EricSchleien
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Posts posted by EricSchleien
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Does anyone remember a well known net-net stock, Lazare Kaplan (LKI)? Stock was halted around 10 years ago over some missing diamonds. Seems like the stock never traded again. Any idea the mechanics behind this? Would shareholders still have some kind of security in their brokerage account?
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The issue with this kind of stuff like the majority of low-level self-help out there which Americans have an addiction to, is that knowing this stuff makes literally no difference. The access to getting this stuff is not through the epistemological domain.
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On 3/25/2021 at 4:32 PM, Mephistopheles said:
Those are awesome stories.
What was Bill Gates drinking?
Haha yes. And I don't remember.
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Sold out of Think Childcare tonight. 100%+ in 4 months. Bought after the company had received two prelim takeover proposals. 2020 was the year of the overbid special situations!
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^ Awesome - love the Munger story especially!
Yeah, he's great! I had certainly pre-judged him as a bit of a righteous asshole and he was literally anything but. Def a more open and approachable demenaor. He even thanked me for being a Berkshire shareholder. The guy truly gets partnership.
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Called Charlie Munger's office once and he picked up the phone. We spent nearly an hour talking and he listened to me like what I had to share with him was the most important thing in the world. Lots of questions, lots of curiosity. He understood very complex things rather quickly.
I wrote a letter to Warren Buffett and he shared with me about his terrible Texas Holdem Poker skills in his letter back to me.
At one annual meeting - I met Bill Gates at a bar. I asked him if he was into sports and he goes "no but my friend owns the Mariners" (there was a Mariners / Twins game in the background). Then I asked him if he owned an iPod. He goes, "no I have a Zune"" LOL!
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Sold some more GME 5 and 5.5 Puts
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My Account for 2020
+56.68% TWR
+66.12% MWR
Biggest Winners:
Trupanion
Liberated Syndication
Game Account Network
Bragg Gaming
Facebook
Amazon
Conic Metals
AerCap
SandRidge Mississippian Trust I
Manning & Napier
Support.com
Affymax
Myrexis
TSR
Yowie
Wilson Learning Worldwide
Clean Seas Tuna
Brookfield Property
CDR
NTT System SA
Alaska Communications
Think Childcare
Link Administration Holdings
St. Joe Corp
Griffin Industrial
Hingham Institution for Savings
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Happy New Year CoBF fam
Wishing you all creating an amazing 2021. Here to support you all however I can - do not ever hesitate to make any huge requests of me, ever - no matter how unreasonable they may appear. Warmly,
Eric
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However, a lot of them aren't so bright or just content and lazy at their jobs so a lot of my job is actually weeding people out and only focusing on working with those that are extremely organized, professional, and have an incredibly high ethical standard. I figured some of you may have contacts in this field and would be extremely grateful to anyone who could put me in touch with highly ethical brokers who are easy to work.
I'm really confused. I thought your "tribal leadership" coaching was transformational and works really quickly. Why don't you just tribally transform them in to a high achieving organization?
Wouldn't that be faster and easier? Especially for someone with a lot of coaching experience and little real estate experience?
I would be more than happy to put you in touch with Glen Esnard who started the Private Client Group at CBRE who built it from scratch and took it to $100 million in revenue from 0 in 4 years while the rest of the company was in decline. He also was the former head of Colliers International in North America and pretty reputable in the world of commercial real estate. So he's worked with many brokers on just this.
I have also attached a case study I wrote up on the CBRE culture story which delves a bit deeper into this.
For more general understanding of how this kind of stuff works and how you can't "use" it on someone, I'd recommend three books:
1) Three Laws of Performance by Steve Zaffron
2) Tribal Leadership by John King (full disclosure, John is one of my partners so I am biased because I love that man like he's my own grandfather)
3) Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block
Best,
Eric
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Regret really sucks and Charlie and Warren advise us to avoid things we regret. They also often talk about their biggest mistakes being mistakes of omission, rather than commission which they refer to as "thumb sucking". So it seems like it is important to avoid thumb sucking.
Does anyone have any recommendation for methods or books or anything else that helps to avoid thumb sucking? It would seem like a finger licking good opportunity to follow up on if someone has some good recommendations.
So there's my post about thumb sucking and finger licking. I look forward to your responses.
Read The Footnotes - I would assert you probably look at thousands of different things every year. Some of them will intuitively stand out to you and you'll later regret not buying them due to the run up in price. There will be others that also seem interesting and in hindsight if you had bought, it would have led to a lousy return over time. So statistically, there should always be ideas you had that you "sucked your thumb" on and later regret it. The way I've dealt with that for myself, is that is just an inevitable part of the game. If I look at enough stuff, there will always be things I wish I bought in hindsight. At the same time, there are stocks I have bought and I think to myself, "Yeah I'm very glad I bought that."
So I'm not sure if the problem is anything actually there to fix. If you look at lots of stuff, it WILL happen. I'd just be with the fact that it comes with the territory of looking at lots of companies. I've done it plenty of times and will continue to do it over the next few decades as an investor.
In fact, I'd say if you don't have the experience of ever sucking your thumb, you've probably stopped looking at a large amount of securities every year. That can also be fine. Perhaps just index or buy stock in Berkshire or a basket of a few world class companies that you believe will outperform, even slightly, over the next few decades and then just buy stock automatically without thinking about it. You'll avoid the experience of "thumb sucking" by not looking at other investments and you'll probably perform investment wise quite well.
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doing real estate and have been either buying and/or consulting on deals all throughout the United States and also Internationally.
What type of Real Estate are you "doing" ?
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We're looking at a everything from single family homes to large buildings with one big tenant and everything in between. My call yesterday was with a broker in Mexico looking at some properties out there.
If the cap rates are there, we are interested.
And to answer the other person's question about Tribal Leadership, I can't tell if that's a genuine question or if you're simply trying to nit pick to be a jerk. However, like any kind of transformational body of work, you can't "use" it on someone. It's an inquiry. So there's nothing to "use" on people otherwise it would just degrade into a management technique or tactic. Yesterday's insight becomes tomorrow dogma. And my job when interacting with brokers is not to train and develop them or coach them. It took about 8 years of training to acquire that skill, and it was pretty brutal work. However, one thing I am very clear about is that it's a very voluntary conversation. It's an invitation to engage in that dialogue, not a demand nor even a request. One has to have ears to hear and to engage in a conversation at that level, which is not most people. Nothing wrong with that - it's just not for most people. And there's no amount of convincing, persuading, or showing people data, that will "get" people to change their mind. Then once they are in the conversation, I can't make anyone do the work and at this point in my life, I'm really only interested in working with smart people.
Sure, could I in theory spend hundreds of hours building a relationship with one of these brokers who I'm not too pleased with, start sharing them ideas and asking insightful questions, and then perhaps in 6 months to a year they'll want me to spend a few full days with them. Sure. However, that's a lot of time invested for one person, and would not have the bandwidth for that. Rather just focus on people who are already interested in that discipline. It's no different than trying to talk to a day-trader about value investing. Their eyes may just glaze over at first no matter what you say to them :)
Anyway, I am happy to chat offline or there are plenty of very smart people who do this work around the world who I could put you in touch with. However, I do invite everyone to keep the topic of the thread to my question about brokers and not get off topic.
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This is really great, TY!
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Hi All,
So last week I was doing a one on one training with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and he must have brought up Charlie Munger at least 5 different times over the course of the 10 hours I spent working with him.
Then two days later, I am doing some work with a group of protesters from Beirut and they also bring up Charlie Munger. So for whatever reason Charlie Munger is in my space and I'm rollin' with it!
On Saturday I am again doing some work with protesters in Lebanon and on Sunday I am leading an all day leadership program for about 2,000 people both in Beirut and in the Middle East. Some of these people are pretty powerful world leaders that I am working with and up to some extraordinary things. Unfortunately, I have pretty strict confidentiality agreements otherwise I'd be raving madly about some of the amazing things these human beings are up to in the world.
A lot of them really admire Charlie Munger interestingly enough, and, am looking for any good speeches/lectures from Charlie that you'd recommend someone already pretty sophisticated in the world of business and also leadership/making a difference to listen to. I am most likely going to use a few clips or passages to support the training if I deem it necessary to go there this weekend.
There is no rush - I lead programs around the world all the time, it's just another thing in my arsenal to use. However, what I really do admire about Charlie is his ability to synthesize principles from different fields and cross polinate them. One of my partners John does that with grace and ease and it's truly an incredible learning experience to be in a conversation for 4-5 hours at a time with someone operating from that space.
However, I would love to hear what your favorite Charlie Speeches or Lectures are. Would make a different for me and will spend the day tomorrow (as well as next week) reading through what you guys recommend.
Thank you all in advanced for your contributions, it make a huge difference for me.
Warmly,
Eric
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Hey All,
I started a company in December doing real estate and have been either buying and/or consulting on deals all throughout the United States and also Internationally. I have about $50 million I can put to work and have been building relationships with brokers all across the country.
However, a lot of them aren't so bright or just content and lazy at their jobs so a lot of my job is actually weeding people out and only focusing on working with those that are extremely organized, professional, and have an incredibly high ethical standard. I figured some of you may have contacts in this field and would be extremely grateful to anyone who could put me in touch with highly ethical brokers who are easy to work.
Please connect me via my email: eschleien87@gmail.com
Thank you so much.
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To feed the discussion, an interesting read on integrity and good leadership as per Prem Watsa:
My colleagues and I just had a good laugh at this paper. I'd argue it's worthless and totally predictable based off the current awareness in the business world.
This is a nice description of integrity, however, it doesn't really get at the heart of the matter of the power of integrity. When integrity degrades into a morality conversation it loses its power. Also having a set of guiding principles will NOT inherently ground a good culture.
The Jensen/Erhard course taught at Harvard as well as 44 other Universities actually gets to the heart of the matter of Integrity. I've done this work and it's nothing that you can get from reading about integrity.
They give the program away for free online which you can get here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=920625
On a side note, businesses that get integrity as a distinction experience increase of profits of 600% within 1 year. Businesses that get their "guiding principles" actually aligned with their culture, takes about 2 days to do and 6-24 months to be seen into action and you get a result on average of 3-5x.
It's my hope that this work gets taught in every business school in the country one day. It's a HUGE missing in our society.
Just read that abstract. It sounds like they are equating "integrity" with keeping your word and owning your shit. Roughly speaking. Not sure how that is teachable, I've always thought about integrity as something someone has or doesn't, but I'm interested enough that I think I'm going to read the whole paper.
Really good observation. Nobody "has" or "doesn't have" integrity. And it's taught through making distinctions. The distinction integrity is what creates the performance increases. The explaining of it does not and just makes for interesting dialogue at best.
Distinctions are made from abstractions. Principles get derived from distinction. Most people if they're lucky start with principles and most people don't even go that deep.
Integrity is often thought of conceptually as moral uprightness and steadfastness, or as you would say "having it"—making the “good” choices, doing the “right thing.” In fact, it is far more than that. Integrity is actually a experiential phenomenon in and of itself. It has to do with authenticity—being true to ourselves—and it is the foundation for power and effectiveness. It is a home, an anchor, a continuing commitment—a way of being and acting that shapes who we are.
When one distiguishes integrity as distinction, it opens up a completely new world. Kind of like if you've ever seen the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy"...when the coke bottle drops from the sky...there is no distinction coke bottle for them so they interact with it differently. On the contrary, you and I have no access to the distinction called "not a coke bottle" so we actually are unable to have access to THEIR experience of the coke bottle. Same thing with trying to explain the color purple to a blind man..they have no distinction called purple or color. Also, if you show someone from an uncontested tribe a photograph, they will see a blob. They don't actually experience a picture.
So distinction is the access to the breakthrough performance.....and the business world is still in the stone ages by teaching these as concepts, it's actually pretty amateur hour...say unlike management techniques which business school has gotten masterful over the past 50 years. Probably because they are taught as techniques and you don't have to distuigish much..just teach someone a tool.
However, the natural space people get to through discovering this experience is integrity resides in the ability to constitute yourself as your word, to be true to your principles, and ultimately, be true to yourself. Seeing authenticity as the access to being authentic around where one is being inauthentic as nobody "is" authentic.
Integrity is not constrained by, nor does it reside in, rules, prescriptions, or imposed demands. Integrity creates an environment of freedom, power, and joy.
Of course the constraint here is that you can't explain a distinction just like I can't explain purple to a blind man. So explaining the distinction integrity will just land as a concept at best.
Cheers!
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To feed the discussion, an interesting read on integrity and good leadership as per Prem Watsa:
My colleagues and I just had a good laugh at this paper. I'd argue it's worthless and totally predictable based off the current awareness in the business world.
This is a nice description of integrity, however, it doesn't really get at the heart of the matter of the power of integrity. When integrity degrades into a morality conversation it loses its power. Also having a set of guiding principles will NOT inherently ground a good culture.
The Jensen/Erhard course taught at Harvard as well as 44 other Universities actually gets to the heart of the matter of Integrity. I've done this work and it's nothing that you can get from reading about integrity.
They give the program away for free online which you can get here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=920625
On a side note, businesses that get integrity as a distinction experience increase of profits of 600% within 1 year. Businesses that get their "guiding principles" actually aligned with their culture, takes about 2 days to do and 6-24 months to be seen into action and you get a result on average of 3-5x.
It's my hope that this work gets taught in every business school in the country one day. It's a HUGE missing in our society.
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rebought a small position in BAM, added to ESRT, and added a little to ILMN.
Why did you sell BAM in the first place?
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Bought BRK June '22 200 Calls
Sold BRK June '22 150 Puts
Added to Endor
Added to Liberated Syndication
Added to LAACO
Collected my 100% dividend from Yowie and have a bunch of Australian Dollars just chillin' 8)
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Created this. Here are my criteria. I will pay all your legal expenses. This project was nearly 10 years in the making and thousands of hours.
www.proxyactivism.com
Happy to talk to anyone privately.
I won't even consider anything where insiders own more than 10% of the stock.
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Lululemon. Their competitive advantage is transformational coaching. No analyst seems to get that. However, the multiple has always been too high for me since I first discovered how great of a business it is. I started www.proxyactivism.com with the help of the guy who coached Chip Wilson to build Lululemon and want to create more of those kinds of cultures/businesses with public companies. As the COO of another huge company told me (which I won't name) - it's the last bastion of alpha since it's low hanging fruit that gives you exponential returns and most people have no desire to do it or don't believe it's possible.
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launched a website about it:
https://www.proxyactivism.com/
please contact me if you fit the criteria.
With the market down again - I'm just going to re-share:
If you are a shareholder in a company and the stock has these following characteristics:
- market cap is under 400m and ideally under 200m
- insiders own 10% or less of the stock
- company is being mismanaged in some way
please let me know and if it seems like a good fit for what I can do in implementing tribal leadership, I will pay for ALL of your expenses related to the proxy battle to replace management.
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Just authentically share what you're up to in life and what your life is about.
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"I dont' know" doesn't mean I don't know EVERYTHING. Warren clearly has an opinion of america if he once again said don't bet against it. He also has enough of an opinion to hold 200 billion in equities and other subsidiaries. He also has enough of an opinion that if an elephant of 30,40,50 billion came on his doorstep on monday he'd do it. He may not have an opinion on the timing of things or how certain industries will be affected but I feel this "I don't know" message is misleading. In investing nothing is certain, in good times or bad. But if you make an investment you do need an opinion of the future.
“I don’t know” is the biggest lesson I learned yesterday from Buffett. It’s an attitude that I hopefully can tell myself all day long as I make decisions. But saying this in an anonymous message board where lots of people seem to know and know better than Buffett is a chuckle. The important difference is that Buffett represents about $400 billion of long term shareholders wealth, including 99% of his. Happy that he’s taking me on as a partner.
The distinction of Mushen vs Mushen Mushen
Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2024
in Berkshire Hathaway
Posted
Think it's worth going to. I've spent quite a bit of time around management, and have also gotten to know some of their employees as well. I sold most of my position a few years ago but overall their product is very good. My dog, Peanut is covered under Trupanion. I'll probably be at the Q&A again this year. There's a few shorts that have done covered the company quite extensively on Twitter, I'd encourage you to read their work as well in case you wanted to ask some questions about some of those points at the meeting. Happy to chat more in person if you'll be there.
Best,
Eric