Page | 1 William Green on Becoming Richer, Wiser, and Happier • Published on September 1, 2021 Dr. Chris Stout Best Selling Author | Psychologist | Adventurer | Startup Whisperer | (Accidental) Humanitarian | Éminence Grise | Clubhouse @DrChrisStout 172 articles Over the last quarter of a century, William Green has interviewed many of the world’s best investors, exploring in depth the question of what qualities and insights enable them to achieve enduring success. William has written for many leading publications in the US and Europe, including The New Yorker, Time, Fortune, Forbes, Barron’s, Fast Company, Money, Worth, Bloomberg Markets, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, The New York Observer, The (London) Spectator, The (London) Independent Magazine, and The Economist. He has reported in places as diverse as China, India, Japan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the US, Mexico, England, France, Monaco, Poland, Italy, and Russia. Page | 2 He has interviewed presidents and prime ministers, inventors, criminals, prize-winning authors, the CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies, and countless billionaires. While living in London, William edited the European, Middle Eastern, and African editions of Time. Before that, he lived in Hong Kong, where he edited the Asian edition of Time during a period in which it won many awards. William has collaborated on several books as a ghostwriter, co-author, or editor. One of them became a #1 New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller in 2017. He also worked closely with the renowned hedge fund manager, Guy Spier, helping him to write his much-praised 2014 memoir, The Education of a Value Investor. William also wrote and edited The Great Minds of Investing, which features short profiles of 33 renowned investors, along with stunning portraits created by Michael O’Brien, one of America’s preeminent photographers. And in this conversation, we do deep dive into his newest book, “Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life." He has also given many talks about the lessons we can learn from the most successful investors, not only about how to invest, but about how to improve our thinking. Born and raised in London, William was educated at Eton College, studied English Literature at Oxford University, and received a Master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He lives in New York with his wife, Lauren and their two children. We begin with William’s time at Eton and the genesis of his interest in investing, along with his start as a writer and journalist, and how he got into ghost-writing. (And a sidetrack into a couple of Page | 3 my similar projects, The New Humanitarians and From the Other Side of the Couch, but I digress.) Here is what others have said about Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life. “The most important investment book of the decade… Richer, Wiser, Happier is going to be a classic and, for generations, will define what it means to be a better investor and a better human.” - Guy Spier, CEO of Aquamarine Capital and author of The Education of a Value Investor “Nobody writes better about money than William Green. A breathtaking trip though the hearts and minds of the world’s most successful investors. This book not only teaches you how to invest, it teaches you how to think. Not reading it might turn out to be one of your life’s monumental errors.” - Rolf Dobelli, author of the international bestseller The Art of Thinking Clearly “Superb… Richer, Wiser, Happier does a wonderful job of showing how to consistently stack the odds in your favor, both in markets and life, by dramatically improving the way you think and reach decisions.” - Annie Duke, poker champion and author of Thinking in Bets “This is a brilliant book packed with powerful insights from the world’s most successful investors. Do you want to achieve total financial freedom while also leading an abundant life that’s truly rich in purpose, fulfillment, and joy? Then read Richer, Wiser, Happier and take its invaluable lessons to heart.” - Tony Robbins “In Richer, Wiser, Happier William Green combines sage advice with captivating storytelling, offering pragmatic ideas to ponder, reflect on, and live by.” - Daniel Goleman, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Emotional Intelligence “If I’d had Richer, Wiser, Happier when I started investing it would have saved me twenty years of reading and studying. It’s all here in one beautiful book. This is one of the most important investing books I’ve ever read.” - Phil Town, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Rule #1 Men’s Journal noted it as one of the Best New Books in 2021, Finance Monthly named it one of the Best Investment Books for 2021, and it quickly catapulted to Amazon’s No.1 new release in “investing basics.” This book is a smorgasbord of ideas that readers choose what works for them, and William steps us through the book and what spurred him to write it. He has interviewed a veritable who’s who in the investing world, and cultivated longstanding relationships with them. William describes the greatest investors as “an idiosyncratic breed of practical philosophers and as consummate game players” and we discuss what these seemingly disparate descriptions show us about the best investors’ mindsets. We go into the powerful benefits of copying other people’s best ideas and how Mohnish Pabrai works to clone Warren Buffett’s investment approach. We delve into the extreme patience and selectiveness of the best investors to beat the market and the challenge for managers to maintain a long-term approach but demonstrate great performance to investors in the short term, quarter-toquarter. William provides great lessons on what Matthew McLennan can teach us about reducing our vulnerability and bolstering our resilience. We learn about the power of storytelling and reverse engineering and we discuss the seeming contradiction of between Pabrai, Greenblatt and Sleep often invest almost all of their money in just a few stocks, which is contrary to the Graham’s classic advice that diversification is key. I loved talking about what Charlie Munger calls “standard stupidities” and how William calls this his Non-idiot’s Guide to Life and the concept of “inverting.” We cover the importance of knowing one’s weaknesses, for example Ken Shubin Stein’s susceptibility to “authority bias,” And that Jeffrey Gundlach says he’s wrong about 30 percent of the time, so “…make your mistakes nonfatal.” Page | 4 There is also a great diversity of interests, but most all within learning and enjoying intellectual challenges – reading, games of chance, and playing poker or bridge. They study fields ranging from economic history to neuroscience to literature to stoicism to the science of habit formation, and try to use the insights they glean to make themselves better investors. It’s an echo of being a seeker of what the economist John Maynard Keynes called “worldly wisdom.” Page | 5 Some, like Joel Greenblatt, note that the entire secret of successful stock picking comes down to “Figure out what something is worth and pay a lot less.” Much easier said than done. Benjamin Graham reminds us to make sure we have a “margin of safety.” "It is remarkable," William notes, “how consistently the greatest investors talk about...the importance of just avoiding catastrophe, staying in the game (and) surviving dips.” And for some, like Jason Karp points out the stress of being a fund manager that there is no “clear linkage between process and outcome. There’s so much randomness that it can drive you insane.” And for him, to leave the money management profession. We wrap-up with learning some of the ways William lives his life in full, as well as what’s next for him. I really enjoyed this conversation, and it was a wonderfully augmenting complement of a conversation to what I learned from his book. Be sure to join our conversation. POSTSCRIPT: Investors interviewed by William Green for RICHER, WISER, HAPPIER include: Warren Buffett’s billionaire partner, Charlie Munger, interviewed in Los Angeles. Munger, a 97-year-old genius hailed by Bill Gates as “the broadest thinker I have ever encountered,” explains how to achieve lasting success by eliminating “foolish thinking” and “idiotic behavior.” Indian hedge fund star and philanthropist Mohnish Pabrai, interviewed in Mumbai and Omaha. Pabrai, who set out to become a billionaire by “cloning” the approach of Buffett and Munger, reveals the “fundamental laws of investing” and shares his inviolable rules for markets and life, such as: “Avoid anything that’s too hard” and “Hang out with people who are better than you.” The greatest global stock picker of the 20th century, Sir John Templeton, interviewed in the Bahamas. Templeton embodies a trait shared by all of the best investors: “the willingness to be lonely”—to diverge from the crowd and pursue his own path, disregarding conventional opinion. Distressed debt investor and billionaire Howard Marks, interviewed in New York. Marks learned from his Japanese studies professor the ancient Buddhist teaching that “the only constant is impermanence,” an insight that drives him to adapt dispassionately as economic conditions, market valuations, and investor sentiment ceaselessly change. Maverick hedge fund legends Nick Sleep and Qais Zakaria, interviewed in London. Sleep and Zakaria reveal for the first time how they crushed the market by 800 percentage points by creating a fund that rejected “the sin and folly” of Wall Street and drew high-minded inspiration from Robert Pirsig’s philosophical memoir Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. French value investor Jean-Marie Eveillard, interviewed in New York. Eveillard offers this timely wisdom: “Because the future is uncertain, you want to minimize your risk.” He and his Australian successor, Matthew McLennan, who oversees more than $100 billion, show how to build and keep a fortune by “removing whatever promotes fragility” and “staying in the game.” Frontier and emerging markets investor Laura Geritz, interviewed in New York. Geritz, an intellectual adventurer who has visited 75 countries and lives in Kyoto and Salt Lake City, gains an informational edge by traveling constantly, studying different cultures, and reading several books a week while hunting incessantly for “great companies in countries that have been hit.” Holocaust survivor Arnold Van Den Berg, interviewed in Texas. Van Den Berg, who almost died of malnutrition while hiding from the Nazis as a child in the Netherlands, has defied overwhelming odds to become a renowned investor and the embodiment of “what constitutes a successful and abundant life.” Green writes, “If I had to choose just one role model from all of the remarkable investors I’ve interviewed over the last quarter of a century, it would be him.” You can listen on iTunes, Overcast, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and iHeartRADIO or download here. Please subscribe on your favorite platform and never miss an episode or to get our monthly newsletter. It’s like a gym membership for your brain. Here are the show notes. The “Living a Life in Full” podcast is the conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED talk, or the author of one your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. This show is for the intellectually curious. You want to not just know more about the interesting and the innovative, but also what makes them tick, and maybe even what makes them laugh. It’s graduate-level conversations with those making a difference in the world and the lives of others. We bring you new ideas and approaches so you can live a life in full. Interviewees are a who’s who of high-performance athletes, bestselling authors, high-caliber leaders, world changing humanitarians, innovative researchers, amazing startup founders, clever life-hackers, paradigm busting thought-leaders and global innovators. Page | 6 The show is equal parts information and inspiration, but without the aphorisms and Pablum. We cover a wide range of topics in an engaging way — from Burning Man to The Renaissance Weekend, from the United Nations to top universities, Nobel Laureates to astronauts — we have an amazing Rolodex. # # # If you'd like to learn more or connect, please do, just click here. You can join my email list to keep in touch. Tools and my podcast are available via http://ALifeInFull.org. 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