You know, before offline before the show, I was mentioning it's my mother's birthday. She's not with us anymore. She died in two thousand eight, but January twenty first nineteen thirty seven, she would have been eighty eight today. And it was Mary Dennett, not Barbara. But for one moment, it was Barbara or Steve.
And I think the key is we kinda need to nip it in the bud and let people know upfront. Otherwise, it just becomes Randy. It becomes painful. It does. I have we. So we couldn't figure out why our next door neighbor has such a bad attitude with us for so long. Like, we were always so friendly. We're always like, hey, Bob. Like like, hope you have a great like, how's your kids, Bob? Anyway, turns out his name's not Bob.
Somehow got out of our head, and that's why he hated us because we've been calling him Bob for, like, four years. Years. Why didn't he just tell us sooner? Alright. Well, since you're laughing, Randy, you get to go next. This is story number two in our muse section brought to you by Randy Zuckerberg. Alright. Well, this one's called how to star on Broadway, learn how to code. And, so I'm gonna talk a little bit about a passion that I had that went a little bit sideways.
I my whole life, all I wanted to do was sing on Broadway, like, from the time that I was a little girl. And, both of you told stories about how courses you took in college changed your lives. Well, I got to college, and I promptly got rejected from the music major. So, like, my lifelong dream and passion got crushed at age eighteen. And, you know, I did okay for myself.
I found, you know, a passion in marketing and business and had this wild ride career in Silicon Valley, but I always kind of had in the back of my head, like, that I gave up on my dreams. And, I did little things here and there inside Facebook. I started an eighties rock cover band. So I was one of the lead singers, and we would go perform. We were terrible, but luckily, the standards are pretty low in Silicon Valley for eighties rock bands.
And, I, I was I had just found out it was, I think, it was my thirty second birthday. I had just found out that morning that I was pregnant with my our second son. And I got a call out of the blue, from the producer of this Broadway musical, Rock of Ages. And he was like, we have this eighties rock musical on Broadway, and we are looking for a tech personality to come star in this Broadway musical. Do you wanna be on Broadway? I I thought I was getting punked.
I was like, did my brother put you up to this? And, and but it turned out it was real. They were they were looking, you know, for a new shtick, and their shtick, they were gonna go with, like, a a tech personality. And so after all of that, after giving up on my dreams, having this wild ride in Silicon Valley, becoming a mom, I actually moved back to New York City and starred on Broadway after all.
So it taught me that there are a lot of, a lot of ways to accomplish a dream and a lot of, you know, you don't you don't have to necessarily go about it the way everyone else is. I love that story, Randy, and thank you. You know, one of the earliest times that I met you, you were at a Motley Fool gathering, one of our Foolfests. I know some people listening to you right now were there that day, and you sang. And you, of course, sing beautifully.
You're you're such a talent, which causes me to think if that eighties band that you were in Silicon Valley wasn't very good. I know you're great. That means they were really, really bad, and the average was not was mediocre. But I really so appreciate that, I not everybody is even going to accept our invitation to speak at our gatherings. You both have, but to actually sing. And I think it was humorous lyrics that you'd made up to a popular song. This is years ago.
But, full disclosure, Randy is on the Motley Fool board, which is how I've gotten to know her much better over the years. But that is such a fantastic story about when you wish upon a star and you just keep wishing, I mean, it it does come true. Sometimes, Morgan, the danger is the things that you really wanna come true do happen, and then sometimes that puts you in a bind, not Randy in that situation. That's right. I love it. Alright. Well, Morgan Housel, are you ready to amuse us? I will try.
And this is less of a story, that's happened to me and more of an observation that I've had over the years. I call this true geniuses. And I tweeted this many years ago, and I I tweeted it after thinking pretty hard about this, which is that I think the greatest psychologists of all time, which has been important to me because my my field is behavioral finance. I think the most insightful psychologists to ever live are George Carlin, Jerry Seinfeld, and Chris Rock. Yeah.
I could put I could put this broader and say, comedians, I think, are the most talented psychologists exist. And I think they are the only thought leaders who are truly worth paying attention to. And I think there's two reasons for this. One is because what a good a good comedian does is take something that you already know, you intuitively know, but you they put it into words that you have not or could not do yet. So when you're watching a good comedy, you don't need to think, is that true?
You just sit back and you listen to it, and you're like, of course, that's true. What you just said is obviously true, and I've never heard anyone put it into words like you just did. It's just a very effective way to communicate, and they're doing it, for things that are really, really fundamental and important in life. Jerry Seinfeld, he once gave this interview, and they asked him why he quit the show, in nineteen ninety eight. Why did he stop?
And he basically said I'm I'm gonna paraphrase him, but he basically said that he and Larry David became so famous that they could not they could no longer observe society without being bombarded. And they said, look, in the early days before they were famous, they would go sit in a in in a deli and watch how people order their food and make a skit about that. It was observational. And as he became megastars, they could not go sit in the deli and observe people. They couldn't do it.
So he said he quit the show because what made them so good at comedy, it was it was it was just being pushed to the side. They they couldn't do it anymore. And I I think the other thing why people love them so much is because a comedian wants to deliver their insight and just make you laugh, whereas so many other people who are trying to make you smarter wanna make themselves look good. It's almost the exact opposite.
If you are a PhD talking head going on on TV, and look, maybe I would I would put myself in this category as as as as well. You wanna deliver insight by making yourself look smart. A comedian wants to deliver insight by making you laugh, the audience member. It is so different, and it is so much more effective to do it that way. And, of course, I will end with one of my favorite comedy bits that I think is so incredibly insightful if you think deep, deep about it.
George Carlin said, have you ever noticed that everybody driving faster than you as a maniac and everybody driving slower than you as an idiot? And, a, it's it's so true. It's so funny, but it is, like, one of the best ways to contextualize that your view of the world depends on where you are. It's relative to everybody else, and I think you can take that so much broader. That's it's so good.
And I, I actually took a class about how using comedy in speech writing or in, even in a a board meeting, is a superpower. And I I so I truly believe that comedians are geniuses and that if you wanna connect with people, making them laugh is the best way to do it. Absolutely. And it the beauty is it really is a gift. I mean, they I love the point that you're making, Morgan, and I too have been a talking head at different points in my life. I mean, I think we all have.
But, you know, the the difference between trying to make yourself sound smart and making someone else laugh is is all about the other. It's not about self aggrandizement. It is truly giving. We all wanna laugh. We all love to laugh. You you both have made me laugh already a bunch of times, and I know I'm not the only one listening in this week, but what a wonderful insight.
I thought you were gonna say that you've decided that all of the people who are the most important psychologists or scientists in this space are are the most were crazy. I thought you were gonna go that direction because there it's probably also true. Like There are lots of people who are upset that's crazy. Yeah. There's a quote from Chris Rock that I love that he says, anybody who thinks for a living is going to be depressed. He was talking about himself in his own field.
Anyone who just sits in a room and thinks about how the world works is probably not gonna be the most happy, joyful person because of it. Mhmm. Yeah. Great line. And a great way for us to close our amused section in this first ever episode of three fools. Thank you so much, Morgan. Thank you so much, Randy. We've educated, we've amused two down, and rich to go. First, a quick foolish plug. Start your weekdays as I do with the Motley Fool's breakfast news.
This is one of our new offerings over the last year. It's our free daily market email newsletter. So you get expert market analysis in brief. It's there for you with breakfast. Company updates sent straight to your inbox every weekday at seven thirty AM eastern here in Washington DC. It felt like four. Sign up at w w w dot fool dot com slash breakfast news. Alright. We move on to enrich. Morgan, we have you leading off our enrich section. Are you ready? I'm ready. Let's do it.
How much richer how much richer are we gonna get with this one? Like, if you were trying to gauge it? Look. Let's let's set expectations low, but I'll do my best. This this is something that I just did a week ago. This is a very recent thing, but it was one of the most haunting, but I think enriching things that I've done in a long time. I went to chat GPT, and I fed it a bunch of accurate biographical information of myself through about age twenty.
I said, this is who Morgan Housel was at age twenty. This is where he grew up. This is where his parents were. This is how he did in school. These were his, his hobbies. A bunch of things that was all accurate through age twenty. And then I said, tell me a story about what happened over the next twenty years. So I was starting at an accurate point, and I said, make a story about how the rest of Morgan's life turned out. And some of and and I did this late into the night.
My wife was wondering what the heck I was doing sitting in front of the computer so late, but it was so incredible and haunting, I would say, because a lot of the stories that I came up with were really sad. And stories of how my life spun off the rails and stories of how this didn't happen, and there were tragedies in in my life. And and and some of them were incredible. Some of the stories that came up with us, I meant that that would have been a great life too.
It was so incredible to think of all the different ways my life could have turned and anybody could do this, of course. And you realize that the life that we have right now is one of infinite other possibilities. It could have turned out an infinite number of different ways, some of which may have been okay, some of which would have been incredible, some of which would have been really sad and bad.
And it was, it was I I think it it made me appreciate a lot of the things that I have in my life right now because most of the stories I did not tell it to do this, but most of the stories that chat t b t came up with were, sad. It was, hey, here's Morgan's life through age twenty. Here's what happened over the next twenty years, and it was a story of a downfall. I don't know why it it did that, but it was, it was haunting because the stories could have been accurate.
It was, you know, since I was feeding it accurate information Yeah. It was it was going in paths that were almost the path of least resistance of where I was at that age in life. Did you let it know it was you? Yes. I did. That probably has to affect it a little bit. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, we're changing it a little bit by letting us know letting it know we're observing it, being observed itself.
I I wonder if chat GBT, if you defended it, Morgan, the day before or something a little week before, and it it was taking a little bit out of it. Like, it didn't have to go negative that much. Yeah. And, you know, and some of the story, if I remember, some of it was, you know, in the in the the great recession in two thousand eight. I lost my job, and I I never recovered after that. And I became an alcoholic and whatnot. And some of those, it's like that that that could have happened.
That that easily could have happened. One of them was I had a great life, and I'm married and had two kids, which is accurate. And and and and one of those kids got cancer and died at age five. Wow. It's all it and it's one of these things where it's like, look. Hey. Both of those things happened to many, many people. So these these are not pie in the sky theories. And it's again, I think that that the point for me was realizing all the different ways all of our lives could have turned out.
It really makes you wonder, like, how much of our lives are really luck and how much is really in our control. It's a Yeah. Bit of an existential moment over here. Absolutely. Morgan, was there a reason you cut it off at twenty? I mean, maybe that's kind of your college years. But, obviously, it occurs to, I'm sure, all of us that we could all do the exact same exercise today. And maybe through enriching us, that's what you're inviting us to do? I don't know why I picked twenty.
I don't know if there's any I I think it was it was just kind of I I just picked a number at random. But I do think there is a thing that for me and probably a lot of people, twenty is around the age where you start transitioning from kid to adult. Even though, you know, you know, at at twenty, you you definitely are an adult, but it it's really when you start trying to find your own independence and voice in the world that is less anchored to what your parents raised you as.
So maybe that was one of the reasons why. Alright. Thank you for that, Morgan. Yep. Oh, I'm up next. I guess I'm the one who made the roster. So here I am. I definitely didn't wanna go last. So, Randy, you get to close it out. But my story, my enriched story, I will call the greatest secret of all. And, you know, I guess I'm going autobiographical again this week. Each of my stories I'm now realizing is pulled from my early days.
Maybe it's because those stories stick because, like, compound returns, their lessons grow bigger over time or seem bigger to us as we age. I think I first told this story ten years ago on this podcast. Don't think I've told it since. By the way, Morgan, Randy, thank you both for joining me. This is the five hundredth consecutive weekly episode of my podcast, and I'm honored to be spending it with you both. So Congrats. Yeah. This this is five hundred, and thank you very much.
So, anyway, this one comes from the day I turned twenty five. So nineteen years earlier, my grandfather had passed away. He left a portion of his estate for each grandchild to inherit at the age of twenty five. So my uncle Gene, a brilliant investor who ran his own firm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, managed that money. And that May of nineteen ninety one, I drove with my dad to uncle Gene's office in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I discovered what I now call the greatest secret of all.
Well, for investors anyway. So uncle Gene handed me a brokerage statement with about twenty five stocks. Companies like Berkshire Hathaway, ABC Cap Cities, which these days is part of Disney, defense contractor Martin Marietta. I'm trying to remember. The Washington Post company, Warren Buffett was on the board there. But what floored me wasn't really the companies. It was the cost bases of each of the stocks. So I would look at this sheet then.
Stock was at ninety eight, but uncle Jean had bought it nineteen years earlier at four. Another was at three hundred thirty seven purchased at ten. So nearly all the holdings had been held for all of those nineteen years and that's that's what I saw. The key to building wealth is finding excellence and holding it. It's not about hot tips. It's not about meme stocks or trying to time the market. It really is sounds boring. It's about patience.
So most of us grow up hearing phrases, deadly phrases, I think, like buy low, sell high, which creates a mindset that makes you think as soon as you bought, you probably need to sell or have sell discipline, a phrase I love to take shots at, or a target price that you'll be selling at. And so that mindset, that buy low, sell high leads to constant churn, and I would say missed opportunities. And I would say instead, we should focus on just buying right as my uncle Jean did and and holding on.
So that morning in Lancaster shaped basically how I've invested ever since. I stopped thinking about selling. I started thinking about owning. And I think the world gets better when more people invest, not trade, but truly invest in great companies over time. And as I think back to close here, friends, I'm thinking about, like, we look at other companies, family based companies.
Let's go with Old Dominion Freight Line, which is a multi generational public company, fantastic trucking logistics company. We tend to look at those and go, you know, that family's got to be very rich. They're third generation. They own such a big impressive company. The reason that families kind of become rich, especially with their own businesses, is because they don't sell. They actually hold it. It's Gramps' and then you inherit you're running it.
And you might sell off a part or you might merge or do other things over time. But for the most part, generational wealth is basically created by people not selling. So to me, that's the greatest secret of all. And I would say, Randy, part of the reason it's a secret is because it really isn't practiced at any big institutional level. Right? Mutual funds are in and out. You never really hear about big money holding. Maybe Warren Buffett, but I still think it's a it's a great secret.
It's it's such a great secret, and I feel like it kinda goes back to even a little of, like, what I was saying about the Bitcoin stuff earlier that if you put a little money in something, if you put skin in the game, you're gonna get all sorts of benefits. Maybe you're gonna, you know, dial into the shareholder meetings. Maybe you're gonna pay more attention when that company comes up in the news.
It it really, forces you to become a citizen of business and a student of, you know, of of different kind of industry. And so I think there's so many incredible things that come with investing. I agree. And, you know, you think about the private sector in our country, which to me is the real story of America. We're here with inauguration and a lot of politics on our minds these days maybe. But the vast majority of us, I think I'm speaking to two others, work in the private sector.
And we're trying to not cause half of America to shout down the other half. We're trying to sell to all of them, and you're only gonna buy from us if we're offering something that's worth it. And ideally, above our own prices which creates profit, dividends, and ownership. But, thank you for that thought. Morgan, any any additional thought about never selling? I think one thing that comes up is most investors focus on the wrong metrics. And it is a knee jerk reaction.
It is intuitive to say, I wanna focus on my annual returns. How could anyone disagree with that? But I actually think what what you wanna focus on over time is just not the returns you can earn, but the amount the number of years that you can maintain those returns for. Because the secret in investing is that earning great returns for a short period of time is subpar to earning good return, merely good returns for a long period of time.
And even for a lot of investors, if you can be average for an above average period of time, you will end up with an extraordinary result. If you can earn index fund returns for thirty years, you will probably beat ninety five percent of hedge fund managers, ninety eight percent of of of hedge fund managers. And so it's just focusing on the wrong return rather than focusing on what are the best returns that I can earn. You wanna focus on endurance and longevity. Brilliantly said.
And, you know, you could really only see this if you watch the narrative arc of history, your own life, or those of others who've come before who've invested or built, started something, and persisted it over time. So thank you. Thank you for those thoughts. And we get to close it out with Randy Zuckerberg and her final and rich story. Randy, you go. This is high pressure. Alright. I'm gonna let you guys decide if this is enriching, exciting, or maybe a cry for help, this story.
So you get to let me know at the end of this, because I just signed up for the most insane foot race ever. Before I tell you what that foot race is, and I guess the story doesn't have an ending yet because the is in May. But I I just wanna give you a little bit of a backstory of my running journey because I don't want anyone listening to think that I've been, like, this lifelong athlete and runner. I am a mom of three who two years ago could not run a mile.
And, I coming out of the pandemic, I just I felt I was really lonely. I had just had a new baby before the pandemic, so I just felt, like, very isolated. I didn't take care of my fitness very much for a long time. And, I stumbled upon this group of women that would go run these, five and ten k races in Central Park and then go have brunch together on the weekend. And I thought, I don't think I like running, but I love brunch, and I'm really lonely. So, like, I think I'm gonna join these women.
And the first race we did was a a ten k race, so about six miles, and it was all women. It was, like, ten thousand women running in Central Park and, like, all ages, all body sizes, and I just remember feeling so inspired and being like, wow. All these women are showing up for themselves. Maybe maybe I can show up for myself a little more in my own life. So I started, training and getting more into running.
I signed up for a half marathon, and I guess all the good runners were not in New York that day because I broke the tape. Like, I won this round. And I won it with my four year old daughter right at the end screaming, like, jumping up and down. Like, you're winning, mom. You're winning. So fast forward from there. Since then, I've run twelve marathons and eight ultra marathons in the last years.
And, I have now signed up for a two hundred and fifty mile race that's happening this May, across the state of Arizona. It starts in Phoenix. You run to Flagstaff. You have five days to do it, and I have a support crew of four friends driving a van alongside of me to support. So, I think this is hands down the craziest thing I've ever taken on in my entire life, and, I guess we'll see how this story ends. Wow. That's that's incredible, Randy.
I I I mean, I I really commend you for doing that for that journey over the last two years. I've driven from Phoenix to Flagstaff a couple times. It's a long drive. I really enjoyed the drive, let alone let alone running. I I I would imagine I'm curious your take on that, particularly for a two hundred and fifty mile run. I would imagine that is ten percent physical and ninety percent mental. What what what odds would you put it on? I I think you're totally right.
And, I've so I've been working with a lot of, experienced ultra runners to get their advice on how to train for this, and almost all the training is mental training. They're basically like your base is there. Your running base is there. Now we gotta train the mind. And so I do crazy things like run up and down staircases for two hours. On Sunday, I ran around a zero point five mile parking lot loop for four hours.
Like, I just do like crazy things like that because you need to be, you know, I can't outrun people, but I can out suffer and out tough people. And if you can train your mind, you can do almost anything. I I'm try I'm grasping after the the right big question to ask, Randy. And what I kind of come up with is why? What drives you? But it's it's unbelievable what you're doing.
Like, I I don't think I've ever heard of that kind of transformation, in such a short period from starting where you did and existing where you are. Why? Alright. I mean, I guess, let's just get vulnerable at the end of the show. I think my entire life, I've been a really awesome sidekick. I have a lot of sidekick energy. Like, I I helped my brother build his company. I'm, you know, Brent's wife. I'm Asher and Simeon Sheera's mom. I sit on boards where I help founders, and I, you know,
I I love being a sidekick. It's such an important role. But, I had a realization a few years ago where I was like, if someone was gonna write the story of my life, would I even be the main character in the story of my own life? And, that was that was a kind of a dark thing to realize being in my forties. And, when you run two hundred and fifty miles, nobody can say that it's because you're someone's sister or because you're someone's or you're someone's mom.
Like, this is the first thing in my entire life that is all mine. Oh, that's incredible. I love that. I'm I'm wondering whether this should be typed into chat g b t and we find out whether Randy finishes more exactly where where this leads because Don't ask. Don't ask. I it's not my fail rate at this rate, but I, you know, I'm gonna grid it out. I'm I'm gonna do it. I know you will. Just absolutely phenomenal, Randy. And I've only ever known you as a star.
I think anybody who has gotten to know you over the years thinks of you as a focus of their attention and a star. But if if not always feeling that way causes you to be more awesome and lift all the rest of us up, I'm gonna keep slightly disrespecting you. I love it. Go on. That's my love language. Truly incredible. Wow. I'm really glad I dropped you both a note a few weeks ago and said, hey. Would you join me? This was such a fantastic near hour together. And any final thoughts from each of us?
I I can close this out. But, Randy? Well, first of all, David, thanks for inviting us. I loved this format, and, I learned a lot and grew a lot. I, you know, I definitely you definitely made me think more about how I can be more mindful about investing and purposeful, especially with my own children. And, Morgan, I I'm gonna load up my, podcast now with comedy for when I when I go run across Arizona. And and so, like, even in my suffering, I will be laughing out loud and thanking you for that.
I love it. I love it. And I know this has been so much fun, to to hear both of your stories. Randy, your story about running is incredible and doing something that's gonna make you the main character of your story, even though I think you always have been, is incredible. And I think that if there's a common denominator to a lot of this, it's a lot of activities that we think are technical are actually psychological.
That's true in investing where it's not necessarily can you pick the right stocks. It's can you do you have the fortitude to hang on to them? It's true for running where it's not what is your physical shape even though that's part of it. It's do you have the mental energy to be able to last two hundred and fifty miles. So many things, fall under this umbrella of psychology and behavior.
And most of the attention is on the technical side, but most of the outcomes and results fall on the behavioral psychological side. As it does with money coming from the author of The Psychology of Money. That was brilliantly summarized. Thank you, Morgan. Wow. What a journey we've just been on together. Nine stories that educated, amused, and enriched, well, at least we hope, delivered by two friends who I find brilliant and engaging. I know you did too.
Randy Morgan, thank you both for bringing your passion, insights, and storytelling magic to this first ever Three Fools episode. And to everyone listening, I hope these stories sparked ideas, Laughter, vulnerability, inspiration for your own journey persist feels like a really important theme that came out right at the end. Thank you, Randy. It was awesome, David. Thank you. Thank you, Morgan. Thank you as always, David. This is fun. Until next time. Fool on.
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.