RWH024: Wealth, Wisdom, & Happiness w/ Tom Gayner

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network

Stig Brodersen

Education, Investing, Business

4.6 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2023

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, William Green chats with Tom Gayner, one of the great long-term investors of our time. Tom is the CEO of the Markel Corporation, a global financial holding company, where he oversees about 20,000 employees. Here, he shares his time-tested advice on how to achieve enduring success in business & investing while also building a happy & fulfilling personal life.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:

00:00 - Intro

03:38 - How Tom Gayner made a fortune by setting up a retirement account at age 14.

10:59 - What he learned from his grandmother about the glory of long-term compounding.

16:29 - How to succeed through steady, persistent progress over long periods of time.

30:00 - Why humor, fun, & joyfulness are central aspects of Tom’s approach to work.

35:15 - Why it’s so helpful to set down your thoughts, principles, & values in writing.

38:33 - Why we should bet on companies that do things “for” their customers, not “to” them.

41:17 - What Charlie Munger teaches about the secret of success.

47:52 - How to flourish in business & life by compounding relationships built on trust & love.

1:00:46 - How Berkshire Hathaway embodies everything Tom looks for in a business.

1:09:08 - What we can learn about investing from the comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

1:12:17 - How Tom approaches the challenge of appraising a person’s talent & integrity.

1:13:23 - Why he prefers to aim for satisfaction, not optimization.

1:26:39 - Why you should never check your luggage when you travel.

Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences.

BOOKS AND RESOURCES

Tom Gayner’s company, the Markel Corporation.
Tom Gayner’s 2022 letter to shareholders.
William Green’s book, “Richer, Wiser, Happier” – read the reviews of this book.
William Green’s Twitter.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to TI-P.
0:03.0	Hi folks, I'm really delighted to introduce today's guest, a legendary investor named Tom Gainer.
0:09.6	Tom joined the Marquell Corporation back in 1990 to manage the company's investment portfolio.
0:15.8	He's been working at Marquell ever since and is now the CEO, overseeing something like 20,000 employees.
0:22.6	Over the last three decades, he's played a starring role in transforming Marquell from a tiny,
0:27.8	somewhat obscure insurance company based in Virginia into a powerful global conglomerate
0:33.2	that now ranks at number 289 on the Fortune 500 list of America's largest corporations.
0:40.2	Marquell's success story is one of steady, incremental progress sustained over a long period of time.
0:46.9	That's also Tom Gainer's story.
0:49.0	When I wrote about him in my book, Richard Weiserhappier, I described Tom as the King of Constancy.
0:55.3	He's a person who plugs away day after day, year after year, decade after decade,
1:01.1	in a thoughtful, diligent, consistently sensible way.
1:05.3	Tom once told me,
1:06.6	if you want the secret to great success, it's just to make each day a little bit better than the day before.
1:13.4	What's fascinating to me is that this emphasis on steady, constant, doggidly, persistent progress
1:19.8	has paid off to a spectacular degree over decades.
1:23.9	When Marquell went public back in 1987,
1:27.0	its stock was valued at a little more than $8 per share.
1:30.8	Since then, it's risen to more than $1200 per share.
1:35.0	That gives you a sense of the extraordinary power of long-term compounding.
1:39.8	As Tom Gainer sees it,
1:41.4	you really don't need to take extreme risks to build significant wealth over time.
	...

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