Five Good Questions Podcast

In this week's episode of Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Adam Mead about his new book, The Complete Financial History of Berkshire Hathaway. Adam Mead is CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Mead Capital Management, LLC, and founder of WatchlistInvesting.com. His book, The Complete Financial History of Berkshire Hathaway: A Chronological Analysis of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s Conglomerate Masterpiece (Harriman House, 2021) was released in April. Extras and research material can be found at brkbook.com. Five Good Questions: 1. There’s an unbelievable amount of financial data and analysis pulled together into this book. What was the process of sorting through and organizing so much information? 2. Which decade for Berkshire was the most impressive to you? 3. Much of Berkshire’s success can be tied to insurance. What are some of your observations after deep-diving into their insurance operations for decades? 4. The effects of compounding are so small at the beginning, they’re almost imperceptibl

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing William Green about his new book Richer, Wiser, Happier. This book is based on hundreds of hours of interviews that he’s conducted over the last 25 years with a pantheon of legendary investors—everyone from Sir John Templeton to Charlie Munger, Howard Marks to Joel Greenblatt, Ed Thorp to Nick Sleep. William has written for many publications, including Time, Fortune, Forbes, Barron’s, The New Yorker, and The Economist. He edited the Asian, European, Middle Eastern, and African editions of Time. Born and raised in London, he studied English literature at Oxford and has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia. He lives in New York with his wife, Lauren, and their two children, Henry and Madeleine. Five Good Questions: 1. How did you get these world-class investors to open up for you in such a striking way? 2. What are some of the common traits running through the people you interviewed? Are these characteristics we can develop, or are they naturally b

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Eric Jorgenson about the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. Eric Jorgenson is a product strategist and writer. In 2011, he joined the founding team of Zaarly, a company dedicated to helping homeowners find home service providers they can trust. His business blog, Evergreen, educates and entertains more than one million readers. You can find all of his projects and other writing on EJorgenson.com. Five Good Questions: 1. This is a very unusual book--how did this project come about? 2. What was your favorite section to work on? 3. What does Naval say about ego, identity, labels and habits? 4. What changes have you made in your own life since compiling this book? 5. What are some common ideas or themes that connect the various advice throughout the book?

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Tim Koller about the 7th edition of Valuation. Tim Koller is a core leader of the Corporate Finance Practice at McKinsey. During his more than 28 years of consulting, Tim has served clients globally on value creation, corporate strategy, capital-markets issues, and M&A transactions. Tim is the lead author of Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies. This book—now in its seventh edition—has sold more than 800,000 copies. Before joining McKinsey, Tim was a vice president at Stern Stewart & Company, a leading value-based management-advisory firm, where he helped develop key financial-analytical tools and software. He has also lectured at business schools, such as the University of Chicago, Northwestern, Tuck, Yale, and INSEAD. Five Good Questions: 1. Do the growth rates and ROICs of today’s market favorites that are implied by their prices seem justified to produce an attractive future TSR? 2. Will profit margins and returns on capita

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Mike Michalowicz about his book Fix This Next. Mike Mi-KAL-o-wits is the author of Profit First, Clockwork, Surge, The Pumpkin Plan, and his newest release Fix This Next. By his 35th birthday, Mike had founded and sold two companies - one to private equity and another to a Fortune 500. Today he is running his third multi-million dollar venture, Profit First Professionals. Mike is a former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal and the former business makeover specialist on MSNBC. Over the years, Mike has traveled the globe speaking with thousands of entrepreneurs, and is here today to share the best of what he has learned. Five Good Questions: 1. When every problem in a small business feels existential, how do we prioritize what to fix first? What is the Business Hierarchy of Needs? 2. Many businesses, particularly in Silicon Valley, have grand visions of changing the world, yet their unit economics might not work. How does that violate your

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Matt Ridley about his new book How Innovation Works. Matt Ridley's books have sold over a million copies, been translated into 31 languages and won several awards.  His TED talk "When Ideas Have Sex" has been viewed more than two million times.  He writes a weekly column in The Times (London) and writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal. As Viscount Ridley, he was elected to the House of Lords in February 2013. He also served on the science and technology select committee.  With BA and DPhil degrees from Oxford University, Matt Ridley worked for the Economist for nine years as science editor, Washington correspondent and American editor, before becoming a self-employed writer and businessman. Five Good Questions: 1. What was the single most important event in the history of humankind and why? 2. Campfire, dung, whale oil, kerosene, “Edison’s” light bulb, CFLs, and LEDs. What are the sweeping innovation lessons we can draw from how humans simply light

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Bogumil Baranowski about his book Money, Life, Family. Bogumil K. Baranowski is a New York City-based investment professional with almost fifteen years of experience. He is a founding partner of Sicart Associates, a boutique investment firm catering to families and entrepreneurs on both sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific. He is the author of Outsmarting the Crowd and a TEDx Speaker ("The Great Investor in You"). Bogumil greatly enjoys speaking about investing and family wealth around the world. He likes to say that he was born Polish, grew up European only to become American later on. In his free time, he reads, writes, flies single-engine propeller planes, scuba dives around the globe, and sails. Five Good Questions: 1. How have your early life experiences shaped you as an investor? 2. What are the three types of “remote” we need to live a good life and be a successful investor? 3. Warren Buffett has a quote that he’s a better businessman because he’s

The Hikecast is a show where interesting people take me on their favorite hikes or walks and we talk about big ideas in an unconstrained format. No planned agendas, just deep conversations, recorded out in nature. The idea is for you to put on The Hikecast and get outside to simulate taking a hike with us. I want you to feel like you're there with us out in nature. Care to join us on a hike? :) My guest for this episode is Bill Brewster. Bill is a research analyst at Sullimar Capital Group. After getting a degree in Finance and Accounting from Auburn University, he got a law degree from Loyola. Bill ran a flooring franchise from 2007-2009 and worked as a credit analyst for BMO Harris Bank. We went for a brisk morning walk in Virginia. Please enjoy this hike cast with Bill Brewster. ********************* Also, please check out my first literary effort: The Rebel Allocator It’s a coming-of-age story of a young man who learns about business and life from an unlikely teacher. Imagine The Karate Kid meets Thorndik

Alan Klement helps individuals, teams, and companies become great at making and selling products that people will buy.  His own experience as an entrepreneur helps make him effective at helping others.  He is the author of When Coffee and Kale Compete. Five Good Questions Perhaps you could explain what Job to Be Done (JTBD) and Customer Jobs mean through the example of buying a Snickers vs. Milky Way? What is the problem with Chasing Visible Figures and how it relates to creative destruction? What are the forces of progress and how do they fit with JTBD? What do systems have to do with innovation? What does Clayton Christensen have wrong?

Robert Greifeld is the former CEO and Chairman of Nasdaq, Inc. He is currently Chairman of Virtu Financial, a leading financial technology and trading firm, Managing Partner and Co-Founder at Cornerstone Investment Capital, a financial technology investment firm, and a Board Member at Capital Rock and Financeware.  Bob is Chairman and Founder of USATF Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting both athletes from disadvantaged backgrounds and our next generation of Olympians. Bob also serves on the NYU Stern Board of Overseers. Five Good Questions: What do you think about the online brokerages now charging $0 for most trades? What does the shift from active to passive mean for exchanges? Are we losing the wisdom of the crowds which imbued information into market pricing? Could the market be doing a less effective job than before? You successfully executed dozens of acquisitions during your CEO tenure. What are the keys to good M&A and what are the risks Amazon went public at a $440m valuation. Go

The Hikecast is a show where interesting people take me on their favorite hikes or walks and we talk about big ideas in an unconstrained format. No planned agendas, just deep conversations, recorded out in nature. The idea is for you to put on The Hikecast and get outside to simulate taking a hike with us. I want you to feel like you're there with us out in nature. Care to join us on a hike? :) My guest for this episode is Nyle Bayer.  Nyle is the Chief Marketing Officer at Helios Quantitative Research (HQR), an investment research company which assists financial advisors in creating, implementing, and monitoring quantitative investment strategies for their clients and boasts over $20 billion in assets under influence.  Previous to his work at Helios, Nyle served as the President of Up Capital Management, a Registered Investment Advisor and he is the founder of Financial Time Traveler, a financial media company.  Nyle is a father of three children, and lives in Roseville, CA with his wife Nicole. We went for

Jon Vroman is a husband and father, who also happens to be the founder of FrontRowDads.com and host of the Front Row Dads podcast.  His mission is to help high-performing entrepreneurial men be family men with businesses, not businessmen with families.  In addition to his business and family, Jon founded FrontRowFoundation.org in 2005, a charity that creates unforgettable moments for individuals who are braving life-threatening illnesses.  Ten years later, he published The Front Row Factor, to share “everything you can learn about living life from those fighting for it.” Five Good Questions: 1. What inspired you to found the Front Row Foundation and what lessons has it taught you about your own life? 2. The modern world is full of stress--how have you made friends with stress? 3. How do you balance achievement and fulfillment? (Or is that a false paradigm?) 4. What are some tips for making more and better moments? Where are most of us going wrong? 5. It seems like you’ve done a great job to minimize the big l

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Lord John Browne about his book Make, Think, Imagine. John Browne trained as an engineer, was CEO of BP from 1995 to 2007 and remains an influential leader in the energy business. He is Chairman of the Crick Institute, a Fellow of the Royal Society, past President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and former Chairman of Tate. He is a collector of antique books and art and the author of four previous books, including The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out is Good Business. Five Good Questions: 1. Do you have a sense that much of cutting edge technology relies on intervention into complex, nonlinear systems and fattens the probability tails of undesirable outcomes? Said more simply, does technology invite more black swans? 2. What’s the one new tech on the horizon that you’re most excited for? 3. How was the stirrup such a powerful invention and what does it tell us about the future of technology? 4. How did gunpowder ironically lead to greater peace in the wor

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Mark Simpson about his book Excellent Investing. Mark is a UK-based deep value investor and author with over 15 years of experience investing in individual securities. He writes about finding sources of edge in the market, investor psychology, avoiding investment mistakes and building better portfolios. Five Good Questions 1. Why do you think the microcap space is inefficient, and how much less efficient is it? 2. Wes Gray has this concept called the “God Portfolio.” What is it and what does it mean to knowing yourself as an investor? 3. What are your thoughts on averaging down when a stock you own drops in price? What are assassins, hunters, and rabbits in this context? 4. A percentage of the Kelly Criterion (½ Kelly or ⅓ Kelly) are popular upper limits for position sizing. What are lower limits and why are they important? 5. What do oxytocin and empathy have to do with story stocks?

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Maya Peterson about her book Early Bird. https://amzn.to/2FUuQWM Maya Peterson is a current high school student who values the power of investing young, so she wrote a book about it called "Early Bird: The Power of Investing Young" and works to educate those around her about the power of compounding with talks and workshops. Five Good Questions: 1. Where did your passion for investing come from and what inspired you to write a book at such a young age? 2. What are three of your best tips for young investors? 3. Where do you see yourself in ten years? 4. How did you develop a relationship with the Motley Fool? 5. What are some of the dangers of a Peter Lynch-inspired “buy-what-you-know” investment strategy?

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Gautam Baid about his book The Joys of Compounding. Gautam Baid is Portfolio Manager at Summit Global Investments, an SEC-registered investment advisor based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Previously, he served at the Mumbai, London, and Hong Kong offices of Citigroup and Deutsche Bank as Senior Analyst in their investment banking teams. Gautam’s views and opinions have been published on various forums in print, digital, and social media. In 2018, He was profiled in Morningstar’s Learn From The Masters series. Five Good Questions: 1. In your book, you state that “I am a better investor because I am a lifelong learner, and I am a better lifelong learner because I am an investor.” Why is continuous learning so important in investing? 2. What does the equation [Ego = 1 / Knowledge] mean? 3. How has minimalism improved your investment process? 4. Given the increase in the rate of change of business, is there cause for concern about the durability of moats? 5. H

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Ashley Goodall about his book Nine Lies About Work. Ashley Goodall is an executive, leadership expert, and author. He currently serves as the Senior Vice President of Leadership and Team Intelligence (LTI) at Cisco, a new organization he has built to focus entirely on serving teams and team leaders. He is the co-author, with Marcus Buckingham, of Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World and of two cover stories in the Harvard Business Review. 1. In your book you state that culture is a “shared fiction” and similar to plumage. What do you mean by that and what are “we” vs. “me” experiences at work? 2. What’s wrong with management by objectives (MBOs), SMART goals, and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) that are widely used? 3. What can Lionel Messi teach us about employees? 4. What do “red threads” have to do with work-life balance? 5. As an investor, what are some outside clues that could indicate a good culture exists in a com

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Brandon Miller about his book, Play to Their Strengths. Brandon Miller is a certified Strengths Coach through the Gallup Organization and has been coaching and training strengths for over fifteen years. He is CEO of 34 Strong Inc, an employee engagement and strengths-based development consultancy. Five Good Questions: 1. Could you explain the equation “Talent x Investment = Strength”? 2. We always tell children they can be anything they want to be if they work hard. I was surprised when you called that a lie. Why is that common idea wrong? 3. In your book, you talk about the before and after picture of your family, what has changed and how do you measure success? 4. What’s the “positive sandwich” with respect to punishment? 5. What’s the most common mistake parents make, and a possible solution?

The Hikecast is a show where interesting people take me on their favorite hikes or walks and we talk about big ideas in an unconstrained format. No planned agendas, just deep conversations, recorded out in nature. The idea is for you to put on The Hikecast and get outside to simulate taking a hike with us. I want you to feel like you're there with us out in nature. Care to join us on a hike? :) My guest for this episode is Bogumil Baranowski. Bogie is a founding partner at Sicart and Associates and previously worked at Tocqueville Asset Management. He's the author of the book Outsmarting the Crowd. We went for a beautiful walk in Central Park in NYC. ********************* Also, please check out my first literary effort: The Rebel Allocator It’s a coming-of-age story of a young man who learns about business and life from an unlikely teacher. Imagine The Karate Kid meets Thorndike’s The Outsiders. You’re right, it’s probably not what you were expecting, but I have my fingers crossed that you’ll really enjoy it.

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Barbara Tversky about her book Mind in Motion. Barbara Tversky has three degrees in cognitive psychology at the University of Michigan. She moved to Israel with Israeli husband, learned the language & culture, taught, fought wars, and had 3 kids. Then she was on to Stanford to research memory, categorization, spatial thinking & language, design, diagrams, event cognition. Her kids grew up, her husband died, and she moved to Columbia Teachers College, adding research on gesture, art, creativity, and joint action. Five Good Questions: 1. What are mirror neurons and how do they unite seeing and doing? 2. How do we use spatial reasoning to navigate the world? 3. What is the first law of cognition and what are some examples to help us understand? 4. What makes maps so miraculous? 5. How can insights of your research help investors and professional decision-makers be more effective? And make sure you pick up your copy of the Rebel Allocator, available n