If you own a business, you know how hard it is to hire good people. Heck, it’s difficult to hire someone to mow your lawn these days. The labor market is tight. Good humans are hard to find. With that in mind, I’m going to tell you something amazing.
I have some of the brightest minds in the world working for me today.
And my manager role is almost completely passive. I’ve never spoken to any of my workers. I’ve never even met any of them.
It may further surprise you to hear their names because you’re certainly familiar with some of them. They are modern visionaries like Jeff Bezos and Mary Barra.
How?
The answer is simple:
I buy stocks.
What are you buying when you buy a stock? You’re buying part of a company. And there is a lot that comes with that. If you buy Apple’s stock ($AAPL), you’re buying a piece of Apple’s:
- buildings and other physical assets
- intellectual property (IP)
- profits (Apple shares them with a quarterly dividend)
And if I own Apple, I’ve hired Tim Cook to work for me. I expect him to manage the Donut Building, IP, and product lines. Tim Cook is a smart guy who works very hard. I would never want his job. Heck, I don’t want any normal job ever again. However, the stock market allows me to benefit from the hard work and brilliance of Mr. Cook.
Stocks And Funds And Plants, Oh My!
In the past, I bought individual stocks like Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, and Tesla. Through those purchases, I’ve hired Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk. You’ve heard of them, right?
Now, I buy mostly index funds which automatically manage my workers. Vanguard’s Total Stock Market Fund, VTSAX, automatically promotes and demotes. Since VTSAX is market-weighted, if one of my workers outperforms her peers, VTSAX increases my allocation of her company. If the opposite happens, VTSAX decreases the allocation. I quite like the elegant simplicity of this arrangement. I don’t have to pay attention to the day-to-day management decisions of Mary Barra or Tim Cook. And for this crazy-good, hyper-efficient management, VTSAX charges me a fee of only .04%. If I give VTSAX $1,000,000 to manage, I pay $400 per year in fees. That’s an incredible value. Take my money VTSAX. If you’re still unconvinced, JL Collins explains it far better than I ever could in The SImple Path To Wealth.
Before I wrote this post, I spent the morning working in my yard. I also studied my electrical panel to plan for solar panels. The plants will make the yard look better and the solar panels will eliminate our utility bill. This is the work I choose to do.
The work I would not choose is securing supply chains for the next iPhone or figuring out how to fend Tesla off. Thank you Tim Cook and Mary Barra (GM) for taking care of that.
It gives me great satisfaction to know that some of the most brilliant leaders today are on my payroll. I get to pursue what I want and they fund it. They’re toiling away in an office somewhere while I practice Spanish this afternoon. Life is good.
More 1500 Days!!!
You can also find me (and the dinosaurs) at:
Mile High FI podcast:
Also here:
- EconoMe: Hey look, I’m speaking at EconoMe later this year!
- Facebook: Facebook group and page
- YouTube: My channel is mostly devoted to home improvement, but I have some other material coming up soon too.
- Instagram: Pretty pictures of dinosaurs, sunsets, and nail guns!
- Twitter: Spontaneous, often insane, ramblings
- Coworking space: On the surface, MMM HQ is a coworking space. Look a little deeper and you’ll see that we’re really building community. The members of MMM HQ are some of the finest people I know.
Other resources I like:
- Camp FIs are amazingly fun! I hope to attend Rocky Mountain and Joshua Tree this year. See you there?
- Need to learn how to invest? The Simple Path to Wealth is all you need.
- New to FIRE? Need some FIREy guidance? Check out Fiology and the accompanying workbook!
Join the 10s who have signed up already!
Subscribing will improve your life in incredible ways*.
*Only if your life is pretty bad to begin with.
Great approach! I love the idea of having those brilliant guys working for me and giving me the power to hire more of them in return while I just sit back and relax.
Related to your post, I just had my solar panels energized a week ago and every time the sun shines I feel great about having 100% renewable energy powering my house (and charging my car along the way). They are worth every penny!
Congrats on your podcast with Doug, really enjoying your conversations.
Whoa, did you DIY the panels or hire out? If you hired out, who did you choose? I got a couple of quotes, but they were insane, so I think I’m going to DIY it.
Thank you for the kind comments on the new podcast!
Unfortunately here in Austin, TX you can’t DIY your panels. The city requires an approved installer to allow the connection to the grid and the ability to get your rebate on the installation. In exchange, they offer a sweet $2,500 cash rebate (on top of the 26% tax deduction from the government).
After shopping around and getting 5 different quotes I ended up using a local company named TriSMART but I believe they only operate in Texas. With the actual cost of panels your $/Watt should be between $2.65 to $2.80. If you shop around you need to be mindful of other variables like Production Factor, type of inverter, warranties, temperature coefficient for the panels and some other random things. Fun project if you can DIY for sure!
I hadn’t thought about the fact that I own a very small part of the Apple donut building. I wonder if I showed up and asked for a tour of the building I own how they would react 😉
P.S. Good luck with the solar panel project. Are you planning to DIY or go with an installer? Either way, it’s pretty cool powering your home with magic rectangles on your roof!
No More Weekdays recently posted…What’s really important in life? How trade-offs help us decide
I have thought about requesting a tour myself! I think we both would get to meet some Apple employees, but those on security detail!
I’m going with a DIY panel install! It’s far too expensive to hire out Magic Rectangle installers. 🙂
Maybe it would help if you introduced yourself as Tim’s boss?
I’m with you on this. After years 15+ years consulting with or working for publicly traded companies, I’m so glad to be done with that rat race! Brilliant minds and leaders are needed to innovate and run the economy. I just don’t want to be one of them. Very happy to “hire” those minds and own a piece of those companies through my portfolio investments.
Mrs. @ RichFrugalLife recently posted…IT’S WAY TOO SOON TO MONETIZE MY BLOG; HERE’S WHY I’M DOING IT ANYWAY
I was just thinking this very thing today. If the assets of a low-capex company like Apple, Microsoft, or Facebook aren’t in buildings, equipment, or factories, then it’s really patents, brand, accounting goodwill, and *people* that I own… if I own shares in one of these companies.
Well, I guess it’s the intellectual labors of those people for 40 hours a week that I own, but it still feels strange to think about it like that.
Enjoyable read Mr. 1500!
Mr. Tako recently posted…You Are A Investing Super Genius!
At first I thought that was a Bitcoin mining array, and was like “Wow, he’s literally minting money!” A breaker box is cool too though. 😉
Haha, I never got into that scene. Whoops*!
*At least for now.
It’s tough to argue against hiring some of those guys. Lol!
Dividend Power recently posted…Is It Hard To Get Rich – Week In Review
My dumb state is still letting HOAs (which i most hate anyways) keep people form putting solar panels on their roofs. They keeping introducing a bill, but it keeps languishing in committee and never seeing a vote. While I probably wouldn’t be an early adopter if it ever gets approved< I would at least do a cost analysis to see if it is almost worth doing.
Haha, yup! That’s the way to do it. Pretty incredible for 0.04% eh? Muy bien.
All your little green workers are toiling away for you long after you earned them, year in and year out. As long as you don’t flush them away on something wasteful, they keep those managers in line at those companies. All the while, more green workers show up. You own an even larger slice (even if it is 0.0000001% of a huge company like Tesla).
Capitalism is pretty amazing from time to time.
Chris@TTL recently posted…Why You Don’t Need To Worry About Inflation (and the 4% Rule)
I think it was JD Rockefeller who said “I’d rather own 1% of a 100 successful companies, rather than 100% of my own company”.
Doesn’t it feel great knowing that Elon Musk is breaking his back and working 80+ hours a week to make you richer? 😉
David @ Filled With Money recently posted…Simple Living is a Ton Better Than Complex Living
Where the heck did I screw up? I’ve been tracking you for years on MMM. We had similar net worth until about the 1.5 million level. Then you just exploded. I guess I was too conservative with my investing. Our liquid NW has exceeded 2.85M and total NW 3M now. But you are a rocket ship. Must be the Tesla. I’m enjoying the podcast.
Bateaux
I got lucky with a bunch of tech stocks. Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Tesla have treated me well: https://www.1500days.com/my-investments-2/
Elon Musk is breaking his back and working 80+ hours