People who succeed via analysis of numbers and facts need to learn that understanding of people can make that analysis unnecessary and can even outperform it. Examples: 1. Amazon did not make money between its 1994 founding through 2002. There was no financial or business fundamentals analysis that could’ve led you to buying the stock, which would launch AWS and FBA in 2006. The only way you could’ve profited from the 4000x share price growth between Dec 31 2002 and today was to figure out that Bezos was one of the greatest of all time and was pouring his best years into the company. 2. I was once doing a reference check for a new employee. You can make a quantifiable prediction of employee quality by creating a points system for traits correlated with future work quality. On paper this employee did not appear to be so great, however his reference, who was an accomplished businessman in his own right without an agenda stopped me and said “Hire this guy. Just do it. Trust me.” He was right. 3. Careers and health are complex systems. We can come up with rules of thumb like “work hard” or “exercise”, but, generally we know a lot less about what leads to good outcomes in these fields than we do in chemistry and mathematics where there are higher degrees of predictable certainty. When an older businessperson who has survived and thrived through multiple recessions tells you, someone much younger, less experienced, and successful, to do something like “call them” or “go to this event”, you just need to do it. When your grandmother tells you to stay slim, exercise, and spend time with friends, you just need to do it. There is no fact or data based analysis to support these recommendations, but decades of experience, of seeing people fail in business or die early and those who didn’t, inform these powerful inexplicable recommendations. Yes, facts and numbers are great, but they will only take you so far. Master the understanding of people and know when their recommendations outperform what we call rational analysis to go even father. And note that these two methods are even more powerful when combined. Trust me.

Brontosaurus skeleton at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History (allegedly) Let’s pretend for a moment that brontosauruses are made up, despite them being accepted by the public and scientific community, having ample evidence for their existence, and appearing in museums all over the world. Let me show you how this could come to be: Smart, but young, naive, and generally conformist people enter academia to study paleontology (the study of fossils) They learn about brontosauruses: They were up to 7 stories tall They weighed up to 70 tons They have no back teeth and swallowed all their food whole They would eat rocks to help with their digestion Their long necks were to "reach marshy vegetation some distance away or to reach leaves higher up in trees" (Encyclopedia Britannica) No skull has ever been found The bones you see in museums are mostly not real. They're casted. They get a PhD about how their poop is the size of a 737 Then one day they have a thought “you know…there’s a lot of stuff about brontosauruses which is pretty unbelievable” and they make a list They write a paper and submit it to a paleontology journal. If the paper is right, the journal must disband and all the people who work for it will lose their life’s work, so it gets turned down. The skeptical paleontologist turns to the press, but all the more senior paleontologists say that the skeptical guy is crazy, so now our skeptic’s reputation is ruined The skeptic can’t attract funding because they can’t get published and they’re a kook according respected paleontologists No museum will air the possibility that brontosauruses are fake because it’s one of the main reasons why people go to museums If the skeptical paleontologist is smart at all, they will see all this and they won’t say anything. They want to keep their PhD, their role in the group, and their prestige. It takes a unique and rare person to go against the flow and call something out like this and even if they do, their views mostly won’t be heard. Of course, I’m just joking around. Brontosauruses are real. But if they weren’t, the brontosaurus would be an uncoordinated conspiracy.

1. Empathy 2. Dexterity 3. Persuasion 4. Musicality 5. Confidence 6. Ambition 7. Grit 8. Creativity 9. Flexibility 10. Energy 11. Individualism 12. Willpower 13. Stoicisim 14. Objectivity 15. Allure

There is investment advice in the book of Jewish religious law (the Talmud). It advises that you keep 1/3rd of your wealth in business, 1/3rd in land, and 1/3rd in gold. It's genius. Why? First, it's simple. Second, business, and, to a lesser extent, land, (but not gold, usually) can make you wealthy. But the real genius is its protection against RISK. Think about the bad luck that can happen to you throughout your life and how a Talmud portfolio of business, land, and gold would perform in reply. 1. Health problems might wipe out your gold and prevent you from operating your business, but even a sick person can collect rent from their land. 2. Divorce may result in your losing your land and gold, but no significant other wants to run your business. 3. Theft may cause you to lose you gold and business, but it's hard to take your land. 4. Anger the wrong person in government and you can lose your land and business, but you can almost always keep your gold. 5. Lawuits may result in the loss of your gold and land, but no litigant wants to run (or can run) your business. 6. Inflation can end your business and depending on what type of "gold" you use, can harm that as well, but land will hold its value. There are many more things like this from invasion to natural disaster, and this Talmud portfolio, while conservative, almost always manages to survive. Yes, it's no longer 500 AD, and technology has changed the nature of business, land, and gold, but the principles remain strong. Life is so complicated. Maybe the Talmud portfolio isn't the proft-maximizing perfect one for this time in history, but you'll do fine with it and it'll almost certainly never leave you broke. Citations: Talmud - Wikipedia The Talmud Investment Strategy (investorhome.com)