#79 Charlie Munger (The Complete Investor)

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets. They're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high. So I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today. And I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. What is most interesting about Munger is not his success as an investor, but the way he thinks and keeps his emotions under control. Munger's ability to cut to the heart of an issue with a few well-chosen words is legendary, as is his desire to think independently. A fundamentally important truth is that people rarely make decisions independently. This means that people who can think independently gain control of their emotions and avoid psychological errors have an advantage.
Warren Buffett once illustrated Munger's desire to do his own thinking with this story. In 1985, a major investment banking house undertook to sell Scott Fetzer. Real quick, Scott Fetzer is the name of a company. It's best well-known for selling the Kirby vacuum and the World Book Encyclopedia, but it also owns about a dozen or so other businesses. I had never heard of it before, so I had to look it up. So it says, a major investment banking house undertook to sell Scott Fetzer, offering it widely, but with no success. Upon reading of the strikeout, I wrote Ralph Shea, then and now Scott Fetzer's CEO, expressing an interest in buying the business. I had never met Ralph, but within a week we had a deal. Unfortunately, Scott Fetzer's letter of engagement with the banking firm provided it with a $2.5 million fee upon sale, even if it had nothing to do with finding the buyer.
I guess the lead banker felt he should do something for his payment, so he graciously offered us a copy of the book on Scott Fetzer that the firm had prepared.
With his customary tack, Charlie responded, I'll give you $2.5 million not to read it.
So that is from the introduction of the book that I read this week and the one I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Charlie Munger, The Complete Investor by Tren Griffin.
And what I was just reading from was actually a direct quote from Warren Buffett from his Chairman's Letter all the way back in 1999 So last week we did an introduction to Charlie Munger with the book, The Wonderful Book, The Towel of Charlie Munger, which I'd recommend everybody go out and buy. It's a fantastically easy to read book and a good introduction into the beautiful mind of Charlie Munger. It contains like 130 or so individual essays where the author would take like a quote or a statement by Charlie and then use that to like expound on his own thoughts. And like I said, it's really easy read and a really good introduction to getting to know Charlie Munger, which I think everybody obviously should get to know. So in that book and in the last week's podcast, I covered a little bit about like Charlie's early life and how he got into investing everything. So I'm not gonna like cover that this week. Definitely go back and read that. What I'm gonna do is just jump right into the highlights and notes that I took while I was reading the book and the things that really stuck out to me. This book is formatted in a similar, but at the same time different way. There's a lot of quotes from Charlie and Warren in this book, but Tren breaks it down into like more like regular chapters. So it reads more like a book than last week's book, where I consider that more like a reference book, where you could just pick it up, read one or two or three essays, put it down and so on and so forth. You can read Tren's book straight through, and it kind of follows in like a, you can understand why Tren organized the way he did. And if you're not familiar with Tren Griffin, I'd recommend, first of all, he's a good follower on Twitter, but I would also recommend checking out his blog, which I've learned a lot from, 25iq.com.