John Rogers – Slow and Steady Wins the Race

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories, and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:59)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is a principal and portfolio manager at O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (1:21)
My guest this week is John Rogers, the founder, CEO and CIO of Ariel Investments, one of the longest standing asset management businesses in existence.
John's resume is nuts. In addition to his success at Ariel, he was the captain of the Princeton men's basketball team, he was the co-chair of Barack Obama's presidential inauguration, he sits on the board of McDonald's, and he has given back to his community more than I can possibly list here. John and I discuss Ariel's investment process and its evolution over the years, lessons from John's basketball career, value investing, and asset management's diversity problem, among many other interesting issues. There are not many people who have been the chief investment officer at the same firm for more than 30 years, so it was a real pleasure hearing about John's career and learning from his experience. You can find show notes at investorfieldguide.com forward slash Rogers, and now please enjoy my conversation with John Rogers.
Well, John, thank you very much for joining me today. This is going to be a blast, and I always try to find somewhere interesting or not obvious to start, so I'd love to start with basketball, if we could. You were the captain of the Ivy Championship team at Princeton your senior year, and I'm always amazed by how many ex-athletes you find in the investing world. It seems to be a good indicator of people that go on to have success. So I'd love to hear a bit about your experience playing basketball, and maybe more importantly, the key lessons that you learned on that team that have carried over into a business career.

**John Rogers** (2:51)
Well, thank you. You probably noticed when you came, we're actually meeting in the Pete Correal room, which is named after my coach at Princeton, and he's actually a genius. He's someone that is one of the smartest people that I've ever come across, and the time that I had a chance to play basketball at Princeton really did change my life, and I was very fortunate because I was literally, back when I was playing, freshmen couldn't play varsity basketball. You had to play on the freshman team, and then sophomore year, I was the last man on the team. There was 15 uniforms. I got the 15th uniform, and I barely made it. And even after I made the team, as he was going down the line, talking about each player after practice one day, he said, I'm not sure how long I can keep you around, Johnny Rogers. You have absolutely no idea what you're doing.
You're not a basketball player. No one wants to play with you.
So the fact that I got to be captain a couple years later was just a complete miracle. But again, it changed my life.
You know, the values, the beginning values that I understood originally have been expanded over time. You know, the key value in the beginning that I focused on, that he taught, was that he really made you understand that when you're on the basketball court, you always are thinking about your teammates first.
And there was just no excuse for selfishness. And that it was just totally unacceptable. And he pounded it home, you know, very strongly and very clearly. But he also taught you to understand how when you helped others, you helped yourself in the end of the day, and you helped the team win. And he would be able to show you and stop practice and show you how the unselfish acts led to really great outcomes. And it just was just terrific. So that was the number one value. As time's gone on, the other thing that I've learned that I appreciate the second thing was that he was someone who believed that you did things the same way every single time. That every pass had to be right in the right spot for your teammate to catch it. Every cut had to be made with the right angle. Every time you dribble and hand it off, you had to have the exact right angle. You couldn't do it a little bit of a banana cut here or a little bit of a softer cut there. It had to be done with precision and excellence each and every time. There was no excuse for doing it in a way that wasn't the right way every time. And he would just stop practice, put everyone back where they were and show you exactly what you should have been doing. And he understood what you were thinking when you made the mistakes. So that idea of precision is something that was drilled into you to do it the right way every single time. And the final thing that I've gotten, as I've gotten older, I've learned to appreciate is he taught you to concentrate.