Tony P Butler

[Tony P Butler @TonyPButler1]

@JulianGoldieSEO N8N

[Billy Oppenheimer @bpoppenheimer]

After his second year at Michigan, Tom Brady wanted to transfer.

He wasn't playing in games, and he was so low on the depth chart that he only got 2 reps in practice.

Brady met with his coach to express his frustration, “The other quarterbacks get all the reps.”

Coach replied,

“Brady, I want you to stop worrying about what all the other players on our team are doing. All you do is worry about what the starter is doing, what the second guy is doing, what everyone else is doing. You don't worry about what you're doing.”

Coach reminded him, “You came here to be the best. If you're going to be the best, you have to beat out the best.”

And then he recommended that Brady start meeting with Greg Harden, a sports psychologist who worked in Michigan's athletic department.

Brady went to Harden's office and whined, “I'm never going to get my chance. They're only giving me 2 reps.”

Harden simply replied, “Just go out there and focus on doing the best you can with those 2 reps. Make them as perfect as you possibly can.”

“So that's what I did,” Brady said. “They'd put me in for those 2 reps, man, I'd sprint out there like it was Super Bowl 39. 'Let's go boys! Here we go! What play we got?'”

“And I started to do really well with those 2 reps. Because I brought enthusiasm, I brought energy.”

Soon, it went from getting 2 reps to getting 4 reps. Then from 4 to 10, “and before you knew it,” Brady said, with this new mindset that Greg instilled in me—to focus on what you can control, to focus on what you're getting, not what anyone else is getting, to treat every rep like it's the Super Bowl—eventually, I became the starter.”

Takeaway 1:

Greg Harden telling Brady to just focus on being great during his 2 reps reminded me of a piece of advice from the entrepreneur Mark Cuban.

“People come to me all the time and tell me they're stuck,” Cuban explained. “They're stuck in a job they don't like. They're stuck working for a boss they don't like. They're stuck on a team they don't like.”

“I just tell them, 'Be great.'”

“The reality of life is that you can't just always quit your job. You can't just always go to your boss and say, 'Give me the promotion, or I'm out of here.'” You can't just always go to your coach and say, 'Give me more reps, or I'm transferring.'

“So when you're stuck, you've gotta find it within yourself to say, 'Ok, this is where I am. And if I'm going to be here, I'm going to be great.'

Because if you're great at your job, typically other people and companies find out, so it creates opportunities.”

Takeaway 2:

I've written before about “lead measures”—the actions and behaviors that predictably drive success.

The core characteristic of a lead measure, the authors of The 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) write, is that “a lead measure is influenceable; it can be directly influenced by you.”

To achieve your goals, they recommend (echoing what the Michigan Coach told Brady), apply a disproportionate energy to the things that are in your control.

Starting at Michigan and for the rest of his career, that’s what Brady did, that’s what drove his success.

In his first media call after he was selected by the New England Patriots with the 199th pick in the 2000 draft, Brady was asked: “Are you aware that [along with starting quarterback, Drew Bledsoe] there’s another quarterback here that they drafted last year?”

Brady said he was aware of that. “And I know he’s a heck of a player,” Brady said. “But I’ve always really concerned myself just with the things I can control. I don’t put a lot of thinking into the other guys because I know I’m not at my best when I’m not just thinking about playing as well as I possibly can.”

- - -

“I never once in my life ever said I wanted to be the best of all time. Ever. I wanted to be the best I could be, period. I learned that in college. It didn’t matter what the other guys were doing. It mattered what I was doing.” — Tom Brady

Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!

[TaraBull @TaraBull]

Top 10 headlines the media didn't tell you this week, Repost & FoIIow for more.

10. Wikipedia Founder warns the site is run by CIA to brainwash the public.

9. Maui residents are being arrested by police for trying to visit their own homes.

8. AZ Senate forensic ballot audit findings show over 200,000 'non-conforming' 2020 ballots.

7. Biden admin to cancel all remaining oil and gas leases in the Arctic, prepare for gas price hikes (again).

6. Liberty Safe company faces massive Bud Light level backlash after releasing code to J6ers gun safe.

5. Elon Musk reveals he refused requests to activate Starlink in Ukraine to sink a Russian fleet, avoiding “a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

4. Enrique Tarrio reveals the Feds told him to lie about President Trump in order to help them seal an indictment — he was then sentenced to 22 years in prison for J6, which he didn't even attend.

3. Job Search Website, Indeed, to pay individual employees $10,000 to help transgender workers move to states where they feel safer.

2. Tucker Carlson drops Bombshell interview, exposing Barack Obama's crack use and alleged relations with another man.

1. Elon Musk to sue the Anti-Defamation League for alleged defamation that led to $22 billion in advertising losses.

If you appreciate this Top 10 recap, remember to Repost and FoIIow me for another week in a clown world 🤡🌎

[Long Equity @long_equity]

These five videos are an absolute masterclass for investors.

1. Aswath Damodaran - Corporate Finance

This covers everything you need to know about how a company should manage its money. Essential listening.

https://t.co/P945gFATnH

[Brandon Beylo @marketplunger1]

Bruce Greenwald invited Li Lu to speak to his class on value investing.

The result is a 90 minute masterclass on how to be a value investor.

If you haven't watched the video, do it now.

If you have, it's worth re-watching.

Here is a list of my favorite quotes from Li Lu 👇

PERSONALITY OF A VALUE INVESTOR

• "Understand who you are as an investor, because you will be tested. You will have to ask yourself if you truly are a value investor."

• "Value investing goes against our evolution of following the crowds to survive."

• "You will spend most of your time as an investigative journalist. To have insatiable curiosity."

• "You almost have to be curious about everything. Because you never know where you'll get that one major insight."

INVESTOR CRITERIA

• Is it cheap?

• Is it a good business?

• Why is this opportunity available to me?

"Once you answer those questions, you really have to go for it."

INVESTMENT CASE STUDY 1: TIMBERLAND

• "The first thing I check in a company is it's valuation."

• "If you're an investor you don't care where it traded before."

• "What matters isn't the price-to-book ratio itself, but what's in the book value."

• "You want to compare the capital invested in the business to how much pre-tax cash flow the business generates using that capital."

• "So Timberland generated $100M on $200M in capital invested. So why does the opportunity exist?"

- Nike, Reebok, all the shoe brands fell off a cliff during the Asian Financial Crisis.

- Founder owns 40% of the stock

- Company was profitable and didn't need financial markets (no sell-side)

- Tons of shareholder lawsuits

• "What would be your conclusion if you were a normal mutual fund hearing this information? That management is milking the company for their own gain."

What does Li Lu do next?

• "I download every file of the shareholder court cases. That's the investigative journalist part."

• "The result was that the founder withdrew guidance and shareholders didn't like it. That was it."

How do you determine if management are decent people?

• "You've got to be an investigative journalist and find the trail of evidence. Go to their community. Introduce yourself to their friends/family/neighbors."

Total Time Commitment: "A couple of weeks of diligent/obsessive work"

• "Investing is intensive work for short bursts of time."

HOW MUCH TO BUY?

• "If you go join a fund, they'll tell you not to risk anything more than 25-50bps."

• "Think about how much effort you put in to this work. You have no downside and its trading at 5x profits."

• "So, I put a shitload of money into Timberland. Over the next 10 years it went up 7x. It was never more than 15x earnings."

• "If you're not a good analyst, you'll NEVER be a good investor."

• "When it goes up, you don't have to do a damn thing. You just sit on it and ride with it."

INVESTMENT CASE STUDY 2: KOREAN COMPANY

• "Don't think about per-share numbers. Think of yourself as an owner."

• "$236M in book value, $60M market cap, $25M net earnings."

How do you know it's cheap?

• "You must confirm that the earnings are there, and that the book value is real, liquid, and tangible."

• "They're trading at the cash value in the bank with no debt. They have hotels and department stores that they own outright. They're making $30M+ in pre-tax earnings. And insiders own 50%."

The result: Went up 5-6x

VALUE INVESTING IS NOT NATURAL

• "There's a lot of money in value investing. But it's still unnatural to most people."

• "One thing you have to do, is you have to do the work. You have to do the reps. You can make a ton of money if you really do this stuff."

• "I benefited by listening AND THEN DOING my own work. Making my own investments and mistakes."

WHAT MAKES A GREAT ANALYST

• "You must provide accurate and complete information. If you can't succeed on that, you can't succeed in this business."

• "If you're not confident about your prediction and what you know, you can't put any money when the stock's in free fall."

WHAT PROVIDES THE BIGGEST RETURNS

• "Your biggest returns will come from no more than ten tremendous insights. That's it."

• "The only way to build those insights is intense curiosity, intense study."

INVESTING MISTAKES

• "The biggest mistakes come when you buy before you've done all the work."

• "My biggest mistakes aren't buying and losing money. It's not buying and missing out on 50-60x returns."

HOW MANY COMPANIES SHOULD YOU BUY

• "I don't have any set rules on how many stocks or companies I buy. Opportunities are sporadic and it depends on the environment."

• "I usually have 3-4 big ideas. If the market is exciting, I have more opportunities. Or if the market is boring, I have fewer."

HOW LI LU ALLOCATES TIME

• "Most of the time I spend reading and studying about everything. Learning new companies and industries."

• "If I find an idea that captivates me. I stop everything and obsess over that idea."

• "Besides that, I spend a lot of time with my kid and my wife."

TL;DR:

• Be an investigative journalist.

• Work obsessively in short bursts and spend the rest. of your time learning.

• When you've done the work and have conviction, buy a shitload to make it worth it.

• Before you invest $1, make sure you can answer the three big questions: Is it cheap, is the management team good, and why does the opportunity exist.

• Never stop learning.

• Become a curiosity machine.

[Tim Ferriss @tferriss]

If you’re confused about life, you’re not alone. There are almost eight billion of us. This isn’t a problem, of course, once you realize that life is neither a problem to be solved nor a game to be won.

If you are too intent on making the pieces of a nonexistent puzzle fit, you miss out on all the real fun.

The heaviness of success-chasing can be replaced with a serendipitous lightness when you recognize that the only rules and limits are those we set for ourselves.

So be bold and don’t worry about what people think.

They don’t do it that often anyway.

[Navalism @NavalismHQ]

"If they can train you to do it, then eventually they will train a computer to do it."

@naval

[Tony P Butler @TonyPButler1]

In any field, in every corner of the world, thoughts and ideas are shared regularly, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is execution.
#action #ideas

[Tony P Butler @TonyPButler1]

@Nicolascole77 @readwiseio save thread

[Tony P Butler @TonyPButler1]

@trbutler811 I’m good babe, I’ve enjoyed speaking with you tonight. Thanks for laying in the bed with me

[Tony P Butler @TonyPButler1]

@barstoolsports @trbutler811

[Tony P Butler @TonyPButler1]

@EKANardini @trbutler811