Morgan Housel - Tim Ferris - ‘Every successful business is a loosely functioning disaster’

A great interview with Morgan Housel on the Tim Ferris Show – here.

Housel’s book the Psychology of Money was mentioned at a number of meetings during our recent trip to the Berkshire Hathaway AGM.

Some really good resources are listed below – I got stuck going down a rabbit hole on ‘The Rabbit Hole’ (this guy is hardcore)

Lachie.

Businesses: Friend Brent Beshore says … ‘every successful business is a loosely functioning disaster’

Leverage: Buffett quote ‘if you’re smart you don’t need it … if you’re dumb you shouldn’t use it’

Planning for risks: The biggest risk is always something that nobody sees coming – all the big events – no one saw them coming. Therefore you have to have a level of savings .. that doesn’t make sense … you need a level of conservatism that seems a bit too much

Kindle audible hack: you can listen to the audible through the kindle app – which allows you to ‘clip’ parts of the book you want to note and then log onto your Amazon account and copy those clips into a doc to then review – very fast way to read and take notes on a book

People you always read: ‘The mount Rushmore’

Those less known:

• Nick Maggiulli – Writes Of Dollars and Data – very clear thinker

• Josh Brown – as funny as he is smart - understands the human side of investing better than anyone

• Dereck Thompson – Atlantic – one of the smartest

• Jason Zweig – greatest financial journalist of modern times (don’t think this is an exaggeration)

• Carl Richards – used to write for the NY Times – now independent – very good at simplifying the complex – writes on behavioral finance

Those well-known:

• James Clear – Atomic Habits

• Ryan Holliday – The daily stoic

• Tim Ferris

Content: Is a meritocracy – people who have sold millions of books – have typically earnt it

Ideas: Every good idea has come when it hasn’t been forced – 90% of writing comes when not sitting at a desk

Writer’s block: The majority of the time you have writers' block it is because your ideas suck – good ideas are very easy to write

Great resources:

• Abnormal Returns: Is the best financial news aggregator – visit this site every day

• The Rabbit Hole: Blast.com – reads more than anyone – makes a detailed summary of every book he has read – does a better job of this than anyone Housel has come across