[00:02:39] Stig Brodersen: So it’s quite common to take a gap year and see the world and perhaps work for some time to save up before you continue your studies. And I did both. I worked as a temp, and worked in various odd jobs. And since age 15 I worked on a dairy farm near my home and picked up as many hours as I possibly could, and I continued with that.

[00:03:00] Stig Brodersen: And I was also on call for a variety of jobs in manufacturing. For example, the night shift in a production facilities packed in cookies, just to mention one. So after 14 years of schooling, I was ready to take a little time off. I wanted to see the world. And after working for a few months, a friend and I bought tickets for Auckland New Zealand.

[00:03:19] Stig Brodersen: I had clearly no idea what I was doing. We had a 22 hour stop in Singapore, for example. It was partly because it was cheaper that way, but also because we were excited to see the city. And I remember that I went sightseeing in a fur jacket and partly it’s a little weird because why would I have a fur jacket in the first place?

[00:03:36] Stig Brodersen: Tots, I have no rebuttal, but I remember that I was drawing quite some looks from local, so it was like 30 degrees Celsius, 86 degrees Fahrenheit, so it was not your typical fur jagged weather anyways, not knowing what life had in store for us. My friend and I bought tickets for the so-called Kiwi Experience tour buses in New Zealand.

[00:03:57] Stig Brodersen: And if you don’t know what a Kiwi experience is, it’s basically an excuse to tell your parents that you’re being cultural while you travel. But actually what happens is that you party every night with all the tourists and then you sleep it off the next day while you’re being driving around to various sites.

[00:04:13] Stig Brodersen: And so I could give you advice from the trip such as make sure you don’t skydive with so much hair that you can’t wear a helmet. And yes, photos of that do exist. No, you’re not going to see them. And probably also I should say, don’t skydive in the first place, or it could be the evergreen advice of don’t stay in a shared dorm room slash kitchen slash toilet with cockroaches.

[00:04:39] Stig Brodersen: It’s just not that sanitary, but I guess we all live and learn. I had a fabulous time around New Zealand and late in Australia traveling up the East coast borrowing contest, flight to as rock and later off to Perth. Whenever I look back, what really stands out to me is that the limits of our language are the limits of my world.

[00:04:59] Stig Brodersen: And please don’t get me wrong, whenever I refer to a language, yes, it could be speaking a foreign language, and you’ll see the world opening up as you learn about another culture in that language, but that’s not really the point. A language you learn could also be coding and software Accounting is a language of business and another language.

[00:05:16] Stig Brodersen: You need to learn how to speak as you enter the world of business and investing. Just like the have speaks a slightly different language or social like if you like, than the have nots, and the opposite is true as well. If you read those always book 1984 about a totalitarian big brother society, you’ll learn why the authorities wanted the word riots to no longer be a part of the English language, so-called newspeak was used to replace old speak.

[00:05:43] Stig Brodersen: The idea is that if you don’t know the word for riot, how can you revel against the authorities? Hence, the limit of my language are the limits of my world in school, although my native tongue of Danish, I supposedly learned how to speak German, English, and Spanish, but I never really felt I mastered any of it.

[00:05:59] Stig Brodersen: At the time, I thought I would likely continue my undergraduate studies in business in Danish. But after the trip, I realized how the world would open up if you spoke multiple languages, and not only my native language where only 5 million people spoke, whereas I never managed to get rid of my cringe worthy Danish accent in English.

[00:06:16] Stig Brodersen: As you can probably tell. I came home making sure I needed to study a business degree in English. Just like others have found that Chinese, Arab, Spanish or another world language opens their world. So I founded with English. If you want to make something in this world, you get a lot of tailwind from speaking a world language, and that takes me to the second piece of advice I will give them to myself at age 20.

[00:06:40] Stig Brodersen: Get outside of your comfort zone. Most people are not wired to get outside the comfort zone. I certainly wasn’t ever since I visited Oxford, England with my parents. I wanted to study abroad, but it seemed like I never got around to it. I had the chance to go and exchange as an undergraduate, but I made up all kinds of excuses not to go.

[00:07:00] Stig Brodersen: I see that with myself, but also with several other people in my life. People who talk about wanting to start a company for years but never pick up the phone to call a customer and get started. And of course, I’m as guilty as charts. I love my life as a student with friends and family nearby and taking the leap to go abroad into the unknown just seemed daunting.

[00:07:22] Stig Brodersen: In 2008, I finally made the leap in between my first and second years of graduate studies. I had the chance to start merger acquisitions and business analysis at a university in Boston, but that was not as fancy as it sounded. To this day, I have forgotten what I learned academically. My regret was never really took outside my comfort zone, but rather I should have done at least a year abroad and really immersed myself in that experience.

[00:07:47] Stig Brodersen: I didn’t stay on campus with the other students, but I rented out a place in Cambridge with a friend and I hang out with the other Danish students who happened to study there as well. Not only that, but I also make sure that my girlfriend, now, my wife, stayed with us for half of the program. What would’ve happened if I had burned the ships?

[00:08:03] Stig Brodersen: The phrase burning the ships dates back to 1519 where the Spanish expedition led by Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico.  Cortés knew his crew was already exhausted after the long sea journey, but he had to motivate them to succeed in new land and even more so. He wanted to mitigate the risk of mutiny, so he ordered his crew to burn the ships.

[00:08:24] Stig Brodersen: Now I’ll be the first to say that the experience was wonderful and it wouldn’t be without it. Some of my friends stayed next to the local football team and they showed us reserved Danes the fine art of standing upside down on a keg and other invaluable life lessons. It being a reserved Dane with doubt about how he could socially integrate with a brand new world in Massachusetts.

[00:08:45] Stig Brodersen: I just brought a little piece of Denmark with me as my safety blanket. When I think back on the experience of walking along the Charles River in scenic Cambridge. I get this warm and fuzzy feeling, and it was such a wonderful adventure, but an adventure that never fully blossomed in the shadows of making myself vulnerable and getting outside of my comfort zone.

[00:09:05] Stig Brodersen: And that is a third piece of advice I would like to pull the thread on the idea of making yourself vulnerable. One of the most impactful interviews I’ve done over the past 11 years was not about stock investing, but an episode with a gentleman named Jesse Itzler. Jesse became successful by co-founder Marquis Jet, which is sold to Berkshire Hathaway’s NetJets.

[00:09:26] Stig Brodersen: In my eyes, I remember going into the episode thinking that Jesse has made it, whereas I certainly felt I haven’t made anything but I remember asking him this question. I asked him, so, Jesse, which piece of advice would you give yourself at 20? And I don’t remember what I thought he would say. Perhaps it would be starting investing in Amazon whenever it’s iPod or Read X, Y, Z book.

[00:09:52] Stig Brodersen: But to my surprise, he said, make yourself vulnerable. And at first it was a puzzling answer. I couldn’t think of anything. I would rather avoid more than making myself vulnerable. In a cutthroat dog eat dog world, why would you show any sign of vulnerability? I was certainly in a state of mind where I thought the vulnerability was the same as weakness and that both were to be avoided like the plague.

[00:10:16] Stig Brodersen: Now, as I’ve gotten a bit older, I realized what a powerful advice that could be for the right person. And I’m a little hesitant to say this because it cannot be taken at face value. I always been, and I’m still at times quite uncomfortable when people walk up to me and share what I would deem to be deep personal information.

[00:10:36] Stig Brodersen: So it doesn’t come easy for me to be vulnerable. But for those of you have followed this show since 2014, you probably noticed that it’s only over the past year or two that I’ve shared stories from a personal life and it’s really only the tip of the iceberg that I share. So as I got over the script for this podcast episode, I probably have five stories I did want to tell every time I told one.

[00:10:58] Stig Brodersen: And it’s not because they’re secret per se, they’re just private. So what has changed? Well, first bullets and then cannonballs. When I was younger, I used to think in quite binary terms, black and white, good and evil. As you grow older, you see things more granularly. The idea of starting abroad seemed daunting.

[00:11:20] Stig Brodersen: Now, not academically in my youth, and perhaps sometimes today. I have a blend of vanity and insecurities that blend it together in the most annoying ways, and the idea of not finishing a top of my class at Howard University never really crossed my mind, but I was terrified of the idea of going there by myself and how I would blend in socially.

[00:11:40] Stig Brodersen: I often felt misunderstood in my teenage years, which could be lonely and disheartening, and starting across the pond also seemed impossible if I didn’t bring a lifeboat in the front of my Danish friends and girlfriends with me. What I wish I knew back then is that I. Whenever you show vulnerability and you make sure that it can’t cripple you if someone wants to hurt you, you are opening yourself up to attracting and compounding wonderful relationships.

[00:12:05] Stig Brodersen: Life teaches you that world. Isn’t that binary? If starting a year abroad was terrible, I could just have gone home and I wish I had thought of my previous life decisions more as I would of a portfolio. You can take a stab at something and get a feedback loop going, but don’t bet more than you can afford to lose in life and investing.

[00:12:27] Stig Brodersen: And oh, before I forget, in that episode I mentioned before with Jesse Itzler. Preston and I, my co-founder started rapping and I am not kidding. The reason is that Jesse had the artist 50 Cent as an intern back in the day. I don’t know if any of the young listeners who know who that is, but he was, whenever I was growing up, everyone knew who 50 Cent was.

[00:12:48] Stig Brodersen: And so, we wanted to make a tribute to that. So no, I’m not going to link to the rap in the show notes, but it is all in the public record if you really, really want to hear a terrible, terrible rap, but you probably shouldn’t.

[00:13:02] Stig Brodersen: Anyways, let’s go to the fourth piece of advice I would like to give myself at age 20. So the advice is be obsessed. So I was sitting in the basement of this swanky Hilton hotel in Mayfair, London last summer with a friend, and the choice of drink was new to me. I’m still honestly trying to figure out if the negro new drink is to my liking. But being ever the introvert, the selection hotel was a bit arbitrary.

[00:13:30] Stig Brodersen: My wife used to live in London, and when asked where she suggested I stay in central London, preferably without too many people, she suggested Mayfair and ignorant as ever, I’d never heard about Mayfair before, and the entirety of my resource process was to find the tallest hotel in the area. So I couldn’t hear noise from the street, but also ever the value investor. I wanted a hotel that was so tall that I didn’t want to pay a premium for any of the fancy suites at the very top and Hilton Hotel popped up as a result. Well, back to the bar. The discussion topic is chess and through twist and turns, we ended up talking about what it requires to be among the world’s top chess players.

[00:14:09] Stig Brodersen: And obviously it helps to have a certain talent, but that’s only a part of it. What really matters with the ability to be obsessed and dedicate your life to mastering the game, and you really need to have both the talent and the obsession. Just having one is simply not enough if you want to be among the very best in the world at competitive chess.

[00:14:30] Stig Brodersen: And I sometimes think back on that conversation, not because I have any brilliant insights into chess. My openings are mediocre best, and from the middle game it’s really downhill from there but I think back at the conversation because I constantly run into listeners of this show with similar questions.

[00:14:49] Stig Brodersen: They want to build a business, they want to become financially independent, and all of that is good and well. And when asked for advice, I tell them to focus on one thing and then to be obsessed about it. The good thing I should say is that you don’t need to have the same obsession and talent to succeed in business as in the chess elite, far from it.

[00:15:07] Stig Brodersen: But you really need to work much harder than most people realize, and you need to be obsessed with one thing, and that doesn’t come easy to most people. Again, we tend to think about it as a portfolio, and if you have 10 stocks in your portfolio, at least one should be a big winner. And perhaps that is true in venture capital and some pockets in the stock market, but that’s not really how it works.

[00:15:29] Stig Brodersen: If you want to be successful with your own business or you want to achieve financial independence, if you professionally do 10 things simultaneously. You won’t get 10x the number of potential successes because you’ll be competing with people who only do one thing and therefore do that one thing better than you.

[00:15:46] Stig Brodersen: You have to find a game. You are wired to win and be obsessed about it for as long as it takes for you to win. It’s that simple, but it’s not easy, and that is also why my fifth piece of advice to myself would be quit. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, the test of first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

[00:16:11] Stig Brodersen: I absolutely love that quote, and it’s so true because everything worth having a life doesn’t come easily. But with that said, it’s equally important not to be tempted to believe that all you have to do to achieve your goal is to never give up. We’ve heard many successful people say that, and perhaps some are right, but I’m quite sure that you’re staring into a survivorship bias.

[00:16:33] Stig Brodersen: The world is full of unsuccessful people who spent their best years reaching for goals that never materialized. Now, this is not my way of saying that you shouldn’t work hard and believe in yourself. You should get going when times get tough. But it is my way of saying that you have a certain amount of chips in front of you.

[00:16:50] Stig Brodersen: You can call those chips, hours, dollars, whatever you want, every time you spend called a one hour on X. You can’t spend it on Y, and you must be obsessed to become one of the most successful in your niche. And if you can’t stop what you’re doing and be obsessed with something else, until you find the game you can and want to win.

[00:17:10] Stig Brodersen: As with competitive chess, being obsessed is just not always enough to fellow loyal followers of Buffet. I can’t help but mention this old buffet quote. How do you beat the former world chess champion, Bobby Fisher? Do not play him in chess. Scott Fitzgerald was right. You have to be ready, never to give up.

[00:17:30] Stig Brodersen: But you also have to welcome quitting. Both things can be true at the same time, and that takes me to advice Number six. We are a product of our time. And so everyone else, when I was 20, George W. Bush had just been reelected. Mark Zuckerberg had just launched The Facebook later simply renamed Facebook, and the McRib was still a stable in your local McDonald’s.

[00:17:53] Stig Brodersen: It seemed like a time full of promises. I didn’t call my parents on my cell phone when traveling abroad. It was too expensive. I would buy a card from a convenience store and call from a phone booth because Skype typically couldn’t find a stable enough connection. And if you’re 20 years old today, you’ll likely have no idea what I’m talking about.

[00:18:12] Stig Brodersen: And perhaps you never even heard about Skype, but perhaps your parents today have a Hotmail email address or an American online account. And believe it or not, it was all the rates back then. It was a time full of hope at dynamic changes. The world was moving fast in 2004. Only seven years before my parents had installed incident in their home.

[00:18:32] Stig Brodersen: And even though something called e modem said the weirdest noise when you went online and for whatever reason you couldn’t use your phone while you were online, it was still magical. Not because you could find much online, you really couldn’t, and you used probably a search engine called AltaVista or something like that.

[00:18:51] Stig Brodersen: But what’s amazing was that after 30 seconds that it took to go online, you could access the entire world. When you listen to radio ads at the time, they would tell you to go to website addresses. That started with www and it was super confusing. And I would literally type up on a piece of paper to make sure how many W’s I have to include on my Internet Explorer browser.

[00:19:16] Stig Brodersen: It was the preferred browser in the late nineties, though surely others would swear by Netscape and Firefox. And for some of you listening to this, it might be a trip down memory lane. Then for others they would have no idea what I’m talking about. But I originally wanted to do this podcast episode and come up with principles that would transcend culture and time.

[00:19:38] Stig Brodersen: But the very point is that it’s so hard to do because you are all a product. At the time and circumstances we were born into, I wasn’t born into a digital first world like Gen Z, which has shaped how I interact or don’t interact with media. But on the other hand, contrary to Gen X, I was not aware of the Cold War before old enough to understand that it was something in the past.

[00:20:00] Stig Brodersen: We all a product of the time and so was everyone else. And so if you are like me, and you sometimes are embarrassed about finding yourself, being annoyed with people from different generations and cultures, or perhaps both, you find that they would do things that you find disrespectful and I wish I was better then and now to live by the following principle of Seek first to understand and then to be understood.

[00:20:26] Stig Brodersen: Now before we end this section in all doom and gloom, I want to end it on a high note, especially on this idea of, you know, what’s going on with the new young generation. This is a quote that’s attributed to Socrates 500-ish BC. The children now love luxury. They show disrespectful for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are tyrants, not servants of the households. They no longer rise when their elders entered the room. They contradict their parents chatter before company gobble up, dance at the table, cross their leg, and terrorize all their teachers. End quote. I just love that quote partly. It’s funny, but it also goes to this idea of finding principles that can transcend culture and time.

[00:21:15] Stig Brodersen: I love this quote because partly it’s just a fun observation, but it also speaks to the idea of yes, we are all a product of our own time. Can we still find something that transcends different generations and cultures? And that takes me to number seven, which is a wonderful quote by Lio. You can have anything but not everything.

[00:21:36] Stig Brodersen: And if you are anything like me as a kid, you would dream about the perfect life you would want. As an adult, I thought I would have the perfect job, the perfect family, the perfect everything. And in my early twenties, struggling with life and everything professionally, I thought to myself, well, if I just make this amount of money and got that promotion, my life will be perfect.

[00:21:58] Stig Brodersen: Of course, as you grow older, you’ll learn that the world is that kind. You’ll learn that human nature is never to be completely happy. Happiness can be an emotion, but it’s always feeling and you want more, whether it’s love, money, success, or perhaps you want all of it. The world is a complex place and just like every cloud has a silver lining, the opposite is true as well.

[00:22:21] Stig Brodersen: Let me give you an example. Being a teacher at heart, I’m biased and wanting to help young people break through. And even as I’ve, which you can probably tell from this episode, gotten a bit more cynical with time. I come from a place where I want to help. So every day I have someone who wants something from me, uh, in my inbox.

[00:22:42] Stig Brodersen: Perhaps it’s 10 people. Perhaps it’s more. One of the common requests I get is something along the lines of, I love your show and I have X, Y, Z product. I want to sell. Can we please do a revenue split? Which seems to be a reasonable business proposition if it comes from a true friend of the show. We share the upside together and there is quote unquote, no downside.

[00:23:04] Stig Brodersen: But let me take one step back. So here in The Investor’s Podcast Network. We make a few million dollars in advertising. All that is good and well. And the way the system is set up is that advertisers come to us and if a campaign works, we get paid. And if it doesn’t work, we also get paid. In other words, there’s no financial reason to do a revenue split on an unknown product.

[00:23:25] Stig Brodersen: And obviously even less with a business that’s typically in its infancy. That’s why they suggest a pure revenue split. But here’s one example of how you can have anything, but not everything. If I don’t respond to the young, ambitious man, I kind of feel bad about it. I mean, I used to be that guy and it was my route of passage to grind and find a way to succeed in business.

[00:23:48] Stig Brodersen: So I want to get back to him and decline and explain why. And of course, order this politely. And if possible, I would like to give advice and I want him to know that it’s not no to him, but it just doesn’t make financial sense to us. To do a no cure, no pay for an unknown product, and I want to wish some luck.

[00:24:09] Stig Brodersen: I certainly don’t want to ignore that email. I’ve been on the other side of the email and I feel terrible about being ignored. So you might be listening thinking, well, that’s all good and well, why don’t you just spend five minutes? Then you respond to this young man and then you get on with your life.

[00:24:25] Stig Brodersen: So this goes to this principle. You can have anything but not everything. Again, I could choose not to respond to him, but I would feel bad about it. But if I do respond, this young man is thinking, this is great. STE is actually responding, and a good salesman doesn’t take no for an answer, so I will continue to approach stick until he gives in and all of a sudden you have the 10 requests, each of them taking five minutes.

[00:24:49] Stig Brodersen: That’s probably okay. You spend 50 minutes of your day, then the next day you have 10, plus the other 10 that you had from the day before because now you have a conversation. And then obviously the 30, you would have 30 and so on and so forth. And so. Of course, this is just one example to illustrate my point, but I think we all have a version of that in our lives.

[00:25:09] Stig Brodersen: Perhaps you’re in a situation where you can have your dream job just two hours away from your home, or you can take a less good job next door, but your dream job adds four hours to your day and likely hear a lot of road rage. If you’re listening to this podcast, you’ll likely quite successful, or at least you want to be successful.

[00:25:26] Stig Brodersen: And this is not just empty, flatter. There’s a strong selection bias to those who listen to this podcast, who started billionaires and how they live their lives, and you are likely in a situation where you have the talent to anything you want. If you truly are obsessed with being successful, nothing is stopping you from achieving that.

[00:25:44] Stig Brodersen: But what I wish I had known back then and what I would tell my younger self today is you can have anything but not everything. You can rise to the very top of your profession in the corporate world. You can train to run a marathon or you can become a successful business owner. But every time you say yes to something you love, you say no to something else.

[00:26:03] Stig Brodersen: And so what I’ve learned and what I wish I knew back then was that the best thing you can hope for in life is to struggle. Well, and on that note, I want to go to the eighth advice I would give to my 20 yourself. Become financially independent before 40. And yes, even after knowing that you have anything and not everything, you probably still want everything.

[00:26:26] Stig Brodersen: Well, welcome to the club. That is why I suggest at age 20, you need to make the decision to become financial independent before age 40. And I was torn about whether or not I should put this down as advice. After all, it would be better to say something inspirational like, follow your passion and don’t think about money.

[00:26:47] Stig Brodersen: Well, I’ve seen young people follow the money in an occupation they don’t like. Then they get lifestyle creeps. It means they can’t stop doing what they do and as a result they become miserable. That’s clearly not the advice I’d give to my 20-year-old self. So what do I mean? Well, when you are 20, you are in a great position because you typically have low spending.

[00:27:08] Stig Brodersen: Keep it that way. Low spending gives you a lot of freedom, even though at age 20 you might feel like it’s the other way around where high spending gives you a lot of freedom. Well, I already recorded episode 689 where I talk about my journey into financial independence. I’ll make sure to link to that in the show notes, and I won’t repeat all of it here, but if you allow me to be a bit of a grumpy old man here, I don’t think following a passion blindly is the way to go.

[00:27:33] Stig Brodersen: For most 20 year olds, you can 100% find successful people who did just that. And through being a starving artist became rich and famous. But simple base rate math would disagree with that choice. If you can find a career where you’re eight out of 10 passionate, that can lead you to financial independence before it’s 40.

[00:27:52] Stig Brodersen: It’s better than the starving artist route. Even if you think that the starving artist route is a 10 outta 10 on passion. And partly I say that because nothing in this life is really a 10 out of 10. The world just isn’t that kind. And if something is 10 outta 10, it’s only a question before it is no longer, unless you’re born into a rich family, which most of us are not, you have to do things in the right order, accumulate wealth first, and then get your freedom.

[00:28:20] Stig Brodersen: You can do it the other way around, but it’s so much harder. Obviously, you don’t want to start in a profession where you’re three out of 10 passionate, you’ll burn out and you’ll not reach financial independence. You have to find the intersection where you are adequate, passionate, but you can also make money.

[00:28:36] Stig Brodersen: And on that note, I sometimes wonder why reaching financial independence was so important to me and whether I should truly give that advice to others who are 20, or if it’s specific to me and kindred spirits. Now I grew up in a beautiful countryside of Denmark, 45 minutes from my live today. And perhaps the best way to explain what it is just because it’s top of mind is Netflix’s show, Virgin River.

[00:29:00] Stig Brodersen: But I should say without the crime and trauma and probably also less attractive people. But well, every morning I walked to school and it was only a few hundred meters away. You had to time when you left, though the road closed in the morning and in the afternoon when the cattle crossed the street. And to me there was, was just the most natural thing in the world.

[00:29:21] Stig Brodersen: My parents always had stable jobs. We never liked anything. The summers were long, sunny, beautiful, and, and often my dad would take out his guitar and the family would gather around at Bonfire sing songs and making twist bread. And my parents still live in that house. And it’s a place with fond memories.

[00:29:38] Stig Brodersen: I come from a village where you’re ambitious on behalf of your local community, but perhaps less so professionally. You worked for the man and everyone seemed content with that. You worked until you retired and while many liked the job and perhaps more important, didn’t dislike it. It was really the social activities outside of work that made the difference for most people there.

[00:29:59] Stig Brodersen: Because the journey of financial independence was so important to me, it has been natural for me to believe that it’s equally important to others to become financial free before 40. Perhaps that is all wrong. I’ve certainly seen in my local community how there are so many wonderful, happy people where I never was something that they aim for, but it is still nonetheless the advice I’d give to myself at age 20 and that takes me to the next advice.

[00:30:26] Stig Brodersen: Number nine, remember the time passes by anyway. Make the most of it. Your life is how you spend your time. It’s that simple and it’s that hard. That said, at age 20, I wish I knew the time would pass by anyway. Okay, so I’m a slow learner. And what do I mean by that?

[00:30:43] Stig Brodersen: Well, I absolutely love Jim Collins book, good To Great. And the book teaches you how corporations go from good to great, and how doing so doesn’t take any longer than staying good. You simply have to make a different choice about becoming great. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Let’s take the world of sports.

[00:31:02] Stig Brodersen: Arguably, the best two footballers in modern times are Lionel Messi, and Cristiano Ronaldo. And what fascinates me about them is that they want everything and still they’re super hungry to continue to be the best even after all their prime. And it’s just not how most people are wired, and certainly not outside the world of sports.

[00:31:21] Stig Brodersen: It just frustrates me when great footballers don’t want to give it their role. Think about it like this. They’re playing an away game and spend a day traveling to that stadium. It’s not like they have something better to do for those 90 minutes than to go on the pitch and be the best version of themselves.

[00:31:37] Stig Brodersen: And why not do the best that you can? And I see this in business all the time. Many have jobs they’re not passionate about. I’ve certainly been there, but if you’re tied to your desk for eight hours anyway, why not do your best in those eight hours while you are there? Not because of the company, and certainly not because of your boss.

[00:31:57] Stig Brodersen: Perhaps you don’t like either, but perhaps you want to perform for you because that’s who you are. And I find the idea of time passes by in a way to be a fascinating mental model of the world. And I heavily lean into it in all walks of life. Like so many other people, money can be burning a hole in my pocket.

[00:32:14] Stig Brodersen: And when I was 20 reaching, my financial goals just seemed daunting. But time is passing by anyways. And why not liberate the beauty of compounding? I usually hit a wall between 10 or 10:30 PM and I don’t feel creative or productive anymore. My opportunity cost at this time are typically to, I don’t know, don’t scroll on my phone.

[00:32:33] Stig Brodersen: This is typically whenever I would double down on a good nonfiction book. And if I want something lighter, I might read a 10 K or 10 Q, which is typically a bit easier to digest and can be skimmed if need be. And when you make the decision that time passes by anyway, you also know that whenever you are just worn out after a long day, you have lower willpower and you don’t make good decisions.

[00:32:57] Stig Brodersen: So you have to make decisions about how you want to make decisions. And so what do I mean by that? Well, I have a terrible habit of always having my phone around me. So what I do at that time is that I always carry a book with me in the room that I’m going into to make easy for me to read the book instead of scrolling on my phone.

[00:33:14] Stig Brodersen: Also, I tend to like junk food at night, so I always make sure to have fruit available. It doesn’t always work, but with small things, you can ask yourself to be the best version of yourself. So remember that time passes by anyway. You don’t have to be messy to be the best version of yourself.

[00:33:29] Stig Brodersen: And that takes me to advice number 10. Do what you say and say what you do. The origin of this was something I clone from Manez Papa and my friend and cohost William. If it wasn’t for them, I didn’t think I would’ve discovered the powerful framework from David Hawkins. In short, people can sense whether you can be trusted or not. They may not be able to tell you why, but you subconscious mind is strong and recognizes certain patterns with people you encounter.

[00:33:55] Stig Brodersen: Think of new people you met over the past month. Do you know why you trust some and not others? The key to unlocking that trust is to do that by saying what you do and doing what you say. And when you do, you radiate authenticity and people would start trusting you, but you have to act accordingly.

[00:34:13] Stig Brodersen: You can’t be trustworthy on command. Either you do it or you don’t, and other people can sense that it’s a survival mechanism that is hardwired in us. Now, doing what you say and saying what you do is a hard way to live. Let me give you an example of how this mindset to commits. Such that life can be exhausting and make you say stupid things.

[00:34:33] Stig Brodersen: So last weekend I was out with a friend and his girlfriend and his girlfriend asked me if there was something I wanted to become better at. And I not so elegant, I said, I wish I was better at lying. Now that is not a nice quote, is it? Well, my friend’s wife understandably got quite confused by the seemingly odd statement.

[00:34:53] Stig Brodersen: I mean, who would want to become better at lying? I don’t know, call men perhaps. But we live in a society where to function socially, you are obligated to tell white lies. You tell your boss that the cover activity has been fun, and when someone calls you and you don’t want to talk to them, you say, I was just about to call you.

[00:35:12] Stig Brodersen: Even if that’s the last thing you want to do. I know I’ve done both a few years ago, I made a commitment to myself to say what I do and do what I say. And it is a hard way to live your life. But as I found out, if you’re hard on yourself. Life will be easy on you. And if you’re easy on yourself, life will be hard and it comes in all shapes and sizes.

[00:35:32] Stig Brodersen: For example, you can be hard on yourself and underspend your income. You can be hard on yourself and not eat junk food. And if you do, life will be easy on you, not today or tomorrow. But in the long term, if you want to lose weight, you might have a rule about not eating dessert. But you can make exceptions if that dessert is really delicious and it seemingly a good rule.

[00:35:52] Stig Brodersen: But it’s also a painful rule because you have to spend mental energy on whether or not you can make exceptions for yourself or not. And this is typically at a times when you know that you don’t make good decision. It’s much easier to make a decision. I eat dessert, or I don’t eat desserts, than to make a decision every single time.

[00:36:10] Stig Brodersen: Let me give you an example. During the Berkshire weekend in Omaha, two years ago, I flew in a little early to get used to the time difference. So I sent a message out into a mastermind community and I wanted to know if anyone was up for a walk and talk. Luckily for me, a young man named James said that he would set aside a bit of time to walk around the city and talk about stock investing and whatnot.

[00:36:32] Stig Brodersen: Now, as I went to the lobby of the hotel, I happened to run into Guy Spier’s, wonderful chief of Staff, Chantal Hackett. And Chantal was very kind, and she invited me to the Berkshire Value Acts event that had just started. And the tickets are notoriously difficult to come by and I’ve never participated before but really wanted to.

[00:36:48] Stig Brodersen: And I was obviously tempted to take Chantal up on her invitation and then give James a bad excuse for why I could meet him. But the decision was very easy. You do what you say and you say what you do. And I had promised James to go for a walk with him. Now, if I’d been the kind of person who would ditch James to go to a cool event, you probably wouldn’t be listening to this podcast.

[00:37:09] Stig Brodersen: You all met that person who promised you whatever it is, but if something is more exciting than you, they are the first to cancel on you. I’ve certainly had that happen to me many times before, and I just don’t want to be that guy. So I do what I say and say what I do for selfish reasons. In this case, James, who I’ve never met and by the way, did get to meet is super, super nice guy, but it was because I made a contract with myself.

[00:37:32] Stig Brodersen: Perhaps it seems like a very tough way to live your life, and sometimes it is. Hence my terrible response to my friend’s girlfriend about being better at lying. But at the same time, the commitment to make your word your bond is also very liberating. You don’t have to think and evaluate if you want to keep your word.

[00:37:49] Stig Brodersen: You just do it and the way you do the small things, also the way you do the big things in life. Life has taught me that it’s hard always to keep your word and it’s hard to live a life where you constantly break your word, choose your heart.

[00:38:03] Stig Brodersen: Alright, shifting gears here. Going to point number 11. Let people do CrossFit. Okay, so what do I mean by that? A few years ago, it seemed like everyone and their mother were doing CrossFit, and it was quite easy to tell if someone did just that. Not because they were ripped, even though they probably were, but because I always found a way to tell you within 10 minutes without any good primer, you could talk about the weather and they would suddenly tell you there was perfect weather to do CrossFit.

[00:38:34] Stig Brodersen: Or if you were having lunch, they would tell you that it’s great having Cals because they were just about to do CrossFit, had just been doing CrossFit or something, something CrossFit. And I think we all have our own CrossFit. Something we are really excited and proud about, but that the rest of the world doesn’t care about.

[00:38:53] Stig Brodersen: And one thing I wish I knew whenever I was 20, and one thing I still struggle with today is not imposing my own values and opinions on other people. In today’s polarized world, it’s very easy to make assumptions about why others have different opinions than you. Typically, we tell ourselves that it’s because the other side, perhaps politically, is just uninformed.

[00:39:13] Stig Brodersen: They’re lied to, or perhaps they’re simply not as smart as you. You’ll save yourself a lot of headache if you choose your battles. The person you speak to is likely as little interested in being told that they’re wrong as you are. So let the other person talk about how proud they are about doing CrossFit, and you can obviously make it as metaphorically as you want to.

[00:39:34] Stig Brodersen: It makes them go strong to talk about it, and perhaps you can even ask into it and learn a thing or two and then move on to other topics that makes both of you go strong.

[00:39:44] Stig Brodersen: Advice number 12, deserve good things in life. At age 20, I wanted to find excuses for redefining success in whatever way that could make me look good and others look bad. For example, if someone had financial success, which few had on their own at age 20, I was the first to point out that it was likely due to someone having a rich father and why that might be true. Sometimes it’s an incredible negative approach to life that would not do you any good when you do this to make yourself look good.

[00:40:13] Stig Brodersen: We ironically make yourself look very bad. And it likely doesn’t surprise listeners of our show, but Warren Buffett has a profound impact on my life, and we could probably do an entire show with Buffett quotes. Now, one thing that always stuck with me was this idea of deserving your successes. It’s not only the case for financial success, but it’s also similar.

[00:40:33] Stig Brodersen: Whenever you want to attract the right spouse or a good friend, you start by being a good spouse and a good friend, and it doesn’t really work the other way around. At times when you feel a little lost a feeling that would likely never disappear for good, it has served me well. To start with the end in mind.

[00:40:49] Stig Brodersen: Ask how you can deserve success in whatever way you define it. And this is not the same as saying that the world will be fair far from it, but a good starting point is to serve what you want in life, even though it doesn’t always work in your favor. It’s the right way to approach life. Number 13, learn from other people’s mistakes.

[00:41:07] Stig Brodersen: When you’re 20, the world is very simple and it’s very complicated. It’s time of experimentation, and you’re trying to find your place in the world. It’s a time when you make many mistakes and it seems like you’re spending too much time getting yourself back on your feet after life has knocked you out.

[00:41:23] Stig Brodersen: It might also be the most exciting time of your life because you’re exploring so many new things. At age 20 I wish I’ve been reading more books. Of course, as a student you feel that all you do is nothing but read. But starting a textbook that you’re supposed to take a sermon is very different than reading books to learn about the world and how to live a good life.

[00:41:43] Stig Brodersen: Ever the economist, looking back, it seems to be such an inefficient use of my time to make so many mistakes by myself rather than reading books by people who live wonderful lives and just learn from their mistakes. I wish I stumbled on Warren Buffett and started how he lived his life whenever I was 20.

[00:41:59] Stig Brodersen: At the same time, I don’t think it would’ve made any difference at all. Yes, learning from other people’s mistakes is cheaper and faster than making your own. Just like you can read about how it is to fall in love and perhaps outta love again, you must feel it on your own body before you really understand it.

[00:42:17] Stig Brodersen: You can read about how it is to have a family that depends on you as the breadwinner, but at age 20, you hopefully don’t have any experience with that. Later, you learn how empowering it can make you feel, and then other times how crushing irresponsibility can be. In preparing for this episode, I asked my friend David from a mastermind community, which advice he would give himself age 20, and he said, lose money.

[00:42:40] Stig Brodersen: I absolutely love that advice. If you’re young and listening to this episode, I hope you’ll lose money too. Not a lot of money, but enough money to make you humble at a time when losing 50% of your net worth might feel like a lot, but where it really isn’t. Since your investible assets are only peanuts compared to your lifetime earnings gin season, and millennials grew up in a time with a strong bull market and easy credit, they might have seen the Covid crash and believe that a bear market is short lived in.

[00:43:07] Stig Brodersen: The market is only up to the right and like falling in love. You can read about how it is to lose money, but you have to experience it and suspect that much of the crazy gambling and speculation we see younger people do today has to do with the time they brought up in and perhaps it will catch up with them when it’s too late at its 20.

[00:43:26] Stig Brodersen: I wish I didn’t see failure as something negative, which I most certainly did. I wish I’ve seen failure as life, giving me a gem, a g that was disguised as a seemingly bad experience that I had to unwrap and teach me something valuable in the process. And that is also why my advice number 14 is get your education in the real world.

[00:43:48] Stig Brodersen: Few age 20 are aware that what you give is what you get. I certainly wasn’t aware growing up, I was quite sure I didn’t appreciate the privilege of having solid role models in my parents. Looking back, I feel a bit embarrassed about how much I took for granted as a kid. I remember asking my parents if I could be paid to do chores around the house, and my father looked at me and said, how about three meals a day and a roof all your heads on?

[00:44:14] Stig Brodersen: We didn’t talk much about money growing up. We never needed anything, but there was certainly no trust fund for me. Whenever I turned 21, either I remember how much I wanted a computer. Well, quickly I learned how many hours I needed to do hard physical labor at the local dairy farm to afford that. After years as a paper boy, I finally got my first real job.

[00:44:34] Stig Brodersen: I was 16 and I got a job working for $7 and 60 cents an hour. It felt like a fortune at the time. I bought a pc, not a laptop, which almost no one had at the time, but one of those big computers you see in old movies, it was really high tech. It ran Windows XP and it constantly crashed. Sometimes you would see the so-called the blue screen of death.

[00:44:56] Stig Brodersen: If you had a computer in that age, you know exactly what I’m talking about. My wife and I sometimes discuss how much we should spoil the next generation. I have two nieces who were brought up similar to me in a household where you learn the value of honest and hard work. And on one hand I want to give them all their luxury in life.

[00:45:13] Stig Brodersen: You know, all those luxury I would’ve loved to have gotten at that age. For whatever reason. The newest tech and branded clothes seems to determine your social standing at a certain age, and it seemed to be so important in those formative years. And of course, also such a nothing burger in hindsight. On the other hand, how can you teach a young person the importance of hard work and saving before consuming if you haven’t felt it on your own body.

[00:45:37] Stig Brodersen: At age 20, I was doing the night shift, and at 2:00 PM I would be at temp worker handling dangerous chemicals at a local factory. You learn a lot from honest work, and also you learn a lot from being the lowest on the totem pole. One of the things is that you learn that you better study hard, so you don’t have to continue doing so.

[00:45:55] Stig Brodersen: I see how young people today have been told by the parents how special they are. I even had a parent of one of them applying for a position with us here at the Ambassador Podcast Network on his son’s behalf. And yes, I’m not kidding. What I would say to myself at its 20 and everyone else at that age is that you are special, but don’t expect special treatment when you meet the real world.

[00:46:18] Stig Brodersen: Yes, you may one day follow your passion, and yes, you might one day find a lot of purpose in changing the world, and you may or you may not be destined for greatness, but at age 20 it doesn’t really matter. But humble and don’t think that honest work is beneath you. Keep your head down and work hard with integrity, and that is also why my advice number 15 is enjoy the face of your life you’re in.

[00:46:44] Stig Brodersen: When I asked my godmother, which face of her life were best, she said it wasn’t the right question to ask. She said that all faces of her life wonderful in their own way. And I’ve been pondering that for quite some time. I’ve certainly had faces of my life that was just very, very painful, and I don’t subscribe to the idea that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

[00:47:05] Stig Brodersen: In many cases, I found that some faces in my life was just terrible. Full stop. That being said, my godmother’s right, that you should lean into what is wonderful in that face of your life. I certainly do not miss being 20 with all of the insecurities that came with that age, but I miss certain things from that time.

[00:47:23] Stig Brodersen: The feeling of time being infinite is one. And on that note, this feeling of being immortal and that serious illness was something that only happened to others and certainly not something that could happen to my family or to me. At the same time, I don’t believe in the whole idea that the truth of how to live a good life will be revealed.

[00:47:41] Stig Brodersen: Whenever you’re on your deathbed, you optimize for different things in your different life faces, and that is okay too. When I was 10 years old, Disney made Lion King and I absolutely loved that movie. And if you were lucky enough that your parents would buy a VHS tape, yes, that is what it was called.

[00:47:59] Stig Brodersen: Well then whenever you finished the movie, you would rewind the tape and start watching The Lion King from the beginning. And I don’t think you would find many people saying that Rewatching Lion King repeatedly is a good use of life. At the same time. I had absolutely no regrets doing that. You optimize for different things and different stages of your life, and you’ll later find that if you can’t waste hours, you would waste years.

[00:48:22] Stig Brodersen: Just before I turned 23, I attended summer school taking a course in International trade and investment, fool of myself. I thought I’d be getting an A, well, I got a C it certainly wasn’t the grade I was hoping for, but I found myself quite preoccupied with this young woman in the class and didn’t spend much time reading.

[00:48:42] Stig Brodersen: Of course, that young woman ended up with a top grade in our class, and I partly attribute that to. Her just being much smarter than me, and as I remember it, she wasn’t as preoccupied with me as I was with her. Well, all is well, that ends well. And here 17 years later, we are coming up on a 15 years anniversary.

[00:48:59] Stig Brodersen: After meeting my wife, I didn’t do a good job spending time with my parents. They only live 45 minutes away, so I don’t really have a good excuse and I’ve since spoken with my father about it. And I told him that I didn’t feel too good about my neglect, and he looked at me and said what hopefully other fathers would tell his son that a young man, his early twenties, finding his new girlfriend and partying with his friends more interesting than spending time with his old folks were probably a healthy and completely a natural thing to do.

[00:49:27] Stig Brodersen: Again, you have different ages and different things you optimize for and fast forward. I often hear from people near the end of their lives that they regret working too much and not spending enough time with their friends. And I think it’s a completely understandable regret but also depends on how the chips has fallen for you.

[00:49:44] Stig Brodersen: I think if you put a camera on my shoulder, it looks like I’m working on TIP 16 hours a day, and it’s the first thing I do whenever I wake up. And then it’s the last thing I think about whenever I go to bed. But I don’t see it as work and it only has a positive connotation. I see it as a beautiful journey with friends where we help each other out and I can’t see how I can spend 16 waking hours better than that.

[00:50:06] Stig Brodersen: So I don’t divide my time between friends, less family and work. But I want to take my friends and family into the wonderful world of TIP. That doesn’t feel like work but purpose. We can’t all be that lucky, but it certainly wouldn’t happen if we didn’t ask for it in life. And it doesn’t apply that I don’t have any regrets.

[00:50:24] Stig Brodersen: I’ve made so many mistakes I would rather be without, but your regrets should be seen in the faces of life you’re in. Regrets also builds character, and it’s an education on the wonderful journey into adulthood. After all, reflection plus pain equals progress.

[00:50:40] Stig Brodersen: Number 16, have fun and I’m a little torn about including the next piece of advice about having fun. Much misery in this world has come from being unable to delay gratification, and I hope this point doesn’t come across as countering that certainly many 20 year olds are too busy enjoying life and do not prioritize education or setting money aside for investments and let the magic of compounding do its thing.

[00:51:06] Stig Brodersen: However, I also think that there is an adverse selection of many who listen to our show at its 20. Just starting my undergraduate studies, I attended conferences, spoke potential employers about the prospect of grad school, and looked at various salary tables. Today I would tell the young man to kick back and enjoy life more.

[00:51:24] Stig Brodersen: Those things will come in due time. Remember to have fun, enjoy the good things about being 20. In my first job after college, I did three rounds of interviews only to realize the extra work I had done to get the highest grade made zero difference. The trading company had heard a rumor that I have a reputation for being a half decent hold player, and there was really the skillset they were interested in.

[00:51:44] Stig Brodersen: After my first job, my second employer couldn’t tell less about my grades or extracurricular activities, and I hope this doesn’t come across as you not working hard in school. You certainly should, but many who listen to this show are already in the top 10 and four was really hard on being top one or perhaps even 0.1 in whatever field they’re in, and I completely understand that mindset.

[00:52:06] Stig Brodersen: I had it myself for many years, and honestly, I still have that today. I have a really, really hard time letting that go. At times, it seems like being number two is just the winner in being the first loser. But today I try to look at it a little bit differently, though my competitive side sometimes get the better of me.

[00:52:22] Stig Brodersen: You don’t know how much time you have in your hourglass. Remember to have fun. Being the top one or top 10% of students likely doesn’t make much of a difference when you’re 40 and look back at your life. Don’t miss out on the fun things. All those fun things you can do. Whenever you are 20, they just won’t come back.

[00:52:40] Stig Brodersen: And similarly, whenever you are 20, you think that whenever you’re 40, you will no longer have the problems you’re currently facing, and therefore your life will be so much better and by and large, indeed, you don’t have the same problems. But here’s the kicker, you’ll just have exchanged one set of problems with another and it never stops.

[00:52:59] Stig Brodersen: The best thing you can hope for in life is to struggle. Well, advice 17, be intentional about your relationships, but not too much. Aside from family and a close-knit group, I don’t have many close relationships today that are forged before the age of 28. And sometimes it makes me sad, but it’s also a very conscious decision.

[00:53:19] Stig Brodersen: Before age 28, I didn’t have much of a strategy for the people I surrounded myself with. And please don’t get me wrong, there were not bad people. There was just people who happened to grow up near me and later. It was friends who happened to study the same thing as I did or work the same place that I worked, and I had a blast with those people.

[00:53:36] Stig Brodersen: At the same time, I felt that something was missing. I believe in making your own luck and the friendships in my life were often made, so because they were coincidentally happened to be geographically adjacent when I was 20, the world was very much where you were based. Sure, everyone had internet access, but you didn’t seek out online communities like you do today with very like-minded people.

[00:53:59] Stig Brodersen: When you wanted to find people with similar interests, you looked around your city to see if you can find kindred spirits. When I turned 21, my wife was doing a part of her PhD in Sweden, and I had a year’s garden leave from my training job, and it was the perfect time to explore new relationships. I found an online community called Buffett’s Books, and this is where I met my future co-founder of The Investor’s Podcast Network, Preston Pysh.

[00:54:23] Stig Brodersen: And looking back, what was so amazing was that I didn’t need to meet that person. In this case, Preston. In real life to build a relationship, the new world allowed you to make friends all over the world. In that sense, our mastermind community has been a blessing, and I hear the same story for all our members because it’s my own story.

[00:54:42] Stig Brodersen: We meet up online and share our thoughts on stocks, portfolio management, intergenerational wealth and whatnot. And we do it because we like each other. But the reason why we joined and found new friends in the first place is because we couldn’t find any of our assistant friends to go on that journey with us.

[00:54:57] Stig Brodersen: Back in 2004 when I was 20, I wish I’d been more intentional about my relationships and found friends with similar niche interests worldwide instead of only looking locally. Now, ironically, I’m also grateful that I didn’t, when you’re 20 years old, you don’t know who you are. I surely didn’t. And you meet many different people from all walks of life, and then you can like serendipity, take over.

[00:55:19] Stig Brodersen: As you grow older and you get more notifications, you really want to make your time matter, and you typically only have so much time you can dedicate to your friends and you want to maximize that time. It’s completely natural and we all do it. We know that one hour, one friend could be spent on one hour in your job or with your family, and it’s great being intentional with your time, but it’s also incredible limiting and can sometimes make you cynical.

[00:55:44] Stig Brodersen: Having relationships with people over Zoom is wonderful because you can, with intention, connect with the most like-minded friends globally at any time, but it’s also terrible because it limits you from having experiences together and you feel there is a counter on your call and a mental agenda that has to be prepared.

[00:55:59] Stig Brodersen: If I could give myself advice at age 20, I would be more intentional with relationships in my life. But again, not too intentional. Set a direction for your life and then perhaps sometimes count yourself lucky than what happens is not what you had planned.

[00:56:14] Stig Brodersen: Advice number 18, start compounding. Now you probably think that this is the section where I would say that you should start compounding capital at age 20, and as such, it could be. We all know that compound interest is very powerful and that a dollar compounding can turn into incredible amount of money, giving enough time. It is, however, less so the intention, as valid as it might be at age 20. I wish I knew that. Like I said here quite a few times, if you’re hard on yourself, life will be easy on you.

[00:56:44] Stig Brodersen: And if you’re easy on yourself, life will be hard on you. And it’s a piece of advice that is valued in the many walks of life. One is health. It was very easy on myself at age 20, and it meant that so many things in life became hard. I mainly lived off bacon and frozen pizza at the time, and of course, whenever you are 20, your body can tolerate more than whenever you get older.

[00:57:05] Stig Brodersen: And like so many young men, after the excitement of moving away from home and not having your mother tell you to eat healthy food anymore, you perhaps realize that you was probably right all along. Diet is nonetheless something that can be hard to change if they become a habit. Now, luckily for me, I met my wife at age 22 and it didn’t take long before she turned me away from takeaway into home cooked meals.

[00:57:28] Stig Brodersen: But I wonder sometimes what happen if she didn’t. I likely shouldn’t wonder. I see it among my peers where the chains of food habits are too light to be felt until they’re too heavy to be broken. And it reminds me of this wonderful piece of advice I got years ago. The advice was simple and yet profound.

[00:57:44] Stig Brodersen: It was to read everything you can until you turn 30 and then spend your time rereading the best books. Now, I don’t think you should take it too literally, but it is how I think about many things in life. I tend to be curious about everything in life, but I’m also aware that one hour doing X is another hour, you can’t doing Y.

[00:58:02] Stig Brodersen: When you’re 20, that is not how you should look at the world. You should both do X and Y. Try everything. This is not an age where you know what you like and dislike, and if you’re lucky, this should be the time for a bit of an adventure. When you grow older, you feel like time is going faster and faster.

[00:58:18] Stig Brodersen: And the reason is that you have progressively fewer new experiences as you get older who might be stuck in the rat race and do the same thing every day. And even if we escape the rat race, we might have figured out which routines we like. And with effort get fewer new experiences. Our perception of the world just becomes more automatic.

[00:58:36] Stig Brodersen: But regardless of the reason, our recession of time changes, for better or for worse, you don’t know how you are the best version of yourself and how you should spend your time to achieve that. And perhaps as you grow older, you’re too sure of that. And even worse, you might be mistaken in that when you’re 20, you can make the best of both worlds and explore yourself and the world without the scars and the following percussions.

[00:59:00] Stig Brodersen: Advice number 19, loneliness is an unwelcome guest but be hopeful. When I was 20, I felt lonely. In a way it’s odd to say, so I just moved to a new city and I loved hanging out with new people I met and I enjoyed exploring the city. It felt like every day was a new adventure. At the same time, ironically, I felt quite lonely and I felt most lonely whenever I was around other people.

[00:59:27] Stig Brodersen: Being an undergrad was a time for me and for many others where they explore who they are, they experiment with different things they never tried before, and it’s also a time where you to a last extent, don’t decide who you hang out with and what to do throughout the day. You follow a program determined by the university and you happen to hang out with the people who haven to attend the same program.

[00:59:48] Stig Brodersen: You find that most of the relationship you forge are there for a reason, a season, and less so for a lifetime. It was not before I found the value investing community close to the age of 30, that it truly found kindred spirits in the world of investing, business and life that all interacts so wonderfully together in the value investing community.

[01:00:07] Stig Brodersen: Now, whenever I intended a conference last year, my father asked me whether I was going as Stig or as Stig from TIP, and I wasn’t sure how to respond to that question and it made me surprisingly sad. The value investing community has allowed me to connect and be friends with high quality people I never would’ve chance to meet.

[01:00:24] Stig Brodersen: It also boxes me into a role of being less Stig the random dude and more Stig from TIP, which is sometimes wonderful and other times feels incredibly lonely whenever I interact with others in the community. And if I could go back to myself age 20, I would tell him that with age you get more opportunities to be around kindred spirits.

[01:00:46] Stig Brodersen: But I would also tell him that loneliness is an unwelcome guest that seems to drop by at the most inconvenient times. I would also tell the young man that being alone and lonely are two very different things, was something I didn’t do a good job of understanding at the time.

[01:01:02] Stig Brodersen: And then the final advice, number 20, don’t carry the world upon your shoulder. Now, admittedly, I 50% chose this as the final advice because it’s part of the lyrics to the Beatles, Hey Jude. But 50% is also because it’s good advice. So when I was 20, it seemed like everything was black and white. I had a hard time putting up with how unfair the world was. And here 20 years later, the world is still unfair.

[01:01:30] Stig Brodersen: So what has changed? Partly as you grow older, you start to see the nuance of more things in life. You see that some things, and some people are not purely bad or purely good. You see how complex the world is and how seemingly contradictory facts can sometimes be. When I was most in emotional turmoil about how terrible the world was, my father would tell me that I couldn’t change the world.

[01:01:52] Stig Brodersen: He said I could change the world for those close to me and in the local community, and being more pragmatic today, I find that to be good advice. The responsibility to make the world a little better than whenever I found it is still ever present, sometimes more often than others. I met some of the best capital allocators in the world, and I met wonderful people who wants to improve the lives of the least fortunate. There are sometimes an overlap, but most often not one. I’m far from being the best capital educator. I still have a sense of guilt that I continue to wrestle with. A part of me wants to buy and consume the finer things in life, and a part of me feels a deep social obligation to give back to society as it feels like I’ve gotten so much more than what I contributed, and it comes in all shapes and sizes with my skillset.

[01:02:39] Stig Brodersen: The best thing for society is probably accumulating capital and then funding a terrible organization. If I worked for a thousand dollars an hour, it’s an inefficient allocation of resources for me to pursue in the shelter, and it would be mathematically better if I kept my head down, worked extra hours and donated more money instead of volunteering my time.

[01:02:59] Stig Brodersen: At the same time as well-meaning as most charities are, most of them optimize for feeling good and resources are allocated terribly. As in that case, you can argue that capital allocators, such as you listen to this podcast, should work on the design on charity. As such, you can argue that capital allocators, such as you guys listen to this podcast, should work on the signup charities.

[01:03:20] Stig Brodersen: This could be a way for you to generate a social higher return than a thousand dollars per hour, but if all you do is organizational work and you never get to meet the people you want to help, it can be draining and it might prohibit you from helping in any capacity in the first place. Now, I’m engaged in a foundation that’s co-founded by team members here at TIP. We want to provide education for kids below the poverty line, and if possible, provide housing for them because many of them come from, let’s say, not so stable homes, if not outright abusive homes. However, in this specific country we’re working in, it’s incredible difficult to build real estate if you do not bribe government officials.

[01:03:58] Stig Brodersen: I’ve obviously refused to pay any bribes, even though the sums we would face in the grand scheme of things are minuscule at best, it would simply not be aligned with my values to even consider that. And as a result, a meaningless amount paid as bribe, which is not even considered as a bribe to locals because it’s more similar to a one-time property tax stops poor children from safe housing.

[01:04:21] Stig Brodersen: And I sometimes wish that I was 20 and I thought I had all the answers. The older I get, the more I’m aware of how little I know for sure. And no, I should say that I am a hundred percent confident that you should never pay bribes to anyone, but that’s not the point. The point I want to make is no matter where you are, life will continue to challenge your values and your ability to tell right from wrong.

[01:04:45] Stig Brodersen: And if I can give my 20-year-old self any advice, I would tell him that if you are directionally correct in how you approach life and business, that’s really all you can ask for. Hold yourself to high standards and do not beat yourself up when you fail. cause you’re well, you’re just human like everyone else.

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