Funny Stories are the Best
Based on your feedback, the all-time three best of these whatever-they-are to date are now:
What’s funny about that – and what I love – is that none of them, for a daily email that set out to be about business and investing (albeit irreverently and trying not to take itself too seriously), are about business and investing.
They’re just funny stories.
Our MD Emily expressed some frustration the other day when one of our LPs could recall with alacrity the details of the big present in the bathroom, but couldn’t recall our returns.
We (humans, I mean…not Permanent Equity, though us, too) are storytellers, I said. Chaos only makes sense within a narrative, and shared experiences are more memorable than facts. It’s also how we connect.
After the Crab Cakes one went out, for example, Nate wrote back to tell me about his girlfriend severely burning her tongue on a roasted marshmallow during a camping trip. Brian responded that he had basically lived my experience but waited for his wife to get home before he told her and admired that I had fessed up on the phone. And Jeremy let me know that his best bonding experience with his now brother-in-law happened because the latter choked on a shrimp shell during the first dinner the sister/fiancee-now-wife invited them both to.
This is why “be entertaining and likable” is some advice I gave to a room full of skeptical, type A business school students who wanted to know how to succeed as capital allocators. I don’t think they bought it, but I stand by it.
– Tim
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