Ep. 3 - Morgan Housel: Empathy as a Competitive Advantage

Today we are happy to be talking with Morgan Housel, partner at the Collaborative Fund, a vc firm out of New York. Morgan is one heck of a writer. He is a two-time winner of the Best in Business award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. He is also a world-renowned speaker, having done 30 talks in 2018 alone. Prior to the collaborative fund, he worked for nearly 10 years for the Motley Fool, an online investment firm located in Washington DC. This is where I first discovered Morgan. His clear writing and down-to-earth nature really caught my eye. Since then, I think I've read almost everything he's written. It is our great pleasure to introduce THE Morgan Housel. More Stuff Thank you so much for listening, we really appreciate you. If you have found this valuable, please consider leaving us a review as it will help more people find it! Thanks you're awesome! You can find more information and content by going to these places: Website: https://www.investingcity.org YouTube: Investing City Twitter: investing_city Instagram: investing_city Or feel free to email us at service@investingcity.org If you would like $10 off/month on a Dynasty Membership, just email us with the keyword "Podcaster Elastimer" and we'll hook you up! (it had to be a strange yet memorable keyword right?!) Again, we really appreciate that you would take the time to listen. Hope it was valuable. Let us know if you have any questions! Below you will find our entire conversation transcripted for those with hearing problems or just if you like reading more than listening. Enjoy! Transcript: Ryan Reeves Okay thank you so much for joining us at the investing city podcast this week, we are overjoyed to have our guest Morgan Housel on who was kind enough to agree. And we're just so excited to have him on. So, thank you, Morgan. Morgan Housel Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it. Ryan Reeves So, the first question I have has a little bit of a backstory. So Morgan, why are you so nice? Morgan Housel That's a great question. I like that question, and I should say thank you. But I think there are not enough nice people around these days. And I would frame it a little bit differently. I would say there aren't enough empathetic people around these days-there aren't enough people that try to go out of their way to put themselves in other's shoes, and even if they have differences from me, or if they think in a different way, what have they experienced in life that I have not, I think that's a really important skill to try to force yourself to think about and a lot of people don't. I think a lot of people just kind of increasingly live in their own worlds. And now that we have the kind of social media technology that we have, we didn't even five years ago, people are more aware of other people's views on the world. And there's a great quote as Gavin Turner said, "the more aware that people become of other people's views, the more upset they get that other views exist." And so I think it's something that I've always tried to push back on intentionally- of course, I don't always do it. There are many people out there, people who would say I'm not a nice person, but I always try to put myself in someone else's shoes. And I don't think it's any different than the classic golden rule that we all learn when we are five years old. You know, people just want to be treated with dignity and respect, and most of the indignities and disrespect that people put forth I think, by and large, are caused by just not being able to empathize with what that other person has experienced in life that has brought them to the view that they might have Ryan Reeves I love that and it's interesting, because I would guess that like 99% of people know the golden rule. But why do...