If you are open-eyed about both the opportunities and the risks of markets outside of the United States, it gives you almost, I mean it gives you a massive advantage. You're talking about 4,000 or so companies on the US stock markets and 250,000 of them

internationally. Like if you just invest in the United States and really if you're if you're doing that it's totally fine.

You're investing in something like two to three percent of the total names available on stock markets around the world and they know that's not that big.

I'm Mary Long and that's Bill Mann. He's the Motley Fool's director of small cap research and lead advisor for our global partner service.

Throughout the summer, we've dedicated some time to getting to know a few of the foolish analysts that you hear from regularly on Motley full money.

The idea is that you can get to know them even better.

I caught up with Bill recently to learn more about how he went from working in telecom and goofing around on

motley full message boards while in Karachi to becoming an investment analyst.

We also discuss how curiosity led him to an early Chipotle investment,

testifying about Enron before Congress,

and lessons learned from traveling to 115 countries and counting. So I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina and the reason that I ended up in North Carolina,

besides being born there, that's kind of how that works, is my dad's father was an executive

with a textile company called Cannon Mills.

So they were from New York, but he came down all the time. Cannon

Mills was a North Carolina textile company based in Canapples, North Carolina.

So that's how my dad ended up in North Carolina. met my mom, and that's probably not key to the story, but what is key to the story with me investing is that my grandfather from when we were little gave a stock in Cannon Mills.

Like that was the thing that he did.

And it was always very fascinating every once in a while

we'd get a check for dividends

and that's how that happened then.

They would mail you a check.

So I was always fascinated with how it

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