Tracy Britt Cool: Building Great Businesses

The Knowledge Project

Shane Parrish

Business, Society & Culture, Technology, Education, Self-improvement, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.7 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2025

⏱️ 104 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Warren Buffett called Tracy Britt Cool his “fireman” due to her reputation at Berkshire Hathaway for turning around struggling businesses. Today, Britt Cool is the co-founder of Kanbrick where she is applying what she learned to the middle market. In this episode, you’ll learn how she went from writing a cold letter to Buffett to being sent in to fix struggling Berkshire subsidiaries, how to evaluate real business performance, and how incentives, culture, and structure line up to create lasting success. ----- Approximate Chapters 00:00 Intro, recent reading, and family life 03:04 Alan Mulally's Turnaround at Ford 04:22 If you're not having fun 4 days out of 5, it's time to move on 05:03 The Pampered Chef Turnaround 07:06 Value Creation is Changing from Investing to Operating 08:38 Why Companies Fail to Adapt 09:23 Upbringing, education, and early career outreach 10:09 Lessons from the Farm 15:48 Writing Letters to CEOs 16:57 Lessons from Warren Buffett 18:25 Ad Break 20:57 Buying Companies at Kanbrick 22:38 The 3 Components of Long-Term Thinking 25:11 Avoiding the Complexity Trap 26:23 Turning Around a Declining Business 28:03 Attracting Talent to a Declining Business 30:29 Matching Structure to Time Horizon 32:00 Growing Margins 33:25 The Process: What to Focus on When Operating a Business 35:10 The Three Buckets of Putting People First 37:00 How to Evaluate Talent 40:16 Avoid These People At All Costs 42:23 Sourcing Deals 43:56 The Five Lenses to Evaluate a Business like Warren Buffett 45:14 How to Evaluate a Moat 49:29 How Quantitative Analysis Misleads 50:25 A Detailed Look at Return on Invested Capital 53:18 What Makes an Attractive Market 54:33 Finding High-Potential Businesses 57:00 The Post Close Playbook 1:02:03 Repeatable Business Systems 1:04:06 Why Copying What Works is Hard 1:06:01 Mistakes in the Past 5 Years 1:10:13 Debt and Leverage 1:12:20 3 Ways to Think about AI 1:15:13 What Most People Get Wrong When Hiring 1:21:12 Businesses to Avoid 1:22:35 What Not to Do 1:24:31 Public vs. Private Company Boards 1:27:04 How Warren Buffett Taught Katharine Graham Business 1:29:28 Each Hire is a Million Dollar Decision 1:31:02 Evaluating Integrity 1:32:36 The One Word That Changes Everything & Keeps People Honest 1:35:52 Principles & Lessons from Business History 1:36:59 Inflation 1:38:46 Quarterly Reporting 1:40:22 Public Company Heroes 1:41:41 Companies & Political Opinions 1:42:46 What is Success for you? ----- About Tracy Tracy Britt Cool is the co-founder of Kanbrick and former CEO of Pampered Chef. At Berkshire Hathaway she worked directly with Warren Buffett as his financial assistant. ----- *This Episode Made Possible By:* Shopify: https://shopify.com/knowledgeproject reMarkable: https://www.reMarkable.com ----- Upgrade: Get a hand edited transcripts and ad free experiences along with my thoughts and reflections at the end of every conversation. Learn more @ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------ Newsletter: The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it’s completely free. Learn more and sign up at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------ Follow Shane Parrish X ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@ShaneAParrish⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Insta ⁠@farnamstreet⁠ LinkedIn ⁠Shane Parrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	When I was CEO, what I felt like was it was very lonely, it was challenging, it was hard.
0:06.0	I was out navigating and trying to find resources, support, people would come before me who could help me in that seat.
0:12.0	Tracy Britt Cool is the co-founder of Canbrick, a long-term investment partnership focused on building enduring businesses.
0:19.0	She is best known for working directly with Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway,
0:23.0	where she served as his financial assistant before becoming CEO of Pampered Chef
0:27.0	and serving on the board of several Berkshire companies, including Benjamin Moore and Kraft Hines.
0:32.3	She combines investor discipline with hands-on operating experience,
0:35.9	bringing a rare perspective on what it takes to grow and
0:38.4	sustain great companies. We only invest in one or two companies here. We'll look at 500, so we're
0:43.0	really selective at finding the highest quality businesses that have a long runway. I also think a lot of
0:47.9	investors haven't actually been operators, and so it's really hard to go into a business and say,
0:52.5	this is what you should go do to operate a business if you never actually operated a business. When it comes to hiring, what does that process look like? What does that nitty-gritty look like in the detail? We very much subscribe to the Who process. So by GH Smart, there's a book called Who, WHO, WHO. It is, I think, single-handedly the best simple book on hiring.
1:11.6	And there's a few components to it, and we've augmented it and added our own.
1:15.0	But the first is building a really in-depth scorecard for the role.
1:19.1	And so a good scorecard in our mind has three sort of critical components.
1:22.7	The first is the second is, and then the third are...
1:27.4	Members get access to an extended version of this conversation
1:30.4	that goes further into frameworks, definitions, and strategies
1:33.8	Tracy uses to build lasting companies.
1:36.5	Sign up today at fs.blog slash membership.
1:42.3	This episode of the Knowledge Project is for informational purposes only.
1:46.3	The views and opinions expressed by Shane Parrish or our guests are solely their own.
	...

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