With age, the elderly and the elders diverge.

Elderly are self-focused. Elders are other-focused. Elderly are concerned with what they get. Elders are concerned with what they can give. Elderly value comfort. Elders value relationships.

Life goal is to become an elder. I've had the privilege of spending time with some elders over the past couple years.

Without exception they are non-anxious, humble and confident, curious, and impossible to offend. They'll challenge and encourage, often simultaneously, without a hint of condescension.

Completed 2 weeks with a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and figured I'd share the results/conclusions.

While nothing is surprising, here are 5 takeaways that have helped me change patterns of eating and exercise:

Hope something in here might help you. Getting, applying, and using the CGM was shockingly easy and painless.

@Levels is great and made it easy. Their CGM was idiot-proof and comfortable. Not once did it interrupt any activity or sleep. Their UI was helpful to point out trends and analyze the data.

18 months ago I asked a wise older man for the #1 piece of advice he would give his 30 year old self. He said:

"Read the Bible every day, then journal what you should know, who you should be, and what you should do based on what you read. It will change your life."

I thanked… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Judges 19-21; Luke 7:31-50 – Know: Wisdom is justified by all her children. The story of the sinful woman shows the two responses to Jesus that I can have. The Pharisees were considered the wisest and focused on right behavior, and yet their hearts were far from God. They could… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

1. I am not the center of the universe
2. I do not know everything, nor nearly as much as I think I do.
3. There is dignity and purpose in knowing my trade.
4. The world needs me.
5. Pay is a reward for my efforts but not my main motivation.
6. Every person has unique gifts and talents.

From the kinsmenjournal.com For those who are checking Twitter this morning because they feel like they're not enough, they fear they don't matter, they know the world isn't how it should be, and that somehow by gaining an insight or getting noticed it will make things ok.

I see you, because I've been you.

We're kicking off a new series @PermanentEquity called Outside Insights, where we bring in a friend to talk about small business ownership and operations.

EP1: @ShaneAParrish chats about discipline, ritual, continuous learning, and investing mistakes.

permanentequity.com/permanentpodca… For most, @ShaneAParrish needs no introduction. He runs @farnamstreet, is a top-notch investor, and is one of the best thinkers, curators, and synthesizers on mental models and frameworks.

He's also a long-time friend and someone I've watched closely now for close to a decade.

If comparison is the thief of joy, and there can be no competition without comparison, is there a way to compete with joy? I asked this question, because it has been on my mind a lot.

Since I was a small kid, I've always been competitive. It hasn't been about doing my best, but instead about doing better than the other.

I often find myself competitive without even realizing it. It's a feeling.

Good morning! Permanent Equity’s 2022 Annual Letter is now live: permanentequity.com/writings/2022-…

Highlights:
-Invested $46M in two deals
-Six new team members, including @nicolergalloway as CFO
-Promoted @markbrooks and @timhanso to Co-Presidents
-New book and office space in the works And, some lowlights:
-Did our first large-scale portfolio company layoff
-Had a heck of a time fighting inflation and margin compression across our companies
-Suffered three deaths in my immediate family this year, including a miscarriage

Einstein, Wells, Napoleon, Dostoevsky, and Harvard would agree.

What if I told you that the world's most influential leader grew up in poverty in a backwater town to an unwed mother, became a refugee, taught for 3 years, then was killed?

Wouldn't you want to know how he did it?

https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1607386567840256001

Today, nearly a third of the world’s population is Christian and that percentage is growing steadily each year.

Christianity is the only truly world religion, with believers spanning all races, geographies, and socio-economic boundaries.

And it was that way from the beginning.

Merry Christmas!

I say that with joy, because the true story of Christmas transformed my life.

It isn't feel-good fiction. It's a gritty love story that shook the foundations of the world and split time.

It's about who you are, how precious you are, and how much you're loved.

https://twitter.com/BrentBeshore/status/1474789454078435332

As an atheist, I lived in the small story of me.

I was an inconsequential blip in a cold universe, a random accident. Meaning, morality, and beauty were an evolutionary trick to help propagate my insignificant species.

I shared Duke professor Alex Rosenberg’s view:

Haha. What? Come on man.

Your execs wouldn’t make good decisions, try hard, and be accountable unless you constrain their behavior with massive debt payments?

Debt never makes a company better. At best it merely amplifies the returns of equity, while introducing systemic risk.

https://twitter.com/orlandobravotb/status/1604164329057550337

Agree that debt helps execs focus, to the exclusion of nearly everything else -- long-term decision-making, building culture, and treating people with respect and care, as well as ignoring their health and their families.

But yeah, it spiffs up crappy returns on a 30X multiple.

Recently finished @wguidara new book "Unreasonable Hospitality” and have started gifting it.

Will took Eleven Madison Park in NYC to the world’s best restaurant + 3 Michelin Stars. The book is how he did it, and it doesn’t disappoint.

All quotes are Will’s. Rest are mine. “Intention means every decision, from the most obviously significant to the seemingly mundane, matters.”

Details always matter, especially when you think they don’t. There are no shortcuts worth taking.

Three most important questions in dealmaking:
1) Why?
2) Why now?
3) Why me?

You have to understand your counter-party if you have any shot of designing a win-win transaction and not getting taken for a ride. And, they often don't fully understand themselves. Each interaction is a way to gather crucial information, especially when it gets heated and the mask slips. Like in poker when the stakes get high, people will reveal their true preferences, often which have nothing to do with economics.

Those are the sensitive pressure points.

Respectfully disagree.

All investing is an attempt to understand the present value of future cash flows.

EBITDA is a rough approximation, because interest, taxes, and depreciation matter. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a lot.

Real object is quality and quantity of cash flow.

https://twitter.com/PrivatEquityGuy/status/1602645433775521792

Quality of earnings is affected by the seasonality, cyclicality, capital intensity, working capital needs, growth trajectory, and defensibility of market position.

Eventually, quality turns into predictable quantity, but it's not always obvious in the short-term.

Stumbled on this. It's wild.

If you've been an owner, you'll inevitably relate to some of it. If you're considering buying a SMB, read this ASAP.

Bookmarked to reply with anytime I see an influencer on here talk about how easy it is to acquire a SMB and become a millionaire.

https://twitter.com/realrookieceo/status/1576170735411740672

Understand that when you buy a small business, you're buying a loosely functioning disaster with decades of baggage, bad habits, and skeletons.

If you expect anything less than hard work, difficult situations, and unexpected challenges, you're a fool.

Also, it can be awesome.

Before I raised, it seemed impossible. Instead of answering glibly, here goes another thread...

May get pulled into something, so sorry if I get cut short and have to pick it back up later.

How we went from the world's smallest family office to raising $50M, then $300M, from MO

https://twitter.com/guerruccisam/status/1601222536263786498

Prior to 2017, I had taken out an SBA loan in 2010 and bought a small business. It was perilous, but did well financially.

Big fan of do more of what works, less of what doesn't. So started exploring buying SMBs at scale. At the time, there was not much out there to read/learn.

I'd do the same thing that launched @PermanentEquity: find a high cash flow, low capital intensity small business to buy.

If you have the skillset and pain tolerance, it's a good probabilistic bet. Here's a thread on how I'd think through the process to maximize odds of success.

https://twitter.com/housleyd/status/1600842864744837121

Before I start, a disclaimer...After a decade+ of being in this space, I don’t consider myself an expert. On a scale of 1-10, I’m probably a 4, or a 5.

Each deal presents new challenges, setbacks, valuable lessons, and opportunities to apologize.

Reader beware.

Hey everyone! I wanted to start a thread about something that's been on my mind lately: the power of small acts of kindness. We often think of kindness as these big, grand gestures that take a lot of time and effort. But the truth is, it's the little things that can make the biggest difference in someone's day.

Great thread @oldbooksguy! I'm glad you're shining the spotlight on Dostoevsky. I was surprised you didn't mention his faith, which was central to his life and philosophy:

“It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.”

https://twitter.com/oldbooksguy/status/1591157021830950912

I loved reading Dostoevsky, and studying his struggles with faith and doubt were a key part of my exploration.

Like him, I was a skeptic. And like him, I came to faith kicking and screaming after weighing the evidence and experiencing love.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

Most owners scale themselves, not businesses. Builders must:
1) Know yourself, and create priorities.
2) Hire competent outsiders – build out a management team.
3) Mentor, train, and delegate.
4) Document institutional knowledge and key processes.
5) Scale functions. Here's a list of questions to help you understand if you're scaling yourself or building your business:

To what degree do customers buy from you individually or from the company?

When a customer or supplier is confused or dissatisfied, at what stage do you get a call?

This is a common misconception, and thankfully not true.

Because of the kindness of @tseides, @patrick_oshag and I joined Mr. Buffett and Todd Combs for dinner a while back. I brought a list of 28 questions from studying the history of BRK.

#1 was about coming close to failure.

https://twitter.com/McD_Investments/status/1554451427010953217

I wanted to know about the very early days of Dempster Mill and Sanborn Map Company, both outsized investments that combined for most of the assets of the partnership.

To make a long story short, neither were going great and especially Dempster Mill, which was in peril.

Josh, I admire you and greatly appreciate our friendship, but this ain’t it.

Cherry picking quotes from some crazy person isn’t helpful. Those are obviously not anything close to orthodox beliefs.

How would you feel if I quoted Jeffrey Dahmer and ascribed it to all atheists?

https://twitter.com/wolfejosh/status/1543299821229973505

Or, atheist Adolf Hitler: