People Who Worked For Me
There are inside jokes and there are inside jokes by which I mean jokes that are only funny to the person telling them and my relentless trolling of Morgan Housel for a retweet certainly falls into the latter category. (But it did make me laugh.)
If you don’t know Morgan, he is today a best-selling author, partner at the Collaborative Fund, and an in-demand speaker on behavioral finance (who we just happen to have a podcast conversation with out today). Plus, he’s a great dude. What’s also true is that at one point in a past life he worked for me.
Morgan’s always been a great writer, but he’s never been strong on change and he and I had a lot of conversations before he decided to move on to something next. That probably seemed like a net negative for the organization we both worked for at the time, but it turned out to be a great move for everyone involved. No one doesn’t benefit from others achieving great things. And now instead of managing him, I get to free ride on his 450 thousand followers.
Lesser-known than Morgan, but still great, is Michele Hansen (who has fewer Twitter followers than Morgan, but still more than me). She, too, worked for me in a past life while also founding and bootstrapping her own software company, Geocodio. She’s since gone on to run that company full-time while also finding time to write a book and host a podcast (Morgan has a new podcast too).
I’m plugging my friends and former direct reports here because I’m proud. I think the best measure of anyone is what the people you might be helpful to go on to do next. And while it’s insanely egotistical of me to believe I had anything to do with any of this, Morgan did send me an inscribed copy of The Psychology of Money that I keep on my desk and Michele did send me a Geocodio sticker that I put on my laptop because both inspire me and remind me when I see them of what matters when it comes to people.
P.S. Permanent Equity’s investing team is hiring. Click here for the details.
– By Tim Hanson