"Rule Breaker Investing" Great Quotes, Vol. 20: Build Yourself a Great Story

If you're ready to think deeper, act bolder, and craft a richer story for yourself, this Rule Breaker Investing episode offers both inspiration and challenge.

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This video was recorded on Jan. 08, 2025.

David Gardner: Recurring series or a staple of Rule Breaker Investing inspired by David Letterman's top 10 lists and Saturday night Lives weekend Updates. One of our originals is great quotes. This week hitting a big round number, Volume 20, but we never do repeats. These five quotes are, of course, all brand new designed to help you think deeper, act better, and/or enjoy life more. Let's get smarter, happier, and richer. Shall we? For a little while anyway with one of our OG series only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. That's right. That is the sound of rules being broken, maybe a window, too. Welcome back. Happy New Year. I hope I'm not the first to say that to you, but if I am, it's a new year. Welcome. It's a whole new ball game. Although, we're going to keep playing the game the same way we've done so before. What do winners do? We try to keep on winning. Let's get right into this week's great quotes, Volume 20. I have five quotes cued up, investing, business, and life, each of which I hope will educate, amuse, and enrich. Let's get started with quote number 1. Quote number 1, is one of my favorite Fool quotes of all. It's from Sir Philip Sidney, the Elizabethan courtier, soldier and poet, who died young. At the age of 31, he got hit by a bullet in the Netherlands in 1586 and died at the age of 31. His works include a sonnet sequence, Astropel and Stella. That's where my quote comes from. I read a little bit of that in my undergrad years at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He also wrote a treatise, the defense of poesy or an apology for poetry, and a pastoral romance, which I never read the Countess of Pembroke Arcadia. Before I give the quote, I want to mention one account says that his death, again, he got shot in the thigh was avoidable and heroic. Sidney noticed that one of his men was not fully armored.

He took off his thigh armor on the grounds that it would be wrong to be better armored than his men. As he lay dying, Sidney composed a song to be sung by his deathbed. According to the story, which may be apocryphal, while lying wounded, he gave his water to another wounded soldier saying, "Thy necessity is yet greater than mine." This became possibly the most famous story about Sir Philip intended to illustrate his noble and gallant character. He played a brilliant part in the military, literary, and courtly life that was common to young nobles of that time, an epitaph of Sir Philip Sidney. Here it is, "England has his body for she it fed. Netherlands, his blood, in her defense, shed. The heavens have his soul, the arts have his fame, the soldier his grief, the world, his good name." He did have a good name, and he had a great line. In fact, it ends the first sonnet in I think it was a 108 sonnet sequence that composes Astropel and Stella. This line means a lot to me. Here it is. "Fool, said my muse to me. Look in thy heart and write." I think I first came across that in my undergraduate years. I don't know if I remarked upon it at the time, but as we got ready to start the Motley Fool, and we were casting about for what we should call our company, that line came back to me, and it's been with me ever since. A few thoughts about it. The first is that it reminds us that the truest inspiration, often the best ideas flow from you and me when we give an honest look within ourselves. Being called a Fool here, Sidney himself calling himself via his muse a fool isn't an insult. It's an invitation to strip away pretense and speak candidly from the heart.

Sometimes we hide behind intellectual prowess or external expectations, forgetting that it's the authenticity that we bring to our most human endeavors and activities, our personal insecurities, they're OK. "Fool, look in thy heart and wright forces us to face our own vulnerabilities." Ironically, that can produce sometimes the strongest and most resonant outcomes. I think, in particular, of the importance at the Motley Fool of our name and the voice that we try to carry authentically based on calling ourselves along with Sir Philip Sidney, Fools, leaning into that so called foolish identity means yeah, you're daring to be different. In a world in which too readily people say a fool and his money are soon parted, we feel very much the opposite. It's that distinctive voice, I would say, from a business standpoint, distinctive branding and genuine messaging when we get it right at the Motley Fool that resonates far more than if it were polished, hyper-curated content. Fool, look in thy heart and write. There's another reason that I love this quotation. It's because it is on the front page. It's the first page of something I'm so excited to announce to you right now, which is that I've written a book.

All last year, I spent writing Rule Breaker Investing. After 30 years of stock picking, this is my magnum opus, a lifetime of lessons distilled into one definitive guide and Sir Philip Sidney's quote is exactly what I kick it all off with. Fool said my muse to me, "Look in thy heart and write." This quotation has particular meaning, not just for me, but for this year. I'm thrilled to share that Rule Breaker Investing is available for pre-order. If you'd like, you could just type in Rule Breaker Investing on amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, or wherever you shop for great books. You can see what my cover looks like, and you can see what I'll call the playbook for anyone who dreams of beating the market, living richly and having a laugh along the way. I'm really thrilled to announce that coming at the end of this summer is my final stock market book. Rule Breaker investing and I think any regular listener of the podcast, I hope it will be a treat not just for you, but I hope for many that you might share it with, whether they're people of the next generation or the friend at the proverbial water cooler at work. I'm trying to get the whole world to understand truly what investing looks like, how richly we're rewarded for breaking the rules. I would say Sir Philip Sidney broke the rules by ending the first sonnet of his most famous work with, "Fool said, My muse to me, look in thy heart and write." To come from a place of humility and authenticity is something I deeply admire. Thank you, Sir Philip. I think I'm going to have some fun this year. I think every week's podcast, I'm going to briefly give just a couple of sentences from some random place in my book. Now that the manuscript is finished, I know what's in and what's out, and I will just have fun once each podcast with 2-3 sentences and here's the first one I want to share from my coming Rule Breaker Investing book. Here's a line early in the book, and I quote, "Everyone is an investor, and everyone can make a 100 bugger."

Onto great quote number 2. I first came across this one in Warren Berger's book, the book of Beautiful Questions. Warren Berger. I've had him several times on this podcast. I've so enjoyed and appreciated his inquiry into the power of asking beautiful questions. It looks like he was quoting from an Ink magazine article by Lee Buchanan in April 2014. The title of that article, I've not read the article, he just links to it in his book, the title was 100 great questions every entrepreneur should ask. Here's the great question that I want to feature as great quote number 2. "How can we become the company that would put us out of business?" Which entrepreneur shared that quote? I had to go back to Berger's book to check. Ironically, and pleasingly enough, it's actually Danny Meyer, who I featured on last week's podcast Blast from the Past, founder of Union Square Hospitality Group founder of Shake Shack, etc., Danny Meyer past guest on this podcast, and I had forgotten/not not known that this was Danny Meyer's line. I love this line. I hope you do, too, as a fellow Rule Breaker. How can we become the company that would put us out of business? Who are the great CEOs of our time that create the great stocks that you and I get to become part owners of? I would say it's somebody like Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, longtime CEO. How can we become the company that would put us out of business? He started streaming right in the face of Netflix's dominance with the rental DVD market, as it quickly bypassed Blockbuster and became a household word, there was Reed saying, "That's not where the world's going to land. We're not going to end up using DVDs 10 years or 20 years from now."

Right away he started savaging his own business. He made some mistakes with QuickStar for those who remember it more than a decade ago. But he is great at this at asking, "How can we become the company that would put us out of business?" As they started to create their own content, which was another outrageous step that nobody expected initially from Netflix that would start coming up with its own content, he said, "We need to become HBO faster than HBO can become us." That is, faster than a content creator like HBO can become a streaming giant. I would say both of them have succeeded, but one of them clearly has succeeded a lot more. That would be because Reed Hastings was great at asking along with Danny Meyer, "You and me, how can we become the company that would put us out of business?'' Other great CEOs, Elon Musk is great at that. Jeff Bezos is great at that and I'm going to say you, you can be great at that, or at least good. It just starts by asking that question. If you work for a company, maybe you're a leader at an emerging company, how can we become the company that would put us out of business? It forces you to look well ahead and ask, where is the world headed? My brother Tom Gardner, our CEO at The Motley Fool, I think is doing a great job with that here at our company.

Any subscription content company right now is looking at artificial intelligence saying, "What does this mean for our business? Let's get ahead of it." I want to say for what we've done so far at the Motley Fool, I think we're doing a wonderful job, imagining what that means for our members and for our business, starting from not this point forward, but from several years ago, as we begin recognizing and taking actions, whether we're picking AI stocks or trying to use more AI to serve you, our listeners, and our members. You can be great at this, too, or at least good. It simply starts with asking Danny Meyer's question, how can we become the company that would put us out of business? Those are the stocks, by the way, that you want to buy. You want to buy the companies that have those visionary CEOs who have the guts to ask that question. Let's move on to great quote number 3. Great quote number 3 comes from one of the OGs of the conscious capitalism movement.

My friend, Raj Sisodia, co-author with John Mackey of the book, Conscious Capitalism in such a bright light unto himself. Now, I think Raj would be the first to quote somebody else giving credit for this quote. But since I've heard it from Raj, many times, I ascribe it to Raj. Here's the quote. Raj says, "Human beings are a source, not a resource." I think Raj credits Debashis Chatterjee. Debashis Chatterjee I see, he's on Wikipedia. You can read more about him. An Indian management professor, author, and columnist. "Human beings are a source, not a resource." I remember one of the early debates we had at the Motley Fool as a start-up was what to call our human resources group. At the time, we had some professionals who'd grown up in HR. For them, the acronym HR was a noble undertaking. It was something that they'd been educated in that they loved. We also loved it. We just didn't love that phrase. I remember Tom and I saying that just doesn't sound fun. That doesn't sound enough human resources. We gravitated along with the help of a lot of our internal leadership toward phrases like the people team or the culture team. That's really what we've used for 30 years or so as a business, but it was a decision to go away from the conventional wisdom, not use the term everybody else was using human resources. Now, in light of Raj Sisodia and Debashis Chatterjee's quote, I like our decision even more because human beings are a source, not a resource. Viewing people as a source champions, your creativity, your passion, your potential. I think leading organizations especially, make a point of fostering a culture where employees actively innovate rather than merely carry out tasks. Increasingly, I think, in our society, carrying out tasks is going to be relegated good news, by the way, to robots.

Over the next 20-30 years, the robotics industry is going to become huge, in part, powered by AI, and a lot of that effort is going to be to carry out tasks. They'll be doing resourceful efforts. In the meantime, you and me, fellow humans, we're going to be unleashed increasingly as sources; sources of creativity, passion, and potential. A company that unleashes its workforce creates trait number 2 of the Rule Breaker stock, which is a sustainable competitive advantage. If you are unleashing your workforce and I'm merely telling mine what to do, you have a huge advantage over me in whatever industry we're competing in highly engaged employees drive stronger, more sustainable returns for shareholders. I'm thinking back even to some of the early picks we made at Motley Fool Rule Breakers, in fact, I want to credit my colleague Tim Byers, one of our Rule Breakers leaders today at Motley Fool Rule Breakers.

Tim came to me in the early days. This is more than a decade ago of Google, of course, now we call it Alphabet, or Facebook, which is now called Meta Platforms. Both of those companies at the time he was pointing out, are strong in part because their employees love to work there. Now, people have very mixed feelings, it seems to me about Facebook or Meta Platforms these days. It's a really big company. I don't work there. I still like the stock a lot. I admire what they do, but back in the day, their employees made them some of the highest rated workplaces in America. I talked about this last week, following LinkedIn's top employers and just buying the stocks of those companies. One of my blasts from the past last week made such an important point, which I'm making again here, which is that when you find companies where people love to work at that company, why do they love to work at that company? Because they're a source, they're not a human resource. Highly engaged employees drive stronger, more sustainable returns. That's exactly how Facebook now Meta Platforms and how Google now Alphabet have become world beaters, gigantic companies and successful multibagers for Rule Breaker members for many years.

Again, hat tip to Tim Byers, who, in both cases, was the Fool who raised his hand on the team I was working with at the Motley Fool Rule Breakers and said, "I think we should pick these stocks." We did, and I hope you own at least one of them because they've been fantastic market beaters. Why? Great quote number 3, "Human beings are a source not a resource." On to great quote number 4. Let's go back a few thousand years, Joe. I never really did study Confucius. I never learned much about Confucianism, but having come across this quote a few years ago, I held onto it and waited for today to share it with you. Now, if you're into Confucianism or if you know you're Confucius, then perhaps you will remember this famous quote. I think he was born in 551 BCE. He lived something like 50 years or so. This quote is about 2,500-years-old, and it's still so great. Here it is. "We have two lives, the second begins when we realize we only have one." Realizing the finite nature of life can spark a profound shift. It prompts us to pursue goals that truly matter, rather than drift through routines. There's not a single moment or age where we all realize this. I'm sure some of us go through life never really fully appreciating or realizing this and some of us are awake into it early on, and sometimes because of urgencies like maybe a health prognosis or something that really shatters us, forces us to break our own mold, and recognize what we should pursue.

What is our highest calling that we are in line with this quote that we are mortal, which, by the way, can be a little unsettling. Once you see life as singular and fleeting, you might question your current path or relationships you have or habits. Are you truly aligned with who you want to be? That can be both liberating and in its own way, I suppose, terrifying. "We have two lives, the second begins when we realize we only have one." There's a great quote. I think I rocked this one. Yeah, checking it. Great quotes Volume 14. That was May 18th of 2022. D. L. Moody, who said this, speaking of lives that matter and goals that truly matter. D. L. Moody said, "Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter." Seeing two sides of things and hoping to give you something that will spark you a little bit here at the start of 2025. Are you pursuing goals that truly matter, or are you drifting through routines? If Confucius is right, that we have two lives, but the second begins when we realize we only have one, are you on course to make the most of it? It's a rhetorical question. It's a great quote. Thank you, Confucius.

Let's now move on to our final quote, quote number 5. I've quoted Jeff Bezos a number of times in this series, again, the 20th volume this week. I think I've quoted him at least three times before. I'm about to do it again. "The greatest Internet entrepreneur of our age, somebody that I admire for many different reasons, but in particular for being somebody who's just bought and held his stock for a long time and benefited in ways I can never fully express." I hope many of you might have bought along with me at different points, and you yourself, should be grateful. But even if you're not a shareholder, if you're like me, there's a package or two arriving at your door every few days. Saving you a lot of time, not having you cast about looking for the right store to find the right thing. You're getting a pretty good price these days, and often it's delivered to your door sometimes same day, depending on what you're ordering and where you live. Increasingly, we take that for granted, and anybody who's more than, let's say, 40 years of age, grew up in a world where you couldn't take that for granted. That's not how things worked. Jeff Bezos more than anyone has made that possible. I have a great quote from Bezos to close with, but before I give it, I'm going to give the runner-up. I was going to go with this one, but I'm just going to share it, but this is not the official great quote number 5. This is just another really good quote. Here's what Bezos once said, "Always lean into the future when the world changes around you, and when it changes against you, you have to lean into that and figure out what to do. Complaining isn't a strategy." A great quote about one of my favorite topics, the word future. Always lean into it.

Bezos said, but great quote number 5 is actually not that one. It's this, "In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story." Each stock you hold or sell is a choice shaping your portfolio's future. In the Rule Breaker spirit, opting for high growth, innovative companies, that's a deliberate action that can rewrite your investing narrative. But what I really appreciate about Bezos, this quote is, it's often tempting to dodge responsibility for outcomes. As an investor, you could blame a market cycle or external factors like that person should never have told you about that stock. It's their fault, but Bezos' reminder that we are our choices, asks us to own each decision fully. No more safety net of excuses. That means, also, by the way, that our greatest triumphs, as well as our regrets, stem from what we consciously elect to do and that's part of what makes the triumph so satisfying that you did own it. You didn't dodge, you accept it. I think in the end, we are our choices, build yourself a great story. I could cross out the word story and say portfolio, as I've often said in the past, and as I know I'll say, in my Rule Breaker investing book, as it comes out later this summer, make your portfolio reflect your best vision for our future. Not only will that lead to a better world, I'm pretty confident it will lead to better outcomes for you. You will build yourself a great portfolio if you own the choices and think about what really works in this world and what you really want to see win. But apart from investing, let's talk briefly, of course, as we close about life because every day presents forks in the road, where you live, who you spend time with, how you react to failure.

These seemingly small choices accumulate into what I'll call your unique personal mosaic. Warren Bennis in his wonderful book on Becoming a leader, speaks to this so well. His third lesson of self knowledge is, "You can learn anything you want to learn." In the book, he talks with Marty Kaplan, Marty Kaplan, a former Walt Disney executive, who becomes a professor at the Annenberg School of Communications at Southern Cal. Marty Kaplan who champions and I quote again here, "The appetite to have experience." As Kaplan goes on, people can be experience averse and therefore not learn. Unless you have the appetite to absorb new and potentially unsettling things, you don't learn. Kaplan goes on, "Part of it is temperament. It's a kind of fearlessness and optimism, and confidence and you're not afraid of failure." Another way I've sometimes put it, phrase that means a lot to me, lead a more interesting life. That's what I have for you this week. Great quotes, volume 20 to kick off the Year from Sir Philip Sidney's embrace of His inner fool to Danny Meyer's urge to be the company that would put yours out of business. To Raj Sisodia's human beings are a source. Then to Confucius' two lives, we closed it out with Jeff Bezos. In the end, we are our choices, build yourself a great story. Fool on.

Mary Long: As always, people on this program may have interest in the stocks they talk about. The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. Don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. Learn more about Rule Breaker Investing at rbi.fool.com.

Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. David Gardner has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, and Netflix. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Netflix. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.