OMD's ABCs #270: Reading, WCM, and Not Waiting, Druckenmiller, Chesterton's Fence, Lazy Day Directive...
Hello!
This week’s newsletter is a mix of updates, essays and tidbits all mismashed together. There are short sections based on my internal struggle with my reading pace (lack thereof to be exact) and an instruction manual for days when I want to be bored, courtesy of Anthony Bourdain.
The first main essay is about the new full-time opportunity I took on. I started working with WCM Investment Management a few months back as a business culture analyst consultant and the ink felt dried enough to speak about it. This led to some pontifications on the last four years and how I believed that perseverance would pay off but how unexpected it still was when it did.
The second essay is about Chesterton’s Fence and using it as a model to be be respectful of why things might be the way there are today. Whether it’s tradition, a cultural way of doing things or something that’s common in one industry, there are reasons for what appears irrational/madness and it would serve us well to be humble and seek to understand the reasons underlying things.
The ABCs of the OMD learning function are below. Feel free to pick and choose the segments that interest you and I hope they make you think about something you didn’t before, raise an eyebrow, or leave you satisfied.
Art: Books, Movies, Creations
Business: Investing, Systems, Work
Culture: People, Self, Observations
Art: Books, Movies, Creations
Reading Update
I have three books that are live at the moment. Two non-fiction and one fiction.
The fiction is The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Its a well-acclaimed book by a Nobel prize winner and it sits at ~40% completed because…well…I find it boring. It’s not a bad book per the wisdom of the crowd. I’m just not ready for it I think.
The non-fictions are Trailblazer by Marc Benioff and Hygge by <author>. I’m really enjoying Hygge. I stopped Trailblazer after reading about 20% because I found it far too “braggy.” I get that Salesforce is successful and it did many great things to get to this point. But the tone of the book sounded far too confident and I felt Benioff and Salesforce’s guerrilla sales tactics in their early years dishonourable.
It is what it is. But with two books on the back-burner, Hygge has been receiving much of my headspace so maybe I’ll have a review for it soon. I also plan to write my review of Agassi’s Open soon as well. I watched the French Open for the first time this year thanks to that book. I don’t think I would’ve ever watched tennis without reading it and it made the tournament thoroughly enjoyable.
Books make people watch sports. Who knew?
Business: Investing, Systems, Work
Life isn’t About Waiting
I partnered up with WCM Investment Management to work with them as a Business Culture Analyst a few months back. This was the opportunity I addressed previously when I shut down the company-specific research part of OMD’s Journal. But having updated my Linkedin with this new opportunity, I guess it’s official in this day and age.
It was an opportunity I felt like I prepared the last four years of my life for. Yet, I never applied for it, sent a resume or knew such an opportunity existed. Amidst the surrealness of it all, I felt a kind of vindication and confirmation that life isn’t about waiting for great things to come.
I heard a guy tell his friend that his life plan was to wait for luck the other day at the gym. He told his friend that he was going to go about life as is but was banking on something amazing hitting him and pushing him towards success. That's a lazy and poor startegy to guarantee nothing will come.
Even if that luck were to strike. I presume such people won't know what to do with it. It probably explains why most people who win the lottery end up losing it all very quickly. How would they know what to do? They never trained themselves to be ready to handle the luck and opportunity.
You can't get that dream job if you don't know what that is. You need to put in the work to figure that out. Sometimes, like me before, you might realize your hypothesis was wrong. Then you regroup, iterate, and the dream changes. If we continue to grow, we will change as people. That means our dreams will change too. It might sound tiring to constantly change and pivot as we grow. But what else are we going to do with life? Isn’t that what all adventures are?
I had to pivot three different careers to realize my first dream. Then I had to go off in the wilderness on my own and thrash about to craft the next one. Eventually, I ended up finding and creating a role that fit what I wanted near perfectly. But that came from one email I sent out of hundreds.
That one email had a report I wrote over 2.5months a year ago. I procrastinated on sending it out because I was afraid people wouldn’t like it. But I sent out one email a day for months, that was how I marketed my newsletter. I just wanted to find a handful of subscribers so I could continue writing and doing my research on people and culture. I didn’t know that one email would be sent around to people at WCM. I had no control over anything once I sent out my email.
But when the phone call came to explore the opportunity I was ready. I had ~1,200 journal entries over four years where I wrote down what I was trying to do with my life. Over the four years I had more than 300 newsletters, 400-500 essays, read 94 books, made 140 podcast episodes and did a bunch of projects trying to build the career I envisioned.
So, when luck struck, I knew it was a rare opportunity. The dozens of hours of conversations felt natural. I had prepared four years for these months of conversations and all I had to do was remind myself to be honest. I didn’t care to think what they wanted to hear. I just focused on saying everything I thought mattered. It turned out we were aligned on what mattered.
All good things take time. But that's time spent day in and day out earning what may come down the line in the future. When I started OMD Ventures, I never thought I would make the newsletter the main business. Nor did I think that I would turn one part of my premium newsletter to basically writing for one organization while getting to build out the business I started in tandem. I got to have all the cake I want and eat them all.
Yet, throughout the years of disappointment and slogging it out, I never let myself think I deserved anything. It’s what my Grade 9 Social Studies teacher said, “you don’t deserve anything. You earn it.” I think the only way to earn anything is through perseverance and hard work.
I had enough money saved up so I could go 5-7 years before going broke. I just believed that if I persevered and worked harder every year, it would somehow work out. I’m just lucky it didn’t need 7 years for an opportunity to come up. Now, I’m only a few months into this opportunity so I might be speaking out of turn being happy about it. But it’s nice to breathe once in a while and this inflow of oxygen is making my mind high.
As far as persevering and going after a dream goes, I’m a n=1 that it works. Most stats show what I did wouldn’t work. But I nearly failed introductory statistics. I mean, I’ve been a minority everywhere I’ve lived and in everything, I’ve done. So, why wouldn’t I try to be a minority in any statistical distribution?
Who cares if only 30% succeed or 90% fail at something? It only matters if it works for one person (i.e. yourself). Waiting for luck and doing nothing is a sad way to go about using the precious gift of life. Life isn’t about waiting. It’s about doing something, not giving up, and cherishing few strokes of luck we earn before doing more things.
An Hour of Druckenmiller
Stan Druckenmiller was interviewed by John Collison at the Sohn Conference this week. This will be as close as this newsletter will ever get to delivering news that is timely and recent. Ignore what anyone else might’ve said about this interview and just sit down to listen to it and form your own opinions. I’m going to listen to this again…and maybe again. It’s just a good way to spend an hour.
Culture: People, Self, Observations
A Directive for a Lazy Day
My life was easiest (and most boring) when I worked as an accountant in a Big 4 firm. But sometimes, we like being told what to do. It’s one of the reasons why being an employee is easier than being an entrepreneur.
Self-set habits and routines is how I tell my future self what to do so I don’t have to waste time and energy deciding every morning. Most times when people read non-fiction, all they want are directives telling them ‘do this, don’t do this.’
So here’s a directive for you and me on days when we just want to be told how to spend the day:
"Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o'clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you've never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a Negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride." - Anthony Bourdain
One day, I’m going to do this. I’ll write this down and do it by myself on a week day that I have off.
Maybe It Makes Sense
What do you think when you see a single fence standing in a field? Most people might think, "oh that’s an error. That doesn’t make sense" and pull it out. But what do they know? Wouldn’t the curious—and humble—path be to ask "why is it there?" Enter Chesterton’s Fence.
"There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”— G.K. Chesterton
To look at most things that exist today and go "that doesn’t make sense. That’s stupid. If they were as smart as me, they wouldn’t do XYZ” is arrogant. In my time of imbecilic youth, I shared that sentiment of believing I knew better. Alas I would love to say age and a lack of experience are the only culprits for such arrogant thinking. But there’re even industries where those who’ve build websites believe they can transfer their frameworks into industries with local veterans like mining or lumber.
Though it’s true that the young and inexperienced can bring a fresh set of ideas, they must first do their homework. Some might call this respecting those that came before or taking a lesson in history. It’s really a respect to evolution and the human to grow and adapt.
Thousands of years of humanity existed before today. Every era of humanity had best practices that were improved upon over and over again as the world and society evolved. That means whatever is done today as the status quo in a business, a culture, a society all have reasons. Whether we agree or disagree with what’s done today, it’s important to first understand why they might exist.
One common example that comes to mind in the investing context is on management teams. I often heard Western investors bemoan Japanese management teams because they didn’t operate the way most were used to in America. Japanese management teams that had embraced the “correct Western way” were often applauded and seen as enlightened.
This reminds me of my senior year religion class (I attended a Catholic high school) where the instructor announced that Sikhism was 30% enlightened, Buddhism 50% enlightened and Catholicism was 100%. My friends and I stared at each other in disbelief at such arrogance. I don’t see this as very different from investors today thinking the quarterly earnings-focused, short-term stock price-obsessed management style of the West should be embraced by Japan. The fact is that Japanese management teams are different for their own reasons.
Now, that’s not to say there isn’t anything to be learned from Western management practices. But even Buffett and Leonard are anomalies and if their teachings could be adopted by any management team, that would be wonderful. Good or bad, whether investors like it or not, the differences of why people operate differently needs to be respected and thus, understood.
This example made me think about how Chesterton’s Fence might be at the crux of most cultural differences people experience. Even a simple thing like not making eye contact when speaking with someone. It’s a sign of respect in one culture and not in another. There’s nothing wrong with either. But it requires people to take a moment to think and ask themselves why some things might be norms and traditions in one culture.
At the core of this idea is to understand why things are the way they are. It’s asking each one of us to ask questions and be curious before we judge and move too quickly. There’s wisdom to things that have withstood the test of time. It would serve us well to learn what came before so that even when we question the past, we come from a position of understanding.
I would like to credit the Value After Hours podcast and Farnam Street for introducing this concept to me.