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GuruFocus
The GuruFocus podcast brings interviews with influential investing leaders, extended discussion with website contributors, original stories and all the happenings in value investing.
Since 2012 Stuart Landesberg, the CEO and co-founder of Grove Collaborative, has been at the helm of his company. Aiming to produce and distribute natural and healthy consumer goods the company has grown to over 1,000 employees in their eight years of doing business. Leading the revolution towards producing natural and sustainable home goods Landesberg hopes that Grove Collaborative can one day become the largest consumer goods company in the world.
Since founding her company in 2012, Nicole Sahin, CEO of Globalization Partners, has been able to spread her business around the world. She has operations in 170 countries, helping businesses employ white-collar workers overseas. Sahin has taken a process that usually would have taken months of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars and cut it down to days. Thanks to these efforts, she has allowed companies to spread around the world and even saw Globalization Partners reach number six on the Inc 5000 list of top growing private companies.
Since 2015 Deeanne Akerson has taken her company Kindred Bravely from a personal need to an extremely successful producer of nursing and maternity clothing. In 2019 they were featured on the prestigious Inc 5000 list at number 20 racking up over 8,500% growth. The company brings in millions of revenue each year and sees tens of thousands of new customers on their site each month. What started with a personal need has now turned into a powerhouse internet retailer in just five short years.
Since 2015 Sara Castillo and Katie Castillo Wilson have worked hand in hand to build their company TapOnIt from the ground up. Creating their own tech hub in Iowa the two sisters have created a new solution for ads. Delivering via text messages and seeing opening rates up to 98%, they have created a database of 300 thousand people with 1,400 new members joining organically every month.
Founder of ActionCOACH Brad Sugars is no newcomer to the entrepreneur lifestyle. His franchise, the first of its kind, has been in business approaching 30 years. With over a thousand employees worldwide and doing hundreds of millions in revenue he also has claims to fame as a best selling author with his 17th book hitting shelves. While not the CEO of ActionCOACH Sugars remains as the chairman, dictating the future of the company, and maintaining high level interests in eight other companies.
Co-founders of Tattersall Distilling Dan Oskey and Jon Kreidler founded their craft distillery in 2015. Since then they have created almost thirty different spirits that have won numerous awards around the country. Alongside their craft cocktails the two created a nationally acclaimed cocktail room to feature signature drinks that has been featured in Eater and Playboy Magazine.
Over the last seven years Slava Khristich has grown his business Tateeda to almost fifty employees in the United States and Ukraine. The company creates custom software solutions for clients in healthcare, real estate, and field services technologies. With over thirty developers accessible to clients 24/7 the company has already completed over one hundred custom projects. On top of solving communications issues with overseas outsourcing the company has saved their clients over $5 million dollars since going into business.
The smartphones that provide access to endless amounts of information also provide companies with an unparalleled opportunity to interact with their customers. However many of these companies are not positions to develop these types of applications. Calvin Carter has capitalized on this situation. In 2008 he founded Bottle Rocket and has taken his company to the forefront of creating digital experiences to "surprise and delight" both companies and their customers. From their first customer NPR to the likes of Disney, American Express, and Chick-fil-A, Bottle Rocket has created mobile and web applications for some of the most well known companies in the world. Their work has won them countless awards and even saw a nomination for an Emmy. Such success brought the attention of WPP, the world's largest advertising and media company, and Bottle Rocket was acquired in 2013. However, to this day Bottle Rocket continues to be led by Carter and operates as an autonomous company under his leadership.
Over the last three decades Ken Aldrich has successfully invested in over fifty businesses and has personally co-founded almost a dozen himself. He considers himself a jack of all trades, having been involved in everything from biomedicine to real estate. Some of his most successful investments include helping start one of the first wind parks in Palm Springs and Green Dot Corporation, which has become the world's largest prepaid debit card company. In May Aldrich published his book Dream Toolbox, which aims to guide readers towards establishing an entrepreneurial mind and gaining control over their financial world.
Jie Song, co-founder and CTO of LogicMonitor, grew his business from a two man operation that coded in his apartment to become the premiere SaaS-based data center monitoring software service. The company grew to employ over 200 employees in the states and overseas in China. They acquired over $140 million in funding and had over 1,500 enterprise customers as clients, including the likes of Adidas, Netflix, PayPal, and Blackstone.
Our sixth guest Merrilee Kick, the founder of Buzzballz and Southern Champion, tells us about running the only woman owned winery and distillery in the country. She speaks to the struggles of starting her business and getting the initial loan through the current day where revenue is topping $50 million.
Pope tells the story of founding Work Shield, a company revolutionizing workplace harassment and discrimination management. In the last year his company has earned over $1 million in annualized revenue and is currently on-boarding over 40,000 employees on top of the 13,000 already covered under the plan. The company eliminates the employer from the intake and investigation process of harassment and discrimination claims and is centralizing data in an unprecedented way.
We welcome Russell Layton of Sparx Hockey to the show. Layton has created a skate sharpener that uses interchangeable sharpening discs to customize how skates are sharpened. His product has come to be used by the majority of NHL teams and was the official sharpener of the Wayne Gretzky Fantasy Camp. In a short period of time Layton has found worldwide distribution and sold over 20,000 sharpeners.
Our third guest, David Taylor, founded DizziBrands in 2018. The company has found a way to freeze alcohol into decadent desserts and has come to be found throughout restaurants, bars, and hotels in the state of Texas. The company plans expansions throughout markets on each coast and currently has 28 different flavors available. Taylor walks us through his past business ventures and how the mistakes he had previously made have helped him to success with DizziBrands.
We are joined today by our second entrepreneur Helen Du. In 2006 Du founded JD Rig & Supplies, Inc. on the premise that significant cost savings could be accrued by manufacturing oil drilling products in China and then importing them to markets in the United States and Canada. After the economic collapse of 2008 Du shifted the product focus to oil production equipment and saw company profits triple on a yearly basis until selling the company to Schlumberger Ltd. in 2014.
Today we sit down with Joseph Boskovich Jr. and discuss how his family's 100-year history in the greater Los Angeles area allowed for them to successfully start Old West Investment Management LLC. He lets us in what it is like to work alongside his father, some early successes and struggles, and what it is like to be an active manager in a industry seemingly dominated by passive strategists.
Today we welcome our inaugural guest Dave Sather. In 1999 Sather founded Sather Financial Group on the premise of creating a fee-only fiduciary investment management and strategic planning business. Over the last 20 years Sather Financial Group has provided transparent services that mold to each individual client. In the year 2019 alone, the company has grown from $500 million to approximately $750 million in assets across 1,000 different accounts.
One of today's foremost value investors, Mohnish Pabrai joined GuruFocus to share his insights and discuss recent portfolio moves. Pabrai, the founder of California-based Pabrai Investment Funds and Dhandho Funds, went into why he has shifted most of his $1 billion portfolio from the U.S. to India, and disclosed that he made new investments in Turkey and South Korea. He also described what drove his fourth-quarter investment in U.S. company Micron Technologies. Regarding his investment style, the Buffett disciple talked more about some of his key concepts, including price-earnings ratio of 1 stocks, his checklist and the No. 1 mistake investors make.
Craig Thrasher, CFA, is an international small-cap expert. In this podcast, he discusses how he has achieved his outstanding returns in an area that abounds in growth and opportunity. Small caps have historically beaten their large-cap peers and offer a large universe of undiscovered companies to choose from, while having lower volatility than domestic investors may think. Thrasher believes in bottom-up analysis, has concentrated portfolios and seeks only high-quality businesses. In the interview, he talks with GuruFocus about how this plays out when investing internationally. He also gives some of his stock recommendations and shares his thoughts on portfolio holdings.
Jerome Dodson runs San Francisco's Parnassus Funds, where he has blazed past the S&P 500 while investing in socially responsible companies. In this podcast with GuruFocus, he discusses his style of value investing and what investors should do in the return of volatility as higher interest rates and trade battles strike. Dodson also covers some of his favorite sectors and companies, including Google, Micron and Starbucks.
John Dorfman, founder of Massachusetts-based Dorfman Value Investments, joined GuruFocus to talk about his style of value investing. John's approach has led to market-beating returns of 9.79% annually since inception versus 5.4% for the S&P 500. In this episode, our guest tells where he is still finding obscure opportunities in a crowded market, what effect tariffs will have on small caps and why value investing is set to stage a comeback. The investor, who was mentored by the legendary David Dreman, also explains the findings of his studies of low-P/E stocks and analysts' most-loved and most-hated stocks.
Jim O'Shaughnessy wrote the wildly popular investing book, "What Works on Wall Street," in which he documents the strategies that sank or soared during over long periods, with some surprising results. In the podcast, Jim expounds on the follies of predicting markets and how a composite approach outperforms. It's only possible, he says, if you can eliminate those pesky emotions. Jim will also give a presentation at the 2018 GuruFocus Value Investing Conference.
Joel Tillinghast, who runs the $38 billion Fidelity Low-Priced Fund, joined GuruFocus for a podcast interview about how he thinks about investing and selects equities. The most distinctive characteristics of Tillinghast's portfolio are its size -- it has 889 positions -- and its requirement that its stocks have a price under $35 per share. It also has uncommon returns. Since inception, he returned 13.76% versus 9.78% for its benchmark Russell 2000 index.
In the extensive interview, Weitz elucidates his investing process and answers questions ranging from rising markets and geopolitics to individual stocks and what he thinks is inexpensive right now. He issues caution about "raw materials" in place for a correction, and explains why his flagship fund, Partners III, is shorting indexes following the S&P 500 and major market indices.
Daniel Pecaut and Corey Wrenn discuss their new, highly rated book, University of Berkshire Hathaway. In the unique collection, they share their notes from 30 annual Warren Buffett's annual shareholder meetings, beginning in 1983. The authors speak with GuruFocus about the making of the book and the insights they gained from their unprecedented journey. Daniel Pecaut is a Harvard graduate whose insights have been featured in the New York Times, Money Magazine, Grant's Interest Rate Observer, Outstanding Investor Digest, and the Omaha-World Herald. He has worked in investing for 30+ years and is CEO of a successful investment firm, Pecaut & Company. Corey Wrenn has a B.S. in Business Administration from University of South Dakota and an M.B.A from University of Nebraska at Omaha. Corey is the Vice President, Treasurer, and CCO for Pecaut & Company. Before he joined the firm in 1992, he worked for 9 years as an internal auditor for Berkshire Hathaway.
Legendary investor Jean-Marie Eveillard previews his talk "Value Investing Makes Sense, It Works Over Time, So How Come There Are So Few of Us?" He also goes into market crashes and what they do to investors psychologically.
How do you invest in health care when bills are failing and policy is up in the air? Is drug price regulation still a danger? Will single-payer spell the end of health care investing as we know it? Mindy Perry, who grew her global health care fund from $5 million to $2.5 billion in eight years, brings the latest from "a strange sector" and shares her strategy. She also offers a preview of her talk for the value investing conference.
In an interview with Bill Smead, GuruFocus digs into the Wells Fargo fake bank accounts scandal that incurred it a $185 million fine and unearthed some other misdeeds. Smead, a popular commentator and the founder of Smead Capital Management, a $2.4 billion firm, talks about the problems in the banking sector, why Millennials will invigorate low-priced financials, how the fallout of the scandal will affect Wells going forward, whether the bank is a buy and more.
Al Frank Asset Management Chief Portfolio Manager John Buckingham and Wedgewood Partners Chief Investment Officer David Rolfe discuss their holdings in Apple. Why is Berkshire Hathaway buying more of the stock? How will iPhone sales affect its business? What are its future prospects? The investors answer these and more questions.