Claims

Sam Van Aiken's grandmother had an enormous black cherry tree on her farm that required her husband to spend weeks during harvest trying to prop up branches to prevent the tree from splitting under the weight of fruit.

Sam Van Aiken worked with artists from the former Soviet Union/communist Eastern Europe after transitioning from communism to capitalism in the early 1990s, visiting Poland through an introduction from a college professor.

Alan Lamb was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1963, raised in a traditional French Canadian household, learned English in his 20s while attending law school, practiced law for 2 years before starting a consulting firm in 1987, ran an investor relations business (Trilogy Integrated Investor Relations) with 26 employees from the 1990s to 2000, and has been involved in multiple business ventures including oil and gas companies (Key West Energy, Luke Energy) and professional cycling team management.

Alan once felt 'out of his depth' at dinner with three geologists (Steve Robertson and two PhDs) discussing Humbug Skarn mineralization and carbonate formations, where he understood almost nothing, but he accepts this limitation and doesn't pretend to understand geological terminology.

Alan's biggest regret is not marrying his wife sooner—he waited three years after meeting her before proposing, which he now considers a mistake.

Alan Lamb has been married for 31 years, has six children and five grandchildren (with a sixth grandchild on the way), maintains strong family relationships, and views his wife's support as the critical factor enabling his career success despite requiring sacrifices from her as a full-time homemaker and grandmother.

Alan got into mining because he met Craig Gibson and Peter McAu while living in Tucson, Arizona, and was attracted to mining by the concept of 'finding something out of nothing' and creating wealth, rather than because of geological passion.

Wendell Berry has personally returned to the place where he grew up and built something real—specifically, he still lives on that farm to this day—demonstrating the viability of the philosophy he articulates in his essays.

Van Neistat is a YouTuber who explicitly uses Crawford's 'spirited man' concept as a model, calling himself the spirited man and demonstrating how one can work with hands, build things, and be thoughtful and artistic simultaneously.

Matthew Crawford has a PhD in political theory focusing on ancient philosophy from the University of Chicago, then worked at a think tank after graduation, but came to hate that life and found meaning and beauty in renting an old garage and repairing vintage motorcycles as a professional mechanic.

After reading Crawford, the speaker started building things with his hands and found it deeply meaningful—he built the shelves behind his desk that hold his books, and despite this costing more than buying shelving, he felt a sense of ownership and agency over his creative space.

Working at Haagen-Dazs in Georgetown, Washington DC on Wisconsin Avenue in 1981 as a head manager at $3.75-$4.00 per hour while working 40-60 hours per week with a small apartment shared with a friend, a small record collection, and an ailing VW automobile represented what seemed like the permanently limited future of a minimum wage worker

Upon reflection on his minimum wage job, speaker realized this was 'probably as bad as good as it's gonna get' for him and considered quitting to work at a friend's record store as an alternative, suggesting he was evaluating different low-wage career paths as equally constrained futures

After successfully auditioning for Black Flag and being hired as their vocalist in late July 1981, speaker quit his Haagen-Dazs job and joined the touring band on their tour itinerary

Speaker was in Black Flag for years, made many records, played many shows, learned extensively, started a publishing company in that period, and in the 1980s began getting contacted by Hollywood directors for acting work because they saw him as 'crazy' and 'can you act'

Speaker said 'yes to every acting job' and 'yes to every audition' in the 1980s while maintaining awareness that he could always 'go back to $8 you know haagen-dazs' if opportunities dried up

Working on publishing company, doing poetry readings and speaking dates in the 1990s, and accepting voiceover work—speaker 'said yes to everything worked like a crazy man' realizing that people like him were rarely able to break through compared to more talented people

Black Flag, a famous punk band, called speaker 'a few days later' after he jumped on stage and sang with them at a New York show to offer him an audition for their vacant vocalist position because the rhythm guitar player wanted to move to lead vocals

Born in 1961, attended American University in Washington DC for one semester before leaving because he couldn't afford four years of student loans and disliked the party culture dominated by beer and marijuana consumption

The speaker sold IUL products for 4.5 years before realizing the inherent problems with the product, motivating the decision to write an educational book exposing these dangers.

Cliff has been retired for thirty-eight years.

Amelia was living in Czechoslovakia with her grandparents when she was a young girl because her father was a prisoner of war.

Apart from the war and the time at college, Cliff has been everywhere in his life.

Amelia Tereza Harper is 103 years old.

Cliff Crozier was born on 6th September 1915 in Birkenhead in the Wirral, Cheshire, making him 101 years old at time of speaking.

Amelia came to England to be with her father when he was released from being a prisoner of war.

The speaker started working in political media shortly after the 2016 election

The speaker was in their mid-20s when they watched Hillary Clinton lose the 2016 election and did electoral math on a whiteboard realizing Trump had won

Jamie Keyes came from pure technical mining engineering background (VMS exploration, mine design, engineering contractor roles) with no stock market involvement, entering mining investment through business/finance education gained at Equinox Gold, not through investment interest

Gautam was initially attracted to stock markets during the final euphoric phase of a bull market in India from 2003-2007; he purchased Reliance Power Sector Mutual Fund in late 2007 and Espar Steel in January 2008 based on blind extrapolation of recent price trends without considering valuations or business models.

Despite the bad initial setback with his first two investments, Gautam's interest and curiosity about the stock market remained very high; after 7 years of investment banking, he realized he had just one short life to live his dreams and did not want to waste further time working in a field he was not passionate about.

During his 15 months at the hotel with free time during slow graveyard shifts, Gautam read every single blog article published on investor blogs like stiff.com, fundprofessor.com, Saber Capital Management, and Basic Investing Macro Cap Club run by Ian Castle, demonstrating his voracious learning during difficult period.

Gautam's father operated a small business since his childhood, and he was fascinated by the concept that once a solid foundation is established, owners don't work for money but money works for them.

Gautam received his graduation in commerce from Calcutta New University, pursued MS in finance from ICFA University in Hyderabad, MBA in finance from Naba University in Ambar, and obtained CFA charter from CFA Institute in the US.

Gautam worked as an investment banking analyst at Citibank in Mumbai for 3 years, then as a senior analyst at Deutsche Bank in Mumbai, London, and Hong Kong for 4 years; throughout 7 years of investment banking, he made decent salary but was unhappy because the field has perverse incentives and incentive cost bias.

Gautam joined Twitter in late November 2016 and started posting thoughts on philosophy, psychology, history, investing, business, and related subjects; within three months, two people flew from India to Salt Lake City to thank him and suggest writing a book.

Gautam prefers win-win games over win-lose games; investment banking is characterized by win-lose dynamics which contributed to his dissatisfaction and career shift.

Gautam never imagined landing a portfolio manager role directly; he expected to start as junior analyst, get promoted to analyst, senior analyst, assistant portfolio manager, finally portfolio manager after 13-14 years — this is how compounding works with backloaded benefits.

While tracking global equity markets as portfolio manager, India as a stock market very clearly stood out for the number of high-growth opportunities it offered, leading Gautam to quit his job at Summit Global in July 2021 to start his own India-focused fund.

The process of setting up Gautam's India fund and obtaining regulatory approvals took approximately one year; the fund launched in July 2022 with portfolio going live on October 3, 2022.

In November 2016, Gautam clicked the 'quick apply' button on a LinkedIn job application and unexpectedly received an interview call for a senior role in an investment firm despite having zero formal stock market work experience; this was when he experienced the power of compounding knowledge.

The speaker is a serious book collector who maintains extensive archives of mathematics textbooks and has preserved books from the personal collection of Augustus Prince, the first Black radar man in the US Navy and a nuclear physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Jonah van Borg started his career at Lehman Brothers during the financial crisis, worked as a credit default swaps trader, then moved to Barclays post-bankruptcy, then to Goldman Sachs trading oil derivatives, then to Vitol as a partner for almost 7 years, then to DRW for 2 years as head of crypto and precious metals trading

The host (Mike) acquired Bitcoin in 2011 when it was approximately $1 per coin, but did not hold it, regretfully realizing later that this represented a missed multi-million-dollar opportunity

Goldman Sachs was specifically looking for an options trader with a track record of gains to trade their crude oil derivatives book (a massive revenue driver), and hired van Borg after his successful trade on the Fukushima disaster

Breiterman spent his entire Foreign Service career in the Arab world, learned Arabic, and spent a decade as a State Department Foreign Service Officer at various Middle Eastern embassies.

After his company failed, the speaker became attracted to Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity (through Augustine and Gerard) as a way to wean himself off worldly desires, rejected technology, switched from computer science to philosophy, and moved to Nepal to practice in a Tibetan monastery.

Acemoglu became fascinated by divergent economic, political, and social outcomes across countries and by explanations of wealth and poverty disparities during his teenage years, which framed his subsequent research.

Both Doctorow and Wu learned to program on Apple IIs in their early education and were excited about early computing, viewing it as the origin of their later advocacy against tech monopolies.

Cory Doctorow and Tim Wu went to elementary school together in suburban Toronto at a school with 80 kids in one classroom where older kids taught younger kids and they were left to pursue self-directed learning.